Floor Statements

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to continue our discussion about the Endless Frontier Act and why America needs to make more investment in the areas of research and development for our Nation. This is critically important as we have gone through this debate with some of our colleagues, to talk about why this is important for the United States. I spent my time yesterday--maybe somebody from the staff can come over and help me with the charts but, thank you--the biggest reason we are doing this is because we believe in American know-how, that is we believe in American ingenuity and we believe in American know-how and we have discussed already how that has helped to build our country over and over and over again, that we are a nation of, if you will, explorers, of pioneers, and by necessity, inventors, and that has continued throughout the history of our country.

So we are so proud to continue to make these investments in all areas of science, certainly in the areas of healthcare, but we are more specifically talking about the engineers of the physical science and engineering. And we are talking about why we should make an increase in both basic research with this underlying bill that continues to drive dollars into curiosity driven early stage research, so that we can continue to grow jobs and help our economy, and it also continues the effort by saying we should make more investments in STEM education, so the workforce that it will take for us to meet the job challenges of the future. So we are excited that we are there with American know-how, but we are also cognizant of this international debate that is going on, the debate about other countries and what they are investing in research and development. And one of the reasons why I like where we are in the United States is because our research and development ecosystem is really an ecosystem of many different agencies doing research and development.

And not only are those research and development investments by these various agencies helping in particular areas--because it is really distributed as this chart shows, the United States works with the private sector, it works with our public universities, and it works with various agencies. Instead of a centralized approach that you might find in other countries, the fact that we have this distributed ecosystem with, you know, the Department of Energy may collaborate with the Department of Agriculture, they may collaborate with the Department of Defense, NSF may collaborate with universities, universities may collaborate with the private sector--it is an ecosystem, and that ecosystem is what is unique about research and development in the United States. It is not hierarchical, it is not the majority driven by the private sector, or by government, it is an ecosystem, and the fact that it is so distributed. That means, almost like the competition in various places, and the collaboration is helping us grow the innovation economy.

So the one thing that we need to be cognizant of in this debate is that we want to preserve that. We want to preserve the uniqueness of our ecosystem. And that is why we are really talking today about this NSF, the National Science Foundation, principally, and you can see from this big pie we just had this debate, right, we had this debate, well, let's increase the defense R&D--well, we are already doing a lot in defense R&D, of course, our colleagues are talking about the budget overall as it related to defense, but you can see that NSF, the numbers that they are at today at 6.8 are not really at the--you know, you might think this whole debate we are spending, you know, billions of dollars to change the focus. This agency is a powerhouse, and it is a powerhouse mostly connected with universities, and the R&D that is done there has been in the basic research area.

But now, this bill by our colleagues Senators Schumer and Young is about taking the basic research, continuing that, making a little bit of investment in that basic research, but then also now trying to accelerate all the research that we now have at our hands, our fingertips, at our minds, and saying, What other user-based research can we take, that basic and applied research, and actually put it into use in commercialization in the United States?

So if you will, capitalizing on a faster tech transfer and a faster deployment of these technologies--why is this so important? Well, it is important because, in the information age, a lot of people can read our published research and development, they can read what we are doing, and they can continue their research and development. Other nations are figuring out that research and development in an information age economy really does matter. They are figuring out that the United States has come a long way as a nation in building job growth, maintaining competitiveness, national security issues, all because we at the Federal Government level have said we believe in research and development with the public taxpayer dollars and it has benefited, whether it is the internet or the bio sciences and healthcare or on national security, the American public gets that that research has made us competitive as a nation.

So we have had two previous attempts to make investments in this issue in America COMPETES, first started in the Bush administration in

2006 when President Bush published a report about America's competitiveness and proposed this concept of that small NSF budget that I was referring to, and articulated that we needed to double that budget within a 5-year or 7-year window of time. They felt that, with the level of change and transformation and innovation, that we wouldn't be keeping pace on a global basis unless we made that investment.

So in 2007 we passed the America COMPETES Act which gave money both to NSF and to DOE, and literally the first 3 years, we thought we were going to double this DOE budget and an investment in DOE within 7 years. So there was a little good news, a lot of euphoria in R&D, a lot of hope for STEM education, science, technology, engineering, and math. And then, in America COMPETES, the same request basically of a 60/40 split between NSF and energy, people thought we would end up--well, we are not on pace, where we want to be, but, oh, we will get there within 11 years. Well, we will put enough money into this innovation effort that we will double our research and innovation budget as it relates to NSF and our energy innovation efforts in 11 years.

Well, this is what really happened. We didn't do either of those things. We are really on a track to have taken those 2007 numbers and double them in 22 years. So when you look back at the history and you say, Well, how did we--what happened? If we are so enthusiastic about this, if we identify this--both a Republican President identified this and then a Democratic administration followed up, why didn't we execute on this? Why didn't we execute on this doubling of this number and making this investment?

Well, we all know what happened, we basically hit a recession. And in a recession of 2009 and 2010, we just didn't live up to this obligation of funding the research and development that was in America COMPETES to the aggressiveness that we had all hoped for. I am not sure everybody even realizes that this effort fell short, that we didn't make quite the level of investment that we wanted, that we were falling behind. I don't think anybody really understood it until now, when people see the incredible level of international competition. All of a sudden, as we see this incredible investment from the international community, people are starting to say, Well wait, what have we done on this effort?

So our next chart shows the fact that the United States has been a leader in global research and development, and as I said, I mentioned on the floor a report that was done by the Pew Charitable Trust--I mean the Pew Research Center, that basically said 7 in 10 Americans believe in public investment in research and development. We have a higher regard for this than other nations, and we just do, I think, because people get it here, I think they get that we have invented a lot of things, they believe in that innovation, they know it creates jobs. And so we have a higher regard for that, and consequently, we have been the leader in world R&D for a very, very long time. But as this Information age has come along, other nations get that R&D leads to job creation, transformation, and certainly to security. So just since 1991, we have seen China who was ninth in R&D--now, they are No. 2, and I am pretty sure, at current trajectories, will end up being No. 1 sometime very, very soon.

And so it is, you know, not everything about China, although many of my colleagues here are going to discuss this is a China bill, I view it as a bill about the future and making the investments in the future to capture the economic opportunities. There are security issues here, clearly national security issues here. There are clearly issues about a supply chain and whether you can depend on a supply chain and whether, if you have a concentration of an industry in one region of the world, then are you really dependent on that one region of the world for that particular product?

What happened to all of us in the last year and a half--and I am saying now on a global basis--is the world community realized with COVID, well, wait, supply chains really matter, product really matters, where we get product in an emergency really matters, whether it does what it says it does in an emergency really matters. And so all of these issues about supply chains and who is building what and the intricacies of it really got ripped open in the COVID debate, and now, we are really, as the world community starts to look at this too, where do we get our product, who is making it, is it made to the standard that we want, is it secure? And obviously, you know, people have made lots of decisions about supply chain based on just pure cost and effectiveness of a product, but now, people are starting to realize that it is way more complex, and it has led us to this current debate.

