Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, a year ago, coronavirus cases were beginning to climb on U.S. soil. Shutdown measures were starting to take effect.

Americans have endured one of the strangest and most painful years in living memory. Nearly 2 million Americans have been hospitalized with serious cases of the virus. More than half a million have lost their lives. Millions of students and workers have had their lives completely thrown off course. But these dark times have also spotlighted some of the best of America: heroism, selflessness, ingenuity.

Last March, the night we passed the CARES Act without a single dissenting vote, I said we would see a new generation of American heroes, and so we have. Doctors and nurses and first responders have worked tirelessly to help their fellow Americans. Essential workers kept manning their posts and prevented economic collapse. Neighbors looked out for neighbors, and small businesses shifted gears almost overnight. Children and parents have fought to adapt to extraordinary disruptions, and incredible heroes in lab coats in America and worldwide worked at light speed to decode this new enemy and create lifesaving vaccines in record time.

Today, together, we are standing on the cusp of a new springtime for our

country not like anything we have experienced in our lifetimes. More than 95 million vaccine doses have reached American arms; another 2 million every single day. COVID-related deaths have plummeted, now less than half of their high, particularly for the elderly and the vulnerable. Science reaffirms kids can be safely in the classroom right now. States are starting to lift blanket restrictions, freeing citizens and small businesses to follow smart precautions themselves. For weeks, every indicator has suggested our economy is poised to come roaring back, with more job openings for Americans who need work.

None of these trends began on January 20. President Biden and his Democratic government inherited a tide that had already begun to turn toward decisive victory.

In 2020, Congress passed five historic bipartisan bills to save our health system, protect our economic foundations, and fund Operation Warp Speed to find vaccines. Senate Republicans led the bipartisan CARES Act that got our country through the last year.

The American people already built the parade that has been marching toward victory; Democrats just want to sprint in front of the parade and claim credit.

So when 10 Republican Senators went to the White House to suggest working together, the Democrats said: Uh, no. Both the Democratic leader and the White House Chief of Staff now indicate they think President Obama's problem was that he was too bipartisan.

This time, as one journalist put it, the situation was ``Democrats to GOP: Take it or leave it.'' The ``it'' that we are talking about here was a bill that only spent about 1 percent on vaccines and about 9 percent on the entire health fight. The rest of the tab went to things like this: a $350 billion bailout for State and local budgets unrelated to pandemic needs, with strings attached to stop States from cutting taxes on their own citizens down the road--take the money, you don't get to cut taxes; massive Federal school funding spread over several years, without requiring quickly reopening; sweeping new government benefits with no work requirements whatsoever--a time warp to the bad times before bipartisan welfare reform--which Democrats already say they want to make permanent; and agricultural assistance conditioned not on specific financial need but solely on the demographics of the farmer, which some liberal activists are celebrating as ``reparations.'' Only about 20 percent of the spending went to $1,400 direct checks, to try to keep all of the unrelated socialism out of the spotlight.

This wasn't a bill to finish off the pandemic; it was a multitrillion-dollar Trojan horse full of bad, old liberal ideas. President Biden's own staff keep calling this legislation ``the most progressive bill in American history''--hardly the commonsense bipartisanship that the President promised.

So we pause today at the 1-year mark to remember and to mourn, but we also look with great optimism toward the future. Twenty twenty-one is set to be a historic comeback year, not because of the far-left legislation that was passed after the tide had already turned but because of the resilience of the American people.

(Mr. PADILLA assumed the Chair.)

Now, Mr. President, on a completely different matter, at noon today, the Senate will vote on whether to pluck the Becerra nomination out of committee after it failed to garner enough support to advance.

Every one of President Biden's nominations the Senate has considered so far has received bipartisan support for confirmation. There is a reason Mr. Becerra could not get one single Republican vote to move out of committee. It is because he is such a thoroughly partisan actor with so little subject-matter expertise and such a demonstrated history of hostility toward basic values like the freedom of conscience. There is nothing about Mr. Becerra's record in Congress or in California to suggest he is the best possible person to run the Department of Health and Human Services in the middle of a once-in-a-generation viral pandemic--not even close.

This is too important a job at too important a time for this administration to put raw partisanship ahead of qualifications. So I would strongly urge all Senators to vote against rescuing this nomination from committee. Let's give the President the opportunity to make a better selection.

Now, Mr. President, on one final matter, as I have mentioned, it is customary for some top Senate staff positions to see new faces when party control changes hands.

