Floor Statements

Madam President, runaway costs and surging inflation are a huge worry for middle-class families. Every survey confirms it. Every conversation confirms it.

Over the last 12 months, during this economic recovery, the average American worker earned a 3.6-percent raise, but inflation has risen so steeply that it has turned that into a nearly 2-percent pay cut.

Remember, at the beginning of the year, the Biden administration inherited a historically strong economic trajectory. Thanks to the smart, targeted, bipartisan policies we passed last year, our economy was primed to get millions of Americans back to work with competitive pay while consumers unleashed pent-up demand. But, alas, that was before Democrats decided to pour $2 trillion into a long list of liberal pet projects and insisted on making it less appealing for workers to actually go back to work.

Today, essentials like gas and groceries have gotten more and more expensive. Bigger purchases consumers had put off during the pandemic are getting even further out of reach. Across the country, working families and employers alike are feeling the pinch, an effective tax increase on both the wages and the savings of the middle class.

Now, our colleagues weren't flying blind. They weren't naive. They knew they were passing what the White House Chief of Staff said was designed to be ``the most progressive domestic legislation in a generation.'' And they knew the risks, which one liberal economist described as ``inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.''

Sure enough, inflation just clocked the fastest year-on-year increase since 2008, but, apparently, according to President Biden himself, the solution is--listen to this--even more of the same. Today, instead of deflecting attention from the fact that his administration's springtime approach was flat wrong, the President actually doubled down. He suggested the right way to shake this inflation was--listen to this-- another $3.5 trillion in spending.

This is the same reckless taxing and spending spree the Democrats dreamt up when they assumed our economy would be having the opposite problem. But now all that same borrowing, printing, and spending is supposed to be what the doctor ordered to fight inflation?

Inflate our way out of inflation. Let's hope the American people don't have to learn firsthand how that strategy would work out. Another multitrillion-dollar reckless taxing and spending spree, believe me, is the last thing American families need.

Madam President, now on an entirely different matter, a few months ago, a group of Democrats and leftwing activists brought the State of Georgia into the national spotlight. Tremendous outrage, an air of total crisis, was cooked up, cooked up out of nowhere.

The State of Georgia was passing a mainstream, commonsense election law. It combined widely popular integrity protections, protections like voter ID, with a great deal of flexibility and availability to make voting easy. It codified more flexible early voting and more flexible mail-in voting than many Democratic-run States offer--for example, New York.

Americans want to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. Voter ID, for example, is popular with majorities of Black, White, and Hispanic Americans. But in their ongoing bid to mount a Washington DC takeover of our Nation's elections, Democrats seized on this mainstream law and decided to start shouting that the sky was falling down in Georgia--the sky is falling down in Georgia.

Unfortunately, for the people of Georgia, many people in the press and corporate America bought it. They got Major League Baseball to move its all-star game out of Georgia. Actual work opportunities, actual prosperity for working people, were sacrificed to serve this faked hysteria.

Well, today, Georgians got what you might call a very weak consolation prize. Today, a week after the all-star game was supposed to happen in Atlanta, Democrats themselves descended on the State to stage a bit of partisan theater. Last week, the traveling road show was Texas Democrats coming here to Washington to beg Senate Democrats to seize power away from their own citizens and local governments.

This week, it was our own colleagues' turn to get on the jets, but the rhetoric was just as hysterical and the conclusion all the same: Washington Democrats need to grab unprecedented power and rewrite all 50 States' election laws. It is the same shtick we have been hearing here in this Chamber for multiple years now.

Remember, their sweeping takeover bill was written long, long before any of the State laws which they now claim are prompting it. This phony outrage is wearing thin on the American people. Citizens know it isn't attacking democracy to have things like commonsense voter ID and commonsense voter list maintenance alongside lots of early voting, lots of mail-in voting, and lots of election-day voting.

That kind of combination isn't an attack on democracy; it is the definition of democracy. It is exactly what Americans want.

Madam President, for the past 3 years Bill Brasch has led our shared fraternity, Phi Kappa Tau, as national president, helping the organization navigate the tumultuous COVID-19 pandemic. Through his work, he helped maintain a vast network of philanthropy and brotherhood that has raised more than $1.6 million for charity in the past 25 years and developed more than 100,000 men of character into men of distinction since 1906. Bill has contributed immensely to the continuity and growth of Phi Kappa Tau and helped it develop into a formidable nationwide organization.

Bill attended my alma mater, the University of Louisville, and built a prestigious reputation in student government and Greek life. He remained at the school after graduation, spending 32 years coordinating the construction and renovation of campus buildings, including the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity house in 2007. He continued his involvement in Phi Kappa Tau at both the local and national level, eventually rising to his current role in 2018.