So again, why do we do this, why does America want to make an investment in an innovation economy? Well, we don't have to go too far to understand that from our past history. It enables competitiveness, and if you just think about, you know these sectors-I will never forget years ago we had somebody--this was in the '80s, visit Seattle, and they said, Well, what is everybody going to do, make car phones and computers? And in reality, there was a big decade or so of making what then was supposed to be great technology of a car phone, and obviously, we all know where we have now been with computers and operating systems and how much it drives the economy of the future, but at the time when we were seeing a transformation to that, people just thought, Well, what are we all going to do? Is that what we are going to do? Well, telecommunication, semiconductors, advanced materials, all were huge things that enabled this competitiveness of our Nation-in automobiles, in aviation, in the tech sector, in healthcare, in a whole variety of things. And it drives our economy with this level of innovation.

The internet, just one example, is something we started working on in the '60s, became a reality in the '90s, and today, it is $2.3 trillion part of our national economy, and 12 percent of U.S. GDP. That is what we got out of previous research. That is what we got out of saying we are going to let scientists do basic research and figure out what they think are the most important advances moving forward. The job growth, millions of jobs, and national security today, we can see just from this past week in a pipeline that was affected by a cyber attack, we cannot afford to take our foot off of national security research and development in the purposes of things like cyber security.

We have to continue to be a leader in this area of technology. It is not as if you are not going to have intimidation of our Nation by somebody maybe sticking the nose of a foreign sub in U.S. waters or flying a spy plane over the United States, it is going to come in the form of intimidation of our banking system, or pipelines, or other senses of security and hacking. And so there is no doubt--no doubt--we need to stay on top of the level of investment in national security. I would say the underlying bill that we will be talking about next week in detail relates to a very important aspect of national security, and that is the area of semiconductors. We need to make an investment in our competitiveness in semiconductors, and we need to make that investment because it is going to be critical to our national security.

So let me talk about a few things that are in the bill, just so people understand some of the priorities that Majority Leader Schumer and Senator Young came up with as it relates to this legislation. As I mentioned, it creates a new Tech Directorate in the office of NSF, the National Science Foundation, so that it will be like a DARPA system, that is, that they work with the private sector, they create technology centers, they build partnerships between government and academia, they support rapid technology demonstration, they advance the competitiveness of the United States in important fields like artificial intelligence quantum computing, biotechnology, and they focus on these ideas, similar to how DARPA has done, where the individuals involved are critical to the effort, that is to say, to get the best and brightest minds who are working in these areas to be part of this effort and concentration.

We also looked at and improved in this legislation the fact that universities and academia provide a lot of research and development, but oftentimes, don't even--in the academia world, people are focused on publishing. Publishing their research, that

is kind of how they get known, that is what they get basically almost rewarded for at the university system, and you will be surprised how little time they take to actually take that research, turn it into a patent, and then turn it into a commercialized product.

So one thing we heard in our hearings is that we needed to give more help to universities on tech transfer and patenting of information. Why patenting? Because patenting helps us protect the science that we already have developed. It helps us--say that somebody can't just take that published science report and then go off in another country and develop it because it is now protected under our U.S. law. So we feel this is a very important effort, and we think that it also helps lead a lot of research at universities to then be supported, developed, exposed to the venture capital markets and thus actually helped turn into commercialization.

So efforts at the University of Washington that specifically focused on this, specifically hired somebody to come into the university and kind of, if you will, shake the tree of the level of R&D that was being done and say, What are we doing to actually patent this content, what are we doing to actually transfer it into commercialization, had outstanding results? Yes, it was a transformation of what our universities do, but in the end, they came up with something like, just in a few years, 20 companies that ended up becoming been, you know, supported by venture capitalists and making it on to the markets. So we are very excited that we will now, with this provision, be trying to get more out of the research we do, by patenting it and doing tech transfer.

Our colleagues Senators Young and Schumer also believe that university research should continue to get investments, and that is the major aspect of the provision here is to have the Tech Directorate work on these 10 areas of expertise, work with selected universities around the United States on this critical focus of technology. I mentioned some of them: artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology, and many others.

So the fact that the bill really is depending on our university system, I think, is something that our colleagues should applaud and be excited about. That chart that I showed at the beginning where everybody is working together, this is just research dollars going to the best universities in our Nation to continue to focus on this, but now focus on it in partnership with experts in these sectors and with industry so that we can actually get to a faster adoption rate and a faster implementation into commercial markets. So I think we are leaning in to our university system.

That is a good idea.

That is a good idea. What we are giving the university system, though, is the tools, the tools to help accelerate that development. And then, as I mentioned, we are also making a huge investment in STEM, more than $10 billion into STEM education. The chart I showed before talked about how we were going to do all these great things under America COMPETES in STEM. We didn't quite get there. We didn't really do that. I think this is like broadband. Everybody talks about it all the time, we think we have solved it five times, and you still think, Wait, I thought we solved broadband?

STEM is the same thing. You think we have funded STEM. We haven't funded STEM. This represents a huge increase in our STEM education budget, but I will just tell you, this is so that we can get the researchers, the scientists, the fellows, if you will, at the higher education level for STEM. We still need to go and build the pipeline at our K-12 system so that we are putting more people into the pipeline. But hopefully, with the STEM dollars here, we will be, if you will, creating a new workforce for the innovation that we are trying to chase with the investments of these dollars.

And we felt so strongly about this that we looked at the numbers and we were just astonished. There are so few women and minorities in STEM fields--so few. The underlying bill our colleagues, Senator Schumer and Young, created a diversity office at, for the first time, over at NSF so they can focus on this issue. We put more resources to it within this STEM category so our colleagues and those at NSF could focus on it. And we expect to really try to take a very aggressive role here. That is what we heard from NSF in their research.

STEM education can't be a passive thing. It can't be just, We are going to put some more dollars out for education. If we want to diversify in the sciences, we have to have a very, very aggressive approach. And so that aggressive approach means changing the faces of those who do the education, changing some of the faces of people who do investments, changing the dynamics of research. A lot of women were hurt in the last COVID pandemic who were researchers because they were juggling both taking care of their families or taking care of parents and doing their research. And so they had extra strains on them that made complexity to when they could get their research done.

So we know we have to think about STEM education from the perspective of what are some of the challenges that face people going into those fields. But no doubt, this underlying legislation before us will have a big investment in that and continue NSF's leadership in trying to grow a more aggressive workforce. So the bill also includes, I should say, a few things about how one of our goals is to diversify innovation to many different parts of the United States. The challenge there is, you know, you are not going to sprinkle some dust on some magic words on some region of the United States, and all of a sudden, something is going to pop up-and nor do I personally expect it to. I always give the example of Walla Walla, which is a real place, Walla Walla, WA. I had a journalist ask once if that was a real place.

