Floor Statements

Madam President, it is a wonderful moment to be here with my colleagues to acknowledge that in March we passed the biggest reduction in poverty in generations in our country. That was through the expansion of the child tax credit, which increased the credit, made it payable on a

monthly basis, and, for the first time in American history, made it fully refundable so the millions of children in this country who were too poor to get the benefit of the credit because their families were too poor would get the benefit of that credit. And we needed to do it.

The United States, before we passed this, was 38th out of 41 industrialized countries in the world when it came to childhood poverty. The poorest generation in this country are our children, and I think what we said was that there is no reason for us to accept those outcomes or those numbers as a permanent feature of our economy or our democracy. And in the end, this isn't about numbers. This is about children all over our country and the future of the United States of America.

Childhood poverty costs this country a trillion dollars a year, and one of the things we decided was that maybe, instead of paying for the effects of childhood poverty, we could actually begin to try to reduce the amount of childhood poverty that exists in our country, the way other countries around the world have already done it.

Nationally, the child tax credit, as I say, is cutting childhood poverty in half. It is reducing hunger among families by a quarter. Let that linger for a second.

When was the last time we were able to come to the floor of the Senate and say we cut hunger in this country by a quarter? It has been generations since anybody has been able to say that on this floor.

In Colorado, a million kids and their families are benefitting from this credit. That is 90 percent of the kids in my State. It is 90 percent of the kids across the country. Parents in Colorado are getting an average of $240 a month to pay for groceries, to help with the rent, and, really importantly, to pay for a little extra childcare so people can stay at work. And I know that because of what parents have told me they are spending the money on.

When we first passed this credit back in June--I think it was then that it first went into effect--July and August, people were getting ready to go back to school, and I had mom after mom after mom across the State tell me how important it was that they were able to buy school clothes for their kids without bankrupting their family, for the first time.

And, you know, all of this is the reflection of an economy that for 50 years has worked extremely well for the top 10 percent of Americans and hasn't really worked for anybody else, and where the families who come to see me in my townhall say: Michael, we are working really hard, but no matter what we do, we can't afford some combination of housing, healthcare, higher education, early childhood education, if we can even find early childhood education or daycare.

We can't save. We feel like our families are going to live a more diminished life than we did and that our kids will as well.

So I brought a few photos today to the floor to share some stories of Coloradans with all of you and my colleagues.

This is April Pratt from El Paso County, and she lives there with her three daughters, who are ages 8, 2\1/2\, and 1\1/2\.

When April was pregnant with her youngest daughter, her husband tragically passed away. Now, she is the sole breadwinner for the family. And although she works full-time at the local school, there is not much left after her mortgage, diapers, and groceries for three young kids. Let me just say that again. She works full-time.

Before the Child Tax Credit, April said she ``felt like I was having a lot of anxiety every month about whether I was going to be able to afford my bills. It was eating up a lot of my attention.''

Thanks to the child tax credit, April can afford the $1,200 a month for childcare for her two youngest daughters so she can work--so she can work. She said, ``If I wasn't able to afford childcare, I'd have to quit my job.''

Without the child tax credit, April said that she would be ``forced to use my credit card to fill in the gaps, and that debt just accumulates and accumulates, and that becomes crippling, and my family wouldn't be able to get ahead.'' She said it was ``nice that our government is finally doing something to help working families and middle-class families.''

Finally, after we have cut taxes for the wealthiest people in this country by more than $5 trillion since 2001, we finally have a tax cut for working families. We should be making it permanent.

This is Amberly Atencio, also from Colorado. She is here with her three girls that are ages 9, 12, and 14. When I got to this place, my daughters were 9, 7, and 4, so I have some appreciation for what she has got on her hands.

They lived their entire lives in Monte Vista, a small town in southwest Colorado in the San Luis Valley. And for the past 3 years, Amberly has been working full-time and studying. And last week, she graduated with her second associate's degree.

She works for a local health insurance company. And before the child tax credit, her paycheck was the only source of income for her family. She said that knowing that monthly support comes on the same day each month helps her pay the rent and buy food. She said: ``I'm a single parent. This is like heaven to me, knowing that I have that extra income to provide for my children. . . . It has helped so much.''

Her daughters love sports--soccer, basketball, volleyball, and track. But between the shorts, knee pads, cleats, shin guards, and fees, it all adds up. And with the child tax credit, she has bought that equipment for her daughters so they can play sports with their friends, which means the world to them.

