Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, before I begin my remarks today, I want to mention that it is the 76th anniversary of the U.S. Air Force.

On behalf of all Tennesseans, I want to recognize the brave men and women who are serving at Arnold Air Force Base, our Air National Guard members, and the Air Force veterans who call Tennessee home. We thank them for their service.

Artificial Intelligence Forum

Madam President, last week, the majority leader hosted a forum on artificial intelligence. That meeting really complemented the hearings that we have been having on this issue and, indeed, two hearings--one in the Commerce Committee and one in the Judiciary Committee--that we held last week. It is vital that we develop an understanding of what it is going to take to put the guardrails in place for AI. We are going to need to continue regular discussions between policymakers and the industry.

We have seen this model work in our favor. In 2019 and 2020, I led the Judiciary Committee's Tech Task Force. This brought experts to the table so that we on the Judiciary Committee could sit down with them, talk with them, learn more about how their technology worked and the dangers that it may pose. We did this with several of our emerging technology sectors. These discussions really yielded great results, and the body became more engaged on technology issues.

But we must stay focused and remember that AI raises the same concerns that plague other technological innovations. I was disappointed with how little the executives who participated in last week's forum had to say about data privacy because, in our committee hearings and with those witnesses, they have engaged on that issue. They have talked about how we need to have that Federal privacy law before we move forward with quantum computing, before we have more utilization of blockchain, and, of course, before we move forward with

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the following interns from my office be granted floor privileges for the rest of this Congress: Haylee Acton, Sedrie Orantes, and Madeleine Katz.

Mr. President, over the last few years, we have all witnessed a devastating rise in fentanyl overdoses. While I have been around Tennessee this month and visiting with so many citizens and local elected officials, I have heard a lot about this and about how Tennessee has really not escaped this threat.

In 2021, the latest year for which we have stats, there were over 4,000 Tennesseans that lost their lives to fentanyl overdose. Equally as concerning is the amount of fentanyl that local law enforcement is finding. This is something that they see coming up in routine investigations.

They are trying to protect their citizens. They are doing all they can. They are distributing and using Narcan, trying to save precious lives, and they feel like the fentanyl just keeps coming.

There have been several significant seizures in Tennessee this year. Just last week, police were chasing down a stolen out-of-State car in Dyersburg, TN. While they were trying to locate the fleeing suspect from that stolen car, they discovered a lunch box that he had dropped. When they looked in the lunch box, they found 750 suspected fentanyl pills. The street value is over $14,000. That is in rural West Tennessee, in Dyersburg, TN.

Law enforcement officials in Knoxville found thousands of grams of fentanyl in one man's possession. They found it in his car, and they found it in his house.

In Bledsoe County, the drug task force recovered a thousand pills that were disguised, made to look like oxycodone--again, in rural Tennessee. These pills that were manufactured to look like oxycodone each contained lethal doses of fentanyl.

We hear these stories popping up all across the country, but we continue to see these massive amounts that are in seizures. Last year, the DEA seized more than 58.3 million fentanyl-laced pills and more than 13,000 pounds of fentanyl. This constitutes 388 million lethal doses of fentanyl.

This year, border agents intercepted over 22,000 pounds of fentanyl, more than double what they seized during the same time period last year. That was just what they managed to catch. Think about what is coming in with the ``got-aways.'' These are the people the border agents can see on surveillance video, but they cannot get to them. The stats I have just given you are what they are seizing. But think about what they don't apprehend and what is coming in with these cartels and coming in with the ``got-aways.''

We have to realize that fentanyl is so deadly. The equivalent of four grains of sand can kill you. That is how deadly it is.

And as a mom, as a grandmom, to hear these stories, it is just absolutely heartbreaking of lives which are lost. Fentanyl is now the No. 1 killer of Americans age 18 to 45. This is something that needs our attention.

When I was over in Chattanooga, they were telling me the story about a 2-year-old who died, and when the medical examiner was doing the report, the autopsy, a lethal amount of fentanyl is what he found in this baby's system.

These parents were charged with murder, and the prosecutor suggested the parents knowingly exposed their kids to large amounts of drugs in their home--a 2-year-old.

In August, I had the opportunity to meet with local leaders in Fayette County, and they told me another heartbreaking story of a mother and her 4-month-old child. This is another rural Tennessee county, and when they did the test, the mother and the baby tested positive for fentanyl.

At the Fayette County roundtable, I also learned about new measures that the school superintendent and the sheriff's department have implemented following the tragic deaths of two teenage girls. They were aged 16 and 17, and they were found dead in the school parking lot in Somerville, after overdosing from a drug combination believed to include fentanyl. Now, there was a third teenager involved in this incident. That teen survived. She was found unconscious, and law enforcement charged her with both second-degree murder and possession of a controlled substance.

So we see what is happening. We know how this is coming across that border, and people are saying we have got to do something about this.

Now, in Tennessee, local law enforcement agencies, local elected officials are stepping up, and Fayette County that I just mentioned, Mayor Skip Taylor is starting a new program, Drug Free Fayette, and he has based this on a successful model that another county mayor, Mayor Huffman over in Tipton County, has started because they have decided if that border is going to be left wide open and this is coming in here, steps have to be taken to protect their citizens.

Now, what they are doing is establishing programs that are going into the schools, going into elementary school grades, high school, middle school, and educating about the dangers of drugs like fentanyl and like xylazine. A good example of this was when the new school semester began last year, Sheriff Bobby Riles, the Fayette County Sheriff's Department, and the Somerville Police Department worked with the Fayette County schools, and what they did was to implement a new DARE Program so that you have got somebody there in those schools, with those kids, establishing that relationship, helping to educate them and pushing back on what these kids are seeing on social media, what they are hearing from gangs and different individuals, trying to tempt them.