Yes, it is a real place. It is a great wine-making place. But somebody might say, Walla Walla, WA, should be a research center. It has got a university, an outstanding university, Whitman. People might say it should be a tech hub or it should be a research center. Walla Walla found its rightful place when research was done, and a university professor at the University of Washington said, You know what, we can grow wine grapes. That really wasn't that long ago. That was in the 1980s. He said we can grow grapes. We weren't growing grapes. Now, a couple of decades later, we have over a thousand wineries in the State of Washington. So not everybody is going to be a tech hub, but it doesn't mean that you're not going to use science to the best and highest use for a region of your State or the country.

It is about empowering. As Director Panchanathan, the head of NSF says, it is about trying to have innovation everywhere, connected to opportunity everywhere, connected to universities. The point is let's build a better ecosystem that goes all throughout the United States so more and more people can take advantage of technology and innovation. So this is really, really important because we never know where the next person is going to come from, who is going to play a critical role in technology. And the more we build this infrastructure, the better.

So this allows money for regional technology hubs to help concentrate in various parts of the country and expertise, more money for our manufacturing institutes which help manufacturers all across the United States focus on being competitive in their particular area, and it supports $2.4 billion for manufacturing extension programs, which are those things that really do work with, say, a particular sector like automobiles or aviation or some other type of manufacturing and help make them competitive. And as mentioned, it also, just like in the former COMPETES Act bills, puts some money into DOE. In this case, it puts about $17 billion into the Department of Energy so that its energy innovation can move forward.

So let me talk for a second about this issue about national security and where we are with semiconductors because I expect this will get a bunch of focus next week as we talk about this legislation. The underlying bill has about $52 billion of investment for the semiconductor industry, so I am pretty sure people think, Well, wait, this is a lot of money, but it is a very big sector.

It is essential to our defense, it is essential to navigation, it is essential to

satellites, it is essential to healthcare, it is essential to consumer products. And the United States has been a leader in this area. The United States has been a leader in this area for a long time--or I should say, was a leader in this area for a long time, when you think of companies like Intel or others, even some of the companies that are foreign investors who made huge footprints in the United States. But the point is that we are no longer in this position--as this chart shows, only 12 percent of a global supply.

A report recently done on the semiconductor industry by Boston Consulting Group, I just want to read this one part: ``The U.S. has been the long-standing global leader in semiconductors with 45% to 50% share of the worldwide market''--45-percent to 50-percent share of the worldwide market--``in the last 30 years. However, significant focus is being placed on ending the U.S. share in semiconductor manufacturing which now only stands at 12% installed capacity.'' This is a report that I am pretty sure you could get online. That is the end of that statement.

So we have gone from 45 percent to 50 percent, that is where we started out, and over the last 30 years, now, we are down to 12 percent--12 percent. So I ask my colleagues, if you were 12 percent of anything, how long would you be around to be competitive? How long would you drive the supply chain? How long would you drive job growth? How long would you continue to be competitive in this very, very important sector that is important to all of these things?

And while I am somebody who supports continued growth of our global economy because I think we build and make great things and we want people to sell them to, this presents to us a very unique challenge, the fact that something as critical to the information age as semiconductors, we have gone from 40 percent to 50 percent down to 12 percent the question is what is going to happen next.

Well, the question of what is going to happen next is, if we don't make this investment, very, very likely that that 12 percent is going to, in the next several years, turn into 6 percent. It is going to turn into 6 percent. So staying status quo right now, doing no investment, it is very likely that 12 percent will turn into 6 percent, which means people aren't going to want to locate their boundaries in the United States. People aren't going to want to locate their research in the United States--people aren't going to want to have their companies and the supply chain and the workforce. Literally, this industry simply is clusters, it is clusters. Seattle didn't get to be Seattle overnight. Seattle didn't get to be the hub of the No. 1 STEM city in the United States of America and certainly an epicenter of software and software development overnight.

It took decades--decades. Literally, you know, even in the 1980s and 1990s, it wasn't that diversified. It has just been in the last 15 years that it has really diversified. But, yes, it took the work of the University of Washington. Yes, it took the work of many companies being there. Then it took the work of then people attracting a workforce who would rather be there than, say, in Silicon Valley. And then it took the efforts of universities to produce a workforce. Then it took attracting venture capital.

Then once they got venture capital, then more companies wanted to come there because then you have the entire ecosystem. You had universities, you had venture capital, you had leading companies, you had a workforce, and you had all of this stuff. Well, that is in software, and software can continue to move forward, but if you didn't have those things, you aren't going to be a cluster for semiconductors. The United States of America--the cluster of semiconductor development is going to be in Asia. It is going to be in Korea. It is going to be in Taiwan, and it is going to be in China.

So we have to ask ourselves if we are only 6 percent of the supply in the future and we can't really control the development and we lose our edge in this and then basically we have to rely on a supply chain for all the chips, you know, in the world, where is the supply chain that we are going to rely on for the national security products and defense technology and satellites and maybe some of these other consumer products that then end up getting used for other purposes? That is what this debate is about.

It is about that we went from 45 percent to 50 percent down to 12 percent. If we do nothing, we are going to 6 percent, and the epicenter of a critical technology is going to move to Asia. So I personally want to see us be successful in keeping a sector in the United States. I am very proud that that same Boston report shows that we have 49 percent of the aerospace manufacturing market in the United States. I am very proud of that because we are an epicenter of that. Forty-nine percent of the manufacturing market for aerospace is in the United States.

That represents, to my region, maybe 150,000 to 200,000 jobs in the Northwest. To the United States, that is 2 million jobs--more than 2 million probably if you think about some of the other related sectors. So being 49 percent of the supply chain in the United States for aerospace really, really, really matters. And I don't want to see that slip. You know, we have had a discussion about the fact that we have the Jones Act.

Now, some of our colleagues might not support the Jones Act, but the Jones Act is we decide, Well, we are not going to be all the shipbuilding in the world. Shipbuilding is going to get built in other places. But, oh, my gosh, we have to have enough shipbuilding in the United States so if we are at war, products and services that we need to support our military can be transported on U.S. vessels. That is why we have the Jones Act because we decided that that sector was critical enough to support.

And what we are saying here is that this sector is critical enough to support, too. I don't know that we are ever going to be 49 percent like aerospace manufacturing is--probably not, probably because it would take a lot more money than we are talking about here--because the rest of this world is chasing this market, too. They are chasing it fast and furious. We have to ask ourselves, Do we want to end up at 6 percent, or are we want going to try to reverse this trend and make an investment and make it as smart as possible?

I thought we had one more chart, but I guess we don't. So I guess we are back to this. Is this bill's investment worth taking the chance on American know-how? Is it worth the history of our country and saying, We have done a lot in research and development, and we know how to get things done. When I think of some of the people in this story, I think one of the guys on the GI Bill was one of the first contributors to semiconductors. It is a guy who basically went to school on a GI Bill, and if you think about the capital formation and capital markets we have in the United States, it has contributed to allowing that technology to move more rapidly. Our investment in higher education has allowed this to move more rapidly.