I had a mom who told me that she had bought a bike for her son and he was able to take it to stay at school late to engage in afterschool activities he otherwise wouldn't be able to do without that bike.

And, finally, here is Ayesha Bogart from Colorado Springs. Here is another mom from the Springs with her three kids, aged 12, 13, and 23. Ayesha served for 16 years as a medic in the U.S. Army and U.S. Army Reserves. While she was on Active Duty, she was injured during a training accident when her Humvee rolled over, and it left her with a traumatic brain injury. Now, she is a single mom supporting three kids all by herself. And before the child tax credit, she couldn't afford to buy new shoes for her kids.

She said there were days when they didn't have shampoo at home and her kids would get teased at school. Thanks to the child tax credit, she bought her kids new pairs of shoes. She bought them school supplies so they feel like they are on a level playing field with the other children in their school. She said the child tax credit has given her ``breathing room where there wasn't any before.''

I have heard stories like that all across the State of Colorado. This is not an anecdotal reflection of people not working hard. All of these people are working hard. It is hard work just to raise a child, much less do the kind of jobs these folks are doing. And the economy has worked really well for the top 10 percent, as I said, but hasn't really worked for anybody else.

And what has Washington's response been time and time and time again? To come here and cut taxes for the richest people in America and ignore the needs of working people. That is what we have done since 2001, $8 trillion in tax cuts, almost all of which have gone to the wealthiest people in this country.

And now, we have a tax cut for working people in an economy that has not lifted them up the way it has lifted the people at the very top. We are saying we don't have to accept childhood poverty as a permanent feature of our economy or our democracy. We don't have to accept an economy where it only grows for the wealthiest Americans. We don't have to accept that Congress is only paying attention to special interests and to the wealthiest Americans.

We can build an economy that includes everybody, that when it grows, everybody benefits from it because the whole society benefits from this as well. Childhood poverty costs this country $1 trillion a year. We can't afford not to do it, which is why so many other countries in the world have done this.

We can create opportunity for every American family and give every child a chance to contribute to this economy and to our society. And I believe it is fundamentally important to strengthening our democracy, making sure we

have got something we are proud of to turn over to the next generation of Americans.

That is why it is critical for us to extend this child tax credit, to not allow it to lapse at the end of the year, and in my mind, make it permanent. I would argue that we cannot afford not to.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, it is my honor to congratulate Adams State University on 100 years of educating students in Alamosa, CO. The school was established on May 4, 1921, as Adams State Normal School by the Colorado Legislature following the tireless advocacy of Colorado State Representative William ``Billy'' H. Adams. Founded as a teacher's college, Adams State now has more than 3,000 students enrolled in 27 bachelor's degree programs, nine master's degree programs, and one Ph.D. degree program.

Located in the San Luis Valley with deep Hispano roots, Adams State was the first federally designated Hispanic serving institution in Colorado. The school has also fostered an elite distance-running culture over decades after hosting the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in August 1968.

Over the past 100 years, Adams State has educated thousands of community leaders, businessowners, doctors, attorneys, farmers and ranchers, and, most

important, teachers and has been a key economic and cultural educational institution for Alamosa and the entire San Luis Valley.

Mr. President, I ask consent to speak for 5 minutes.

Mr. President, I am coming to the floor to talk about a nominee that we have before us this afternoon, who is nominated by President Biden to be the Deputy Under Secretary of the Treasury for Legislative Affairs.

He is a person who is well known to this Chamber. He spent roughly 20 years working in the Senate. He started out as Senator Paul Sarbanes' body man years and years and years ago and became chief of staff for Senator Sarbanes when Senator Sarbanes was the chair of the Banking Committee. He worked in the House for Representative Sarbanes, was chief counsel to Senator Warner, and then came to my office and was my chief of staff.

His name is Jon Davidson, and he worked for the people of Colorado and for the country for about 10 years in that role. When he came over as my chief of staff, it was very shocking to me that he was willing to do it because he had a good job and he was doing really well for Senator Warner. But it gave him the chance to run a Senate office, and he did an extraordinary job not just because of his understanding of policy and his understanding of politics--a lot of people have that around this place--but also his understanding of human nature and his belief that in all of us, even those of us who are Senators, there can be a gem of goodness in us to be found and to be brought along and to be grown. And that was true not just for me, but for the entire staff.

