Floor Statements

Madam President, our country recently took a long- overdue step toward honoring the courageous Americans who served in the First World War. Earlier this month and more than a century after the formal end of the war, the United States raised the flag over the newly constructed National World War I Memorial. I am immensely proud of this tribute in our Nation's Capital to the 4.7 million Americans who sacrificed to preserve our way of life. Today, I would like give special thanks to a remarkable Kentuckian who became a driving force bringing this memorial into existence. My longtime friend Terry Hamby, from Cadiz, is the chair of the World War I Centennial Commission. He deserves our sincere gratitude for his leadership and perseverance in giving every American the opportunity to honor our heroes.

Through the generations, the Hamby family has proudly answered the Nation's call to military service. The noble tradition dates back to the Civil War and Terry's great-grandfather's service in the Union Army. His grandfather and father each courageously defended our country in a global war. Next, it was Terry's turn to wear the uniform as part of a Naval Air Wing in Vietnam. He later joined the U.S. Army Reserves until he retired following 26 years of military service. Terry's son continued the family legacy by joining the Navy in the Persian Gulf. Service and sacrifice are personal to this family.

Even when Terry retired from the military, he continued working to support the world's greatest fighting force. His hometown in Christian County, KY, neighbors Fort Campbell, one of our country's premier military installations. Terry founded a contracting firm to provide services to the Defense Department and the men and women stationed at the base nearby, including the famed ``Screaming Eagles'' of the 101st Airborne Division.

To know Terry is to instantly like him. I have had the privilege to call him a friend for many years, and I have always been impressed by his love of our country and respect for the men and women who protect it. So when I had the chance through my leadership position to appoint a member of the World War I Centennial Commission, Terry was the clear choice. His family's tradition of service, as well as his civilian contributions to the military, gave him an important perspective for this project. I also knew the commission would benefit from Terry's business mindset as it raised funds to advance its mission. His colleagues on the commission quickly recognized his talents too. They elected Terry to chair the organization and this monumental effort to honor America's heroes.

The memorial found a fitting home only blocks from the White House in a park named for General John J. Pershing, the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front of World War I. After an international competition with more than 300 entries, the commission selected a design titled ``The Weight of Sacrifice.'' Terry and his wife, Carolyn, recently took Elaine and me on a tour of the memorial. One of its most striking features is an approximately 60 foot long depiction of ``A Soldier's Journey.'' Dozens of overlapping figures tell the stories of warriors leaving home for the battlefield before their ultimate triumph. It is emotional piece that shows these soldiers' toil and sacrifice to build a lasting peace.

Even now that the memorial is officially open to the public, Terry hasn't stopped working to honor the World War I generation. He has turned his attention to gathering support for recognition of female telephone operators called the ``Hello Girls.'' Other than nurses, these were the first women in uniform who played a consequential role in our country's wartime effort. With Terry working for their cause, I am confident these selfless women will receive the national attention and gratitude they deserve.

So I encourage my Senate colleagues and all Americans to plan a visit to the World War I Memorial. It is a striking commemoration of our brave men and women in uniform, those who supported them, and the Americans who never came home. Terry Hamby has earned our praise for his unyielding drive to build this tribute. Without him, the United States would still be waiting for a proper memorial to these heroes. Kentucky and our country are proud of the mark he has left on our Nation's Capital.

Mr. President, as I noted here on the floor last week, the unaccompanied children packed into overflowing facilities are not the only tragic consequence of our failure to secure the border.

In addition to the U.S. mail, our southern border is a major source for the stream of lethal illegal drugs that continue to pour into our country. According to the CDC, more Americans died of overdoses last year than ever before.

This health crisis predated COVID-19 and will outlast it, and Customs and Border Protection data tell us a major cause has been a spike in the flow of fentanyl and its analogs produced by chemical companies in places like China. These drugs, which can be hundreds of thousands of times stronger than morphine, are rightly classified on the schedule of controlled substances. There are severe penalties for those caught trafficking them. It is the least we can do to protect American lives, families, and communities.

Clearly, on its own, this step hasn't been sufficient, but in a few weeks, even this obvious step is set to expire. Fentanyl analogs would cease being controlled substances in Federal law, making enforcement and deterrence even more difficult.

So Congress is faced with what should be a crystal-clear choice. The right thing to do, of course, is to permanently schedule these substances. Only in Washington could this become some kind of intense debate, but alas, some soft-on-crime corners of the political left have convinced some Democrats that this impending expiration is actually, actually a political opportunity. They want the Democrats to only reschedule these analogs for a short period of time, punting this deadline just a few months into the future, which makes you ask, Why?