So to my colleagues who aren't sure about this legislation or think that it sounds like a lot or thinks that it sounds like, Oh, I don't understand it, it is really quite simple. Do you want to make a bigger investment in our contribution to American know-how with research and development and let them compete to winning the next generation of jobs? I do. I do.

I want to do that because I want to see what comes next. I think it is one of the most exciting things about today and where we live today. We are not in the agrarian age; we are not in the industrial age. We are in the information age where everything can be created in the blink of an eye and now distributed and transform our economy in such significant ways. I want to see what comes next. But we can't do it by passing legislation, authorizing things and then not appropriating the money and then waking up in 10 years and finding that we are at the lowest percentage of research and development to GDP in 60 years. That is where we are, the lowest percentage. So we can't do that. We have to make these investments and if we invest in American know-how, the rest of this will take care of itself.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1527.

Mr. President, we come to the floor today after a lot of hard work by the Commerce Committee to pass out the Endless Frontier bill last week--24 to 4. I know my colleagues from the committee will be out here to speak on this important legislation, as will the majority leader, Senator Schumer, who authored this important legislation, and our colleague from Indiana, Senator Young. We thank them for kick-starting what is a very important national discussion about how much we should be investing in research and development or what I would say is American ingenuity or, to put it a little more simply, I just say American know-how, because we are a nation of people who know how to innovate, who know how to use science to transform our economy, and we have done it over and over and over again.

I don't know. Maybe it came with, in getting in a boat and coming all the

way across the ocean, you had to be an adventurer to begin with. If you had to settle the frontier, you had to be innovative in your own right. If you had to continue to expand our country, you had to have a great ability to take risks in order to calculate and move forward.

Yet, somehow, in the United States of America, we are blessed with ingenuity in our DNA. We as a nation are a nation that has figured out that if we continue to partner together with those great, creative minds, that the investment by both the public sector and the private sector and through our universities and now our community colleges and now research centers--that we can grow our economy, compete on an international level, and protect opportunity for future Americans.

So it has been many eras of innovation. When I think about it, I think about Thomas Edison and the light bulb, I obviously think about Henry Ford and automobiles, and in my part of the world, we think about Bill Boeing and aviation. Innovation is so much part of our DNA that I don't think we sometimes absorb the littler things that we might not know about.

People probably don't know about Nathan Stone Stubblefield, a Kentucky inventor who in 1902 demonstrated the first wireless transmission of communication using magnets. I know we have a big wireless industry today, but people probably don't know that, in 1902, a Kentucky inventor basically helped to turn the page on a new generation of technology. People probably don't know that a Louisiana professor, J. Lawrence Smith, in 1850, invented the microscope. Think about how much that led to the important discussions of science and healthcare for us as a nation. People probably don't know that, in Indiana, a State police officer invented the breathalyzer test, a gentleman named Robert Borkenstein, who basically just said, ``We don't know what is happening here,'' and he introduced and created the breathalyzer test.

That is what America is. America is the spirit of know-how and getting things done.

In fact, a report read:

Americans prioritize being a world leader in scientific

achievements more than other global [communities].

That is from the Pew Research Center report by Cary Funk and several other authors last September.

The report goes on to read:

[S]even in ten Americans believe it is very important for

the United States to be a leader in scientific achievements.

Clearly, what makes us different than other nations is that we are willing to put significant American tax dollars on the table to ensure that the national investment, the research in science, and the development of our ecosystem take place. That investment is matched with a good education system, capital formation, and, as I said, private sector investments in research and development. All of that has continued to make us the world leader in science and technology innovation. It also helps us create job growth here at home.

The question before us today is, How much research and development should our government be doing given how important th practical sciences and engineering are to the next generation of Americans?

We are here to discuss this proposal by Senators Schumer and Young, who, as I said, have been working on this concept for years because, no doubt, we have fallen off the pace--that is to say, the pace of scientific research investment at least as a percentage of the GDP.

Even though President Bush, in his second term, tried to signal the importance of this investment, he issued a report basically calling the American Competitiveness Initiative the leading world innovation agenda. That was in February of 2006.

In fact, at that time, President Bush said:

[T]he role of government is not to create wealth; the role

of our government is to create an environment in which the

entrepreneur can flourish, in which minds can expand, in

which technologies can reach new frontiers.

George Bush had it right. He knew that this competitiveness issue was starting to challenge us from a competitive perspective, and he knew that we needed to make a bigger investment.

Unfortunately, with the two attempts that we had--the America COMPETES Act in 2007 and the America COMPETES Act in 2010--it really was a goal by us to basically double the NSF budget within a 7-year window. While we started out in the right direction, we had a huge economic downturn, and these goals were not met. If we had kept our promises to these science agencies, we would have invested $80 billion more in innovation investments over the last 14 years than we have done today.

The challenge that we face now is that, after decades of not living up to what had been outlined for America COMPETES, we now know that it is an environment in which we are facing much more aggressive competition. We have to think about the lack of investment that we did not realize in the context of how long it takes to do technology breakthroughs.

Look at just one example, the internet as we know it today. Literally, in the 1960s, the ARPANET was first talked about. It took us to the 1990s to really, with the University of Illinois and Marc Andreessen, to affect what we would later know as hypertext links and a browser. Today, what it means to us is more than $2 trillion annually to our economy.

When you think about the investments we are asking our colleagues to make today, we have to consider that, in fact, Federal dollars for R&D is near its lowest point in 60 years as a percentage of the GDP. I can't say that we are going to discover the next internet, but I can say that, if we continue to underinvest in this, we will be shortchanging generations of innovation.

There is no doubt that key investments in research and development in other parts of the world are certainly getting attention. Since 2000, research and development in China has grown by 1,600 percent; in Taiwan and Korea by 400 percent; while, in the United States, just by 150 percent. That is in a 20-year window of looking at this issue.

Americans believe that competition is good, and we believe that competition helps to drive innovation. So you won't find me as one on the floor who is obsessed about other nations as much as giving a perspective here about what the world market opportunity represents. If we are not making the investments here in science and technology and innovation, not only are we missing opportunities in our own country, we are missing opportunities around the globe. The rest of the Nation, in an information age, is not going to sit by idly, so we have to think about how we move ahead on critical technology that helps us in all sectors of our economy--how it helps us with supply chains and, certainly, how it helps us with national security.

What we are talking about here, with this bill proposed by our colleague Leader Schumer and Senator Young, is more than a doubling of NSF's budget in 5 years; it is the start of trying to catch up. It is also a $17 billion investment in energy innovation--a key sector of our economy in which we need to make continued transformation. That represents a 28-percent increase in some of the projects from the Office of Science and things like ARPA-E that could see investment.