He was an incredible mentor to probably hundreds of people who worked for me over the years, both in the State of Colorado and in here. He was an extraordinary manager who led with integrity and discipline and drive.

And while I was extremely sorry to lose him, I wasn't at all surprised that President Biden and the Secretary of the Treasury wanted him at Treasury, where he could take what he had learned on Capitol Hill and apply it at

a moment when the country urgently needs leadership like the leadership that Jon Davidson can provide.

Just one example: You know, Mr. President, I ran a not very well noticed campaign for President the last time we were having a campaign for President, and I ran it on the idea that we could cut childhood poverty almost in half in this country by adopting the changes that I had proposed to the child tax credit with Senator Brown from Ohio and Senator Booker from New Jersey and then-Senator Harris from California.

But, like with anything else a Senator does, the work is actually done often by the members of that Senator's staff. And in the case of Jon, the vision also came from him and from Charlie Anderson--another staff member that I had--and the entire team that worked together not just for that Presidential campaign but to make sure that, in the wake of it, that could actually become law.

And because of Jon's tenacity, among other things, and his willingness to be able to raise this issue again and again and again in rooms full of staff but also in rooms full of Senators, those changes in the child tax credit are now the law of the land, and we are cutting childhood poverty in this country almost in half this year. It is one of the signature accomplishments, in my mind, of the Biden administration. It is one that I hope that we are going to be able to continue.

So, obviously, I was extremely sad to see him go. I was very, very pleased to see the broad bipartisan support that the cloture vote on his nomination engendered. And I know great things are ahead for Jon and for the country because of his leadership.

He knows, I think, that he has got an open invitation to come back anytime that he wants to.

Before I leave the floor, I also want to say a special word of gratitude to his dad Garber, who lives in Baltimore; and to his wife Erin; and to his children Leo, Mia, and Serena--all of whom have been part of the efforts that we have undertaken on behalf of the people I represent in Colorado over the last decade and on behalf of the United States of America.

These opportunities for public service that all of us have are ones that can't be accomplished without our families; without, I know in the case of Jon, the mentorship that he received from his father, who himself was a distinguished public servant in the United States, and also the support of his family.

So I am filled with great happiness today that we are going to have a great, positive, bipartisan vote on Jon Davidson, as it should be. And perhaps that is a sign of things to come when the kind of quality of somebody like Jon Davidson is recognized in a way that it causes us to act not in a partisan way but in a bipartisan way, to embrace his public service but also a vision for the country that can move us forward.

So congratulations to Jon Davidson. Congratulations to his family, to the Department of the Treasury, and to the United States of America.

With that, Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have 7 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

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

committee on agriculture, nutrition, and forestry

The Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, November 2, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

committee on banking, housing, and urban affairs

The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, November 2, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

committee on energy and natural resources

The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, November 2, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a business meeting on nominations.

committee on foreign relations

The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, November 2, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.

committee on the judiciary

The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, November 2, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

select committee on intelligence

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

subcommittee on state department and usaid management, international

operations, and bilateral international development

The Subcommittee on State Department and USAID Management, International Operations, and Bilateral International Development of the Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, November 2, 2021, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Thank you, Mr. President. I would ask the quorum call be vitiated.

For once, the Senate is not in a quorum call. It is amazing. We are having an actual debate. I can't believe it. It has been so long since that has been true.

Mr. President, I am here to talk about voting rights today, and I actually am delighted that you are in the Chair, my colleague from Colorado, because over many years you have had so much to do with the fact that Colorado has the second-highest turnout of any State in the country--76 percent--because of what we have done, Republicans and Democrats and unaffiliated voters working together, to make sure that Coloradans can cast their ballots.

I am tired, as I am sure you are, of hearing our colleague from Minnesota come down here, Senator Klobuchar, and say that Minnesota is No. 1 in voting, which they are. They have more than 76 percent of the people that vote, but I think we will catch them, and maybe we will catch them this year.

But the reason why we have such a high turnout is because of things that we have put in place working in a bipartisan way. And when the Presiding Officer was the Governor of Colorado, you know, that was when, really, we moved to the mail-in ballot system that we have, completely fraud free and a delight, especially for people living in rural areas, where it is hard to get to the ballot box sometimes.

And so thank you for helping create a model for the country as we debate this bill in front of us. In fact, much of what this bill does-- I will get to the bill in a minute--is reflective of the work that we have done in Colorado.