Now, local law enforcement officers are receiving training that is necessary to work with kids and teens in the schools. They are pushing forward with that to get their officers trained. And the officers I heard from report that kids are beginning to bring some drugs to school from the community and from their home.

This is why the training is important. This is why these programs like they are implementing in Fayette and Tipton County are so important: educate the kids, make certain the community is aware, make certain the officers have the education that is necessary so that we are all doing everything we can to save these lives.

Now, we have talked a good bit about these cartels over the last several months, and it was so interesting to me, as I was across the State, to hear local law enforcement talk about the cartels and how active they are in our State. It is why every State is a border State, every town is a border town now.

And what we see happening is that the cartels have linked up with some of the scientists in the labs in China where they create these precursor chemicals. Then they are sending it into Mexico. The cartels have labs, and this is where you are getting the fentanyl-laced gummies, you are getting the pills that are pressed to look like oxycodone. All the manufacturing is there.

I had one sheriff tell me he just assumed everything was laced with fentanyl because, he said, you will get marijuana, you will get gummies, you will get pills, you will get all these different things, but what they really are is laced with fentanyl. All of this is ending up in our backyard, but it is also ending up on social media.

Now, I found it so interesting, as I was doing some work with our counties and focusing on this issue, we found out that as high as 36 percent of fentanyl cases--think about this number when you think about across our country--36 percent of the fentanyl cases are linked to social media. This is where kids have met a drug dealer. Maybe it was Snapchat or Facebook Messenger or Instagram or TikTok, 36 percent.

These stats have made a few things very clear: The fentanyl crisis is real; it is killing Americans; it is killing Tennesseans; and it is our duty, as sworn representatives, to do something about this.

Here in the Senate, we have already begun this work, and I want to encourage my colleagues who have not signed on to a few bills to get on board and let's give this crisis the attention that it deserves.

Now, Tim Scott had a bill--I joined him last June when he introduced this--the FEND Off Fentanyl Act, and recently the Senate passed that as part of our Defense Authorization Act. This bill takes a very important step because it would declare the international fentanyl trafficking cartels and the trafficking of fentanyl a national emergency.

And it also would direct the Treasury Department to target, sanction, and block the financial assets of these transnational criminal organizations, like those in China and Mexico, that are pushing this product forward.

I also joined Senator Rubio in introducing the Felony Murder for Deadly Fentanyl Distribution Act, which would add the distribution of fentanyl resulting in death to the list of crimes that are eligible to be charged as felony murder.

But given the significant role that illegal immigration has played in the fentanyl epidemic, it is clear that we also need to go right to the source. The Fentanyl Public Health Emergency and Overdose Prevention Act, a good bill that is just plain common sense, gives the Department of Homeland Security authority similar to that under title 42 to expedite the removal of illegal immigrants in response to the public health emergency that fentanyl poses to our country. If you are going to carry this, distribute it, push it, then you are not going to come in this country.

Now, all of these are pieces of legislation that make a difference. What we see happening in counties in Tennessee is that local law enforcement, local elected officials, local school superintendents, and directors of schools are coming together and saying: We have got to get to work on this issue. They are all steps.

What we have to do is have this administration, the Biden administration, stop burying their head in the sand on this issue. They can no longer ignore the influx of drugs coming into this country over that open southern border.

We have to make certain that the border is secured and the resources are there to address the fentanyl crisis.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today I bid a fond farewell to my chief of staff Sean Farrell. Sean has been an indispensable member of my team for 6 years. During that time, he has worn several hats, each coming with its own challenges. Sean joined Team Blackburn when I was serving on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where he mastered some of the most complex issues that the U.S. Congress examines. After I was elected to the Senate, Sean agreed to move from the House to the Senate and assumed the formidable task of managing my legislative agenda, as well as a gaggle of young lawyers and policy experts.

When I asked Sean to serve as my chief of staff, I knew I was asking him to face challenges far beyond those normally associated with the position.

Pandemic-era rules had scattered our staff across the country, and the Senate was still limping its way through a once in a lifetime crisis. Thankfully, Sean stepped up. He approached the job with grace and persistence and, even during the toughest fights kept his eye on the ball and the team's focus on serving the people of Tennessee.

We will miss him tremendously, but I have no doubt that his beautiful wife Kasey will be happy to see him spending more time at home and less time in the halls of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. I would like to leave Sean with my thanks for his years of service to the Volunteer State and my best wishes as he moves forward in this next exciting season of his career.

Mr. President, this month, millions of Americans received a very rude awakening as they saw the horrors of human trafficking playing out on the big screen.

I say that they had a rude awakening because until very recently, the fight against modern-day slavery has been an uphill battle on multiple fronts.

Transnational criminal organizations have turned the buying and selling of human beings into a $150 billion-a-year enterprise, and current policy has made it almost impossible to catch them.

Of course, the work being done on a Federal, State, and local level to help trafficking victims hasn't been made any easier by the astonishing number of people who insist that human trafficking is a myth or that things aren't nearly as bad as advocates make it out to be.

That is some truly impressive spin. It is really quite disgusting. And right now, the American people are wondering why that is the message that, apparently, is driving this administration and, unfortunately, some of my Senate Democratic colleagues when we have so much evidence to the contrary.

Human trafficking is an epidemic. Tennesseans have asked me, and they want to know, how could this happen in this country? How could this human trafficking issue have gotten to be so bad, and what are we going to do to stop it?

