Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to complete my remarks before the vote.

Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to support the nomination of Lauren King to serve as judge for the U.S. District Court of Western Washington. I am pleased to have recommended her to President Biden.

As a citizen of the Muscogee Nation, Ms. King will be the first Native American Federal judge from my home State and only the sixth- ever Native judge in our country's history.

She is extremely well qualified and has an abundance of Tribal court experience, something that is very important in my State. We are home to 29 federally recognized Tribes, and it is long overdue that our Federal court system includes those who have deep understanding and appreciation of Tribal trust responsibilities and Federal Indian law.

Ms. King has extensive litigation experience and is a recognized leader in Tribal law. She has been a pro tem appellate judge for the Northwest Intertribal Court System since 2013. She has also served as a commissioner on the Washington State Gambling Commission and chairs her law firm's Native American Law Practice Group.

A graduate from the University of Washington and the University of Virginia School of Law, she has also taught Federal Indian law at Seattle University. She has earned the support of the National Congress of American Indians, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, and other leading Native organizations.

I know she will make an excellent addition to our court in the Western District of Washington, and I urge my colleagues to support her nomination.

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

Mr. President, I have 9 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss an important provision I authored in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Section 40336 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, H.R. 3684, includes several provisions relating to the Act of June 29, 1940, 54 Stat. 703, chapter 460; 16 U.S.C. 835d et seq., that facilitated the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam. The portion of the Columbia River that flows through the Colville and Spokane Indian Reservations formerly supported abundant anadromous salmon fisheries that were significant culturally and nutritionally to the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and the Spokane Tribe of Indians. Upon completion of the Grand Coulee Dam in 1942, these fisheries were destroyed, and the Columbia River upstream of the Grand Coulee Dam was inundated by its reservoir waters. In 1945, these reservoir waters were designated Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake and today are commonly referred to as Lake Roosevelt.

The 1940 Act instructed the Secretary of the Interior to ``set aside approximately one-quarter of the entire reservoir area for the paramount use of the Indians of the Spokane and Colville Reservations for hunting, fishing, and boating purposes, which rights shall be subject only to such reasonable regulations as the Secretary may prescribe for the protection and conservation of fish and wildlife . . . .'' 16 U.S.C. 835d (emphasis added). Congress authorized the Secretary in the 1940 Act ``to perform any and all acts and to prescribe such regulations as [it] may deem appropriate'' to protect these paramount use rights. 16 U.S.C. 835h. The portions of Lake Roosevelt ultimately set aside for the paramount use of the Colville and Spokane Tribes pursuant to the 1940 Act are within the Colville and Spokane Reservations and are called the ``Reservation Zone'' of Lake Roosevelt.

In a 1945 Opinion, Interior Solicitor Warner Gardner interpreted the 1940 Act and confirmed that the 1940 Act provided the Tribes ``special rights'' to hunt, fish and boat within the Reservation Zones. 59 I.D. 147 (Dec. 29, 1945). Solicitor Gardner also found that the Secretary has broad discretion to determine how to protect the Tribes' paramount rights, including the power to ``give the Indians exclusive rights of hunting, fishing, and boating'' in the Tribes' respective Reservation Zones.''

In 1990, Interior entered an agreement with the Colville and Spokane Tribes establishing the framework for cooperative management of Lake Roosevelt between the Tribes, Bureau of Reclamation, National Park Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs. The agreement, commonly referred to as the ``S-Party Agreement,'' provides for the Colville and Spokane Tribes to ``manage, plan and regulate all activities, development and uses that take place'' within the Tribes' applicable portion of the Reservation Zones. The 5-Party Agreement also directs that the Bureau of Indian Affairs ``shall assist the tribes in carrying out the tribes' management of the Reservation Zone, and undertake such other activities as are authorized by law in support of the tribes.''

At the Tribes' request, the Department of the Interior and its agency stakeholders previously initiated a process to consider potential solutions, including various possible Federal administrative actions to protect the Colville and Spokane Tribes' paramount rights. This process involved government-to-government meetings and communications with both Tribes and with the State of Washington. The Department of the Interior considered several options, including rulemaking. A summary of the parties' efforts in this regard were memorialized in a January 19, 2017, letter from Interior Solicitor Tompkins to the State of Washington and the Colville and Spokane Tribes.

The references to the Tribes' paramount use rights in section 40336 are intended to reaffirm the 1940 act's recognition of those rights and to recognize that the Secretary of the Interior has both a federal trust responsibility and broad discretion to protect the Tribes' paramount use rights.