Mr. President, you came here during a difficult time, I would say, for our democracy. This has been, in many ways, a near-death experience for the U.S. democracy. There are countries all over the world that are totalitarian societies who are counting on our country to fail. They tell us at the negotiating table every time we sit down with them that they think we are going to fail; that democracy isn't up to the challenges of the 21st century; that it doesn't move fast enough. This place doesn't move at all many weeks and could give a person reason to wonder whether or not we are going to make it work.

But in this year, we had a particularly savage experience on January 6, when the Capitol was invaded by our own citizens, and we were escorted off the floor of the Senate, taken to a secure facility, where I watched and the Presiding Officer watched what everybody in America saw, what everybody in the world saw, which were thousands of people streaming into this Capitol to try to stop the counting of the vote at the urging of then-President Trump.

And, fortunately, because there were enough people in this body who wanted to confirm the vote, on January 20, we actually had a peaceful transfer of power, and Joe Biden became the President of the United States.

Most countries that have a January 6 never survive to January 20, you know. And when I was a kid, it was common to see these kinds of things happen in other capitals around the world, places like Tehran. You never would have imagined it would happen here in Washington, DC.

And now it has happened here in Washington, DC. But the big difference is that because more people turned out to vote than at any time in our country's history, we had that peaceful transfer of power.

And now the question for all of us, I think, as Americans, is, What are we going do with the gift that our fellow citizens have given us by turning out to vote in the midst of a pandemic in record number? What are we going to do with that gift they have given to us--a gift of democracy, I would say, a new lease on life.

And I think we have got a moral obligation to them and to our Nation's children and, frankly, to humanity to make sure that this democracy actually works for the American people and not for the special interests that have worked so hard to corrupt it.

And there are so many ways before January 6 that our democracy was being attacked: partisan gerrymandering all over the country to allow politicians to pick their voters rather than have voters pick their politicians. That is an incredibly undemocratic thing for us to be doing across the country; the special interests that lobby this place who are basically unregulated by any campaign finance laws; the effect of Citizens United, which was the Supreme Court's decision that opened the floodgates of billionaires funding American elections instead of people funding American elections; and now, perhaps most egregiously, because it is so strategic and it is so purposeful, the attack on the vote all over the United States of America.

I find it hard to believe. I am 54 years--56. That is the saddest story I have ever told. I am 56 years old, Mr. President. As you know, I went to college in the 1980s, you know, and now I am seeing laws passed that I read about in the 1980s that passed in the 1960s to try to deny people the right to vote all over the country, to make it harder to vote.

Just this year, 19 States have passed 33 laws undermining democracy; laws to make it harder to vote early or vote by mail, two things we treasure in the State of Colorado; laws to slash the number of drop boxes or put them in really inconvenient places so people can't vote, as I do every single election with a drop box just a few blocks from my house. It takes me 30 seconds to vote, completely fraud free. Everyone in America should have the benefit of that.

We have got a law that made it a crime in Georgia to give people water while they are waiting in line to vote.

So I know there is a tendency around this place sometimes to just think that our democracy, just because it has always been here, that it is always going to be around, to assume that we can coast on the blood and the sweat and the tears of Americans who came before us, who fought generation after generation after generation to make this country more democratic, more fair, and more free. This is not a time for coasting. This is a time for us to deal with the profound threat that is stealing the right of Americans all over this country to vote, to have their

voice heard, to be able to have a say in the direction of our democracy or whether we are going to have a democracy at all, whether we are going to accept the world where politicians, like the people in this body but at the State legislatures, can overturn the independent judgment of other parts of the election apparatus, people that held the line this year when somebody in the White House was trying to intimidate them to change their mind.

We have got people in this country, State legislators, who are passing laws that would allow them to do exactly what Donald Trump said he wanted them to do, which was overturn the election judgments of independently elected or appointed officials. That is something we cannot allow to have happen because the minute that does happen, you lose the democracy. The minute you cannot make a decision at the voting booth, at the voting box, at the poll, the minute you can no longer make a decision there that is held up no matter who wins and no matter who loses, that has the confidence of the American people, that is when you lose the democracy because the whole point of a democracy, the way we make decisions, is a peaceful transfer of power.

And in the absence of that very, very unusual aspect of our society compared to other societies around the world and the history of humanity, in the absence of that, what you confront is political violence like the violence that we saw on January 6, where people tried to take by force something that should have been decided and was decided at the ballot box.