I will tell you, the data does not lie. In the interest of setting the record straight, I want to start by offering to my colleagues a few statistics showing us just how bad things have gotten for the victims of human trafficking. That $150 billion-per-year figure that I mentioned a few moments ago doesn't come from me; it doesn't come from a nonprofit. This comes from this administration's Department of Homeland Security. That is their assessment. That is their number.

If you want to look it up, I encourage you. Go to the report that DHS issued in January; you are going to find that stat on page 2 of that report. Yes, indeed. Selling of human beings, trafficking of human beings is, indeed, $150 billion-a-year business. And it is happening right here, every community, every State, all across this country. Should we accept that? Absolutely not.

Here is another one for you: DHS also estimates that there are--get this number--30 million victims of sex trafficking and forced labor around the world. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation estimates that, on average in the United States, a child is bought or sold for sex every 2 minutes. Think about that. Every 2 minutes a child--a child--is bought or sold for sex every 2 minutes.

This is what is going on. This is what is happening right here: modern-day slavery. You better believe it is modern-day slavery.

In fiscal year 2022, DHS alone--just DHS--helped 765 confirmed victims of human trafficking. They initiated another 1,373 cases and made 3,655 arrests. As of this January, they had convicted 638 traffickers and indicted another 1,045.

In 2022, the number of investigations, arrests, indictments, and convictions all increased from the previous year, so it is safe to say the cartels and the traffickers, they are gaining ground. They are gaining power.

And, again, this is not my educated guess. You can find every bit of that information on page 6 of the report that DHS put out in January of this year.

So human trafficking is not a myth. Our concern is not overblown. These criminals--criminals--violent, vicious criminals are hiding in plain view in your cities, in your communities, in your States. They are selling human beings. They are setting a price. It is disgusting.

In 2021, the National Human Trafficking Hotline received 525 reports from good Samaritans in Tennessee concerned about potential human trafficking. That year, advocates identified 152 confirmed cases involving 217 victims. That is 217 people identified by one organization in one State. Think about that one. And that stat is 2 years old.

Human trafficking has grown from a $500 million-a-year business about 4 years ago to $150 billion-a-year business. And Tennessee is not the only one. There were 217 victims in Tennessee; Massachusetts had 143 victims; Michigan identified 429 victims; California, 2,122 victims; Georgia, 1,065 victims. You know, the list goes on and on. Texas, 1,702 victims. It is all there on the National Human Trafficking Hotline website.

If you drill down to the local level, you are going to see it gets even worse, because this is where the survivors come for help. The Community Coalition Against Human Trafficking, which serves survivors in the Knoxville, TN, area, handled 408 referrals in 2022. The situation was dire, or so they thought. And, yes, indeed, it is.

But guess what? This year it is worse. I know that other organizations around our State in Jackson, in Franklin, Chattanooga, Nashville, Memphis, Powell, Dayton, and Cleveland, they are all telling me the same story.

I don't know how any serious person could look at these numbers and claim that the horror stories these advocates have heard are part of some elaborate conspiracy theory to say that human trafficking is not happening; to say that, well, it is a falsehood meant to distract. No, it is happening. The stats show it.

Now, we do know for a fact that our wide-open southern border is enabling this disgusting practice. Many of the people who fall into the hands of the cartel smugglers are trafficked by their captors. Yes, indeed. Many are women. Many are children. They are physically, mentally, emotionally, and sexually abused as they make their journey to that southern border.

But don't take my word for it; ask the Department of Homeland Security. Now, they know it is an issue, so they have allocated more than 60 million to the Counter Human Smuggler campaign and sent more than 1,300 personnel to the southern border and into Latin America to try and stop it.

DHS has identified a problem at the border, so why can't Congress put politics aside and do the same thing and admit that these children, these women, need our attention and our help. This is a humanitarian crisis. This year, I have introduced two bills that would throw a wrench in the operations of these trafficking rings and help the border patrol and the local law enforcement regain some ground in this fight that they seem to be losing.

The SAVE Girls Act would establish a $50 million grant program for States, localities, NGOs that work to prevent the smuggling and trafficking of young women and girls.

We know that most of the innocent people who end up in the hands of sex traffickers are, indeed, young women and girls. And even if they do manage to escape, we see many of these women fall victim to domestic violence and to drug abuse.

They are trapped in a system. If the Federal Government is not going to secure that border and stop this, it ends up with local entities. That is why the SAVE Girls Act would put resources into the hands of these local law enforcement agencies and NGOs who are trying to rescue and save these women and girls from this.

Heightened border security is a necessity, but it won't save the women who have already been forced into servitude. And as I said, many of them are in your communities. They are hiding in plain sight.

Having those funds locally will help to save them. But there are also things we can do directly at the border to pull young women out of the hands of traffickers before they disappear into the country.

Last month, I reintroduced my End Child Trafficking Now Act, which would crack down on the practice of ``child recycling,'' which is horrendous. Absolutely disgusting.

It would mandate DNA testing for migrants coming across the border with children. My bill would require up to a 10-year prison sentence for any person who lies about their familial relationship with a minor. If this sounds familiar, it is because it is an old policy that was very successful in the previous administration because of the data that was collected from that one pilot program. What we learned from that was that 30 percent of the children presenting at that southern border--30 percent--have no relation at all whatsoever to the adult who is bringing them to the border. These children are

enslaved. And what happens? That adult gets through, they send that child back to the cartel, and they attach them to another adult the cartel is trying to get into the country.

Passing the End Child Trafficking Now Act and implementing DNA testing at that border would help save lives. This is something we should do on a bipartisan basis.