Today, it is my honor to pay tribute to Mary Suit Jones, a huge asset to this institution who has become an institution herself.

Tomorrow, Mary will finish her second separate run as Assistant Secretary of the Senate and conclude a Senate career that has spanned more than a quarter of a century.

I first met Mary Jones in the mid-1990s when we brought her on board to help manage my office. Neither I nor Mary's colleagues back then could have predicted that nearly 30 years later, she would depart as one of the most senior officers in the entire place. But the truth is, if you had told us, nobody would have been even a little surprised either.

I have entrusted Mary with a lot of different responsibilities over the years. She served as our office manager just a few years out of college. She came with me to the Rules Committee, first as deputy staff director and then the top job. Senator Frist had the good judgment to ask her to be Assistant Secretary in the early 2000s. Then she returned to Rules and resumed serving as our staff director under Senators Bob Bennett, Lamar Alexander, and then Pat Roberts. Finally, she generously brought all of this expertise and institutional knowledge back to the Assistant Secretary role 6 years ago.

In her first job in my office, Mary organized one team of people and our infrastructure. In her current job, she has overseen 26 departments and scores of Senate staff, pushing resources and guidance down and pushing information up. In between, at Rules, she tackled things like helping run Presidential inaugurations.

Through it all, I cannot name one time when Mary Jones did not deliver. She is consistent, competent, and completely reliable. No wonder her name has become a kind of catchphrase around the Senate when anyone is trying to track down some key piece of wisdom or is puzzling over how to get something done: ``Well, let's ask Mary Jones.'' ``Have you checked with Mary Jones?'' ``I think Mary knows all about that.''

Everyone from junior staff to senior Senators, Republicans and Democrats, have been able to count on Mary for expertise and execution. On a million different subjects, she knows the answer to the question you are going to ask before you even finish asking it. A rock-solid administrator, a consummate professional--she is just that good.

So I am sorry to see Mary depart the Senate, but she has given generously to this place. She has certainly earned the opportunity to apply her many talents to some new challenges and perhaps knock a few miles off of her famously epic commute while she is at it.

The whole Senate thanks Mary for her excellent service. We wish her, her husband, and their kids all the best in the exciting new chapters that lie ahead.

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

Mr. President, yesterday, I voted to advance the nominations of Congresswoman Marcia Fudge to be the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and Judge Merrick Garland to be Attorney General.

These aren't the nominees whom any Republican would have picked for these jobs, but the Nation needs Presidents to be able to stand up a team so long as their nominees are qualified and mainstream. I have voted to confirm people like Secretaries Austin, Blinken, Yellen, Vilsack, and Buttigieg. We certainly disagree on plenty of issues, but I spent 4 years watching many of our Democratic colleagues do everything possible to obstruct and delay President Trump's nominees right from the start.

Now we hear of many of the same Democrats insisting that, as a matter of principle, a new President needs his team and any delay is an outrage. It is funny how some things change. My position has not.

I am voting to confirm Judge Garland because of his long reputation as a straight shooter and a legal expert. His left-of-center perspective has been within the legal mainstream.

For the country's sake, let's hope our incoming Attorney General applies that no-nonsense approach to the serious challenges facing the Department of Justice and our Nation. Let's hope that he controls the bureaucrats and leftist subordinates that the President proposes to place under him, rather than the other way around.

When I spoke to Judge Garland, we discussed his commitment to the ongoing investigation of the events of January 6. Federal law enforcement needs to continue the work of identifying, arresting, and prosecuting those who broke the law in order to disrupt the constitutional business of Congress. He assured me that will remain a priority.

At the same time, it is essential that DOJ treat political violence with equal seriousness no matter which political fringe it may come from. Last summer, riots, vandalism, and even a so-called ``autonomous zone'' consumed parts of American cities. In some instances, thugs directly attacked Federal property. But amazingly, some local leaders seemed more willing to tolerate the chaos than tolerate the angry tweets that leftwing activists might have sent if they had stepped in to actually do their jobs.

We were fortunate to have Attorney General Barr, who took seriously the Federal Government's role to protect Federal property and enforce Federal law. Judge Garland must be prepared to do the same.

Of course, the riots haven't been the only area where we have seen liberal governance give short shrift to the rule of law. The Obama administration was famous for its willingness to let ideology dictate the enforcement of Federal laws or the lack thereof.