And all of this, in my view, is why it is so important for us to pass the Freedom to Vote Act. The bill includes commonsense reforms that are broadly supported by the American people, and that is because they reflect common sense, just like the American people.

And we know these reforms work, Mr. President, because we have already passed them in Colorado, thanks in large part to your leadership. We banned partisan gerrymandering. We don't have it in our State.

So, again, politicians in Colorado don't have the right to choose who their voters are; voters get to choose who their elected leaders are.

We have automatic voter registration, as this bill has; early voting, so people have a chance to get off work and go to vote and don't have to just be there on election day.

Vote by mail, which I have to say, up until the last President's Presidency, there was no one in America that was concerned about vote by mail. We had cast millions of ballots in this country without a shred of fraud. Just ask the American Enterprise Institute. They are the ones that said you are more likely to get struck by lightning than participate in voter fraud by voting by mail. That is not a Democratic- leaning organization, as everybody on this floor knows.

Secure drop boxes in your neighborhood, where it takes 30 seconds to vote--every time I go there, next to the Botanic Gardens in my neighborhood in Denver, and I drop my ballot off, I think about all the people all over this country in 2021 who don't have the simple ability to drop their ballot off in a ballot box, who are having to wait in line for hours for the privilege to vote just because of the State they live in.

We should have basic national standards for people. It is a civil rights issue. It is an issue that is fundamental to our democracy. And having a convenient ballot box is one of those things. Having mail-in ballots is one of those things. We have had zero fraud in our system.

And as I said earlier, in many ways, it is as important to rural Colorado as any other part of our State because the people live a long way from the ballot box.

If our State's history is any guide at all, we can do this in a bipartisan way. And it is not surprising to me that vast majorities of Americans, whether they are Republicans or Independents or Democrats, support the provisions that are in this bill by wide, wide margins.

I am going to be pleased to go back to Colorado and have the chance to tell them that we have banned dark money from our political system; that the Supreme Court's fundamental misunderstanding in Citizens United, where they completely misdefined the problem and failed to see the corruption of inaction that happens around here, the things that aren't done because of the dark money that is spent in our elections because--for fear that some billionaire is going to show up and throw what to them is nothing into a race that could determine the outcome of our elections.

We have got to change that, and the only way we can do that is by passing this bill. And I think that if we pass this bill, what we find is that States all over this country would see 76 percent of the people voting, just like in Colorado, instead of 50 percent of the people voting or 40 percent of the people voting. That would have a huge impact on what we are doing. We could show the world that we can actually compete with the communist government in China. We can resolve the question about whether democracy is up to this in the 21st century or not.

We could invest in the next generation of Americans. We could improve our schools, improve our roads and bridges, and invest in the future again, as so many generations of Americans have done in the past when they stood up for democracy and the next generation of Americans. That is the question that we are confronted with today as we take this vote.

Are we going to stand up for our democracy? Are we going to stand up for humanity, who is relying on us to deliver a democracy that works? And are we going to stand up for the next generation of Americans and remain a beacon to the rest of the world, committed to our highest ideals and not our worst instincts?

I think we have the chance today when we take this vote to follow generations of Americans who have, in their lives, lived out those best ideals, rather than caving into our worst instincts.

It seems to me--putting Democrats and Republicans aside--the question in front of us is: Are you for democracy or not? Are you for the freedom to vote or not? Are you for maximizing fraud-free elections, where people can actually turn out to vote no matter where they live? Or are you suppressing the vote of our fellow countrymen and women?

That is the question before us. And because it is such a clear question, I would urge every one of my colleagues, Republican or Democrat, to vote for this legislation so we can set a basic standard for what the freedom of vote should look like in the United States of America.

With that, Mr. President, I appreciate your indulgence and patience.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Ohio, Senator Brown, for his remarkable leadership in getting us to this point with the child tax credit and with the earned income tax credit for childless families which, thanks to his leadership, we have been able to triple.

But I think we are here today on a really, really momentous matter. When I think back to the days when I was the superintendent of schools in Denver, most of the kids in my city were kids of color and most were living in poverty, and many of their families were working two or three jobs. And no matter what they did, they couldn't get their kids out of poverty.

Today, now, I travel the State of Colorado, a State that has got very rural areas and very urban areas. If I had to summarize the last 10 years of my townhalls--10 or 11 years--it is very easy to do it. No matter what county I am in, people say: We are killing ourselves, and no matter what we do, we can't afford some combination of housing, healthcare, higher education, early childhood education--if there is any childhood education. We can't save. We feel like our kids are going to live a more diminished life than the life we lived.