Thank you.

Reserving the right to object.

Mr. President, Senator Scott's bill would prohibit the Department of Transportation, Amtrak, Transportation Security Administration, or other Agencies from requiring passengers in interstate transportation to show proof of COVID-19 in order to travel.

I appreciate my colleagues--all of whom I serve with on the Commerce Committee. I know that they know well--we have had a lot of discussions about the impacts of COVID-19 on our transportation sector. They know very well that we had to spend a lot of resources keeping our transportation sector moving.

Why?

Because we have to move goods and services and products. During COVID-19, we had to move essential workers, and we had to move product.

There is no doubt our transportation system needs to have keen oversight as it relates to moving in even a pandemic. That is what we did. I am proud of the work that we did. But it is not lost on anybody that COVID-19, the deadliest pandemic in U.S. history--as of September 28, there have already been 700,000 COVID-19-related deaths in the United States and over 43 million infections. In my State, 7,586 deaths and 652,000 cases.

So the point is here, we have been fighting this pandemic with all of these tools and no one has ever suggested the one--that Senator Scott nor my colleagues from the Commerce Committee are saying what the President might do. That is not what he has suggested.

In fact, I was very involved in an area of transportation where we wanted to get cruise ships back in service to Alaska at a critical moment--both for Alaska and a critical moment during the pandemic. Not everybody was ready to have that happen; not everybody was ready to move. And yet it meant so much to Alaska that we all worked together. And in some instances, those cruise ships said: We are going to require the vaccine.

So the point is here, we are not trying to mandate this. Now, if the President and the industry feel that it is important to have a workforce so that that workforce continues to serve us and conserve the growing response to the pandemic--which I mean responding to the aftermath of the pandemic--that is why we spent money. That is why we are trying to take off. That is why we are trying to return a workforce. That is why we are returning

kids to school. That is why we are trying to get our hospitals staffed. That is why we are doing things.

That is the only thing the President said, is that those people should get a vaccine. He has not said, if you want to get on an airplane, you have to get vaccinated--maybe if you are flying overseas and have to work with another country.

My colleague from Florida knows all too well because he and I are working together to try to get temperature checks in a very broad way established at airports through the U.S. We have agreed that is a smart thing to do. It has been done on an international basis for a long time and it prevents people from getting on a plane who are sick. The President has not said this.

To now put a bill through that might have prohibited the cruise ship industry reestablishing service up to Alaska because now, all of a sudden, you are going to have all of these things is not the way I want to go.

I like what we have been able to achieve. It has taken hard work and working together. It does not take us passing this bill by Senator Scott.

I object, and I hope my colleagues understand that we are willing to work on anything related to the transportation sector so it can keep our U.S. economy moving.

Madam President, I come to the floor this afternoon to support the nomination of David Estudillo to serve as district court judge for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.

I am pleased to join my colleague Senator Murray in supporting Judge Estudillo, who was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on a bipartisan basis, and I certainly appreciate the support of both the chairman and the ranking member on this nomination.

Mr. Estudillo is the son of Mexican immigrants who came to the Yakima Valley as part of the Bracero Program in the 1960s.

Growing up, he learned and embraced both the culture of his parents and that of the United States. Judge Estudillo is a great example of the successes and contributions many immigrant families make to our great Nation.

Judge Estudillo earned an associate of arts degree from Columbia Basin Community College and his bachelor of arts degree and juris doctorate from the University of Washington.

After graduating from law school, Judge Estudillo practiced general and civil litigation and immigration law in Moses Lake and Seattle and tried cases in both Seattle and Tacoma immigration courts. He is well experienced in many issues of the law.

He was appointed to the Grant County Superior Court in 2015 and was the only Latino judge in any Eastern Washington State court. Judge Estudillo received bipartisan support, with endorsements from both Democratic and Republican local officials and support from all nine of Washington State Supreme Court justices.

He has earned the respect and the support of his community. To quote a letter that was sent to the Judiciary Committee from Mayor David Curnel of Moses Lake, WA, he said Judge Estudillo ``is a respected member of our community. He is involved in our community. He is committed to our community. This is what I understand about Judge Estudillo and why I can recommend him highly for a Federal judge position.''

