Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, last week, President Biden announced his choice to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Judge Jackson was confirmed less than a year ago to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

Now, every Senator must carefully evaluate Judge Jackson's record, legal views, and judicial philosophy. The nominee, the Senate, the Court, and the American people all deserve a process that is free of embarrassing antics that have become the Democratic Party's routine whenever a Republican President nominates a new Justice--the baseless smears, the shameless distortions. The country deserves a process that is painstakingly rigorous and befitting the seriousness of a lifetime appointment to our highest Court.

I, for one, don't care what Judge Jackson's friends wrote in her high school yearbook. I care that American families are facing major crises that bear directly on Federal courts and our legal system, from surging violent crime and systematically weak prosecutors to open borders and campaigns to shrink religious freedom and the rights of conscience.

What is more, one of our two major political sides increasingly makes noise about attacking the very legitimacy and structure of the Supreme Court itself. The country needs a serious and sobering examination of all of it.

I look forward to discussing these issues and many others with Judge Jackson when I meet with her tomorrow morning.

It has been less than 1 year since Judge Jackson was confirmed to the DC Circuit. Since then, I understand she has authored only two opinions,

both in the last several weeks. I am troubled by the combination of this slim appellate record and the intensity of Judge Jackson's far- left, dark money fan club.

Throughout the jockeying that preceded President Biden's announcement and, indeed, dating back to her prior confirmation last year, Judge Jackson has attracted loyal and intense support from some of the very same dark money, far-left activists who have declared war on the institution of the Court itself. One has to wonder why these leftwing organizations worked so very hard to boost Judge Jackson for this potential promotion.

I am sincerely looking forward to meeting Judge Jackson, to a thorough conversation tomorrow morning, and to the vigorous Senate process that lies ahead.

State of the Union Address

Mr. President, on another matter, tonight, President Biden will deliver his first State of the Union Address.

One year into his term, the American people have a lot of questions they would like answered: why Democrats plunged ahead with reckless spending that caused the worst inflation in 40 years, why violent crime and illegal immigration are setting all-time records, why the administration haphazardly withdrew from Afghanistan and proposed to cut defense spending after inflation at a time when Russia is trying to redraw maps in human blood.

When President Biden took office 1 year ago, he inherited major tailwinds and a brimming optimism. Brilliant scientists and Operation Warp Speed had developed vaccines in record time, and we were already putting doses in more than a million arms every day. Scientific data had already proven that, after a devastating year for children and families, schools were safe to reopen in person.

Thanks to the historic CARES Act and another targeted, bipartisan stimulus that had just passed weeks earlier, our economic foundations had weathered the pandemic lockdowns and were primed for a roaring recovery back to normalcy and prosperity. Before the pandemic, Republican policies had America as a net exporter of oil for the first time since World War II.

The same voters who gave President Biden the Presidency gave him a razor-thin margin in both Chambers. His only mandate was to govern from the middle.

In his inaugural address, President Biden promised to do just that-- to unite and to heal--but for the past year, he and his administration have often behaved like they are trying to fail their own test.

Remember, the President made stifling American energy independence a day-1 priority, killing miles of pipeline and freezing new jobs and new exploration with the stroke of a pen.

Then came the spending bill his administration called the ``most progressive domestic legislation in a generation'' that top liberal economists warned would ``set off inflationary pressures . . . we have not seen in a generation.'' Inflation has surged so steeply, most Americans have seen their real wages actually cut.

Then came the decision to cut and run from the international coalition we led in Afghanistan. President Biden's top military advisers warned that retreat would embolden terrorists, endanger loyal partners, and leave our intelligence capabilities in the region badly handicapped; but the Biden administration failed to heed these warnings and presided over a disastrous withdrawal. Our biggest adversaries took notes, and now, one of them is testing the limits of the West's resolve to oppose his murderous conquest.

Then there are the alarming trends this administration has placed on the back burner but which communities across America are facing every day.

After spending the Presidential campaign talking about potential amnesties, the Biden administration wasted no time in making our southern border more porous. The CBP has reported its highest single- year total for southern border encounters on record--with no sign of a coherent administration response in sight.

Meanwhile, Democrats' response to a historic surge in violent crime has been to double down on the hostility toward police and the prosecution that has encouraged it. Across America, radical local prosecutors are simply declining to charge whole categories of crimes. But, instead of condemning this extremism, the Biden administration has endorsed it, staffing their Justice Department with some of the most outspoken critics of law and order.

Meanwhile, this Justice Department goes out of its way to keep tabs on parents who dare to question teachers unions' veto power over established medical science or who exhibit skepticism toward woke propaganda in public schools.

So that is a heck of a rap sheet, but I am afraid the most damaging legacy of President Biden's first year is bigger than just his unwise policies. Democrats have not just tried pushing bad ideas through our institutions; even under the Presidency of a self-styled institutionalist, the far left has tried to wreck--wreck--our institutions altogether.