That is the anecdotal reflection of an economy that, for 50 years in this country, has worked really well for the top 10 percent of Americans and not for anybody else. The result of that is, today, the United States is 38th out of 41 industrialized countries, in terms of childhood poverty.

The poorest people in our society are our children. The poorest generation in the United States of America are our children, which is scandalous.

Senators Brown, Booker, Warnock, and then-Senator Harris, before that, and I came together to try to address it and to say that we don't have to accept this much childhood poverty as a permanent feature of our economy or a permanent feature of our society. We can actually fix this by making three changes to the child tax credit: to increase the amount and make it fully refundable, so that for the first time in our country's history the poorest kids have the benefit of it; and to have it paid out on a monthly basis, so that when parents and grandparents are at the end of the month trying to make the rent or buy a few more groceries or pay for a little bit more childcare, they are able to do it in real time.

I am sure my colleagues on the floor today spent time meeting with people in their States over the recess. I did. I met mostly moms, but parent after parent after parent, who said to me: For the first time in my life, I was able to buy back-to-school clothes, and I didn't bankrupt my family. Buying back-to-school clothes was not a catastrophe for my family. My kid was able to go to school in a new shirt.

One mom in Colorado Springs said to me that she bought a bicycle for her son so he could take himself to school and participate in afterschool programs that he wouldn't have otherwise been able to participate in, because he could take himself there and bring himself back.

She said that he had burst a tire in this new bicycle and that she was able, because of the child tax credit, not to buy the cheap tire that she would ordinarily buy that would break next week--as she said-- but to buy a tire that the kid could rely on. She said, ``That is what being poor in America is like; you have to pay a tax on everything,'' because you can't buy a decent pair of shoes and you can't buy a decent tire for a bike.

This is a reason why 450 economists have written to the administration saying we should be making this permanent. And I believe we should be making it permanent. They have also pointed out that it is very important for people to hear that this is pro-work. The countries that have child allowances like this actually have a higher percentage of people in the workforce than we do, because people can use that allowance to pay for a little extra childcare so they can stay at work. They can use that allowance to help pay to fix a car so they can stay at work. This is a pro-work policy.

Just as importantly, childhood poverty costs our country $1 trillion a year. We have been told by Columbia University that we are going to see an 8x annual return as a result of cutting childhood poverty in half this year, which this policy does, as opposed to spending money just to mitigate the effects of childhood poverty.

So there is every reason in the world that we should make this permanent, that we should extend it. In my view, we can't afford not to, and that is why we are here today.

I want to thank my colleague from New Jersey, Senator Booker, somebody I have known since he was mayor of Newark and I was the superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, and we were working together to try to lift up kids in our respective communities. There have been many times when I have been on this floor and I have said that we are treating America's children like they are someone else's children, that only a country that didn't care about their kids would treat our kids the way we have.

But, finally, we are not. Finally, we said: We are not going to tolerate this. And a lot of that has to do with the Senator from New Jersey's leadership.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to speak about Veronica Rossman, President Biden's nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

Ms. Rossman comes to this floor with broad legal experience and a sterling reputation in Colorado. Veronica cares deeply about justice and the rule of law because she knows what it means to live without it.

Veronica was born in Russia, where her family faced anti-Semitism at every turn. Her grandparents couldn't openly practice their faith because they feared retaliation at work. Her father was a brilliant career scientist who was routinely denied promotions. Her mother, a talented pianist and music teacher, never openly shared her faith until the family fled Russia.

In the end, Veronica's parents knew that anti-Semitism would stand in the way of her enormous potential, and they wanted her to grow up with a freedom that they never enjoyed. And like so many others in our country's history, Veronica and her family came to America as political refugees.

And from virtually nothing, Veronica built a distinguished legal career. She worked hard and earned a BA from Columbia University, and then a JD from the University of California at Hastings.

She clerked for Justice William Maupin of the Nevada Supreme Court, who could say not enough about her brilliant legal mind. Veronica then practiced appellate litigation at Morrison & Foerster, where she worked on one of the largest international patent cases in history.

Later, she served as a staff attorney for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and taught for 3 years at the University of Denver as a visiting professor of law.

In private practice, Veronica specialized in complex civil litigation and handled cases about everything from antitrust law to intellectual property law.