Well, so that Democrats could come back to the table with an unrelated soft-on-crime bill--say, reducing prison sentences for drug dealers--and make that bad idea the price of admission for keeping these deadly poisons illegal.

So look, we need to be clear-eyed here. No amount of political spin or inside-the-beltway horse trading can muddy the debate. It is very clear: Congress should schedule these fentanyl analogs permanently-- permanently.

It is not complicated. Americans are dying. Communities are drowning. Chinese drug traffickers are getting rich off of our misery. Permanently scheduling these analogs is the very least, the very least Congress can do

Mr. President, now on another matter, this week the Senate is set to vote on President Biden's nominee to be Deputy Administrator of the EPA. This nominee actually needs no introduction for my fellow Kentuckians and our neighbors in coal country.

But for those less familiar, Janet McCabe was the chief author of the Clean Power Plan that President Obama unveiled back in 2015. Well, 6 years and thousands of coal industry jobs later, Ms. McCabe is set to join an administration whose job-killing policies would make the Obama EPA blush.

Of course, President Biden's War on Coal predates his administration. Back in 2008, as a candidate for the Vice Presidency, he insisted there would be ``no coal plants here in America. Build them, if they're going to build them, over there,'' obviously, meaning some other country.

Sadly, this was one area where the Obama administration, unfortunately, kept its promises. It was a terrible time to be a working American whose livelihood the Democrats happened to dislike. But our new President's leftward sprint is set to make these bad old days merely the warmup act.

Remember, rejoining the Paris climate agreement was a day one priority for this administration--this unenforceable deal whose own signatories largely ignored their commitments for the past 5 years, the deal that proved unable to keep China from significantly increasing its greenhouse gas emissions and proved unnecessary for the United States to decrease our own. We decreased our own.

But despite it all, the administration is rushing back in to signal virtue on the international stage. Here at home, they are rolling out policy after policy that would cost American families quite dearly.

The President signed away thousands of jobs by canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline. The authors of the Green New Deal boast about the radical social engineering they have seeded into the administration's legislative proposals. The infrastructure plan they have rolled out would pick winners and losers in automotive manufacturing and aim to purge the electrical grid of the most reliable and affordable forms of domestic power.

Of course, despite it all, carbon emissions don't respect national boundaries, so all the unilateral sacrifices this administration is eager to impose on blue-collar families won't make a dent in global emissions if our adversaries just keep on roaring right past us.

And now the Biden climate team is hoping to add a proven veteran from the War on Coal. The President campaigned suggesting he wouldn't owe the far left anything, but he is choosing to govern like he owes them everything.

I will oppose the McCabe nomination and would urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. President, now on one final matter, yesterday I discussed how the Biden administration's wishful thinking has set them up for foreign policy failure in Central Asia and the Middle East. The likely catastrophe in Afghanistan may well consume the administration and distract from the challenges proposed by competition with Russia and China.

The President's meager defense budget proposal suggests his administration isn't taking strategic competition very seriously to begin with. Russia and China have spent years--years--investing heavily in military modernization with a specific eye toward threatening U.S. forces. We spent the previous administration repairing the readiness of our forces and beginning to modernize after years on the back foot.

A bipartisan Commission concluded we would need sustained increases in defense funding to successfully counter the growing Russian and Chinese capabilities. Yet adjusting for inflation, President Biden's proposal would amount to a reduction in spending.

This administration has talked tough with both these rivals, and I have given credit where credit has been due, but when the time came to speak in the language that Putin and Xi understand best--money and power--this White House flinched.

Just last week, Russia reminded us of the threat it poses to Europe with a massive mobilization of forces on Ukraine's border. NATO allies are already struggling to meet their commitments on collective security.

So you have to ask, Would declining American spending make Putin more likely or less likely to think twice next time? And what about China? Will China be more likely or less likely to respect its neighbors' territorial waters if the United States stops contending for an edge in naval and long-range capabilities and lets ourselves fall behind?

The head of the U.S. Strategic Command reported last week that both Russia and China are modernizing their nuclear arsenals faster than the United States. He warned that if we fail to keep pace, we will be ``at risk of losing credibility in the eyes of our adversaries.''

Our nuclear triad has preserved the peace for decades, but crucial components are now decades older than the men and women we have operating them. If we want to maintain effective deterrence, we have to modernize.