Tonight, we will hear from a President who assigned a commission to study packing the Supreme Court because his party didn't like its current ideological makeup.

We will hear from a President who urged his former colleagues to tear up Senate rules in order to rewrite the rules of American elections, likened anyone who opposed these efforts to infamous racists, and continues to stoke racial animus with wild nonsense about a revival of segregation.

We will hear from an administration that has failed its own tests and which, candidly, has the public approval figures to match.

On foreign affairs in particular, I am sincerely rooting for President Biden's success. We need steady, serious, and smart leadership to help guide the West through this perilous time, but on most issues, what the American people deserve tonight is a commitment to drastically change course. If this administration does not majorly correct its course, the American people may correct course for them this coming November.

I am glad the American people will also hear from Governor Kim Reynolds this evening. She is a strong and successful leader who delivers real solutions for the great people of Iowa. She fought COVID without declaring war on freedom or common sense. She backed the blue, stayed tough on crime, and kept Iowa's economy open.

I look forward to hearing her reaction to the President's remarks and her thoughts on how Washington could better serve Middle America.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, last week, Putin again invaded the sovereign territory of a neighboring country. Sadly, it was long clear that attempts to invoke genteel international norms would not move this self-styled czar.

Putin only cares about norms insofar as he wants to rewrite them. He only cares about the peaceful international order insofar as he wants to disrupt it.

Like his Soviet predecessors, Putin has always rejected the postwar order that held up states' sovereignty and territorial integrity as sacrosanct. Putin and Xi of China both want to replace this peaceful order with spheres of influence.

They want to bend other countries to their will and redraw borders by force. Make no mistake, this crisis does not and will not end with Ukraine. And the reason isn't simply that appetites grow with eating. Confrontation with the West is Putin's main objective.

He wants to restore the Russian empire. He said explicitly, he wants NATO rolled back to its 1997 borders. We have a dictator trying to dismember a U.S. partner, trying to decapitate its democratically elected government.

Does anybody really think it stops here? Does anybody think that Europe, or for that matter, Taiwan, will be safe if the world lets this stand?

We will only deter further Russian and Chinese aggression if Putin is made to pay a significant price. Massive and sustained sanctions that undermine his ability to wage war, now and into the future, will be necessary.

But sanctions alone will not suffice. Russia has massive currency reserves. It has options to blunt economic pain and to impose countercosts on America and our partners, at least in the near term. The sanctions that would hurt Moscow the most would also have a significant impact on our friends in Europe. So there will continue to be resistance to maximalist sanctions.

To date, the Biden administration has sent mixed messages about its own sanctions policy. For months, we heard that prospective sanctions were being drafted to deter Putin's aggression. But last week, the President said he and his advisers never thought sanctions would deter Russia. Now, they are finally imposing sanctions but short of everything that is available.

So to what end exactly? What is the administration's coherent plan? I believe we should have used more of these tools prior to this brutal escalation to deter Putin and to weaken his capacity to wage war. Now, we must use these tools aggressively to impose massive costs for Putin's aggression, to demonstrate to other aggressors that we mean business, and to degrade Putin's longer-term ability to threaten NATO and compete with the West.

But ultimately, sanctions are no substitute for military power. They are no substitute for the steps we must take

to help Ukraine now and to defend ourselves in the future. Moscow and Beijing will only be deterred from aggression if they see concretely that military force cannot achieve their objectives and the cost of military aggression will be too high.

In the immediate term, we must ensure the Ukrainians can adequately defend themselves and impose costs on Russia that prove prohibitive. The administration brags about giving $650 million to Ukraine last year, but the manner in which it did so deserves scrutiny.

When Putin built up forces along Ukraine's border last spring, the Biden administration delayed an arms assistance package, literally, for months.

A headline from last June read: ``White House freezes Ukraine military package that includes lethal weapons.''

Even as Putin began directly threatening Ukraine last fall, an assistance package languished for weeks at the White House before it was approved. This weekend, the administration rushed to announce another $350 million in military assistance. For which weapons? On what timeline? And how will the weapons reach the brave Ukrainians who have lost ground?

So Congress must use its oversight tools to ensure we are providing Ukraine the weapons it needs as quickly as possible. The same goes for helping to shore up our NATO allies' defenses along the eastern flank. And we need to identify what shortfalls, redtape, and limiting factors have slowed our assistance, so we are better prepared to help the next partner in need.

As I have warned repeatedly, we cannot afford to move at the speed of bureaucracy.

Beyond the immediate crisis in Ukraine, American Presidents, beginning with President Biden, must recommit our Nation to the longer- term challenges that we face. Seventy-two years ago, Harry Truman led the West in rebuffing the Communist assault in South Korea, as well as contesting Soviet domination over Europe.

America made sure NATO would not be a toothless political alliance, but rather a capable military fighting force. This meant sustained investment in American and allied military strength. Defense funding was the precondition for impactful diplomacy that kept the Cold War from going hot.