What we are also investing in, which our colleagues were very adamant about and very convincing, is a new tech directorate--that is to say that our research is very good with basic and very good with applied but that we actually have to get better with the user implementation of our science and spur more innovation in a more rapid fashion. So we are investing, between this new tech directorate and tech hubs, nearly $39 billion to help stimulate the faster translation of our advancements into real innovation. This is something the committee thought long and hard about, and we took testimony from experts who have worked on innovation issues for many years.

In this bill, we also increase the protection of intellectual property from our universities.

We are helping our universities do better tech transfer but also protect their intellectual property. In an information age, when so much is published online, if other nations, hungry for development, can read our research and act an effect on it because we haven't patented it, then we need to do a better job of patenting our innovations and helping our universities.

Our universities are unbelievable research institutions, and helping them spend more time on tech transfer is something that we have done in the Pacific Northwest. A new program ushered in there literally led to 20 startups from research that had been done but just hadn't been translated into new areas.

We also are trying to help get more regional diversity to our research and investment dollars. There are about 25 States in our Nation that previously qualified for a program that says they should get a share of research dollars. This legislation says all the money being spent here, 20 percent of it should go to that, what is called EPSCoR efforts, which is expanding research and development into those States.

And for the first time, we will have over at NSF an office of diversity--an office to focus on the lack of women and minorities in science and to make real progress on this issue.

People see the chart behind me, and, yes, it is no mistake, the picture we picked.

The point here is that we know from NSF's own research that we can't be passive about this. Literally, the University of Washington got an NSF grant that helped them study why we are not making more progress with women and minorities in science and innovation, and they came back with: It can't be passive. You can't just put dollars on the table for STEM. You can't just put a few programs in place. It has to be an active approach to changing many aspects to the way we educate in science.

I am very proud of the University of Washington on this point because they made changes, and now of those who are teaching in what are considered STEM sciences at the University of Washington, 70 percent of them are women or people of color. So we have changed what the face of teaching science looks like at the University of Washington, and now we have to change some of the criteria and curriculum so that we can continue to attract more people. This bill is a very good step in that direction.

So what are we trying to achieve? We are trying to achieve what NSF Director Panchanathan is saying. He is saying that we need, in this next decade and in decades to come, innovation everywhere, tied to opportunity everywhere, tied to our universities. That is what we are trying to do in advancing this legislation.

We processed over 100 amendments in committee and a broad range of input from our colleagues. We will, I am sure, here in regular order process many more, but, hopefully, these amendments and more of the substance of this underlying bill we will go into in detail. We have to remember what our goals are with this investment--to stay competitive, to create future jobs, to help our economy by unleashing innovation, to protect our national security, and do what Americans know how to do best--that is, use that ingenuity to help create a better future.

I will see if my colleagues want to speak, but we will be coming back to expand on many other layers of this legislation. We will be back to talk about semiconductors. We will be back to talk about the new tech directorate. We will be back to talk about NASA funding. We will be back.

And that reminds me. If anybody at home is saying, ``Well, you know, OK, that was interesting; I don't really know about this; what is American innovation?'' just go and Google two things. You can either look at SpaceX rocket return, which they did in 2015, or Blue Origin. In both of those--the New Shepherd and the Falcon, two different approaches--there are literally engineers who said: If we are going to go to space, if we are going to go to the Moon, if we are going back to the Moon and go to Mars, we need to figure out how to have returnable rockets.

Just go Google those two clips, and you will see alive and well the spirit of American ingenuity when those engineers see that rocket returning from outer space and reland because they have pulled off an incredible achievement. You will see jubilant joy and excitement over that accomplishment.

I guarantee you, we will not see everything that this bill will unleash, but I guarantee you it will unleash things that will deliver that kind of excitement for Americans in the future, and we will have to be very thankful that this Congress set the record straight on the level of investment we need to achieve to keep us competitive.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that upon receipt from the House, if the text is identical to the text of S. 593 that passed the Senate, the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 1318, the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, if I could just say something, for a second, while the Senator from Mississippi is here. It has been one of the great joys to collaborate with Senator Wicker on so many important policies last year, working on everything from aviation to maritime and foreign issues, and now working on this legislation and infrastructure and on many things that we want to do for the future. I thank him for his collaborative work on this process.

No one probably relished the speed at which we moved through on this bill from our committee perspective, but, nonetheless, I think the committee actually had a lot of joy in the fact that we were at regular order and could process so many amendments and have that diverse of a conversation. The subject matter, in and of itself, is so important--it really is--to get this right.

When I think about our attempts at America COMPETES in 2007 and 2010, we were enthusiastic, but we didn't convince the rest of everybody to put the money behind it. It makes me think that I am glad we are creating more of a robust debate about why this competitive issue is so important.

Amendment Nos. 1517 and 1547

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the following amendments be called up and reported by number: the Tillis-Hirono amendment No. 1517 and the Scott-Johnson amendment No. 1547; further, that at 4 p.m. today the Senate vote in relation to the amendments in the order listed, with no amendments in order prior to those votes in relation to the amendments, with 60 affirmative votes required for adoption, and 2 minutes of debate, equally divided, between the two votes.

Mr. President, I enjoy working with my colleague from Florida on many issues, but on this particular issue, I disagree.

This amendment harms both my State and our Nation. It literally is saying: Take the money that went to local governments in the rescue plan and repeal it to pay for the Endless Frontier Act.

It said by the date of the enactment of this, if that money is repealed, it can go and take other money that was part of the recovery plan that isn't spent and start taking money from it.

I think this is the wrong way to do that. This would take money immediately away from Tribes. It would take money away from healthcare. It would take money away from broadband and, eventually, it could take money away from things like aerospace, manufacturing, and money that is there for the people who have been impacted by the downturn who no longer have jobs and need to be retrained and skilled.

I think we should pay for the Endless Frontier Act as our appropriator colleagues will get the chance. Please don't ruin this bill by basically trying to pay for it with repealing State dollars.

Vote on Amendment No. 1547

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate resumes consideration of S. 1260 tomorrow, the following amendments be called up and reported by number: Inhofe-Shelby 1523 and Johnson 1518; further, at 12 noon tomorrow, the Senate vote in relation to the Inhofe amendment and at 1:30 p.m. in relation to the Johnson amendment, with no amendments in order to these amendments prior to a vote in relation to the amendment, with 60 affirmative votes required for adoption.

Mr. President, just for the notice of our colleagues, I should say we are still trying to work out other amendments, including the Coons amendment and others, so we will be working on that this evening.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I understand that there is a bill at the desk, and I ask for its first reading.

I now ask for a second reading, and in order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I object to my own request.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 25, S. Res. 97.

I ask unanimous consent the committee-reported substitute amendment to the resolution be agreed to; the resolution, as amended, be agreed to; the committee-reported amendment to the preamble be agreed to; the preamble, as amended, be agreed to; the committee- reported amendment to the title be agreed to; the title, as amended, be agreed to; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10:30 a.m., Thursday, May 20; 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; further, that upon the conclusion of morning business, the Senate resume consideration of Calendar No. 58, S. 1260, as provided under the previous order.