The problem with human trafficking is intertwined with so many other issues that we are charged with handling every day. You can find connections to border policy, immigration law, criminal justice, and even to the NDAA and defense policies.

As many of my colleagues know, I filed the End Child Trafficking Now Act in the form of an amendment to the NDAA, and I have asked for a floor vote on this issue. The U.S. Senate should be heard on this issue. So of course I ask for support of that amendment, but no matter what people decide to do on this, I would remind my Democratic colleagues that they cannot hide from this issue just because it would force them to ask some serious questions about the policies of this administration.

The American people are figuring this out. Every 2 minutes, a child is trafficked and sold for sex. What they have seen this month has driven them to start asking questions, and I am so glad so many Tennesseans have paid attention to the media around this issue.

The Nashville Anti-Human Trafficking Coalition normally welcomes about three new volunteers every week. Now, on average, 38 new volunteers per week are reaching out and saying: Tell me what I can do to help rid our community, our State, our Nation of this problem. I hope other organizations across the State and the country are seeing the same wave of support.

Advocates who work with victims of sex and labor trafficking refer to this as modern-day slavery. If you look at the pictures and if you listen to these survivors who have been rescued tell their stories about their experience, you would see why. They have been raped, abused, stripped of their dignity. They live in fear. Many of them have been in bondage so long that they have lost their sense of self.

These people deserve better from us and from this administration and our President. At the very least, they deserve a government that recognizes that, indeed, their lives are worth saving.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, AI is really grabbing some headlines, and over the past few months, Tennesseans have been watching the Senate as we go about having hearings and deciding how to handle this emerging technology. This technology has broken boundaries in ways that most people never imagined would be possible, and they see great potential in it.

Healthcare companies in Tennessee are already using AI to enhance the quality of care that doctors can offer their patients. If you have been in for a doctor's checkup in the past few years, you have probably noticed that your doctors and nurses are using more digital tools to help inform their diagnoses and choose which drugs they are going to prescribe. Most of those tools are powered by AI, as are many of the apps and gadgets that healthcare providers recommend to their patients to monitor their health and keep their treatments on track. We have seen the use of these remote monitoring tools just explode, especially in rural areas during the pandemic.

We are also seeing AI make a substantial impact on manufacturing. The largest auto manufacturers in Tennessee are already using this technology to make our cars safer and more efficient. Many of them are experimenting with automated driving systems. They are also using it to make operating a vehicle a little more practical. One that I found amusing is that Ford used AI to develop a program that would automatically hook a trailer to a hitch. Now, I know some of our Members who have farms and ranches probably think you should have that skill, but I think, for many of us, that would be a practical application.

So whether we are talking about making things safer, finding which pharmaceuticals are going to better treat diseases, or making things more convenient, AI has the potential to completely transform entire industries. Indeed, innovators are working on those components as we speak.

It also comes with significant drawbacks, and nowhere are those problems more pronounced than in Tennessee's music industry. All things considered, technology has been great for the business side of the music industry. The increased use of social media by up-and-coming musicians has allowed record labels to sign artists who have millions of fans. Platforms like Spotify automatically generate playlists that promote new music, and all of that music is available instantly via an app on your cell phone. But the thousands of musicians, songwriters, and artists who call Tennessee home are really quite worried about the lack of control they have over how AI platforms exploit their creations and their intellectual property.

This month, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing to examine the downsides of making technology an essential element of the creative process. The most obvious problem that we have uncovered in our discussions with artists and songwriters comes down to a basic question of copyright infringement.

We know that to create artistic works, AI systems must train on data scraped from existing artistic works. If you look at how this technology has advanced, it becomes clear that generative AI is often trained on popular music that was used without the copyright holder's permission. One AI model that we reviewed was trained on a staggering 280,000 hours of music. There is not a reasonable person who would ever suggest that the writers and artists were compensated fairly for that 280,000 hours of use of their products that was used to train AI to mimic and clone their voices and their words.

Now, the very existence of this tech and what it produces are enough to draw challenges to spurious claims that data scraping counts as what is called fair use, but we have even more extreme examples of what AI can do after training on existing popular music, or music that has been scraped, in order to train the platform.

Most recently, an anonymous content creator uploaded an AI-generated song called ``Heart on My Sleeve.'' It was a perfect replication of the vocals of Drake and The Weeknd. It was so perfect that listeners on multiple platforms were duped into thinking it was real. The song gained over 9 million views on social media and hundreds of thousands of plays on Spotify and YouTube before the platforms took it down. But because the internet is forever, so is this fake song, and there is nothing those artists can do about it.

Not only does this raise questions about what ``fair use'' means in the age of AI, but it also raises serious concerns about our current State-by-State approach to protecting an individual right of publicity. Common sense tells us that this isn't right, even if the law is still catching up with the pace of technology. We have discussed having a Federal--a Federal--individual right of privacy law.

AI has also affected how fans interact with real music. At least on streaming platforms, playlists have outpaced platforms as the preferred listening format. Companies have employed AI-driven playlists to expose listeners to new artists, with decidedly mixed results.

Martina McBride, who knows a few things about country music, has gone public about her experience in trying to build a playlist using Spotify's ``recommender'' system. In a playlist she prompted with the words ``country music,'' she had to refresh her recommendations 13 times before it delivered a song by a female artist. Country music is an expansive genre. Yet, somehow, that algorithm spit out 120 songs by men before managing to include a song by a woman.