In short, Judge Estudillo is a well-qualified jurist, and he has dedicated his entire legal career to practicing and supporting his community. I am pleased to have recommended him along with my colleague Senator Murray to the President. I know his strong character and respect for the rule of law, a sense of justice, fairness, humility, empathy, and capacity for compassion and understanding would be a benefit to the court and all the parties concerned.

I urge my colleagues to support Judge Estudillo's nomination.

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 have 5 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Committee on banking, housing, and urban affairs

The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 14, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

Committee on foreign relations

The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 14, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

Committee On Homeland Security And Governmental Affairs

The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 14, 2021, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.

committee on the judiciary

The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 14, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.

select committee on intelligence

The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 14, 2021, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.

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

Madam President, many States in the United States need infrastructure investment, but I would put the State of Washington high on the list of States that desperately need infrastructure investment.

We have been blessed with a growing economy and a big trade economy based on the Pacific rim and the actions of the Pacific rim. So we need to keep moving products. We need to keep moving services, and we need infrastructure investment to do so.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank the work done by the Commerce Committee and those who worked on the Infrastructure Investment Act, specifically: Kara Fischer, Michael Davisson, Joanie Lofgren, Zeb Schorr, Ronce Almond, Alex Simpson, G.G. Slais, Nicole Teutschel, Jennifer Quan, Matthew Bobbink, Jami Burgess, David Martin, Amit Ronen, Stacy Baird, Devon Helfrich, Patrick Eckroth, Naseem Mehyar, Hannah Albert, Eric Vryheid, Elle Wibisino, John Branscome, Shawn Bone, Brian McDermott, Mary Claire York, Jared Bomberg, Shannon Smith, John Beezer, Noam Kanter, Jordan Blue, Tiffany George, Lucy Koch, Hunter Hudspeth Blackburn, Kelly Ryan, Dave Stewart, Melissa Porter, and David Strickland.

These are some of the individuals who were involved in putting together the commerce piece of this underlying bill. About 20 percent of the underlying bill was the focus of the Commerce Committee and its jurisdiction.

I want to thank Ranking Member Wicker and his staff for the hard work to pull off what was the bipartisan bill that came to the Senate floor as part of this package.

Our legislation, I think, is a historic investment to rebuild our transportation infrastructure, including investments in things like megaprojects, basically helping to eliminate our problems at grade crossings, improve our freight network, improve our environment by removing culverts, and helping Amtrak better serve the United States of America.

All these were important investments, but we should look at the firsts. First, we are authorizing for the first time megaprojects. Megaprojects often take up so much of our budget in our States and federally they never get funded, but that doesn't mean they aren't critical to the United States.

In the Northeast Corridor, we certainly have megaprojects. In the Pacific Northwest, we have megaprojects that would be critical, like the Columbia River Crossing between Vancouver and Portland, or the Highway 2 trestle in Everett. These projects deserve the attention of the Nation and, with this first-time authorization, will get so.

The bill also puts a historic investment in freight and in Amtrak. As I mentioned, the economy of a global nature is demanding that we be able to

move competitively our products. But if we don't continue to invest in freight, we are not going to get that job done. So this provides $66 billion to improve our passenger rail and freight system, the single largest investment that we have had in our Amtrak system that was funded 50 years ago.

The Commerce Committee's bill lays the foundation for this funding, which I believe will do three things. It will mean more investment to fix the problems in the Northeast Corridor; more specifically, it will give us the ability to have more sequencing of trains throughout the United States of America; and it will provide for new service in city pairs that, I hope, will help economies all across the United States with more investments.

I know, specifically, the Senator from Montana, Senator Tester, is very adamant about our Amtrak funding and the services that Montana demands. I want to thank him for his help on this.

I want to thank Senator Duckworth for her hard work in making sure that Amtrak complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. This is so important for us to do, and her language, making sure that we also have someone from the disabilities community on the Amtrak board, is the kind of thing that should be followed in other examples in this legislation.

I also want to say, for the first time, we are addressing specifically at-grade crossings. This is the instance where there is congestion in freight, in my State, multiple times the increase in freight traffic. Again, you know, a lot of Midwest product moving to Asia has increased a demand in safety and transportation. Somebody quoted one of our reports that it took freight 3 days to get through just the city of Chicago because of the amount of congestion.

Our job here is to make sure that our product, made and grown in the United States of America, gets quickly to its destinations or we will be outcompeted by other nations that have an infrastructure system that can beat us to those marketplaces. So this provides, for the first time, a focused program on improving at-grade crossings to continue to make the investments that need to be made to keep our freight moving and our public safe.