Now, it is this President's job to seriously meet the growing threats posed by Russia and China. The United States and our allies and partners must understand that the core of our competition with Russia and China is the military dimension.

President Biden's first budget proposed to actually cut defense spending in real terms. Congress had to take bipartisan action to beef up the NDAA to correct his error. Clearly, more investment is needed. Congress must keep strengthening defense capabilities as we work on appropriations.

But President Biden must lead by example. The President's next budget request must include at least a 5-percent increase in defense spending above inflation.

Russia and China have prioritized military modernization literally for decades.

They have invested in specific tools like long-range aerial defenses and hypersonic weapons that are designed to push the U.S. and our allies further away from the fight.

We are actually behind in this competition. We are actually behind. Hypersonic weapons, nuclear force modernization, power projection, global presence--these things cost money. It is a small price to pay for keeping security threats off of our shores. I have criticized NATO allies who failed to contribute fully to our collective security, but I am a strong supporter of the transatlantic alliance. I am encouraged by how our partners have responded, however belatedly, to the growing threat posed to our collective security.

For example, special praise to the courageous decision by Chancellor Scholz this weekend to seek an emergency appropriation of 100 billion euros for the German military. This effectively doubles Germany's military budget this year--doubles Germany's military budget this year.

He wants Germany to fulfill its pledge to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense. He wants to build liquefied natural gas terminals and make other energy investments to finally dial down Germany's dependence on Russia.

If our wary European friends are finally shaking off their slumber and getting serious, then certainly the United States of America can do the same.

President Biden must lead the charge and lead it now.

Madam President, now, on an entirely different matter, with a cascade of major crises testing our country, Senate Democrats are prioritizing a show vote on mandating 9 months of abortion on demand across America.

Senate Democrats want to go on record supporting the radical and massively unpopular proposition that we should have functionally no restrictions on abortion whatsoever. Democrats already have the United States, one of just seven nations in the entire world that allows elective abortions after 20 weeks. This radical fringe policy places us in company like China and North Korea.

But now, Senate Democrats want to go even further than Chairman Xi and Kim Jong-Un. Ninety-one percent of Americans support some restrictions on abortion during the third trimester. The public overwhelmingly disagrees with Democrats' extreme obsession on this issue.

But yet again, our colleagues wish to demonstrate that the radical left fringe runs today's Democratic Party.

As the world prays for Ukraine and debates consequences for Putin, as American families contend with violent crime, open borders, and runaway inflation, Washington Democrats want to spend their time arguing for unlimited abortion on demand.

So I want to thank the majority leader for making it so clear where his party's priorities lie.

Madam President, now, on yet another matter, last week, our distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from Oklahoma, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, announced he will retire from the Senate at the end of this Congress. By this autumn, Senator Jim Inhofe will have been a stalwart champion for Oklahomans and a hugely impactful Senator for 28 years. He has led crucial committees, shaped major legislation, and helped keep the needs and concerns of middle America at the forefront of this institution and its work.

The fruits of Jim's labors are apparent across his beloved home State and our whole country. Most recently, atop the Armed Services Committee, he has been a remarkable advocate for fellow veterans, for today's servicemembers, and for the needs of our national security.

We will have much more to say about Senator Inhofe's storied service as we move through the remainder of this year and this Congress. But for now, I just want to congratulate our colleague, his wife Kay, and their 20 kids and grandkids on a well-earned retirement, to which they are now looking forward.

And I am very glad to have the Senator's wisdom and leadership to call upon for 10 more months, especially at a time such as this.

Now, on one final matter, I was saddened to hear this morning that Richard Blum, the husband of my friend and colleague Senator Feinstein, has passed away following his fight with cancer.

For 30 years, Elaine and I have been privileged to cross paths with Dianne and Dick in a number of ways, both professional and personal. It was always a great pleasure to break bread together, compare notes, and catch up.

Our colleague's very loving husband was, simply put, a fascinating person. He was highly successful, adventuresome, brave, and curious. For years, he moved seamlessly between such things as creating major value in the highest ranks of the private sector and studying Tibetan Buddhism. His passion for the Himalayas led him to befriend both the Dalai Lama and Sir Edmund Hillary. I understand he even made his own attempt on Mount Everest.

Dick's appetites for adventure, for philanthropy, for civic engagement,

and business success all seemed to be truly boundless. He was full of life and kept impossibly busy with a wide array of projects that were both interesting and impacted his community for the good.

I know all Senators are grieving with and praying for our colleague Senator Feinstein and their entire family at this very difficult time. Elaine and I join in those thoughts and prayers in a particular way.

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

Madam President, for the first time in 12 years, an outright majority of Americans say crime has gotten worse in their area over the past year.

Many Democrats have spent the last year and a half trying to defund police, smear law enforcement, and go soft on crime. As a result, innocent citizens have spent a year and a half watching murders, carjackings, and other violent crimes literally skyrocket.