Bill saw our fraternity through one of its most challenging periods when, in the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced colleges and universities across the country to shutter. Thousands of brothers were sent home from campus, threatening the very core of fraternity life. Bill's tenure as national president, originally intended to be a 2-year term, was extended into 2021 as the crisis forced Phi Kappa Tau to cancel its national convention. However, through Bill's hard work, the fraternity didn't just survive the pandemic but thrived. Phi Kappa Tau is now well-prepared to return to campuses across the country and bring young men back together in brotherhood, just as it has for more than a century.

Bill Brasch has devoted his life to Phi Kappa Tau's mission ``to champion a lifelong commitment to brotherhood, learning, ethical leadership and exemplary character.'' In recognition of his

dedicated work, he has been named the University of Louisville Alumni Fellow for 2021 and will be honored during the halftime celebration at this year's homecoming football game. His mentorship and leadership have been invaluable to our fraternity's success, both in Kentucky and across America. On behalf of the Senate, I would like to thank Bill for his leadership in times of crisis and congratulate him on a successful presidency.

Madam President, for the past 15 years, Mark and Lori Wilson have been key organizers of Kentucky's legendary Fancy Farm Picnic, held annually at St. Jerome Catholic Church. This event brings together elected officials and spectators from all over the Commonwealth for good-natured debate and celebration. For decades, the impassioned speeches and zingers delivered at the Fancy Farm Picnic have riveted Kentuckians and brought nationwide fame to the event's namesake hometown. The picnic also serves as a significant fundraiser for St. Jerome, providing resources for the church's elementary school and charitable efforts serving the community. All this success would never have been possible without the dedicated leadership of local volunteers like Mark and Lori.

Every year, Mark and Lori welcome upwards of 15,000 attendees to Fancy Farm, KY, but that is merely the most widely known aspect of their work. They are also deeply involved in St. Jerome, helping the church year-round with its public service efforts. Mark is a longtime member of the western Kentucky agriculture industry, often humorously comparing his role at the Fancy Farm Picnic to farming: ``like growing a crop of tobacco, it's a thirteen-month job.'' The couple are classic Kentuckians, dedicated to community and tradition.

Though the Fancy Farm Picnic was canceled last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, Mark and Lori built a strong foundation for the event to continue full-speed ahead this year. Under the leadership of their successor Steven Elder, Fancy Farm will continue to captivate the Commonwealth with its annual festival of bingo, barbecue, and amicable banter.

Mark and Lori have dedicated countless hours to their church, community, and State. On behalf of the Senate, I would like to express our gratitude for their committed work in support of the Commonwealth.

Madam President, throughout my career, I have been proud to amplify the voices of freedom fighters around the world, brave men and women working to secure the blessings of liberty that we enjoy here in America. And I have repeatedly shone a floodlight on the oppressive regimes that stand in their way. I have championed the pro- democracy movement in Burma, the brave advocates for freedom in Hong Kong.

Right now, the loudest cries for liberty are coming from pretty close to home. After enduring 60-plus years of socialist tyranny just 90 miles from American soil, the people of Cuba are telling the world they have had enough--had enough. They have had enough of a regime that has stolen their dreams for decades. They have had enough of its stranglehold on information and on prosperity. They have had enough of its intimidation and its repression.

The past week's demonstration in the streets of Havana should represent a major turning point in the Cuban people's movement toward liberation. The regime's failed communist ideology has saddled generations of Cubans with a backward economy, inadequate services, and no means of justice or dissent.

Now, some naive Americans on the left seem intent on once again running interference for the Cuban regime. They still buy the propaganda that Cuba is a socialist paradise--paradise--with a model healthcare and education system that we should actually emulate. But the Cuban people see a different reality: an open-air prison that communism has run right into the ground.

Since the 1950s, the blight of Castro rule has driven many Cubans to flee to the United States. Generations of immigrants and their descendants have lived out and are living out American dreams of prosperity, achievement, and service. We are blessed to call them fellow Americans.

As Senator Rubio put it so well this week, ``The only country on this planet where Cubans are not successful is Cuba.''

My hometown of Louisville is actually home to one of the largest Cuban-American populations in any American city outside of Florida. In recent days, this vibrant community has rallied by the hundreds in support of Cuban protesters. As one of these fellow Kentuckians of mine put it, ``The only voice they have is us.''