Take the DACA Program, for example. When the Obama administration realized their preferred immigration policies couldn't get through Congress the right way, they stretched prosecutorial discretion and law enforcement discretion to breathtaking unconstitutional extremes. When confirmed, Judge Garland must not back other constitutionally corrosive efforts to effectively repeal laws just by ignoring them.

That brings me to the issue of immigration more broadly. Just a few weeks into the job, the Biden administration and Secretary Mayorkas are flailing and failing on our southern border. The number of unaccompanied migrant children in Border Patrol custody has tripled in just 2 weeks and now dwarfs anything seen during the last 4 years.

Like I mentioned last week, this is not an isolated question of border policy alone. The backdrop behind this entire crisis is the giant push toward amnesty and insecurity that the administration advertised throughout the campaign and every time they step to the podium now. That is what has enticed people to flood in.

Even now, administration staff keeps parroting strange lines like ``Now is not the time to come.'' ``Now is not the time to come''? Well, when is the right time to break Federal law? Is there going to be a good time to break into the country illegally, and people need to just be patient and wait for their signal? What on Earth are they talking about?

A lot of blame for this mess rests on Secretary Mayorkas himself. He spent the first weeks of his tenure downplaying and denying the crisis instead of solving it. But, again, the Biden administration's far-left approach to this issue is not limited to DHS or to the border. Interior enforcement is a key component.

On Secretary Mayorkas' watch, we have seen what the Washington Post calls ``a sharp drop'' in arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement--a collapse of more than 60 percent from just the prior few months--a political choice, in effect, not to enforce the law.

Judge Garland must ensure the Department of Justice takes its duty to uphold the law more seriously

Mr. President, on a related matter, after we confirm Congresswoman Fudge and Judge Garland, the Senate will consider two nominees I will not be supporting. They both report straight to the frontlines of the new administration's leftwing war on American energy. They would work to unbalance the balancing act between conservation and the economic comeback we badly need.

To head the Environmental Protection Agency, the President has nominated Michael Regan, a longtime regulator and activist. Mr. Regan has plenty of experience. The problem is what he is poised to do with it. He and the administration are plainly prepared to put that experience behind the same far-left policies that crushed jobs and prosperity in States like Kentucky throughout the Obama administration.

The Clean Power Plan? Back on the table. The absurd waters of the United States rule? Back on the table.

Kentuckians know that when bad policies like those are on the table, it means their jobs, their livelihoods, and their communities are on the menu.

Congresswoman Haaland, the President's pick to lead the Department of the Interior, was literally an original cosponsor of the Green New Deal. She has vowed to ``keep fossil fuels in the ground'' and once pledged ``to vote against all new fossil fuel infrastructure.''

Her record and her views ignore the fact that American energy independence fueled prosperity for the working class and middle class over the last 4 years. Yet in multiple of those years, our carbon emissions actually went down--went down. The supposed choice between a clean environment and domestic energy independence is a false choice. It only exists as a zero-sum tradeoff in the minds of Democrats.

We have every reason to believe that voting for Mr. Regan and Representative Haaland would be voting to raise gas prices for families who are already struggling, voting to raise fuel and heating bills for seniors on a fixed income, voting to take the tough times we have been going through and making them even tougher.

I will be voting for American families and against both of their nominations.

Mr. President, it was one decade ago that my friend Brad Richardson saw an opportunity in Hardin County. The community was ready to step on the gas pedal and start a new era of growth. It had the raw materials: a dynamic workforce, a premium location, and a strong ally in Fort Knox. All it needed was the right person to lead the way. Today, I would like to pay tribute to Brad, a visionary leader who helped realize the area's potential. At the end of this month, he will begin a well-deserved retirement with our sincere thanks.

The first step was bringing everyone together. Brad is a natural team builder. He oversaw the consolidation of four local business advocacy groups into the Hardin County Chamber of Commerce. The new organization would help attract investment to one of Kentucky's most populous counties. As the chamber's inaugural president, Brad spent the next decade doing just that.

One of Brad's first moves at the new Hardin Chamber was to restart the annual Small Business Expo. The event gives local entrepreneurs the opportunities to connect with customers and local leaders as they expand their operations. Brad also launched a Buy Local campaign to keep Hardin County's dollars in the community. In 2014, he was named the Chamber Executive of the Year by the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Executives.