On Monday, in my hometown of Louisville, KY, we were stunned by what appears to have been an assassination attempt against a Jewish mayoral candidate by a prominent far-left activist who previously called for defunding our police department.

This far-left Black Lives Matter activist and defund-the-police cheerleader walked into a Jewish Democrat's campaign headquarters and opened fire.

Obviously, every aspect of this is still under investigation, including the suspect's mental condition. But guess what. He has already been let out of jail--already let out of jail.

A leftwing bail fund partnered with BLM Louisville to bail him out. Less than 48 hours after this activist tried to literally murder a politician, the radical left bailed their comrade out of jail.

This is just jaw-dropping. The innocent people of Louisville deserve better.

Since 2020, a long list of prominent corporations have donated or pledged enormous amounts of money to the radical nationwide BLM parent organization. One wonders if any of their corporate money helped spring this would-be assassin from jail.

Now, I am confident that if an activist claiming to be conservative tried to assassinate a politician, whatever his mental state, the media would open a 24/7 national conversation about rhetoric on the right. Somehow, I doubt attempted murder by a BLM activist will get that same treatment. I doubt we will have a national conversation about the constant chorus of powerful voices calling our society evil.

I raise this double standard because it is not limited to media coverage. We have seen this extend into our legal system itself.

In May of 2020, when Minneapolis was engulfed in lawless riots, one rioter broke into a pawn shop and started a fire that burned it down. His act of arson actually killed somebody. But the Federal attorneys, who were supposed to represent the victim and the people, went out of their way to push for an unusually lenient sentence. They asked for the typical sentencing guideline to be cut in half. Why? Well, because, they wrote, the defendant was an angry political protester who simply lost his cool. They wrote, ``As anyone watching the news worldwide knows, many other people in Minnesota were similarly caught up''--as if that were an excuse. This is the sentencing memo from the prosecutors. It reads like it was ghostwritten by the defense. They even tried to quote Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to explain why this guy burned down a pawn shop. What a backward attitude.

We cannot have Federal officials acting like leftwing political violence is more acceptable than any other violence. If anything, political violence is uniquely unacceptable in a democratic republic.

Now, I placed a hold on President Biden's nominee to take over as U.S. attorney in Minnesota until he pledged he would keep political favoritism out of his prosecutions. Fortunately, he quickly said so in writing. He also knows Republicans will be watching.

The American people need public servants to crack down on crime and defend their safety--crack down on crime and defend their safety--less pandering to woke mobs; more protecting innocent families.

Energy

Madam President, now on an entirely different matter, Washington Democrats' inflation is slamming consumers with the highest prices in 40 years. One of the toughest blows has been the soaring cost of a trip to the gas pump. A gallon of regular costs a full dollar more today than it did a year ago.

So after triggering a historic run of inflation and hammering American producers with anti-energy policies designed to restrict supply, our Democratic colleagues are suddenly talking about gas prices. Here is their bold, creative plan: temporarily suspending the gas tax, to the tune of 18 cents--oh, and excluding diesel--a slap in the face to truckers and a further burden on the supply chain. Oh, and just to make the political games transparent, they want this to expire right after the midterms, as soon as the next Congress is sworn in.

Democrats want to blow a $20 billion hole in highway funding so they can try to mask the effects of their own liberal policies on working Americans. They have spent the entire year waging a holy war on affordable American energy, and now--now--they want to use a pile of taxpayers' money to literally hide the consequences.

As the senior Senator from West Virginia has pointed out, ``People want their bridges and their roads, and we have an infrastructure bill we just passed this summer, and they want to take all that away. It just doesn't make sense.''

He added that this half-baked proposal doesn't make any more sense than the President's pointless decision to take oil out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve last year.

President Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers, called this stunt ``short-sighted, ineffective, goofy and gimmicky.'' That is the Secretary of the Treasury in the Bill Clinton administration.

Back in 2008, then-Candidate Obama himself said this:

We're arguing over a gimmick that would save you half a

tank of gas over the course of the entire summer so that

everyone in Washington can pat themselves on the back and say

they did something. Well, let me tell you, this isn't an idea

designed to get you through the summer--it's designed to get

them through an election.

That is Barack Obama in 2008, and he was right.

Look, if Democrats actually want to help the American people fill their tanks, they wouldn't have been attacking American energy every way possible for the entire year. President Biden made killing the Keystone XL Pipeline his day 1 priority. Democrats voted in lockstep to endorse President Biden's ban on new energy exploration on Federal lands. At every turn, in every way, Democrats have made it harder to produce affordable and reliable American energy. Take any form of energy, and if people in San Francisco don't find it fashionable, the Biden administration has gone after it.

Three years ago, under Republican policies, the United States became a net exporter of oil for the first time in more than 70 years. From a sheer mathematical perspective, for the very first time since World War II, we were producing all that we needed and then some. Alas, a very different philosophy now controls Washington. In President Biden's first year, our own oil imports from Russia--from Russia--hit a new alltime high.