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

Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about the rise in hate crimes in the Pacific Northwest and to thank my colleague the Senator from Hawaii for her tremendous leadership in guiding us through this process to get this legislation passed in the U.S. Senate.

I want to thank her for her incredible work as a member of the Judiciary Committee and for getting this out and moved to the floor and to thank Senator Schumer and Senator McConnell for both helping us to get to this point today and our colleagues for passing this incredible legislation. But, again, thanks to Senator Hirono for knowing--knowing and understanding and being a great member of the Judiciary Committee-- that we needed to get this legislation done now.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have a long history in our country. And their contributions have been significant, both in cultural vibrancy to our economy and to our way of life.

But, unfortunately, that has also been marked by periods in our history of hate and damaging stereotypes and xenophobia, and we saw this again with COVID-19. That is why we needed to act today, to pass hate crimes legislation to protect Asian Americans in the United States of America and to make sure that they have tools to protect them.

Our AAPI communities are facing the same challenges we face in the pandemic. And trust me, we have lost

some incredible Asian Americans, who ran markets, who ran restaurants, who were small business leaders and continued to work during this crisis and ultimately paid the price with their lives. But they also, in addition to facing the pandemic, have had to face a range of hate and racism against them during this time period.

According to Stop AAPI Hate, nearly 3,800 incidents of violence and hate against AAPI individuals were reported nationwide over a year since the pandemic. And sadly--sadly--women made up over half of this. Nearly 68 percent of the reported incidents of violence against Asian Americans were against Asian-American women. This must stop.

And it is very important that we think about how a fraction of these statistics that are the reported information--how many more are out there that go unreported.

My State, the State of Washington, has the seventh largest Asian- American population and the third largest Pacific Islander population in the Nation. And like the rest of the United States, we have seen an increase in these incidents.

In fact, in 2020, the State had the third highest rate of hate crimes targeted against AAPI community members. That is why I am for getting a full slate of people over at the Department of Justice, including Kristen Clarke, to deal with hate crimes. Why? Because my State is plagued by these issues, and we are not going to tolerate it. We are going to fight back and make sure that we have the infrastructure in place to recognize these things.

Just this past February, a teacher driving in the Seattle International District was assaulted with a sock containing a rock. The attacker was charged with felony assault but not a hate crime.

We have been told that there are widespread reports of AAPI elders and women throughout Western Washington who have been verbally harassed and randomly physically assaulted. The King County Coalition Against Hate and Bias is collecting information about these attacks. But we know that there have been many throughout many communities in our State.

Just a few months ago, a woman in King County and her two children were accosted with a man yelling, screaming at them just to get out-- ``Get out! Get out!'' And a man was captured on video in downtown Seattle attacking an Asian couple, spitting on them, slapping the man's face, and yelling at them: ``It's your fault.'' So we know these incidents are happening.

In fact, just a week or so ago, I participated in a roundtable of the Asian American-Pacific Islander community from my State to talk about the need for this national legislation and why it is so important we have community-based solutions, which include more cultural education to teach our children the history of the Asian-American community in the United States, mental health support in multiple languages, investing in community groups, and this legislation that was passed today that will give us better tools to prosecute those individuals who participate in hate crimes.

This bill would designate a point person within the U.S. Department of Justice to expedite the review of hate crimes and continue to work with all of us.

It requires the Attorney General to issue guidance to State, local, and Tribal law enforcement to establish an online hate crime reporting and data collection system. These are all important tools.

So I, again, want to thank our colleagues, and I want to also thank Senator Blumenthal. His bipartisan amendment would authorize the Attorney General to provide grants to States and localities to better train law enforcement on identifying, investigating, and reporting hate crimes and to operate State-run hate crime reporting hotlines.

So this legislation will help us in shining a very bright light on an alarming rise in violence against the Asian American-Pacific Islander community and help us with new tools to combat that crime.

I, again, thank my colleagues. We all must work together to stop this kind of violence.

I thank the President.

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 this afternoon to support the nominations of Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke to serve in the leadership of the U.S. Department of Justice, and I am here, Mr. President, to say that just because you are pro-civil rights does not mean that you are somehow anti-police. To be for a Department of Justice that will help us make the right decisions in enforcing civil rights laws around the United States is what is at stake with these nominations. I personally am tired of the challenges that we have faced at home when we do not have people being held accountable and we have incident after incident. And the last administration said, instead of playing our role on consent decrees and making sure federal civil rights laws are enforced, instead they said, ``We're going to stop playing that role.''

So it is so important that we get a Department of Justice that will fight for the civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans. Both these women are highly qualified. They have defended our constitution. They have defended the civil rights of all Americans, and they will ensure that everyone, including the police, are held accountable. We have probably heard this afternoon my colleagues praising Vanita Gupta and supporting her to serve as Associate Attorney General, the third highest position in the U.S. Department of Justice. She is very qualified for the position. She will be the first civil rights lawyer and woman of color to serve in this role. She led the Civil Rights Division during the Obama administration and previously served as an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. When it came to enforcing consent decrees, she made sure the Obama administration did the job.

Now, why is this so important? I can tell you, in Seattle, we had a Native-American carver who happened to stop carving on one corner to walk to another corner and was shot and killed by a police officer because he didn't respond immediately to ``Drop your knife.'' I am so glad the Federal Government was there to say what is going on in Seattle with the police department and overseeing on a consent decree. We had a tragic situation in Spokane where a disabled man just went in to buy a soft drink and snacks, but because somebody thought he was fooling around with the ATM machine, they called the police. And when the police arrived and he didn't respond immediately, he was brutally beaten in the head with a baton, tasered, improperly hogtied to the ground, and stopped breathing shortly after first responders improperly strapping a non-rebreather mask to his face. That was Otto Zehm's afternoon activity, to just go to the store. As he lay there dying, he said, ``All I wanted was a Snickers.''

And thank God we had a Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice that said, yes, we are going to intervene and make sure that there is oversight of the Seattle Police Department and an investigation, and we are going to make sure that the civil liberties of all Americans--all Americans, whether you are White, Black, or disabled, or Native American--your civil rights are going to be upheld. But instead of discussing what is the proper role of the Federal Government in making sure that civil liberties and civil rights of all Americans are upheld when their rights are violated--instead, people have said, Well, Ms. Gupta supports decriminalization of all drugs.

Well, from a State that has actually passed legislation legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, I guarantee you, my State views some of these issues very differently. But I can say, emphatically, Ms. Gupta has stated consistently she does not support the decriminalization of all drugs--nor do the people of Washington, just because they voted to legal marijuana.

Ms. Gupta does not claim that all drugs should be legal, and she does not adhere to the statements that some people have tried to paint her with. You have to ask yourself, What are they afraid of? What are they afraid that she is going to do at the Department of Justice besides uphold our civil liberties? Some of my colleagues have argued that she supports defunding the police. There is zero proof that she supports defunding the police. I don't know why we keep having this debate, but she has worked and understands the police officers' perspective. She has worked to ensure that they were provided with adequate resources. She has worked on building relationships. She has a comprehensive approach to law enforcement and support from their organizations. And I

believe she deserves the support of our colleagues.