The brave men and women who have taken to the streets in Cuba are demanding freedoms they have been denied their entire lives. They deserve our strong support. I am proud to cosponsor a new resolution with Senator Rubio and several other colleagues to communicate precisely that.

Madam President, on another matter, this week, Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee are doing something so radical that it hasn't been done for decades. They are advancing an annual funding bill that leaves out the Hyde amendment, the commonsense prohibition on forcing taxpayers to fund abortion.

Since the 1970s, abortion has claimed the lives of more than 60 million unborn children. But at the very, very least, the mainstream, bipartisan Hyde amendment has ensured that taxpayers' hard-earned money is not funneled into this brutal practice.

A broad, bipartisan coalition agreed the American taxpayers should not be forced to underwrite this nightmare. And, by the way, a strong majority of Americans still agree with that proposition.

For decades, nearly his entire career, then-Senator Joe Biden was a reliable supporter of Hyde protections. One letter to a constituent read like this:

Those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be

compelled to pay for them.

But a couple of years ago, on the President's campaign trail, our former colleague changed his tune. He let the demands of the increasingly radical left overcome a principle he had held literally for decades.

So earlier this year, the President's budget request obligingly proposed ending this longstanding protection. Yet another way in which the administration that sold itself as moderate and unifying is now spiraling way, way to the left. And this week, the House is following through.

In today's Democratic Party, there is no room to dissent from the far left's culture war, even in the most modest, most longstanding, most widely popular ways.

Senate Republicans are going to continue standing up for life, standing up for taxpayers, and standing up for the conscience rights of millions, millions of Americans who don't want the government laundering their hard-earned money to abortion providers. Republicans will stand with the majority of the American people, even if our colleagues across the aisle have given in to the most radical voices

Mr. President, at any particular moment, with total certainty, Washington Democrats know one of two things to be true, either American democracy is so well-functioning, so sacrosanct that nobody can possibly question or badmouth it; or democracy is in total crisis, hanging on by a thread, and only a massive, sweeping partisan overhaul by Democrats can save it.

Now, it can be hard to guess which of those opposite stories Democrats will be shouting on any given day. The narrative flip-flops at a dizzying pace.

After 2016, when voters picked Republicans, Secretary Clinton and a whole cast of senior Democrats called the new President illegitimate. Two-thirds of all Democrats said Russia had probably or definitely hacked into our voting systems and actually changed the tallies, a baseless conspiracy theory, a big lie.

Four years later, they kept insisting that democracy was broken and Democrats had to overhaul it. H.R. 1 was written and introduced on that pretense.

As recently as last summer, when the 2020 election was looking close, Democrats and cable news spent multiple weeks in literal hysterics over what they said was a massive secret election conspiracy revolving around the Postal Service--another big lie.

It was one frantic meltdown after another, constant, silly claims that our democracy would die. But last November, their story turned on a dime because Democrats got election results they liked a lot better.

Now, suddenly, our elections were no longer in crisis. Now American democracy was finely tuned, fully legitimate, and beyond reproach. For about 11 weeks, from President Biden's election through his inauguration, Democrats and their immediate friends briefly stopped being our democracy's biggest doubters and became its No. 1 fans. But now, as Democrats look ahead to the first midterm that is almost always challenging for the sitting President's party, the silly hysterics have been switched right back on.

This spring, the State of Georgia passed a mainstream election law that expanded early voting and made drop boxes permanent for the first time. The left responded with a total meltdown. Regulations that left Georgia with more flexible early voting and more flexible absentee voting than many blue States, including New York, were, insanely, called ``Jim Crow 2.0.'' What nonsense.

Georgia Democrats scared huge corporations into promoting a moral panic that was completely and totally false. It was a shameless effort to manufacture an air of crisis to help Democrats ram their election takeover bills through the Congress, but it didn't work. The Senate rejected all the bad ideas in S. 1, so the made-up outrage had to be cranked up even higher--even higher.

So this week, State legislators from Texas decided to grab some beer, hop on a private plane, and flee the State in what they are pretending is some great moral crusade. In reality, they have just come here to Washington to snap selfies, bask in the limelight, and beg Senate Democrats to take over Texas elections.

Once again, this outrage is completely phony. The Texas Legislature was going to consider bills that would expand the minimum hours of early voting, make even more counties provide 12-hour days of early voting, and make it even easier for voters to fix mistakes on mail-in ballots so their votes would actually count. These bills would apply voter ID to mail-in ballots through a simple process that doesn't even require a driver's license number. They would clean up voter rolls to remove voters who have died or moved away.

This is not controversial stuff; it is common sense. More than 80 percent of Texans support voter ID. But Democrats have pulled out the same Chicken Little playbook that failed in Georgia, the same big lies.