It also, for the first time, authorizes transportation improvements to repair culverts. Culverts and other transportation infrastructure have done damage to our environment. They have done damage to fish; they have basically blocked spawning grounds. They have caused other infrastructure challenges to species all along our coastal States. This program will help to improve that situation by repairing some of the fish passage that has been blocked for so many years. This is so important for us in the Pacific Northwest, but it is also important throughout the South and for our many, many coastal communities.

So this transportation legislation that went through the Commerce Committee, as I said, also, you know, makes other investments. This floor bill also makes other investments for bridge repair, for transit systems, for climate resiliency, and specifically for our airports. You probably haven't heard too much about that out here on the floor, but in the Commerce Committee, I can tell you that aviation, transportation, and competitive--I know that the Presiding Officer knows this very well; that in Las Vegas or in Reno that infrastructure like our airports is essential to our economy continuing to grow. SeaTac is probably one of the fastest growing airports in the United States right now, and under this legislation, we will also see an important improvement for our airports so they can continue to grow and so we can continue to make investments.

I also want to, as I mentioned, thank Senator Wicker in the title for vehicle safety. These are important provisions that he and I and others on the committee--Senator Blumenthal for his work on safety legislation that related to both the Northeast Corridor and to individuals in transportation, including, with Senator Wicker, the lifesaving technology, like an automatic emergency braking system, preventing child heat stroke deaths, and impaired driving faculties.

So I again thank all of the members of the Commerce Committee for their hard work in getting this legislation as part of this package.

I think we can see that we have some firsts here: first investing in megaprojects; first in cleaning up our environmental problems with culverts; getting our freight product through our most congested corridors with improved at-grade crossing; and making the major investment so that Amtrak can continue to expand.

So I look forward to working with my colleagues as we move through the legislative process and continue to make improvements in our transportation infrastructure.

I yield the floor.

Recognition of the Minority Leader

Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to urge my colleagues to support this important legislation. And I listened to my colleague from Maine on her remarks and I take her at her word. If there would be any chance to work on these election issues in the future, I guarantee we are all ears.

I say that because I come from the State of Washington, and we have a very high election turnout. We have a very high election turnout rate because we have a vote-by-mail system that has been developed over a long period of time. My colleague knew my predecessor, Slade Gorton, who was a three-term Senator. In the 2000 election, I won by 2,229 votes, and I am forever grateful to Senator Gorton for having faith in that election. That election that included provisional ballots and signatures and all sorts of things that people really understood. I think that is the principle here. Our election in the State of Washington is based on your signature.

That is the way it is now when you vote in person, and it is the way it is when you vote by mail. So our system has a lot of security in it, and this legislation that is before us today is to make sure that these rights--these civil rights and constitutional rights of individuals-- are upheld throughout the United States of America.

Now, I understand some of my colleagues may not like the ethics reform or campaign finance reform in the underlying bill. I support those provisions. But at the heart of this debate is

whether we are going to fight to make sure that the Federal Government does its job on constitutional rights. I feel like there is a little bit of hiding going on in this discussion about whether we have a role, that this is somehow left up to the States. It reminds me of when Rosa Parks was sitting on a bus. We didn't say it is just up to those individual States. Or when people were denied equal accommodations at hotels, we didn't say it was just up to those States. And we certainly didn't say, when people used police dogs trying to intimidate women to vote in the 1960's, that it was just up to those States.

No, no, no. We did something about it. We passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. We did that because intimidation was happening, and we needed to correct for it. So I hope that our colleagues will think about this issue because to me, it is the same debate we are having on criminal justice reform. So many people on the other side of the aisle said: You know what, this is up to local police departments, and it is just up to the local governments, and that is all there is to it.

No, that is not all there is to this. This is about whether we do our job in upholding these constitutional rights when certain States don't do that.

And so these American voting rights are guaranteed by our Constitution. The 15th Amendment provides that voting rights cannot be abridged on the account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The 19th Amendment, which turned a hundred years old last year, provides that voting rights cannot be denied on account of sex. The 26th Amendment provides that Americans 18 years of age or older cannot be denied the right to vote on account of age.

Generations of Americans fought for these rights over many decades, and they didn't come easy to us as a Nation. Nor should we overlook, now, these issues as we think that these rights, these constitutional obligations that we should be fighting for and should uphold, are facing challenges at the local level.