At this point, Veronica could have pursued any number of high-paying legal jobs, but, instead, she became a Federal public defender for the districts of Colorado and Wyoming.

And over the past 12 years, Ms. Rossman developed rare expertise as an appellate specialist, handling direct criminal appeals from every judicial district in the Tenth Circuit.

In her time as a public defender, she has handled or supervised over 100 appellate matters before the Tenth Circuit. She has represented more than 250 indigent clients--from controversial defendants to people sentenced to long terms for a nonviolent offense, even though they had no criminal history.

She fought for every one of those Americans, often against long odds. But more than that, she fought for the American ideal that everyone deserves equal justice under the law.

If confirmed, Veronica would be the only judge on the Tenth Circuit with experience as a public defender. We need more judges like Veronica, who are not only highly qualified, but who know what it means to be on the wrong end of the legal system that too often fails the most vulnerable in our society.

I know some of my Republican colleagues worry about confirming public defenders because they don't know that much about civil procedure. I don't share that view. But in Veronica's case, it doesn't apply anyway. When she was in private practice, as I mentioned, she worked exclusively on civil matters. She taught civil procedure at the University of Denver.

And some others have suggested that public defenders bring in an ideological agenda to the bench. In Veronica's case, that couldn't be further from the truth. Her family's story has proven her profound appreciation for how, at its best, the rule of law is an antidote to the arbitrary administration of law based on prejudice.

And you don't have to take my word for it. Here is what she told the Judiciary Committee under oath. She said:

[I]f confirmed. . . . In every case, I will treat all

litigants respectfully and impartially;. . . . I will

carefully review the record on appeal; I will put aside any

personal views; I will faithfully adhere to the rule of law.

Ms. Rossman's qualifications are obvious. She has been a first-rate lawyer, and she would make a first-rate judge. That is why the Judiciary Committee sent her to the floor with a bipartisan vote. Now I hope all of us can come together and confirm this outstanding nominee.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the rollcall vote scheduled for 5:30 be called now.

I ask for the nays and yeas.

Here, here.

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

Mr. President, I rise to speak about Bennet-Hoeven amendment 2548.

Our amendment would formally establish the Joint Chiefs Program at USDA. I know a lot of people haven't heard of this initiative, but it is really, really important.

As I have said on this floor before, in Western States like Colorado and North Dakota, our forests and our grasslands are as important to our economy as the Lincoln Tunnel or the Brooklyn Bridge are to New York, but they haven't received nearly enough investment over the years. The result is that we have people on the ground across the West who are working with incredibly constrained resources. But, despite their best effort, there is a lot of important work to maintain the health of our forests and grasslands that they are unable to do. The consequences of this have been terrible in the West.

In Colorado, we had the three largest wildfires in our history last year. The fires were still burning when the snow fell, for the first time. That has never happened in anyone's memory.

As we consider this infrastructure bill tonight, one of the major east-west corridors in America is closed because of mudslides that poured down the burn scar from the wildfires last year. Now I-70 may be closed for weeks.

We need to deal with this on the front end, and that is why the Joint Chiefs Program matters. At USDA, the Forest Service works mostly on public lands, while the Natural Resources Conservation Service supports efforts on private lands. Joint Chiefs allows them to work in a collaborative way.

I thank Senator Hoeven for his support, and I hope we will vote for this on voice vote.

Mr. President.

Mr. President, we are all here today--I want to say on this floor how much I love my colleagues from New Jersey and from Ohio who are here with me today on the floor to celebrate this incredibly important milestone.

I love you for your commitment to the country and for your commitment to our kids.

I want to wish your brother well because I know that he is recovering from his stroke, and you are still taking time to be here on the floor to make sure that people who need it the most hear about this tax credit. I want to thank you for that.

I have heard the Senator from Ohio, just like the Senator from New Jersey, talk about the lives of real people in their States. I have sat in the chair where the Presiding Officer is, listening to Senator Brown talk about families in Ashtabula or Zanesville or Dayton or Cleveland or Cincinnati or Toledo and what the policies that we pass in this body either--you know, the difference they make or very often the difference they don't make to real people at home, to the people you work for and represent in Newark.

I think about a mom, I say to my colleague from Colorado, the Presiding Officer, a mom in Rifle, CO, who was in an early childhood center there, and she was so happy to be there. The other

moms were happy to be there, too, because until they had that early childhood center, they had to drive 30 miles to Glenwood Canyon to get to Glenwood Springs to put their kid in daycare so they could work, and now they could actually have it in their community. What she said to me was this: I work so I can have health insurance. Every single dollar I make goes to pay for this early childhood center so I can work.