Whether this administration likes it or not, we are locked in a race with adversaries who plan literally decades ahead. A lack of resolve will compound on itself and invite disaster. Surely that cannot be the legacy President Biden hopes to leave.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, over the weekend, the University of Kentucky's women's volleyball team made history. The Wildcats hoisted the program's first NCAA volleyball national championship trophy after defeating Texas on Saturday night. The falling confetti in Omaha closed out an incredible 24-win season. The Wildcats' unmatched athleticism and resilience fueled their paths to the title.

Yesterday afternoon at UK's Memorial Coliseum, enthusiastic fans welcomed home their champions, including Madison Lilley, who was named the tournament's ``Most Outstanding Player.''

So I would like to extend the Senate's congratulations to the players, Head Coach Craig Skinner, and the entire program. Kentucky and all of Big Blue Nation couldn't be prouder.

Madam President, on another matter, it has been nearly a month since the Biden administration rolled out its so-called infrastructure plan. It quickly became clear that their proposal mainly focused on everything but the things normal people call infrastructure.

The day this plan was introduced, the White House messaging document mentioned the words ``climate'' and ``union'' more often than ``roads'' and ``bridges.'' And the numbers back that up. Out of more than $2 trillion in proposed spending, less than 6 percent would go to roads and bridges. Even when you add in airports, ports, rail, and waterways, the total would still be exceeded by the amount going to electric vehicles alone. Even an Ivy League expert said using ``infrastructure'' to describe the totality of the bill ``does a bit of violence to the English language.''

So after a few days of trying to battle the English language, Democrats began to pivot. I understand this is no longer an ``infrastructure'' plan. Now it is a ``jobs'' plan. But that turns out to be just as dishonest. This proposal isn't any more focused on creating jobs than it is on fixing roads.

Even by the favorable metrics that the White House likes to use, this plan would cost Americans more than $800,000 for every new job that would exist 10 years down the road.

Serious, bipartisan legislation to rebuild American infrastructure could have a big impact at a fraction--a fraction--of the cost. This plan is bloated, unfocused. It is not a targeted recipe for better public works.

When America actually puts our mind to things, we can do them. Remember Operation Warp Speed? But this isn't like that. This is a sloppy liberal wish list that would spend a lot and get very little in return.

The far left has been bragging about all the social engineering and welfare spending that is stuffed into these proposals. They have boasted that the DNA of the Green New Deal is all over this administration's agenda.

Roads, bridges, and ports are bipartisan priorities. Water infrastructure and broadband are bipartisan priorities. That is why when the Senate tackles honest-to-goodness infrastructure in a smart way, we almost always have wide bipartisan margins.

Last week, our colleague from West Virginia, Senator Capito, got together with the other ranking members of committees that deal with actual infrastructure. These Republicans put forward a smart proposal that would meet pressing needs in actual infrastructure.

So now comes the critical moment. Now is the time we learn whether Democrats really want to jump start

actual public works projects or whether infrastructure was only ever intended as a wrapping paper for unrelated gifts to the far left.

Remember what happened when Republicans went to President Biden, offering a bipartisan compromise path on COVID relief. They were informed the Democrats were not interested in working together. So our country needs the administration to find a smarter approach

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

Madam President, yesterday, I mentioned that the DNA of the far-left Green New Deal is all over President Biden's spending bills. That wasn't just my opinion; it was the verdict of our colleague the junior Senator from Massachusetts.

Today, the President is scheduled to meet virtually with a group of the world's leaders on climate policy. His agenda, reportedly, is to encourage them to expand their countries' Paris climate agreement commitments to meet even more ambitious emissions goals. The problem, of course, as our colleagues, no doubt, remember, is that the hollow commitments these countries made back in 2015 carry no serious means for enforcement.

Under the last administration, even from outside this agreement, the U.S. economy proved more than capable of meaningfully reducing CO2 emissions. But many of the signatories within the supposed deal have largely ignored their stated commitments and continue to emit with reckless abandon.

As the Biden administration climate envoy, John Kerry, once lamented, ``[M]ost countries are . . . not getting the job done in living up to Paris.'' China, for example, has just kept emitting more and done it shamelessly. Their share of greenhouse gas emissions is now nearly double--double--that of the United States.

On a recent trip to Shanghai, Kerry tried to echo President Biden's encouragement on emissions reduction, but the kid-gloves approach didn't seem too successful. China's Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs said: ``I'm afraid this is not very realistic.'' A direct quote from the Chinese Government.