Yesterday, the President of the United States delivered a speech that was set in an alternate universe. He called these mainstream State laws, these modest integrity measures that are wildly popular with Americans--now, listen to this--``the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.'' Really? This is our new President, who promised to lower the temperature, bring America back together, and rebuild a civil society where we can dialogue as fellow citizens? That is the person who is now yelling that mainstream State laws are more dangerous than two world wars, more dangerous than poll tests and Bull Connor and actual Jim Crow segregation and somehow analogous to the Civil War? That is what the President of the United States said yesterday? What utter nonsense. It would be laugh-out-loud funny if it wasn't so completely and totally irresponsible.

Here are the great sins of the Texas proposals. Here is what is apparently so outrageous: They want to wind down a few emergency COVID voting procedures, including drive-through voting and polling places that are open all night long. I am serious. That is what this is all about, that they want to wind down two COVID voting procedures: drive- through voting and polling places that are open 24/7.

Because of the pandemic, for the first time ever, some places in Texas experimented with these brandnew, unusual measures, but now winding them down is somehow an assault on democracy? Really? If Texas is not interested in permanently letting people vote from their car windows or at 3 in the morning, then President Biden says that ``they want to make it so hard and inconvenient they hope people don't vote at all,'' simply because you can't vote all night? Really? These brandnew exceptions for a 100-year pandemic are supposed to now be sacred pillars of our system. Things that we did last year to deal with a 100- year pandemic--to get rid of any of that is a threat to our system?

Voter ID protections are supported by majorities of White Americans, Black Americans, and Hispanic Americans, but President Biden calls these things ``a 21st-century Jim Crow assault''--one big lie after another. These people think that if they just keep repeating the same melodramatic clichEs, they will finally get to pull off the power grab.

These false comparisons are an insult to the actual hurdles that Americans have overcome over the years together. We have won two world wars, faced down the Soviets, unwound brutal segregation, defeated actual Jim Crow laws, and endured the 9/11 attacks, but now the sky is falling? The sky is falling because of these mainstream laws that people actually support? Because Texans want to allow 16-hour days of voting but just not in the dead of night?

Do they know that nobody outside of liberal Twitter and cable television is buying an ounce of what they are selling? The big lies, the fake outrage failed in Georgia. The big lies and fake outrage failed here in the Senate, and they will fail in Texas.

The big lies and fake outrage are totally failing to persuade the American people. Americans want to make it easy to vote but hard to cheat. Americans know that having widespread and accessible voting, along with voter ID, isn't an attack on democracy; it is the definition of democracy.

So, look, I understand the Democrats may be growing nervous about the 2022 elections. I can see why. Liberal policies are overspending, overborrowing, and hurting our economy. They are destabilizing the Middle East, weakening our southern border, and increasing violent crime across our country. But the solution is not to keep lying to the American people about the health of our democracy. The answer is not this desperate craving for an unprecedented

partisan takeover so Washington Democrats can appoint themselves the board of elections for every county and State.

The longer these fake hysterics keep up, the more Americans will keep wondering just why Democrats are this desperate--this desperate to seize control over election laws and why Democrats are this panicked by the prospect of voter integrity measures that are simple, that are fair, and that are popular with the American people.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, 3 months ago, President Biden announced his intention to completely withdraw U.S. forces from the ongoing fight against terrorists and terrorist enablers in Afghanistan. I said then this was a shortsighted decision, and sure enough--sure enough--a reckless rush for the exits is becoming a global embarrassment.

Just take the reports that our forces slunk away from the strategically vital Bagram Air Base in the middle of the night without plan for our Afghan partners to secure the base or even to keep the electricity on. But President Biden remains defiant. He has rejected warnings that the government in Kabul will fall to the Taliban. He is ignoring the truth unfolding before our own eyes: Afghanistan is unraveling.

Since April 13, the Taliban has retaken administrative districts all across the country at a truly alarming pace. With military victory in reach, the group is hardly even pretending to seek a negotiated solution. It has wasted no time dragging large swaths of Afghanistan back under its repression, but President Biden appears unmoved. He says he bears no responsibility for the plight of the Afghans who fought with us.

Back in 2019, when his predecessor was contemplating a quick withdrawal from Syria, then-Candidate Biden called that notion ``the most shameful thing any president has done in modern history in terms of foreign policy.''

Well, look where we are today. The Taliban is hunting down the U.S.- trained pilots who helped defend the Afghan people. It has wiped out scores of special forces resisting its advance. As the Taliban moves toward threatening Kabul, the Biden administration seems to have no plan to efficiently process special visas for the Afghans who helped us and no plan to get those people safe passage to our Embassy or, for that matter, even out of the country.