But as we speak, events in Eastern Europe are reminding the entire world that energy abundance is not just about families' pocketbooks; there is a colossal strategic cost when our Nation and our allies become economically dependent on countries that don't like us very much.

Some of our European allies have spent many years voluntarily winding down reliable sources like nuclear and coal and refusing to tap into their own considerable natural gas reserves via fracking. Instead, they gambled on less reliable sources and outsourced their perceived dirty work to places like Russia. Western European elites decided they wanted their energy production out of sight and out of mind, and Putin was all too happy to oblige them.

Even after Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, Germany willingly signed up for Putin's Nord Stream 2 Pipeline. It would negate Ukraine's own pipelines and deny the money and leverage that Ukraine needs to keep Russia at bay, but Germany backed it. Meanwhile, Berlin put off building liquid natural gas terminals, instead choosing to rely on Russian gas and refusing to diversify its import options. I am hopeful the latest indications that Germany is reconsidering this will prove to be accurate.

The Biden administration is scrambling to connect our at-risk allies with some energy resources from everywhere else--everywhere else. But it should not have taken this latest Kremlin misbehavior to remind the West that self-sufficiency actually matters. It matters. And Democrats have still not flinched in their broader war against our own--our own-- U.S. production.

Glitzy summits in Paris and finger-wagging climate rhetoric are one way to approach energy policy. Actually exploring and developing abundant, affordable, and reliable domestic energy is another approach, and that is the approach that will actually work.

Mr. President, yesterday, President Biden addressed the country about the ongoing crisis that Russia has created on its border with Ukraine.

There was much in the President's remarks that I appreciated. He was right to candidly remind the Russian people that neither the United States nor NATO nor Ukraine wants a war. He was right to emphasize that the world will not shrug or stand idly by if Vladimir Putin tries to invade his neighbor or redraw the map of Europe through deadly force.

We have spent much time discussing Russia's alleged security concerns and not enough time examining the legitimate concerns of Russia's neighbors, many of whom have a long history--a long history--of being invaded by Moscow. The concerns of these free, sovereign states matter as well, and the President would do well to amplify their voices and their historical experiences.

So it is fine for President Biden to engage in good-faith diplomacy, provided we are skeptical about Putin's intentions. Thus far, Putin's behavior is proving how little he can be trusted and how little he is interested in diplomacy as anything other than a gambit to divide the West or a pretext for war.

The United States must keep sending these strong messages, verbally and with concrete actions, both right now before any hostilities and then with

devastating force if Putin does, indeed, plow ahead.

The United States and our partners should waste no time in helping Ukraine prepare for war--weapons, materiel, advice, logistics, and intelligence. We should be building the infrastructure to help Ukraine sustain their resistance to Russian aggression if and when it comes.

I welcome the President's deployment of additional forces to the territory of NATO allies situated along our alliance's eastern flank. I recommended he take such action months ago. And I am particularly grateful to the Kentuckians of the 101st Airborne Division who are leaving Fort Campbell this week to join NATO reinforcements in Eastern Europe.

As our diplomats work to halt the train of Russian aggression, it is the brave men and women of the U.S. military who give their words added weight.

I am hopeful that President Biden will rise to the occasion. As a bipartisan group of colleagues and I made clear in a joint statement yesterday, the President would have overwhelming, bipartisan support to use his existing Executive authorities for tough sanctions against Russia in the event of conflict.

We should acknowledge Putin's use of energy as a weapon. If the President is serious about providing relief for Americans at the pump or blunting Putin's manipulation of energy markets, he will stop his administration's anti-energy policies that make it harder for our own producers to explore, to produce, and to export energy to vulnerable allies.

While our eastern flank allies have consistently taken a clear-eyed approach to their own defense, it is time for America to invest more meaningfully in our own military capabilities and demand that our allies in Western Europe actually follow suit.

Whether the administration is serious about competition with Russia and China will be clear when it submits its fiscal 2023 budget request. Our allies and adversaries will all be watching.

Mr. President, now on a different matter, while the world's eyes are fixed on the present foreign policy crisis, troubling facts are continuing to surface surrounding the administration's previous self- inflicted crisis--the botched retreat from Afghanistan.

Last week, journalists published the findings of a 2,000-page autopsy that Army officials compiled following the chaotic withdrawal from Kabul. The report hammers home a damning fact we have actually already known for months: The Biden administration received clear advance warnings from commanders on the ground that should have been heeded but went ignored. As I warned at the time, we have confirmation this disaster was foreseeable--foreseen, actually--and avoidable.

The Army's conclusions build upon the report from the Special Inspector General which was declassified last month.

While President Biden and his political advisers still cling to the notion that they got mistaken advice and were caught off-guard, both these reports suggest that nonpartisan experts knew and predicted the Afghan military would likely collapse and spent months trying in vain to get the administration to pay attention.