Hardin County is more than a great place to live and work. It is also the proud home to Fort Knox, one of Kentucky's premier military installations and the location of the U.S. bullion depository. The installation supports over 20,000 local jobs and makes a multibillion dollar annual economic impact. In 2016, Brad was a driving force in the establishment of the Knox Regional Development Alliance. The group is tasked with promoting the relationship between the community and our Armed Forces. For his work to encourage the partnership, Brad was given the Fort Knox Gold Neighbor Award.

I've worked closely with Brad and KRDA to invest in Fort Knox's infrastructure and capabilities. Last year,

that hard work paid off. The Pentagon selected Fort Knox to host the reactivated V Corps headquarters. Kentucky is one of the most military- friendly States in the country, and Hardin County was eager to welcome more than 600 additional soldiers. I am grateful to KRDA, Brad and his team, and our many other partners who made the stationing of the V Corps at Fort Knox a reality.

Over the years, Brad increased chamber membership and made substantial innovations for his community and our Commonwealth. That record of accomplishment would be enough for anyone. But Brad was determined to bring his good humor and enthusiasm to every project. He made it a real pleasure to be part of his team. When Brad took this job, he set an ambitious goal to enhance the quality of life in Hardin County. By any objective standard, I think he succeeded.

So we are all going to miss working with Brad at the Hardin County Chamber of Commerce. Along with his colleagues and friends, I extend my best wishes for a fulfilling retirement. On behalf of the Senate, I would like to congratulate Brad on all of his success and to thank him for many years of leadership in Kentucky.

Madam President, when Senators were last in this Chamber, our Democratic colleagues were shooting down amendment after amendment to ensure their largely non-COVID-related spending plan remained very liberal and purely partisan.

Republicans proposed amendments to cap extra government help for wealthier Americans, to ensure that direct checks would only go to citizens and legal residents and not to people in prison, and to rein in runaway State and local bailouts and refocus the bill on urgent COVID-related actual needs. But Democrats banded together to defeat every one of these commonsense changes. As the Democratic leader happily explained to reporters later on Saturday, his whole conference put lockstep party unity ahead of substance and ahead of bipartisan compromise.

So the nearly $2 trillion partisan spending spree that President Biden's Chief of Staff brags is ``the most progressive domestic legislation in a generation'' is on its way over to the House. Already, we hear reporting that this giveaway will simply wipe out the budget deficit of New York State and eliminate a big part of the deficit in San Francisco, courtesy of the taxpayers in Kentucky and Middle America. Already, we hear the administration saying they want some of these sweeping new welfare policies to become permanent, like a no- strings-attached benefit that disregards all the pro-work lessons of bipartisan welfare reform. Meanwhile, it only manages to spend about 1 percent on vaccinations and less than 9 percent on the entire health fight.

Democrats inherited a turning tide. The vaccine trends and economic trends were in place before the bill was ever voted on, before this President was sworn in, but they are determined to push to the front of the parade with an effort to push America to the left.

Meanwhile, House Democrats are wasting no time pursuing even more purely partisan legislation. Last Wednesday, the House passed H.R. 1, their effort to rewrite the ground rules of American elections and seize power from States and localities. Just like the spending plan, in both Chambers, once again the only thing bipartisan about the bill was the opposition.

This is House Democrats' bid to put Federal bureaucrats in charge of local election rules; to undermine voter ID requirements with massive loopholes that undermine them; to require every State to permit ballot harvesting, which lets paid political operatives produce stacks of ballots with other people's names on them; to overturn or change hundreds of State election laws; and to turn our highest election authority, the equally balanced FEC, into a partisan majority body to crack down on speech and ideas they don't like.

It is quite the recipe for rebuilding public faith in our democracy on all sides--a purely partisan effort to seize unprecedented power for Washington, DC, on a razor-thin majority. It is a hugely harmful idea at the worst possible time.

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

Madam President, today or tonight or tomorrow, Democrats say they will break the bipartisan streak that has defined the pandemic response up until now. They are dead set on ramming through an ideological spending spree packed with non-COVID-related policies.

This is just what a leading House Democrat admitted they would do back at the start of the crisis: Exploit the pandemic as ``a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.'' To give them credit, they never hid the ball. That is how you get a 628-page bill that costs nearly $2 trillion, but only 9 percent addresses the fight against the virus itself and only 1 percent--1 percent--for the lifesaving vaccines that are ending this nightmare as we speak.

That is how you craft a bill that does nothing to immediately get kids back to classrooms. In fact, that spends only 5 percent of the K- 12 school money this fiscal year.