I know that my colleagues say that these are State rights to hold these elections. Article I, section 4 of the Constitution empowers Congress to make or alter rules for Federal elections. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld this authority as broad and comprehensive. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the election clause gives Congress the authority to ``override state laws to regulate federal elections.''

Now, this was in a pretty famous case in 2015. In the majority opinion in the Arizona State Legislature v. the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, Justice Ginsburg wrote, ``The dominant purpose of the elections clause, the historical record bears out, was to empower Congress to override state election rules. The clause was also intended to act as a safeguard against manipulation of electoral rules by politicians and factions in the States to entrench themselves or place their interests over those of the electorate.''

So these issues are very clear. It is calling on us to make sure that we uphold those constitutional rights. But according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, at least 14 States, from Georgia, Florida, Oklahoma, and many others, have enacted voting rights since the 2020 election to restrict individuals. My colleagues have been out here talking about some of those restrictions, and I think those that place undue burdens on individuals are something that we should be addressing. Yes, States have been at a different pace in allowing vote-by-mail, but we should be empowering people. We should say that we want to empower more people to vote under a system that is fair and gives them those opportunities to do so.

So there are at least 64 bills restricting voting rights moving through 18 State legislatures, and I think that we should be making sure here that we have clarity on what will help us continue to empower the public to cast their vote.

The For the People Act, S. 2093, is a comprehensive bill that makes voting easier. It also authorizes $1.7 billion in new federal grants to help secure the security of our voting system. Again, I like our vote- by-mail system in Washington State. It is based on my signature to the ballot that is checked at the ballot. I can tell you in the last election because of the ruses and various things that went on, 13 different people said that they voted on my behalf. But they didn't. And our election system caught that. They knew that it wasn't me, and they checked the signature on the ballot, and they knew that it was me. So even though the system has had people who are trying to cause distrust and discord about whether we have the right system, it is working. And the more we empower people, the better our democracy.

This legislation requires the Director of National Intelligence to report on threats to election infrastructure, including cyber threats, and requires the President to develop and implement a national strategy for protecting U.S. democratic institutions. I know that these are things that we should be updating. Throughout our history, following the civil war and reconstruction, there were localities that used discriminatory tactics like poll taxes and literacy tests to keep African Americans from voting. The Black community endured both of this kind of intimidation.

And in the years that followed, Americans have protested and marched for these voting rights. And out of this struggle, Congress passed, and President Johnson, signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act to make sure that we kept these promises of our constitution. So the Federal Government has had to intervene and we have done so I am glad that we did.

So I hope that we will continue to say that these provisions that are so important to guaranteeing the right to franchise for Americans, are there, and that they are continuing to be modernized. I hope that what we will do today is the start of an effort to focus on this.

I take my colleague at her word. I am sure she is sincere about wanting to vote to help do something on election and our democracy. We need to start that process today. We need to move forward, we need to address these issues. We can't live in a world where we are not allowed to move forward on a very close election in Washington State. That wasn't the only one we had. We had another one, I think, was decided by probably, you know, a few hundred votes. And were there issues? Yes. And guess what. The system resolved it. The system found any mistakes.

I keep mentioning, you know, a gentleman who basically when it got down to that somebody thought this was a Governor's race that was going to get down to 10 or 15 votes, basically decided to say that he had voted for his wife who had passed away, and admitted it because he knew in the end that they were going to find out. And he thought it was better to come forward and say I made a mistake. She had already passed. I sent in her ballot. It wasn't something I should have done, and we have a system that can work based on our signatures. It can and does today. When you go in to vote in person, you sign your name, and that is the signature, and that is the security of the system. And it has allowed us to trace and find and now expand to vote-by-mail. And it is time for us to say: Let's not make voting harder in the United States of America through a system that basically disenfranchises people, but make a system in the United States of America that is about giving people these opportunities so that people can feel this enthusiasm that we see when we successfully pull this off.

And what we need to be doing here is to show States that an 83 percent voter turnout in the State of Washington is a great victory. A high turnout is a great participatory system, and that is what we should be striving for with these reforms that are about security and about our constitutional rights. I hope our colleagues will support them.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be permitted to speak prior to the scheduled vote: Blunt, for up to 15 minutes; Merkley, for up to 15 minutes; Klobuchar, for 10 minutes; and Senator Schumer, for 5 minutes.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to complete my remarks before the vote starts.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that there be 3 minutes of debate, equally divided, between the votes today.