The dangers facing the Afghan people--especially, especially women and girls--are heartbreaking. The humanitarian crisis may well be historic. But this is also an awful, bungled mess from the perspective of our own national security. The President's own CIA Director told Senators this decision would be certain to inhibit our ability to collect intelligence. Gen. Frank McKenzie of Central Command confirmed this week, this very week, that intelligence collection was already suffering.

The President's top advisers understand very well that the Taliban is capable of retaking control of Afghanistan in just a matter of months. This would allow al-Qaida to reconstitute. So analysts are debating not if, not whether, but when al-Qaida will again threaten the United States from Afghanistan.

Just wait until we see Russia and China rushing into the void, exploiting our retreat to expand their power and influence in Central Asia. Just wait until the botched retreat and lingering threats end up requiring a large, ongoing presence of our military and surveillance forces in the region rather than freeing up resources for the Indo- Pacific. Just wait until the Biden administration ends up consumed with this humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan and its destabilizing effects rather than focusing on building coalitions to counter Chinese or Russian aggression.

Yet, amid all this, President Biden isn't reconsidering. Instead, he is flooring it. The administration actually sped up the withdrawal so it can accomplish it even before the darkly ironic deadline of September 11.

So I have forcefully opposed efforts by Presidents of both parties to cut and run from our work in Syria or Afghanistan. I have warned of the huge strategic price America would pay if this administration pretends that terrorists will play nicely with their political timeline. As one recent headline put it, ``We might be done with jihadis but they are not done with us.''

President Biden and his team are desperate to duck hard questions about Afghanistan, but the American people deserve answers. They deserve to understand the risks of this trajectory and how the Commander in Chief plans to keep us safe against a terrorist enemy that his own senior advisers admit will be allowed to regroup thanks to the President's actions.

I hope that, even in this Democratically controlled Congress, our national security committees will uphold their obligation to oversee this unfolding debacle and its implications. Ending our presence in Afghanistan will not end the terrorist war against us. Sadly, the opposite is likely to be true. This self-inflicted wound could very well make the struggle even more difficult and even more dangerous

Mr. President, now on a totally different matter, Senators have just spent 2 weeks traveling our home States and hearing what is on the minds of working families. I got to spend time with all kinds of hard-working Kentuckians across the Bluegrass.

There is no question we are in better shape than we were a year ago. Thanks to the genius of science, the success of Operation Warp Speed, and the bipartisan rescue packages the Republican-led Senate passed in 2020, the year 2021 was primed and set up for a historic American comeback well before the new Democratic Congress or the new Democratic administration was even sworn in.

But Democrats still wanted to rush ahead with the huge borrowing and spending sprees they had promised their far left. Top economists, including famous Democrats, warned our colleagues to think again. Even liberal experts tried to warn our colleagues that the socialist ideas they had drawn up in 2020 were not suited to what Americans needed in 2021. Overspending and overborrowing would unleash inflation, slow rehiring, and hurt small businesses.

All that was predicted, but Democrats rushed ahead. They rammed through what the White House bragged was the most leftwing legislation in our Nation's history, and now Democrats want to follow up with an even more absurd summer sequel.

Well, let me tell you, I just spent 2 weeks hearing from my fellow Kentuckians, and they are already paying a heavy price. Manufacturers are still absolutely hammered by supply chain shocks. Employers large and small say Democrats' special bonus for workers to stay unemployed is badly hampering their ability to fully reopen and to serve their customers. Most of our surrounding States have already put a stop to this awful idea, but Kentucky's Governor, regretfully, hasn't.

It isn't just for-profit businesses, either, that are having trouble getting people back to work. I heard from one residential treatment center for pregnant women and new moms grappling with substance abuse. They said that because of the generous Federal bonus for staying home, they have had trouble finding enough support staff to even reopen one of their facilities post-COVID. About 80 percent of the people who schedule an interview don't even show up.

These backward bonuses have also invited heaps--heaps--of fraud. In California, for example, a significant share of the State's COVID unemployment benefits were paid out fraudulently, billions and billions of dollars to people who shouldn't have gotten them at all. And now-- get this--Democrats want to give the California labor secretary who was in charge of that nightmare a promotion. In fact, we are scheduled to vote on her confirmation today to a leading position at the Department of Labor. You really can't make this stuff up.