In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Fraternal Order of Police described Ms. Gupta as one who ``always worked with us to find common ground, even when that seemed impossible.'' So it is clear that she has the support of police. So we need someone like her who is going to bring back this important role of oversight to these important issues.

Ms. Clarke is the same. She is nominated to head the Civil Rights Division where she once worked as a trial lawyer. She previously codirected the voting rights work of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, led the Civil Rights Bureau in the New York State Attorney General's office, and has served as the president of the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights Under the Law. I have called her; I have interviewed her. Why? Because I am tired of the violence and hate crimes in the State of Washington. I am tired of hearing, time and time again, about these issues. And it can be the synagogue in Spokane, where literally somebody spray-painted it. And you would think, Well, how are we going to find who spray-painted a swastika on a synagogue in Spokane? You think, How are we going to find that person? Okay. Not a lot of trouble because people actually said, We did it purposely because we are an organization who believes in this, and we wanted to get our message out. That is what we're facing.

And several years ago, we found a bomb planted in the Martin Luther King Day Parade in Spokane, just a few years ago. So these aren't issues that we are sending somebody over to the Department of Justice to analyze and write a report on. We are asking people to help us with the situation in the United States of America to fight hate crimes and to bring about justice on the civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans. And so we have to have people that we have confidence that they are going to uphold our laws and enforce them.

We need to have consent decrees to hold police departments accountable for systematic violations of constitutional rights. We need to defend voting rights and to make sure that hate crimes against Asian-American and Pacific Islanders are prosecuted. And so this is why the nomination of Ms. Clarke is so important. I ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, if you are facing any of this in your State, please get Kristen Clarke to be there to help us address these issues.

Advocating for increased investment in mental health and social work and school resources for minority communities is something that law enforcement agrees with. They agree that we should do these things. So that is not defunding the police; yet people accuse Kristen Clarke of the same thing. She must be for defunding the police. I have talked to prosecutors throughout the State of Washington, and they will tell me that these programs that help families and communities identify these problems early are actually the best things to keep them from having to really have problems later. I certainly hope that some of the false claims that people have made about Ms. Clarke being anti-police are also continued to be struck down as untrue.

Ms. Clarke understands law enforcement must collaborate with the State, local, and Federal level. She has a solid record of working cooperatively with law enforcement for decades. She is supported by the Major Cities Chief Association, the National Association of Black Law Executives, a bipartisan group of over 70 former State attorneys general, and more than 40 police chiefs and sheriffs throughout the United States. That can't be somebody who sounds anti-law enforcement. They have the support of law enforcement.

What we need is the support of our colleagues to say that these are serious issues and the Federal Government does play a role. That is why it is called the Department of Justice, and that is why they oversee and make sure that the civil liberties of all Americans are upheld. As attorney general and at the Lawyers Committee, Ms. Clarke played a key role in launching a Religious Rights Initiative to address faith-based discrimination to fight anti-Semitic activities. When Ms. Clarke led the Lawyers Committee, she led the charge in shutting down abhorrent anti-Semitic websites that made racist comments, and some were in connection with stormfront.org, which was a central site used to organize the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

She recognized that online hate is an emerging threat and that Congress must address that threat. After seeing what happened on January 6 and the plethora of anti-Semitic paraphernalia presented here even in the Capitol as we saw riots, Ms. Clarke's expertise and dedication to fighting online hate would be extremely beneficial to the Department and to all Americans.

So I implore my colleagues, these are strong women, great qualifications, have been in the mix on these policy issues for a long time. They know what we are up against. We have to ask ourselves, Are we going to enforce the law? These women will enforce the law, and they have the support of law enforcement. We should proceed and confirm both of them.

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

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

Mr. President, I know we are having a vote in a moment. I ask unanimous consent that the vote not start until I finish my remarks.

Mr. President, I don't plan to speak long, but listening to my colleagues, I just wanted to make a few points.

Our former colleague, Representative Becerra, spent much time in the Congress--I think 12 terms--much of that in a position focusing on healthcare policy as a member of the Ways and Means Committee. I say that because I know so many of our colleagues, particularly House Members, have gone on to run Agencies, run Departments, be Secretaries of Defense, and, basically, they just had some congressional experience in that policy area.

So I am not sure why we are discarding that important policy background, consideration, balancing of those issues, weighing in on parts of our constituencies, as Mr. Becerra did.

And Mr. Becerra was the first Hispanic to be a member of the Ways and Means Committee. So I am pretty sure he brought forth a context to many of the healthcare policies. I know now that I bring a lot of focus on Native American issues to the Finance Committee because I represent so many Native Americans.

I think Mr. Becerra represents somebody who has a lot of healthcare experience and then, as attorney general, took on one of the biggest fights we need to have right now, which is the affordability of prescription drug pricing and the shortages that I believe are artificially created on things like insulin and other drugs that are spiking out of control the healthcare prices for Americans.

If you had to say, besides getting access to affordable healthcare insurance, what the second most important goal would be--or, actually, if you asked across the spectrum of millions of Americans--they would say it is the high cost of prescription drugs. And we have somebody who has taken on this battle and, basically, really understands what we need to do as a nation in lowering prescription drug prices.

So I just hope that people who are at home are listening. This is a unique individual who I think stands up truth to power many times in his career, and I think that we would be great if we have his vote and nomination out here on the Senate floor so the American people can hear more about the important policies.

If you want to vote against him because you don't want the Affordable Care Act, well, that is your prerogative. But if you want somebody who has just as much experience as any other Member of Congress who has gone on to run an Agency, I guarantee you he is as qualified, if not more qualified.

So I hope our colleagues will vote yes on this motion to bring Xavier Becerra before the United States Senate.

I thank the President.

I yield the floor.

Vote on Motion to Discharge

Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about the American Rescue Plan, but following my colleague from Washington and in the presence of the Senator from Vermont, I just want to thank them for how hard they have fought for an increase in the minimum wage.

Our State, the State of Washington, has led the Nation for many years in the highest minimum wage, and it didn't impact our economy. In fact, it helped our economy. There are now reports, as we have moved towards $15 from just a little town, SeaTac, to the city of Seattle, to now a plan for our entire State to move to $15 over a gradual period of time.

I urge my colleagues--I urge my colleagues to come together with a plan that can get us to a $15 minimum wage. I know we have it in us. I know we can do it. I so appreciate our colleagues waging this effort to continue to make this a priority for our Nation.

I can't tell you enough how much the wages, particularly in a place like Seattle, are going to matter to people, to have a livable wage. I know people here have discussed various aspects of this program and the plans that are in this bill, but I just want them to know that the cost of living in a very expensive place like Seattle demands that we pay workers what they deserve. It also means that we deal with big-city problems like homelessness and deal with making investments, and I hope that our next infrastructure bill will get to that.