We could chalk up this apparent bias to a glitch in evolving tech were it not for the fact that fans rely almost exclusively on technology to listen to and discover new music. People expect more innovation, not less, because that is exactly what Big Tech is selling them. When they spin one of those customized playlists, they expect to hear a fair sampling of whatever it is they asked for, but that is clearly not what these platforms are delivering. This matters to established artists like Martina, but it matters even more to up-and- coming artists who are forced to rely on these algorithms to gain exposure to the music-listening public.

Over the past few years, Congress has learned a very important lesson about the perils of allowing technology to outpace the law.

Over the course of several hearings, we produced evidence of the unraveling

of safety and security standards on social media platforms. Senator Blumenthal and I worked together on this. We heard testimony from parents, children, and industry experts. We exposed how platforms prioritize growth over maintaining even the most basic checks on predatory and dangerous content.

This Congress, we have the opportunity to put guardrails on these companies through the passage of the Kids Online Safety Act. It is a strong, bipartisan bill that will make a real difference for children and their families.

I would like to remind my colleagues that it took us far too long to engage on this issue. Indeed, when the Acting President pro tempore and I were in the House, we were leading the way in getting our colleagues to address these issues.

I think we are at the point that we can say now that this has to be done. We can't afford to wait and let AI systems be put in place without having protections for the American people. So, in recent months, we have held several hearings on this issue. Most recently, we examined the impact on intellectual property rights. In June, we fielded several firsthand accounts of how this technology could be weaponized against basic human rights. Senator Ossoff and I led that hearing.

We have yet to truly dig into the dangers of allowing China to outpace us through the use of AI, and I think it is time that we catch up.

When it comes to tech, we have done our best work when we have listened to the people and have worked with people who are closest to the issue. The Kids Online Safety Act came to be because we listened when parents spoke out about how impossible it was to protect their children in the virtual space.

Years ago, when the House Energy and Commerce Committee was crafting what would become the 21st Century Cures Act, I worked with Tennessee's healthcare innovators to include provisions that made the law more responsive to the rapid growth of the healthcare technology industry. We had similar conversations in the runup to the passage of the Music Modernization Act.

So I would encourage my colleagues to start engaging with us on this issue before it gets away from us. Listen to what creators and engineers have to say about AI's effects on their industries.

There is no turning back the clock on AI just as we learned that there was no turning back the clock on social media and that there was no turning back the clock on the World Wide Web. AI is here to stay--it is going to drive innovation--but that doesn't mean we have to accept innovation at any cost.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the following interns in my office be granted floor privileges for the rest of the Congress: Benjamin Chamberlin and Peter Skehan.

I ask unanimous consent the following Senators be allowed to speak prior to the scheduled rollcall vote: myself for up to 20 minutes, Senator Carper for up to 5 minutes, Senator Boozman for up to 30 seconds, Leader Schumer for as much time as he may consume.

Madam President, back in May, I was in Shelby County to visit with 100 members of the Tennessee National Guard. They were heading off on yet another deployment to the southern border.

These are some of the bravest and most capable people that you will ever meet. Tennesseans depend on them to keep us safe during natural disasters, to rescue lost hikers in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and to defend the country from our adversaries overseas. Yet there they were on their way to what many would call a war zone in their own country to do the job that Joe Biden refuses to do.

They shouldn't have had to go, but they went because they knew that no matter who was to blame for all this chaos, our Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement needed help controlling it.

When I think back on my conversations with those servicemembers, I can't help but notice the stark contrast between their focus on service and sacrifice and the Biden administration's lack of regard for the welfare of this country.

Over the past several years, the relationship between the American people and their government has changed, but not for the better. At the beginning of Biden's term, they were just baffled by what they were seeing. All they could do was shake their heads in disbelief. But as the months wore on, that disbelief gave way to genuine fear that this President was digging a hole that they wouldn't be able to claw their way out of no matter how hard they worked.

As it turns out, those fears were well-founded, and now, 3 years into this administration, that fear has given way to outrage because this President has made it abundantly clear that when it comes to pursuing his radical agenda, he simply doesn't care whom it hurts.

The President may be happy to ignore the mess he has made, but Tennesseans don't have that luxury. If they ignore the problems they see, they suffer real consequences. If local law enforcement officers just ignored the drugs flooding into their communities, even more people would die from fentanyl overdoses and drug-related crime.

Every year, I meet with local leaders in each of our State's 95 counties, and the conversation turns to the border crisis every single time. It is an unmitigated disaster, and they just don't understand why the President refuses to do something about it.

If you talk to law enforcement in East Tennessee, they will tell you that they are recording record levels of drug seizures. What they once would apprehend in ounces they now measure in pounds.

Chief Jason Owens at the Border Patrol gave a ``week in review'' from June 22 to 29. Here is some of what they apprehended. They know they had 28,339 apprehensions. They also had an additional 6,100 ``get- aways.'' They apprehended 116 pounds of marijuana, 50 pounds of fentanyl, and 2,056 pounds of cocaine. Where does much of the drugs that are coming across with those ``got-aways'' end up? It ends up in our communities.

A judge in Rhea County told me that 80 percent of the crime he sees is drug-related. If they could get a handle on the drugs, they could take care of much of the court cases and the prison population, but they can't get a handle on it because the local dealers are not the root of the problem. For every drug smuggler the Border Patrol manages to catch and every pound of drugs they apprehend, you have that handful of ``got-aways'' who escape into the country with drugs and contraband.

In Overton County, they said they haven't busted a local meth lab in 5 years. Here is why. The drug dealers have outsourced their entire supply to the cartels because it is easier and cheaper to smuggle it in than it is to make it themselves. The police can trace that supply chain down I-75 to Atlanta and then right across the border into Mexico.