Top commanders reported that trying to get State Department officials to engage in advance evacuation plans was like ``pulling teeth''; that the National Security Council was ``not seriously planning for an evacuation''; that among peers in uniform, ``everyone clearly saw some of the advantage of holding Bagram.''

As the top U.S. commander on the ground during the evacuation put it, policymakers had not ``paid attention to the indicators of what was happening on the ground.''

This staggering report from our own U.S. Army should have chastened the Biden administration. It should be an occasion for apology, reflection, and accountability. But last week, President Biden instead tried to simply wave away our own Army's conclusions without evidence.

He was asked, ``Are you rejecting the conclusions or the accounts in this [Army] report?''

The President replied, ``Yes, I am.''

``So, they're not true?''

``I'm rejecting them,'' the President said.

No evidence; just hand-waving denial. Frankly, it was a bizarre performance.

Our retreat from Afghanistan seriously damaged America's credibility. It made confronting terrorist threats that much harder from over the horizon, and it invited more testing like what we are now enduring in Eastern Europe.

President Biden and his team were warned of all these dangers well in advance by our own military, but our Commander in Chief seems to have flat-out ignored our commanders. This has been an unbelievably costly lesson that the Biden administration should never have had to learn even once. Let us all hope they don't need to learn it twice.

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

Mr. President, at this time last year, Washington Democrats were beginning their quest to dump trillions of dollars in leftwing spending on a recovering economy that already had the preconditions for some inflation. Everybody warned Democrats to pump the brakes. Just weeks earlier, Republicans had already supported a smaller, targeted, bipartisan stimulus that had barely started to take effect. Even top liberal economists warned the Democrats' agenda could spark massive inflation.

The consequences for working families have been particularly harsh. Essential goods have played an outsized role in driving up prices overall. It is harder to put dinner on the table when eggs, meat, and fish are 12 percent more expensive. It is harder to fill up cars with gas that is 40 percent more expensive and to heat a home with natural gas that has gone up 24 percent or fuel oil that has gone up 47 percent. This is reality for millions of Americans. They are living it every single day.

Yet the Biden administration seems less interested in trying to solve this problem than in trying to persuade families that the pain is actually just in their heads. One recent story reported that members of President Biden's team were ``seemingly mystified'' about why the American people weren't celebrating this economy.

Well, if Washington Democrats spent 5 minutes talking to a middle- class family, I am confident they would cease to be mystified. The middle 40 percent of American earners have seen their disposable incomes fall more than an entire percentage point over the last year-- entirely due to inflation. Any American who hasn't managed to secure an 8-percent pay raise in the last year has actually received a real pay cut, thanks to Democrats' inflation.

The American people are reporting their lowest consumer sentiment in over a decade. Seventy-five percent say our economy is doing badly. Almost 80 percent expect inflation to get worse. Six in ten say their family's income isn't keeping pace with their costs of living.

These are not statistics the White House can wave away. We are actually talking about human pain. A working mother in Michigan said:

I cannot buy the food that I would normally buy for my

family.

In Washington State, a single mom of four who also cares for her elderly parents says she has had to take favorite family foods like frozen pizza and wings and make them ``more of a treat than just a regular meal.''

This is where Democrats' policies have left working families.

Mr. President, now, on a related matter, this Democrat-caused inflation has forced the Federal Reserve and its Board of Governors into a very tricky position. But while the country is carefully watching the Fed Board of Governors, the Senate happens to be considering several of President Biden's nominees to that very same Board.

Later today, I will meet with Chairman Powell, whom President Biden wisely renominated to serve another term atop the Fed. Chairman Powell has proven to be a straight shooter within the mainstream of monetary policy. His creative leadership helped stabilize our entire economy through the uncertain early days of the COVID recession. I look forward to discussing inflation and the state of our economy with Chairman Powell this afternoon.

Unfortunately, several of President Biden's other Fed nominees appear to have been significantly less wise selections. One nominee, Professor Cook from Michigan State University, has previously promoted partisan conspiracy theories. In 2020, she called for a fellow academic to be fired because he opposed defunding the police.

The White House cites among Professor Cook's qualifications that she sits on the Board of Directors of the regional Fed in Chicago. She was appointed to that position just a few days before President Biden nominated her for this one.

More troubling still is President Biden's nominee to the extremely powerful position of Vice Chair for Supervision. This slot comes with major unilateral power. But the President's nominee, Sarah Bloom Raskin, has spent recent years pressuring the Fed to stop being a neutral regulator and instead become an ideological, leftwing activist body.

Ms. Raskin has argued openly that unelected Fed Governors should use their powers to declare ideological war on fossil fuels and affordable American energy.

Ms. Raskin wants our banking system to start picking winners and losers in ways that would stick American families with higher gas prices, higher electricity bills, and more dependence on China. And she wants to implement this agenda from inside one of the least directly accountable institutions in our government so that voters simply have no recourse.