It is that triangle that so many Americans are caught in because we have had an economy that for 50 years has worked really well for the top 10 percent and not for anybody else in America. For too long, it seemed like Washington wasn't paying any attention to that. I mean, what was our solution to that? To spend $5.6 trillion on two wars in the Middle East that lasted for 20 years? To come to this floor to cut taxes not for working people, not for the people who needed it, but for the wealthiest people in the country at a time when our income inequality was higher than it was at any time since before the Great Depression? It made no sense.

It was like if the mayor of Denver--who the Presiding Officer used to be, so let's just imagine that for a second--it is as if the mayor of Denver said to the people of Denver: We are going to borrow more money than we have ever borrowed.

I would say, as a concerned citizen of Denver, to the mayor: That worries me. I would like to know what you are spending it on. Are you spending it on parks?

Nope.

Mental health services? We certainly need those.

Nope.

Homeless?

Nope.

Our roads and our bridges?

No

Schools?

No.

You are borrowing all this money. What are you spending it on?

The mayor would have said: Well, I am going to give the money we are borrowing to the two richest neighborhoods in Denver and expect that somehow it is going to trickle down to everybody else.

That sounds crazy, but that was the Bush tax policy. That is the Trump tax policy, sixty-five percent of that bill for what he called the middle class going to the top 5 percent in America. That is why this is such a new day.

I have said on this floor before that it is long past time that we started treating America's children like they are our children and that we wouldn't accept the conditions so many kids live in unless we thought they were someone else's children.

This country, as the Senator from New Jersey has said before, is 38 out of 41 industrialized countries in terms of childhood poverty. In other words, we have the 38th worst childhood poverty in the industrialized world. Only three countries are worse than we are. The poorest population in America? Our children. And we have some of the lowest economic mobility of any country in the industrialized world. We tell ourselves we are the land of opportunity, but we haven't looked like that for a very long time, and the policies that have been passed here haven't helped. That is where the child tax credit comes into being.

We increased it to $3,000, $3,600 for kids under the age of 6. We made it fully refundable so the poorest kids, the millions of poor kids who have never benefited from the tax credit before because their parents made too little money, now have the benefit of it, and it is going to be paid out starting tomorrow on a monthly basis. So when families are making decisions about how to pay the rent, put a little food on the table, buy a few hours of daycare so that they can stay at work and earn a living, they will be able to do it. So they can work, as the Senator from Ohio so eloquently said, with dignity.

In my view, this should be just the beginning of creating an economy that, when it grows, grows for everybody, not just for the people at the very top. It strengthens our democracy by giving everybody a sense that they have a real stake in the economy and that their kids are going to be able to live a brighter life than the life they live. That is what it is supposed to be in America.

I am grateful to stand here today with my two colleagues and with the Presiding Officer to say that finally, finally, with this President, we are treating America's children like they are America's children, and we don't have to accept chronic childhood poverty as a chronic feature of our economy or our democracy. We can have an ambition that is greater than that for our country and for our children, and we can say to our kids: You are important to us. In some ways, you are all that matter to us, and the position we put you in to be able to get an education and contribute to society and help lead the country, participate in our economy, in our democracy, that is our priority, and that is what we care about.

I think that is President Biden's priority, and he has reflected it incredibly well in this policy.

I will turn it over to the Senator from Ohio just by saying that now we have to do the very hard and important work of making this a permanent part of our Tax Code so that we cut childhood poverty permanently in half in this country. I would like us to end childhood poverty in the United States. I think that would be a very worthy aspiration for all of us to have.

With that, I yield the floor to my wonderful colleague from Ohio, who has been an incredible leader on this from even before I was in the Senate.

Mr. President, I just was so inspired by--I am only going to be 1 minute--something Senator Brown said in his remarks about his staff that I also want to mention Charlie Anderson, who is no longer with me because he quit me to go work for the administration. But if it hadn't been for him, I would be very surprised if we would all be here today. So I wanted to say thank you to Charlie for never giving up on this and for holding me accountable as we did the work together.

I also am not going to address the issue about junior versus senior Senators from Colorado, just to observe what a wonderful delegation it is we have from the State of Colorado.

With that, I yield the floor.