Now when they respond to an overdose death, local officials have to implement fentanyl protocols because they know it is the likely culprit. The cartels add this to the drugs to make them that much more addictive. Everything is laced with fentanyl. It is also very lethal in small amounts. In Marion County, they are spending an astronomical amount of money on autopsies because of this. As of May, they have spent $80,000, and almost all of those deaths are fentanyl-related.

These local officials are desperate for help. They know this is this administration's fault because the situation escalated when the Biden administration moved into the White House.

Here is what the President did: He terminated ``Remain in Mexico.'' He terminated title 42. He terminated DNA testing at the border. And his rhetoric made it clear that he would rather pander to the left than admit that Trump-era border policies were working. Then he left local law enforcement to fend for themselves.

They need our support. When title 42 ended, I introduced the Make the Migrant Protection Protocols Mandatory Act. That would reinstate the successful ``Remain in Mexico'' policy. I also introduced the End Child Trafficking Now Act, which would reinstate DNA testing at the border and thwart the child trafficking rings that President Biden has allowed to flourish. If we passed these two bills, we could give Border Patrol and local law enforcement a fighting chance against the cartels.

But the problem goes much deeper than just preventing illegal entry into the country. When Joe Biden took office, he threw the rule of law out the window. Since then, we have watched Biden and his supporters ignore the

Constitution, attack our most important institutions, ignore the law, enable corruption, and slander their fellow countrymen as violent racists.

Tennesseans take issue with that and with the judges and the bureaucrats whom President Biden has nominated to write this partisan rhetoric into law. Over the past several years, this body has considered nominees to some of the most critical positions in government who were little more than political activists, and that is putting it mildly.

We have questioned judicial nominees who are unfamiliar with the Constitution, potential Agency heads with almost no experience in the industries they seek to regulate, and Cabinet nominees who have demonstrated their commitment to burning down institutions and norms that conflict with their radical views. But the one thing they all have in common is they have agreed to rubberstamp the Biden agenda.

The local leaders I see in my county tours see the chaos this is causing. They see two tiers of justice at work, and they are very concerned about it, especially when they see administration officials egging on leftist fanatics seeking to undermine the rule of law at any cost.

For example, Federal law makes it clear that it is illegal to protest outside of a judge's home with the intent of influencing a ruling. It is common sense. But after the Supreme Court's Dobbs opinion leaked, far-left protesters immediately began demonstrating outside of the Justices' homes. The Biden DOJ has yet to arrest a single protester, which means that the Biden DOJ has in effect endorsed the intimidation of Supreme Court Justices who refuse to rubberstamp the Biden agenda.

Earlier this year, I introduced the Protecting Our Supreme Court Justices Act, which significantly increases the maximum jail time for any individual who violates this law. I am sure that under a future administration, it will serve as an effective deterrent to this disgusting behavior.

But imagine being a law enforcement officer in Tennessee and seeing this complete breakdown of law and order in our Nation's Capital at the highest levels of government. How much faith do you think they have in this administration to help them control the flow of drugs and violent criminals into their communities? How seriously do you think they take the Democrats' promises to fight for safe streets when this body continues to confirm judicial nominees who promise to undermine the rule of law? Unlike the Biden administration, they can't change the rules whenever they feel like it, they can't use the bureaucracy to stack the deck in their favor, and they can't put their friends in charge to cover for them if they get caught breaking the law.

Our local law enforcement officials deserve better. Tennesseans deserve better. The American people deserve better. But right now, they have to do the best they can fighting a losing battle on two fronts-- against criminals trying to exploit them and against a President who knows exactly what is happening but just doesn't care enough to do something about it.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, for almost 3 years now, the American people have watched the Biden administration and their Democratic allies in Congress burn through trillions of dollars of their hard- earned money.

Early on in the administration, when one of their radical proposals made its way to the Senate floor, I would hear from Tennesseans wanting to know whom the Democrats expected to actually pay the bill for these programs. But as time has gone by, the Democrats confirmed, as they have every time they have been in power, that their plan was to keep squeezing taxpayers for as much money as possible, for as long as possible. Indeed, the Federal Government has a ceaseless, nonending appetite for taxpayers' money.

I don't think I have to tell you how discouraging this is for Tennesseans. It is confirmation that their President knows what is happening to them but he just does not care. They are in pursuit of a goal. They see this as a means to an end.

Now, when I am at home in Tennessee, as I was this weekend, people don't ask me where all the money went because they know the Democrats have wasted it on handouts and Green New Deal schemes--trillions of dollars down the drain. All they want to know is when is this going to stop.

They can't plan ahead. They can't save for special occasions. Even something as simple as a holiday cookout has slipped out of reach for so many families. Independence Day is coming up, but what should be an exciting time for everyone has turned into a source of stress because, in 1 year--1 year--the price of a bag of chips, up 7.9 percent; ice cream and popsicles, 8 percent more; potato salad will cost 7.1 percent more this year, and that is only accounting for the cost of the potatoes. Hot dogs and hamburgers have gone up, but when you account for the almost 16-percent hike on ketchup and mustard, a 9.4-percent hike on lettuce, the 13-percent hike on pickles, and a ridiculous 12.5- percent hike on the bun to put it all on, you can cross your main course off the menu also.

There is no reason why a meal like this should suddenly be out of reach of many families, but it is, and it is not just due to the price of the hamburger bun. That is just something that really is adding insult to injury.

Since Joe Biden became President, grocery prices have increased 20 percent, which is something every single person serving in Congress has seen in action. You cannot deny this. Any trip to the grocery store tells the story.