The far left is already boasting that this backdoor Green New Deal would only be the first step. Democrats have already introduced legislation that would get the Federal Reserve into the racial redistribution business and inject racial preferences into our financial system. These unpopular ideas would completely upend an institution that Americans need to remain nonpolitical, nonpartisan, and nonideological. Fed Governors are supposed to be neutral regulators, not economic policy dictators whom voters can't get rid of.

If this weren't disqualifying enough, potentially significant ethical questions have begun to swirl around Ms. Raskin's nomination. During her time out of government, Ms. Raskin became affiliated with an obscure financial technology firm in Colorado. Shortly thereafter, somehow, mysteriously, this small company became what appears to be the only nonbank financial tech company in the entire country to receive a special master account that allowed them to directly access a core Federal Reserve system.

This is an obviously worrisome topic, but I understand that Senators have not even been able to get Ms. Raskin to satisfy their basic requests for information. So I would urge President Biden to find a better, more mainstream, more bipartisan candidate to serve this crucial institution.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

About 2 weeks ago, I spoke on this floor about the

state of the pandemic 2 years in, about letting American families get back to normal. The current science clearly supports the 70 percent of Americans who believe we must accept this virus is here to stay, trust the science, and proceed with normal life.

At the time, this was not a universal sentiment. The next day, across the river, liberals tried to shame Virginia's new Governor for forgoing a mask in an incredibly vaccinated area where cases had been falling for weeks.

The top Democrat in the Virginia State Senate criticized the Governor and backed ongoing school mask mandates as ``common sense.'' But, my goodness, how quickly things can change.

A few days ago, I understand the same State senate leader did a 180- degree turn and voted for an amendment to end school mask mandates. A dam had begun to break nationwide. A week ago, leaders in Democrat-run New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, and Oregon announced they would ax or relax their mask and/or vaccine mandates in the near future. By the end of the week, States, including California, Illinois, Nevada, New York, and Rhode Island had followed suit to varying degrees.

Now, obviously, the scientific facts have not changed in the last few weeks. We have known for many weeks that this variant is significantly milder, and we have known for many months that the universally available vaccines reduce the odds of hospitalization or death down to the level of many routine risks that we all face constantly in our daily lives. The only science that has changed in the last 2 weeks is the political science. The only data that has changed in the last 2 weeks is the Democrats' polling data.

The Washington Post put it like this: The ``abrupt end to mask mandates reflects a shifting political landscape.''

Ah, but there is a problem.

While Democratic leaders are stampeding to finally follow the science and end burdensome mandates on adults in many places, America's children are still being left behind. States like New York and California are rolling back restrictions on adults but have yet to provide any end date or off-ramp for mask mandates in K-12 schools. This is completely backward since we have known for well over a year that COVID poses far lower risks to children than to adults.

Officials in Illinois and the District of Columbia have embraced the same double standard, winding back general public mandates while leaving the schools with no end date in sight. In other words, here in Washington, the Mayor's office will be lifting mandates next week in all kinds of adult establishments, from bars to fitness studios, while keeping kids in classrooms, masked up for at least--at least--another month.

Even as Democrats permit grownups to get back to normal, they are clinging onto their emergency powers over K-12 classrooms. The ultrarich, ultrapowerful teachers unions that have been antagonists of normal childhoods at each step of the pandemic are continuing to drag their heels.

For 2 years now, Democrats at the local, State, and Federal levels have let a labor executive named Randi Weingarten become something of an unelected national classroom czar, holding millions of kids' fates in her hand. Science has proven over and over again that in-person schooling is safe for kids, but Big Labor has sought to move the goalposts every time, and Democrats have mostly gone along with it.

Last year, Ms. Weingarten bragged publicly that the Biden administration had invited her own hyperpolitical teachers union to basically author the scientific guidelines for school reopenings. The Biden administration took the pen away from doctors and experts and handed it to Big Labor. She boasted:

They asked us for language and we gave them language.

Reporters found multiple instances where the union's words were copied and pasted directly--directly--into the final CDC document.

Now the same Ms. Weingarten is trying to move the goalposts again on America's kids to an even more extreme and unscientific place. She asserted last week that little kids should have to keep covering their faces in schools until there is ``no dissemination and transmission in schools.''

With respect, that is completely bonkers, absolutely bonkers. There is no credible scientist or doctor in America who believes that we are headed toward zero COVID. We are not going to magically eradicate this virus; it is heading endemic. So Ms. Weingarten's latest made-up standard would have K-12 kids covering their faces literally forever. Little kids in masks forever? That is the upshot of this top Biden administration's ally's public demands. This is utter madness.

Two years ago, the American people accepted temporary disruptions to their daily lives in order to prevent our hospitals from collapsing and to buy scientists time to invent vaccines and therapeutics. Check, check, and check. Our healthcare system endured. We have remarkable, safe, and effective vaccines; we have therapeutics; and we know that, thank God, none of these variants have posed a medical emergency for the vast majority of children--period.