This isn't a pandemic rescue package; it is a parade of leftwing pet projects they are ramming through during a pandemic.

There is a costly ObamaCare bailout that will disproportionately benefit wealthier people; payments to farmers and ranchers based solely on the demographics of the recipient without any regard to actual need; and a massive cash bailout for mismanaged State and local governments, multiple times the size of COVID needs.

Instead of pushing back on the anti-science bullying from Big Labor that is locking kids out of the classrooms, they buy into it.

They want to create generous new benefits for parents who are dealing

with school closures but only if they are Federal employees. To all the parents without government jobs, no such luck.

There are provisions to let abortion providers raid the small business rescue funds that were meant for Main Street businesses.

They want to pay people a bonus not to go back to work when we are trying to rebuild our economy.

There is an effort to create a brandnew, sprawling cash welfare program--not the one-time checks but constant payments--that ignores the pro-work lessons of bipartisan welfare reform and which the White House has already stated they want to make permanent.

The unrelated liberal policies are simply endless. It is like they have forgotten we have a pandemic to fight.

Larry Summers, a top economist in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, says this plan piles way more debt on our kids and grandkids than we need to spend right now. That is Larry Summers, Bill Clinton's Secretary Treasury. Jason Furman, who chaired President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, said the State and local bailouts are ``overkill.'' These are liberal economists, Madam President.

By one analysis, the Democrats' extra cash bonuses for laid-off workers who stay home will result in almost 60 percent of workers earning more money staying home than they would earn from returning to work--more money by staying home than they would earn from returning to work. What a great idea. This isn't State unemployment insurance; it is borrowing from our kids and grandkids to pay yet an additional cash bonus for not working.

This would extend deep into 2021, when we anticipate serious job growth. Just this morning, we had a jobs report that shattered expectations, nearly doubling the job growth experts had expected to see.

This is what the Washington Post says about this mess. This is the Washington Post about this mess that is before us:

For policy experts and even members of Biden's own party,

the improving picture is raising questions about whether the

stimulus bill is mismatched to the needs of the current

moment.

That is from the Washington Post editorial.

It is mismatched all right because it was never designed to meet Americans' needs. The goal was to ``restructure things to fit'' their ``vision.'' That is why there was no bipartisan process after a year of completely bipartisan COVID bills that we worked on together. That is why the Senate Republicans who went to the White House to propose working together were told: No thanks; take it or leave it.

This is such a poorly targeted rush job that Democrats can't even settle on one set of political spin. The White House Chief of Staff is going around town admitting that they have written ``the most progressive domestic legislation in a generation.'' That is the White House Chief of Staff. Meanwhile, here in the Senate, Democrats are still pretending this is some down-the-middle proposal and lecturing us for not supporting it. They can't even get their stories straight.

The administration campaigned on ushering in a new day of unity and bipartisanship, but in 2020, under Republican leadership, the Senate negotiated five rescue bills totaling $4 trillion, and none of them got fewer than 90 votes. That is how this Senate was run last year in a time of divided government, and now, in this supposed new era of healing leadership, we are about to watch one party ram through a partisan package on the thinnest margins. Go figure.

Republicans have many ideas to improve the bill, many ideas, and we are about to vote on all kinds of amendments in the hopes that some of these ideas make it into the final product. We are going to try to improve the bill. The millions who elected 50 Republican Senators will have their voices heard loud and clear.

Our country is already set for a roaring recovery. We are already on track to bounce back from this crisis. That is not because of this bill; it is because of our work last year. This is a trend this new Democratic government inherited. We are going to come roaring back and mostly not because of this bill--in fact, in some ways, in spite of this bill. It will be because of the bipartisan foundation we laid last year and the strength and resilience of our people. Democrats inherited a tide that was already turning.

We could have worked together to do something smart to finish this fight as fast as possible. Democrats decided to do something else.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: At what time did the previous vote on the Senator's amendment begin?

How much total time elapsed during the floor vote on the Senator's amendment?

Well, my goodness, this has been quite a start, quite a start to this fast-track process. They were in a big hurry. We started voting

on the first amendment, as the Parliamentarian said, right after 11 a.m. The Democratic leader held the vote open all day so they could try to figure out what was going on with their own legislation that they want to pass only with their votes.

Now, the last time we had a long string of amendment votes was just a couple weeks ago. We considered about 40 amendments. So if you multiply 11 hours of scrambling times 40 amendments, you would land at about 440 hours. That is about 18 days with zero breaks.