Energy bills have gone up 36 percent since Joe Biden and the Democrats took power. Rent is up 15 percent; clothes, 12 percent more. A tank of gas is up 51 percent, and a used car to put that gas in is going to cost you 33 percent more today than it did last June.

To counteract all of this, the Fed has raised interest rates at the fastest pace since the 1980s, which has in turn destroyed access to consumer credit and made it harder for small businesses to take out the loans they need to grow.

The problem isn't limited to a holiday celebration; our President and the Democrats have made life too expensive to afford every single day of the year.

Needless to say, spending has been out of control for over a decade. Regardless of what this administration believes, we cannot spend our way to prosperity. It does not happen. But we can directly trace this crippling inflation back to the reckless spending policies of this administration. So let's take a look at some of the things they have chosen to prioritize over the good of the country and the good of the people.

They used the 6,825-page Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 to set a new precedent for wasteful spending that, frankly, continues to baffle most Tennesseans. This bill, which no one had the opportunity to read, included billions in pure waste and authorized over $1.82 trillion in total discretionary spending authority.

To make matters worse, the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed last August, gave the Internal Revenue Service $80 billion for--guess what-- more IRS agents. They estimate that the resulting increase in harassment will take $204 billion from hard-working taxpayers who are already struggling to make ends meet.

The IRA also included $386 billion for Joe Biden's radical climate agenda, including $27 billion for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the sole purpose of which is to increase the power of the EPA; $3 billion in environmental and climate justice block grants; and an extension of the Affordable Care Act's premium tax credits.

This is hundreds of billions of dollars going to pet projects of the left, while Americans are struggling to put food on the table.

But the spending won't stop there. Earlier this year, President Biden released a pledge to make things worse. It is in the form of his 2024 budget request. This exorbitant wish list proved that he has no desire to get our national debt under control. It included annual budget deficits ranging between 4.6 and 6.8 percent above the baseline. He also included trillions in tax increases and added even more funding to the IRS. He doubled the tax on capital gains; increased the corporate income tax rate to 28 percent, which is the second highest rate in the developed world; and then made sure the IRS could find ways to take even more money--not exactly a taxpayer-friendly approach.

This path is not sustainable and will only lead to our children and grandchildren bearing the full brunt of our massive national debt burden. In my opinion, this is immoral.

This is why every Congress I introduce legislation to cut spending by 1, 2, and 5 percent all across the board. These small changes would make a big difference and help us return to a path of fiscal stability and fiscal sanity.

The Consumer Price Index rose 4 percent in May. Incredibly enough, the Biden administration celebrated this as a win, which leads me to believe they are still counting on the American people somehow ignoring what a mess they made in continuing to fork over the money.

Let's be clear. Four percent inflation is still double the target rate. This is not a win. It is not normal. The day Joe Biden came into office, inflation was at 1.4 percent.

Now, what this does do, it does guarantee that Tennesseans will face yet another month of groceries that are too expensive to afford and unsustainable spending on programs they did not vote for and do not want.

If we were to pass a 1-percent across-the-board cut to Federal spending, then there is a chance we can reverse this trend and ease the impossible burden that the Biden administration has placed on the American people. But if we continue to ignore the problem and spend even more money, that will lead us even further down the path to economic collapse.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the following interns in my office be granted floor privileges until the end of the Congress: Nell Palumbo, Reagan Philbeck, and John Orantes.

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

Madam President, yesterday, the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law hosted a hearing to examine the rise of artificial intelligence. In the last few months, we have had a lot of conversations here about AI, and I am grateful that we are looking at this issue. Although there are many areas where we disagree, our colleagues on each side of the aisle are paying close attention to this issue. I would encourage my colleagues to review the high points of yesterday's hearing because it truly demonstrated the scope of the challenges that we find ourselves facing.

We fielded several firsthand accounts of how this technology can be weaponized against human beings in our homes and on a national scale. We heard from Jennifer DeStefano, who was the victim of an attempted AI kidnapping and extortion scheme. Scam artists used AI to clone her 15- year-old daughter Brie's voice and then used this manufactured recording to try and extort $1 million in ransom.

Fortunately, Jennifer was able to confirm that Brie was safe. But you can see how criminals could, and indeed will, and certainly are beginning to leverage this technology against other families.

We also heard from Jeffrey Cain, an investigative journalist who has witnessed how destructive AI can be in the hands of oppressive governments. He has reported extensively on how the Chinese Communist Party is using AI to enhance their brutal surveillance state.

According to one account, the CCP has used facial recognition to track the movements of Chinese citizens. They have even used it to track their citizens as young as 9 days old. This is how the Chinese Communist Party is using this technology.

One of the things that we have learned is that China and the CCP are trying to control the market for artificial intelligence, just the same that we have learned they are doing for 5G, for quantum computing, and for other groundbreaking technologies.

They said as much back in 2017, when they released their national AI development plan. Their goal is to be the dominant force in artificial intelligence by the time we reach 2030.

But whether we are talking about the threat from scam artists or hostile foreign powers, it is time to prove that the U.S. Senate understands why we must lead in setting the standards for and developing artificial intelligence, rather than ceding this authority and this place to Xi Jinpin and the Chinese Communist Party.

That means continuing the work that we started in yesterday's hearing. It is important to note this was a bipartisan hearing. Chairman Ossoff did a great job in leading this discussion. We had great participation in this hearing.

And we have to continue to look at the uses of artificial intelligence. There are some for good, and there are some for evil, which is what we heard so much about yesterday and how it impacts human rights.