And then there is inflation. Just this morning, we learned that runaway inflation has continued to hit working families and hit them hard. Consumer prices spiked in June considerably more than had been forecast. Inflation is up 5.4 percent year over year--the fastest jump in 13 years. Stunningly, it is up 0.9 percent just month over month. Families are feeling it everywhere, from the supermarket to the gas pumps, to housing, to the used car lot, and beyond--all thanks in part to the Democrats' half-baked spending spree from the springtime. Now they want an even more absurd, even more damaging summer sequel.

What Democrats say they want to force through this summer through reconciliation would make our current inflationary mess look like small potatoes. Nobody seriously thinks our country needs another gigantic overdose of overborrowing, overspending, and overtaxing.

This isn't what the American people voted for, either. Our distinguished colleague, the junior Senator from Vermont, the chair of the Budget Committee, has been very transparent about his socialist ideology for decades, very upfront about it, but the country didn't elect a 50-50 Senate and a President who claimed to be a moderate so that Chairman Sanders could turn America into a socialist country.

Working Americans know that is not what they voted for. This summer they will see who wants to borrow and spend trillions more dollars for no reason and who would rather help them get their jobs back, their stable prices back, their small businesses back, and their lives back

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

Mr. President, yesterday, President Biden announced that his administration would attempt to combat the alarming rise of violent crime unfolding in cities across our country by making it harder for law-abiding Americans to exercise their constitutional right to keep and bear arms. And today our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee voted on the nomination of a person the President intends to lead the effort. David Chipman was tapped to be Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

If he is confirmed, this nominee would bring to the job a dangerous and unprecedented hostility to the Second Amendment. We know it from his record as an anti-gun extremist, and we know it from the reputation he earned among ATF veterans as an ``activist'' and ``a rabid partisan.''

It should go without saying that these are exactly the wrong motivations to encourage at the helm of the Agency charged with firearms enforcement. Then again, it should also go without saying that responsible gun owners don't cause surges in violent crime; they actually prevent them.

Unfortunately, Democrats' latest bout of cognitive dissonance on crime didn't begin just this week. Let's consider what has unfolded over the past year. Last summer, across America, peaceful protests were overtaken by lawless rioters. For nights on end, violence and looting left cities in flames, and in too many State capitals and city halls, local officials froze under pressure from the left and failed to protect their citizens, their homes, and their businesses.

In fact, at every level of government, elected Democrats instead rapidly embraced radical calls to ``defund the police.'' To the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, they succeeded in gutting local law enforcement budgets and

validating the worst instincts of the anti-police agitators.

The president of the Minneapolis City Council called on her colleagues to ``imagine a future without police.'' And sure enough, in Los Angeles, police were told to make do after a cut of $150 million. In Seattle, the police department budget shrank by nearly 20 percent. Defunding efforts here in Washington were passed by committee unanimously.

The Biden administration has amplified these efforts by appointing avowed supporters of defunding the police, like Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke, to high-ranking positions at the Justice Department, the Agency charged with enforcing Federal criminal law.

Now, we didn't have to imagine the consequences of betraying the brave officers charged with keeping the peace. Millions of Americans have been living this dangerous new reality literally for months. Last year closed with the Nation's sharpest 1-year increase in homicides in decades. In New York City, the murder rate jumped nearly 45 percent, and in my hometown of Louisville, it is already on pace this year to exceed last year's all-time record.

New fears arose in communities across the country, and as Democrats flirted with their imagined future without police, Americans did exactly what you would expect of a free people: They looked to their own defense and exercised their Second Amendment rights in record numbers. The FBI processed nearly 40 million background checks on gun purchasers last year, shattering previous records. And, nationwide, 40 percent of the guns sold last year were purchased by--listen to this-- first-time buyers. In particular, members of racial minority groups joined the ranks of gun owners in record numbers.

So let's review. In city after city, powerful Democrats vocally refused to uphold their responsibilities to protect public safety. Violent crime filled the void. Against this backdrop, the American people chose to defend themselves by exercising a core constitutional right.

But now, as Democrats at the State and local level play politics with public safety, Democrats here in Washington want to make gun ownership in America more burdensome than ever. Prominent voices on the left, including some of our colleagues, fanned the flames of a dangerously misguided experiment, and law-abiding Americans are paying the price.

Here in the Senate, Republicans have been focused all along on making American communities actually safer. It is why we supported Tim Scott's efforts to pass police reform that empowered law enforcement to do their jobs very well rather than federalizing and defunding the police.