Americans who watched the Super Bowl saw rich celebrities having a grand time with hardly a mask in sight, but under the Democrats' policies, first graders who watched that big, maskless party last night had to wake up this morning and cover their own faces in order to go to school. America's classrooms seem to be the last places where local, State, and Federal Democrats will accept that cost-benefit calculations exist, and zero transmission is simply not possible.

For 2 years now, the Democratic Party has allowed some of the most powerful special interests in our country to profoundly--profoundly-- disrupt children's lives. The political left has put kids last. That is simply not acceptable. American families deserve normalcy; they deserve it right now; and this side of the aisle, the party of parents, has their back.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, moments ago, the country got yet another terrible monthly inflation report under the Biden administration. Yet again, the data confirmed what working families already know painfully well: Rampant inflation and soaring prices are crushing--crushing--the American people.

Experts had predicted another red-hot inflation report, around 7 percent. Even that alone would have meant we were still trapped inside the worst inflation in 40 years, but reality turned out to be even worse than that. It turns out inflation this past year hasn't been 7 percent; it has been 7\1/2\ percent. In other words, if you haven't personally gotten a pay raise of 8 percent or more in the last year, then Democrats' policies have given you a pay cut--pay cut.

To add insult to injury, reporters say the worst of this inflation was driven by the most painful categories for working families: food prices, energy prices, and rent.

This is not about financial inconvenience for wealthy people who can afford to stomach it; this is about massive price increases for essential goods that make up a huge share of working families' budgets. Gas is up about 40 percent since this time last year. Used car prices are up about the same. Meat, fish, and eggs cost over 12 percent more than they did just 1 year ago. The cost of natural gas for home heating has soared by 24 percent since this time last year. Fuel oil has shot up almost 47 percent. The cost of essentials has absolutely exploded since Washington Democrats took power.

To be clear, the worst inflation in 40 years is not something that just spontaneously happened to Democrats on their watch. As a Pew report demonstrated late last year, it is true that countries around the world are facing inflation--they are--as a result of COVID, but America has it worse than almost everybody else in the developed world. This is a direct result of liberal policy choices.

Here is how Jason Furman, President Obama's CEA Chairman, explained it recently. I will quote from the New York Times:

``The United States has had much more inflation than almost

any other advanced economy in the world,'' said Jason Furman,

an economist at Harvard University and former Obama

administration economic adviser, who used comparable

methodologies to look across areas and concluded that U.S.

price increases have been consistently faster. The

difference, he said, comes because ``the United States'

stimulus is in a category of its own.''

Obviously, he is referring to the $2 trillion so-called rescue package last year.

The severity of this inflation was directly fueled by the reckless, far-left spending spree that every single Democrat in this Chamber voted to ram through at President Biden's behest last year.

Even the most prominent liberal economists knew this would happen and tried to warn the Democrats. A year ago, Larry Summers warned that Democrats' binge could set off ``inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.'' Ah, but Democrats ignored their own experts. They

plowed ahead, using the pandemic as a pretext--a pretext--to dump $2 trillion into left-wing policies that were overwhelmingly unrelated-- unrelated--to the healthcare fight against the virus, and we see the results all around us. Families are living with the results every day.

As recently as the last few days, some of my Democratic colleagues have come here to the floor to boast about the increase in nominal wages. They want a round of applause because the numbers on many Americans' paychecks have gone up. But that is staggeringly out of touch with the reality. Yes, in an inflationary spiral, lots of people will see the numbers on their paychecks go up. The problem is that even those bigger paychecks are buying Americans less in real terms today than their smaller paychecks bought them before Democrats were sworn in.

It is like this: Democratic policies have created an inflation riptide that is forcing families and small businesses to swim as fast as they possibly can just to avoid getting sucked out to sea, but Democrats are trying to call this a success because of how fast everybody's arms and legs are moving. Talk about an absurd effort to spend your way out of reality. The truth is plain for everybody to see.

A few weeks ago, the Washington Post ran a story with the headline ``'That raise meant nothing:' Inflation is wiping out pay increases for most Americans.'' The story explained, and this is a direct quote:

[M]any [workers] said that despite considerable pay

raises--as much as 33 percent, in some cases--they were still

struggling to cover basic expenses. Several workers said they

had taken second jobs to keep up with rising costs for

groceries, gas and rent.

So American workers are not buying the Democratic spin for 1 second. One year after President Biden took office with massive economic tailwinds at his back, with an economy that was primed for a roaring comeback, 75 percent of Americans say our economy is doing badly. About 90 percent of Americans say they are concerned with inflation. Ninety percent of Americans say they are concerned with inflation. A 60- percent supermajority say their family's income is falling behind the cost of living.

It didn't have to be this way. This was a policy choice. This all- Democratic government was warned that their radical agenda would supercharge inflation, and they pushed ahead anyway, and our country is paying the price.