As we think about deploying AI on a broad scale, we need to focus on preserving the freedoms and the democratic values that we hold dear here in our country. It also means finally enacting a national data privacy standard to govern the collection and the sharing of our personal information.

One of our witnesses, Alexandra Givens, mentioned that this needed to be done as a fundamental foundational element before we begin to look at guardrails for AI, giving individuals the ability to protect their virtual views themselves and their information in the virtual space.

This is something that, as policymakers, we need to make sure that our existing laws can adapt to meet the challenge that is before us as we look at artificial intelligence.

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, the Biden administration has spent the better part of 3 years claiming that its border policies are humane and just. We know this isn't the case. Under Joe Biden, the Mexican cartels are acting with impunity because the President would rather cave to the desires of the far left than admit that a country with open borders has no borders at all. Because of this open border policy and the fact that they are not recognizing the southern border as a border, they have turned every town into a border town, every State into a border State, and this has made us vulnerable to drug smugglers, human traffickers, and violent criminals looking for their next victim.

In April, the Border Patrol reported more than 182,000 encounters with migrants trying to cross the southern border--182,000. When you combine that with the numbers from the first quarter of this year, you come up with more than 602,000 encounters. That doesn't include the tens of thousands of got-aways who disappeared into the country before they could be apprehended. When you add that to the 22,000 pounds of drugs that have been seized, almost 40,000 criminals that have been caught, and 49 suspected terrorists apprehended, you must conclude that the Biden administration hasn't just lost control of the border; they have relinquished it.

As I said, the border policy is to have no policy, to have an open border--interesting--and it is something that my colleagues across the aisle refuse to admit is taking place.

Our southern border is wide open. The people benefiting are the cartels that are in control of the border on the Mexico side: 49 suspected terrorists, 22,000 pounds of drugs, 40,000 criminal illegal aliens apprehended. As I said, that is just in the 602,000 who have been apprehended so far this year. That is right, so far this year.

And in the got-aways--the tens of thousands of got-aways--how many more pounds of drugs, how many more criminals, how many more terrorists have come into this country?

While our border is open, the cartels are monetizing Joe Biden's refusal to secure the country. They have turned human trafficking into a $13 billion-a-year business. It is amazing--$13 billion on human trafficking alone.

For years, illegal immigrants have taken advantage of the fact that if they cross the border with a minor, they will more likely than not be released into the United States while their immigration cases are processed. But under Joe Biden, human traffickers have made this complacency a part of their expected business model.

They are now engaging in a practice that is horrendous. It is called child recycling. It is a disgusting process. In this child recycling process, the same child is exploited repeatedly by illegal aliens attempting to enter the United States. Once one criminal escapes into the country, they ship the child back across the border and into the hands of another abuser.

The Trump administration fought back against this practice and mandated that asylum seekers with accompanying minors take DNA tests to prove that they were indeed a family unit. And like many of the Trump- era border policies, this worked. We have the data to prove it. Just ask the Border Patrol.

In one pilot program, 30 percent of those rapid DNA tests showed that the adult trying to enter the country bore no relation to the child they brought with them--30 percent. The DNA testing program saved a lot of lives.

So I would ask my colleagues this question: Is it fair--is it fair-- to ask the Biden administration, is it worth saving the lives of these children?

This Biden administration ended DNA testing of illegal immigrants last month, 2 weeks after title 42 ended. So is it fair to ask why they will not implement DNA testing? Why will they not agree to save the lives of as many as 30 percent of the children who are being presented at the southern border?

See, it wasn't a policy decision. You have just got to believe that. It had to be a political decision, and we just cannot allow this to stand.

Earlier this year, I introduced the End Child Trafficking Now Act. That would criminalize child recycling. It would reinstate the DNA testing program and create harsh penalties for migrants who try to skirt the law. This legislation would require adult migrants trying to enter the country with a minor to prove that they are indeed the child's relative or guardian. They will be able to do that by providing paperwork and sworn witness testimony or by taking the DNA test.

If their paperwork doesn't check out--and we know the cartels have started to forge documents into fraudulent paperwork. We are aware of that. That is why, if their paperwork doesn't pan out, the DNA test is mandatory. If the DNA test proves that migrant is lying, HHS would step in and process the child as an unaccompanied minor, and the trafficker would face a maximum 10-year prison sentence for falsely posing as a family. This legislation would also require DHS to deport illegal aliens who refuse to take the DNA test. This is a commonsense bill that every Senator in this Chamber should get behind.

I call on my Democratic colleagues to either join me in moving this important legislation forward or explain to the American people why they would stonewall a program, a test--and it only takes 45 minutes. Why would they stonewall this when it would keep children out of these human trafficking rings?

This horrific practice will not stop unless we stop it. And if we don't catch it at the border, we need to catch it as these criminals move across the country.

Child recycling is a problem, but I think we all know that not every child forced across our border is sent back home. Labor and sex trafficking within the United States is real, and it is happening in our communities.

This horrible reality particularly affects girls and young women, which is why I introduced the SAVE Girls Act. This bipartisan legislation, which I introduced with Senator Klobuchar, creates a $50 million grant program to provide States, localities, and nongovernment organizations, our nonprofits, with the resources they need to catch traffickers and to support the children and the women who survive this horrific practice.

This is not a Republican or a Democrat issue. This is a human rights issue. And I am so grateful to my colleagues for working with me to put the safety of these women and girls first.

I hope the rest of the Members of this Chamber will follow the lead and help us pass the SAVE Girls Act and the End Child Trafficking Now Act because, if we don't, things will get much, much worse for these children and these women who are being trafficked.

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.