So, look, the whole idea behind this, I gathered from listening to them over the last few weeks, was to use the crisis to jam through what the White House Chief of Staff called ``the most progressive domestic legislation in a generation.'' A little tougher than they thought it was going to be, isn't it? It turned out to be a little bit tougher.

Well, what this proves is there are benefits to bipartisanship when you are dealing with an issue of this magnitude. We all remember that we did this five times last year. We did it together. I think there were no more than eight votes against any of these proposals. We spent about $4 trillion on pandemic relief. Every one passed, as I said, with 90 or more votes. Not a single spectacle like today--not one.

Exactly 1 year ago, instead of partisan scrambling, we were humming with bipartisan work, working on it together. We had a bipartisan task force building the CARES Act from the bottom up. We passed the bill 96 to 0.

We were prepared to do yet another bill on a bipartisan basis. Several of our Members went down to the White House, sat down with the President, laid out a proposal we thought made sense given where we were now. But, no, they wanted to do it the hard way. Wanted to do it the hard way.

So now they want to begin the vote-arama that could have been done in daylight because of their own confusion and the challenges of getting together 50 people to agree on something when they could have been doing it quicker on a bipartisan basis.

Motion to Adjourn

Mr. President, so rather than start the voting at 5 minutes to 11, I move to adjourn until 10 a.m. tomorrow, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

The Senate has never spent $2 trillion in a more haphazard way or through a less rigorous process.

Voters gave Senate Democrats the slimmest possible majority. Voters picked a President who promised unity and bipartisanship.

Democrats' response is to ram through what they call ``the most progressive domestic legislation in a generation'' on a razor-thin majority in both Houses.

The right path was obvious. We followed it five times last year--five rescue packages totaling $4 trillion, and none of them got fewer than 90 votes.

The Senate wrote the CARES Act, Republicans and Democrats, shoulder to shoulder. That was the road to real pandemic relief, but Democrats actually wanted something else. They explained their intent very clearly: to exploit this crisis as ``a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.''

That is how you get this massive bill with only 1 percent--1 percent for vaccinations, that ignores the science on reopening schools, that is stuffed with non-COVID-related spending that even top liberal economists say is wrong for the recovery.

Democrats inherited a tide that is already turning--2021 was already set to be our comeback year--because of the American people's resilience and the bipartisan foundation that we laid last year.

We could have worked together to speed up victory, but our Democratic colleagues made a decision. Their top priority wasn't pandemic relief. It was their Washington wish list.

So, Mr. President, colleagues, I strongly recommend a ``no'' vote.

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

Mr. President, earlier this week, I described the terrible flooding across my home State of Kentucky. Rivers reached historic levels. Whole communities are still underwater.

Yesterday, my staff and I spoke with leaders in some of our hardest hit counties. The Estill County judge executive told me that he personally joined crews to help families escape danger. Small business owners in Lee County, who survived one COVID obstacle after another, now saw their life's work literally washed away. The situation in Powell County is so dire that at least one city can only be accessed by boat. Road crews, first responders, and the Kentucky National Guard are doing their best to help out, but they can't get a handle on the full scope of the damage until the water recedes.

Once the assessment is complete, the Governor will formally request an emergency disaster declaration from the Biden administration. As soon as he does, my team and I will do our part to get Federal assistance to these communities as soon as possible.

Mr. President, on a completely different matter, yesterday, our Democratic colleagues had planned to begin ramming through their partisan spending spree, but it seems they have had some difficulty getting to the starting line. After all, Senate Democrats, including committee chairs, are essentially being jammed with text from over in the House. Their own Members have barely been able to read this thing, let alone shape it.

So let's think back to where we were 1 year ago. Eleven-and-a-half months

ago, the Senate was also discussing a major spending package. In fact, it was the same size as what is being proposed right now--about $2 trillion--an appropriate pricetag back at the start of the crisis, but that is where the similarity actually ends.

Last March, the Senate was working overtime, in a bipartisan fashion, to craft good policy from the bottom up. I assembled bipartisan task forces. We had Republicans and Democrats and staff working around the clock to build the policies that would save our health system and our economy.

The CARES Act sustained us for almost a year of shutdowns. It funded the healthcare fight, saved small businesses, and funded Operation Warp Speed, which helped pave the way for these pioneering vaccines and preordered hundreds of millions of doses for Americans. The law sent so much relief to households that, even as the GDP declined, personal incomes and savings actually went up. Even liberal economists say President Biden has inherited an economy that was already primed for a swift recovery. It was the largest American rescue package ever. Yet it passed the Senate without one single dissenting vote because it was built the right way.