It is the reason that Chairman Lindsey Graham and 46 other Republican Senators joined me today to demand publicly that the Department of Justice cease its efforts to restrict the use of common pistol-brace devices by lawful gun owners. We are talking about a plan that would turn millions of law-abiding Americans into criminals with a stroke of the pen. It would be an outrageous violation, and we expect DOJ to withdraw this attempted confiscation. Federal law enforcement should focus on the criminals committing violent crimes in American cities, not on law-abiding gun owners.

So Republicans will continue to stand for Americans' Second Amendment rights, as a matter of public safety and of basic freedoms.

Mr. President, on another matter, as the Senate headed into the June work period, the Democratic leader laid out an agenda that was transparently designed to fail, a string of far-left proposals that were not intended to become law or to make a difference in the lives of the American people. They were designed to fail and provide political theater for liberal activists.

And sure enough, the Senate did reject Democrats' brazen attempt to rewrite the rules of American elections, permanently, to their own advantage. We did reject their bid to exploit the cause of paycheck fairness to fill the pockets of the trial bar. And other radical proposals, like the one to impose crushing legal penalties on organizations that failed to conform to leftwing social preferences, didn't make it to the floor.

But, let's remember, this was never just about policy. If our colleagues actually believed that the substance of their plans were viable, they would have submitted more to scrutiny in committee. We know how things work in this body when a narrow majority actually wants to make a law. That is not what we have actually seen.

So Senate Democrats weren't out to pass any legislation this month. Their designed-to-fail agenda was supposed to indicate that the institution of the Senate itself was somehow broken. And on this count, our friends across the aisle failed spectacularly.

See, the Framers designed the upper Chamber, our Chamber, to be a proving ground, a place where good ideas would rise to meet high standards and bad ones would actually fall flat. So this month our Senate colleagues proved that the Senate is working quite well.

We turned away an underhanded attempt to open American employers to a new form of unlimited predatory liability and a hostile takeover of our election system. And the whole time, productive work continued on bipartisan proposals that are actually--actually--intended to become law. From infrastructure to agriculture, many of our colleagues have been hard at work demonstrating the right way to go about legislating. In the Commerce and EPW Committees, they approved smart legislation with wide bipartisan votes. This morning on the floor, we considered another bill from Senator Braun that more than half of our colleagues actually cosponsored.

So as we head back to our home States and take time to celebrate our Nation's founding, let's double down on efforts like these and leave designed-to-fail partisan antics in June.

Mr. President, now on one final matter, earlier today, a bipartisan group of infrastructure negotiators took the results of their efforts down to President Biden. It was an encouraging sign of progress after leading Democrats had gone out of their way to slow the process.

Remember, at the first sign of an agreement last night and then again this morning, both the Democratic leader and the Speaker of the House made it clear they would hold a bipartisan agreement hostage, demanding trillions of dollars in wasteful spending and job-killing tax increases in return for even considering it. The top two Democrats literally pulled the rug out from under their bipartisan negotiators with these unserious demands before they had even made it down to the White House.

So President Biden's show of support earlier today appeared to be a major breakthrough for earning Democrats' support, but, alas, that optimism was short-lived. Less than 2 hours after publicly commending our colleagues and actually endorsing the bipartisan agreement, the President took the extraordinary step of threatening to veto it. It was a tale of two press conferences--endorse the agreement in one breath and threaten to veto it in the next. Less than 2 hours. It almost makes your head spin. Less than 2 hours. As I said, it almost makes your head spin--an expression of bipartisanship and then an ultimatum on behalf of your leftwing base.

I have no doubt the President is under enormous pressure from some on the left to deliver on a laundry list of radical climate demands. The Democratic leader and the Speaker have already made clear they will do whatever it takes to keep their runaway spending train chugging along all summer, and more and more Members of their party are having to contort their positions to keep pace with the expectations of the Green New Deal fringe. But, really, caving completely in less than 2 hours? That is not the way to show you are serious about getting a bipartisan outcome.

So, look, I hope our colleagues can recover and get their good-faith efforts back on track.

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

Madam President, for the first time earlier this month, President Biden traveled to Europe. The primary purpose for this trip was to engage with some of America's closest friends and allies, but the agenda also included a one-on-one meeting with a staunch adversary, Vladimir Putin.

The President took office armed with a great deal of tough talk on Russia. He called his counterpart a ``killer'' and a ``KGB thug'' and warned he would ``pay [the] price'' for interference in U.S. elections. The world wondered whether this rhetoric would be underpinned by tough action. I certainly hoped it would.

Back in January, I made it clear that if the Biden administration was serious about ``imposing real costs on Moscow,'' it would ``find willing partners on Capitol Hill.'' But so far, there have been few encouraging signs for those of us who take Russia's threats very seriously.