This is not the last time I am going to speak about minimum wage, but I want our colleagues to know that this battle is not over yet and that if we want to raise the standard of living in the United States, we have to pay a livable wage.

So I come to talk about the details of the rescue plan. This is 1 year since a young man from Everett, WA, became the first COVID victim in the United States of America. Not only did he get sick, but many loved ones got sick, their families, and they are all waiting now for vaccines. So this legislation--priority No. 1 for so many Americans right now is the COVID-19 vaccine.

In my State, the State of Washington, more than 1 million residents have been vaccinated, and 6 million more are still waiting. Everyone knows that demand far exceeds the supply. Our healthcare workers are working tirelessly, along with other government officials, to get shots in the arms of individuals.

That is why this bill is so important, because it provides $20 billion to invest in vaccine administration and distribution. That includes launching community vaccine centers, deploying mobile vaccine units to hard-to-reach areas, and continuing to support an increased pace of vaccinations. That is job 1 right now--get the vaccine into the arms of Americans.

That is why this legislation is so important, to continue that effort, but it also provides other support, like extending unemployment benefits for millions of Americans who lost their jobs through no fault of their own a year ago and are now seeing unemployment benefits expire next week.

We know what today's numbers say. We still have a very high unemployment rate in the United States of America. So this bill extends the benefit another 5 months, until August 29. It is a very prudent measure to continue to put the resources into the American economy.

It also provides $1,400 stimulus payments to millions, and it supports new efforts for our restaurants, small businesses, and those devastated by the pandemic so they can use this money for payroll, rent, utilities, and paid sick leave. This is so important, to continue to learn from the programs that COVID has started and to refine them to make them successful for our economy.

This also helps children who are at home, helping provide more money for E-Rate and broadband connectivity for schools and libraries. This is so important to individuals.

It also provides critical dollars for Federal health funding to treat Native

Americans in urban areas, a community that has been very hard hit by the pandemic.

Our economy lost 9.8 million jobs in 2020, and our current unemployment rate, as I just said--we know from this data that came out this morning--is still too high. We know that, as a result, 19 million Americans, including 460,000 Washingtonians, rely on those unemployment benefits. If we don't act by March 14, 11.5 million people will lose their extended unemployment benefits. So that is why this program is so important to get passed today in the Senate.

The restaurants, as we know, have been very plagued by this problem, and the PPP program has been helpful, but I believe this legislation will be even more helpful. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 110,000 restaurants across our country have closed either permanently or for an extended period of time, including 2,300 in the State of Washington, and some are just struggling to hang on.

For example, the Black Cypress restaurant in Pullman, WA, lost more than 1 million in revenue and had to lay off workers after the initial PPP loan program ran out. In southwest Washington, restaurants like the Mighty Bowl in Vancouver and the Depot Restaurant in Seaview are operating at 50 percent revenue loss.

I talked to one of our restaurant owners, Wassef Haroun, who operates very popular restaurants in Seattle, including Mamnoon. He said his restaurants have lost 70 percent of their revenue compared to 2019. And these are people who are hustling to do standup, popup windows, and all sorts of things to keep the restaurants and restaurant employees working.

So the Paycheck Protection Program was critical, and these improvements were desperately needed. That is why this bill includes a new $25 billion grant program for restaurants to address those concerns of rent and utilities and sick leave and other things head-on.

The bill also helps with more funding for the SBA live venues grant program that we have authorized, helping those venues stay open. For us in Seattle, music is a thing, and we want these venues to be there. They are part of our history. They are part of our culture. They are part of a music story that really is about, well, just a little bit different take on music than maybe some other parts of the world. So we are very proud of it, and we don't want to lose these facilities, the home for growing more music and cultural impacts to our society.

So one of the hardest hit businesses, though, has been businesses with 10 or fewer employees in underserved areas, like Grays Harbor, Yakima, Ferry County, or Pend Oreille. This legislation allows $10,000 grants from the SBA program of Economic Injury and Disaster Loan Program to help with the smaller communities and the small businesses that have been underserved to date by the programs that we have passed.

But for the first time, in this legislation, there will be support for the aviation supply chain. We are hearing all sorts of discussions about supply chain shortages and the competitiveness of the United States if the United States sees that critical supply chain elements will not be able to be filled, whether you are talking about the automotive industry or whether you are talking about aviation.

Well, in the previous bills, certainly, I can say that the Fed made capital available that, certainly, manufacturers--large-scale manufacturers--took advantage of. Previous bills made money available for the airlines to continue operating, as this legislation does as well. And I would say, I think, we are probably somewhere between 40 to 45 percent of the original capacity for airlines that we were previous to the pandemic, which means we are making progress, and that is what we always wanted to see--the ability to return our economy quickly.

But in Washington State alone, we have 30,000 aerospace manufacturing and supply chain jobs that have been lost. Our aerospace supply chain is part of a juggernaut for our economy. It helps us with our gross domestic product, and it helps us in containing and keeping a workforce that is skilled that can work postpandemic. So in this legislation, we will be, for the first time, making resources available for that supply chain.

I want to thank Senator Moran and Senator Warner and a slew of other Members who worked on providing resources to this supply chain. It will help us retain and rehire workers in the aviation manufacturing sector. It will help us keep highly skilled workers who serve as the backbone of industries so that our Nation can continue to be poised for the recovery. And it helps us in making sure that we are poised for a strong recovery. We know that aviation manufacturing jobs mean a lot to our Nation. Finally, we are going to help stave off the tide of the huge losses that we have seen in that sector.

We are going to help the mom-and-pop machine shops. We are going to take those who have been working on small aircraft parts and landing gears and doors and flight controls and help them with the impact that they have felt in trying to keep a workforce during this period of time.

These are all important priorities for us as a nation: the vaccines, the unemployment benefits, the stimulus checks, the E-rate program for helping students learn at home, the investment in the aerospace supply chain. It is important that we get the dollars out the door. This will help us recover. This will help American families wade through the last months of this COVID pandemic fight. But, believe me, they need the help in the last months. This fight is not over, and this will help sustain us.

I urge my colleagues to pass this legislation.

Mr. President, the sun is coming up in Washington, DC, and we have to spend all night debating policy and questions to arrive at this moment, at 6 a.m., with an amendment that is literally robbing Peter to pay Paul. This isn't the idea of a debate.

The Amtrak and North Corridor System has basically had to reallocate resources. The 457 Corridor, which is one of the busiest in the Nation, has over 750,000 people on that system, but because of COVID, it has lost revenue. It has a 97-percent loss of revenue, and now they are making drastic cuts to employees and to services that could become permanent.

This simply helps Amtrak and our busiest corridor stay in business. We will address the Coast Guard needs in other legislation. I ask my colleagues to vote no. Stop robbing Peter to pay Paul. Let's fix the COVID crisis on our transportation system.

Vote on Amendment No. 1395