That was last March. So what about today?

Instead of heading into a dark tunnel, we are accelerating out of it: incredible vaccines, a rebounding economy. That is what the Biden administration inherited thanks to what we did last year.

Yet Washington Democrats are trying to exploit the last chapters of this crisis to pass what President Biden's Chief of Staff calls ``the most progressive domestic legislation in a generation,'' and they have told Republicans: Take it or leave it. No openness to meaningful bipartisan input. Ten Republican Senators approached President Biden and proposed cooperation on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars. They were refused. All that interested the Democrats was a partisan hodgepodge of, largely, non-COVID-related items.

Last year, the Democratic leader said:

Sitting in your own office, writing a bill, and then

demanding the other side support it is not anyone's idea of

bipartisanship.

As recently as last November, he said:

We need a true bipartisan bill--not ``this is our bill,

take it or leave it.''

Another time, our friend from New York told everyone to ``go look up in the dictionary what `bipartisanship' is. It's both parties working together, not your party doing a bill and then saying it's bipartisan.''

In less than 4 months, we have had two completely different versions of the Democratic leader. The two of them could have a fascinating debate with each other.

But look, the real tragedy here is not Senate process; it is how ill- suited this bill is to what Americans need right now. There are no policies to get schools reopened right away and no smart solutions to directly spur rehiring. Less than 1 percent of the money goes to the vaccines that will end this nightmare--only 9 percent to the entire healthcare fight altogether.

I guess it has become a rite of passage for a new Democratic President to begin with a poorly targeted spending spree that doesn't give Americans what they need.

We already laid the foundation for a roaring comeback. The Biden administration inherited a tide that was already turning, but they have chosen to ignore the approach that got us this far

Mr. President, now, on one final matter, yesterday evening, House Democrats repassed their plan to give Washington unprecedented power over the way our Nation conducts elections. Just like their partisan spending spree from last week, the only thing bipartisan about the vote was the opposition.

The same party that wants to change Senate rules when they lose a vote, pack the Supreme Court when they lose a case, and throw out the electoral college every time they lose the White House now wants to forcibly rewrite 50 States' election laws from Washington. It is unprincipled. It is unwarranted. Large portions of it may well be unconstitutional. One of the key principles of American elections is that Federal officeholders cannot personally micromanage the way in which voters can hire and fire us.

Different States and localities settle questions around early voting or absentee voting or voter registration in very different ways. Washington Democrats want every county in America to have to answer all of those questions the way they want. For example, no State would be able to have a simple voter ID requirement unless they neutered it with a massive loophole, but every State would be forced to allow ballot harvesting, where paid political operatives can show up, carrying a stack of ballots with other people's names on them.

Imagine looking at this national landscape, where we have seen the losing side doubt the legitimacy of two consecutive Presidential elections, and thinking: This is the time for a sweeping, one-party rewrite of election law.

Democrats are also coming after Americans' free speech. The Federal Election Commission was set up after Watergate to be a bipartisan panel by design. The FEC intentionally needs bipartisan consensus to throw a penalty flag. Washington Democrats want to scrap that as well.

Their bill would convert the FEC into an odd-numbered, partisan body, and this partisan FEC would get even greater scope to nose around in even more of Americans' speech and Americans' activities. The bill also tramples on citizens' privacy with new mandates that would intensify ``cancel culture'' and help mobs harass people for their private views. Even the leftwing ACLU condemns this part of H.R. 1.

This is what the ACLU had to say:

It could directly interfere with the ability of many to

engage in political speech about causes that they care about

and that impact their lives.

That was from the ACLU.

That is right. House Democrats have swung so far to the anti-free speech left that they have even lost the ACLU.

Speaking of political swings, Democrats who want Washington to take over elections should remember that majorities in Congress actually come and go. It would be absurd for election regulations in every precinct in America to go boomeranging back and forth every time Congress changes hands. Millions of American voters elected 50 Republican Senators and a whole lot of House Republicans to make sure that Democrats play by the rules, not rewrite the rules. For one party to seize unilateral control over elections nationwide would be a civic catastrophe.

It is worth asking: Why are Washington Democrats so desperate to forcibly rewrite election law before the next time voters decide their fates?