Remember, after less than a week in office, President Biden agreed to Russian requests for a full 5-year extension of the New START Treaty, no strings attached. He gave it up for free, undermining our leverage to extract concessions in future negotiations.

Then, his administration rolled out a budget proposal that would cut investment in defense, in real terms--shortchanging the modernization we need to keep pace with both Russia and China.

And 2 weeks ago, the President left for Europe, having already given the Kremlin two other gifts: a high-profile summit that experts predicted Putin would use to help legitimize his regime at home and abroad and a waiver of sanctions on the Russian-owned company behind a lucrative gas pipeline project.

So I will repeat for President Biden the same warning I offered to the previous administration: The Kremlin is

not our friend, and it is high time our actions started reflecting that.

Back home, of course, the Biden administration has proven it knows perfectly well how to crack down on energy pipeline projects when it wants to. In fact, on the day he left for Europe, the firm behind the Keystone XL Pipeline project announced that the President's revocation of its construction permit would be fatal. That is the end of it. What a striking image. The President of the United States heads overseas and meets with a major adversary whom he has handed a major geopolitical win, and here at home, the last nail goes in the coffin of the job- killing crusade against reliable North American energy that he said on day one was a priority.

It is a tale of two pipelines: the decisive rejection of thousands of American jobs here at home and the empowerment of America's adversaries abroad. And it is only the latest sign that the Biden administration's strategic priorities are simply out of order.

Recall, this administration rushed to rejoin a climate agreement that has failed to hold major signatories to their commitments on reducing emissions, even as the United States recorded multiple years of reductions on our own.

This administration made it harder to cap our abundant and domestic energy, even at the risk of greater reliance on imports from countries with lower environmental standards. And, of course, they proposed to squander years of accumulating economic pressure on Iran in exchange for no meaningful concessions on its nuclear ambitions or regional aggression.

So when President Biden elected to pass on another opportunity to check the influence of a major adversary, we had heard this story before.

Here in Congress, opposition to the completion of the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline has been vigorous and bipartisan. Last year's Defense authorization, which earned 84 votes here in the Senate, expanded the scope of sanctions against critical entities involved in its construction. We are talking about a project that would give Putin a new artery of influence in Western Europe and rob Ukraine of critical leverage over the way Russian energy currently flows throughout the region.

But, apparently, the Biden administration's own opposition to the project was just rhetorical. When the chips were down, the President used a waiver to avoid having to place sanctions on the biggest company behind the project and its CEO--a Putin crony. According to reports, his decision even overruled the objections of senior diplomats and the concerns of his very own Secretary of State.

Oddly enough, the administration's decision to snuff out union jobs in the energy sector here at home didn't seem to prompt as vigorous an internal debate. In fact, President Biden's Executive action to kill the Keystone XL has been followed by a steady stream of radical proposals that illustrate just how deep his administration is in thrall to the environmental fringe.

Under the guise of infrastructure, they pitched trillions of dollars in Federal spending, aligned so closely with most liberal interests in Congress that the authors--the authors--of the Green New Deal boasted President Biden's agenda had their manifesto's DNA all over it: unprecedented spending on electric vehicles, huge increases in funds for transit projects that disproportionately benefit blue States on the coast, and plans to pick winners and losers in the market for affordable, reliable American energy.

So American workers know what a thriving energy sector looks like. It is exactly what Republicans spent 4 years working to encourage here at home.

As a matter of fact, if you hit pause on Washington Democrats' radical climate rhetoric, you will notice that smart energy policy isn't limited by political stripe. For years, the liberal government up in Canada has recognized pipelines as a safe and efficient way to connect people with affordable, reliable energy and grow what is already the largest sector of United States-Canada trade. So it was hardly surprising to hear one Canadian official greet President Biden's decision to sink the Keystone XL Pipeline as ``an insult''--an insult-- or to read that the Canadian firm behind the project is now pursuing legal action to recoup its investment.

So capitulation to our rivals, painful blows to our neighbors, legitimizing corrupt foreign leaders, and jamming hard-working Americans--whatever his motives, and despite his own rhetoric, the consequences of President Biden's actions are already clear.

It is not too late to impose real costs on Russia's pipeline windfall and provide serious, lethal support to Ukraine and other vulnerable States on the frontlines of Putin's aggression. It is not too late to get serious about the defense investment that bipartisan assessments say that we need--that we need--in order to compete with China and Russia. It is not too late to recommit to bipartisanship on infrastructure and on energy and show radical climate activists the door.

I hope the Biden administration changes courses sometime soon.