Democrats' zeal for imposing costly environmental agendas on our own country is not something our biggest foreign competitors seem to share. If that is true, our colleagues could inflict as many painful policies on American workers and American industries as they want and still not achieve a significant change in worldwide emissions or global temperatures.

The cost of these misplaced priorities is already hitting Americans hard. Remember, revoking permitting for the Keystone XL Pipeline and killing thousands of jobs was a day-one priority for this new administration. Now their so-called infrastructure plan would aim at completely decarbonizing our electric grid, which means hurting our coal and natural gas industries and putting good-paying American jobs into the shredder.

Borrowing money in order to kill jobs, now, there is a concept. Meanwhile, a mountain of redtape would keep public works projects smothered, literally smothered in endless environmental reviews, and their plan would thrust the west coast obsession with electric vehicles onto the entire Nation, onto rural school districts, onto industries, whether they like it or not.

Next week, President Biden is set to address a joint session of Congress for the first time. I expect we will hear more claims like the ones that have been debunked by fact checkers that all this Green New Deal DNA would actually create a lot of American jobs. Fact checkers are debunking that claim.

But even the most favorable analyses, even the administration's favorite projections, suggest that the President's plan would be terrible, just terrible at creating jobs. The rosiest numbers you could come up with suggest it might cost American taxpayers more than $800,000 for every job it might create--more than $800,000 per job.

And Ivy League economists have calculated that the plan's long-term effects on GDP, capital stocks, and hourly wages would all be negative. Let me say that again. These multiple trillions of dollars would buy us less GDP, less investment, and lower wages. It almost takes talent to craft something that completely disastrous.

So this is quite a one-two punch: toothless requests of our foreign adversaries and maximum pain for American citizens.

Madam President, now, on another matter, earlier this week, the Democratic leadership of the Judiciary Committee convened a hearing with the embarrassing title of ``Jim Crow 2021.'' It was the latest effort to use shocking rhetoric to distract from the specific details of actual voting laws in States like Georgia.

Amazingly, one of our Democratic colleagues testified before the committee that people actually shouldn't bother combing through the specifics of the law--don't bother reading the actual law. He suggested that ``narrow analysis only obscures the larger, unmistakable picture.'' Put another way, the facts deflate the narrative.

Misrepresentations of Georgia's election law have been debunked by fact checkers. The real, unmistakable picture is that the bill would expand early voting and make no changes to current election day hours-- none. Ironically, Democrats' own star witness at this week's hearing once sponsored and supported an earlier effort that would have cut early voting days in Georgia in half.

The facts puncture the left's big lie. Much of this overheated rhetoric seems like simple projection because there is, indeed, a piece of legislation that would create a stunning one-party takeover of voting laws and elections in our country, and that would be Washington Democrats' darling, H.R. 1. This is the bill that was first introduced back in 2019, with many Democrats still in denial that a Republican had won the White House in 2016.

It was marketed at that time as a wholesale transformation designed to salvage a broken democracy. But now that Democrats got an election outcome they liked better in 2020, what is essentially a xerox copy of the same overhaul is now being marketed, oh, as a modest step, just a modest step to maintain the status quo.

The first sales pitch was actually more honest. This 800-plus-page takeover would give Washington Democrats unprecedented control over 50 States' election laws, over a newly--listen to this--a newly partisan Federal Election Commission, over policing America's political speech. That is what it would do.

Now, Democrats know that the same Senate rules they happily used for the last 6 years will not make it easy to launch this awful proposal, so there is another important piece in their plan. They are aiming the same wild rhetoric at the Senate's own rules--at our rules here in the Senate.

The legislative filibuster which senior Democrats have loudly and proudly defended in the past, which Democrats used repeatedly in recent years, all of a sudden has become an offensive and outdated relic overnight. Isn't it amazing how this new awakening only happened when Democrats felt they had a chance to retake the majority.

Now, the American people can see right through this. Nobody is fooled. Nobody is fooled by their desperation to rewrite 50 States' election laws or the campaign to pack the Supreme Court or the attempt to pack the Senate with new blue States, rewriting the rules of American politics to exclusively benefit one side: their side. That was the Democrats' false charge in Georgia, but it is exactly what they are trying to do in this Capitol on a national scale.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order be executed with respect to the reporting of the three amendments under the consent agreement.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, early on, a major theme of the Biden administration has been false advertising. We have the so-called COVID relief bill that broke a long bipartisan streak on pandemic response and only spent 1 percent of the money on vaccinations.

We have the reintroduction of a sprawling election takeover bill that Democrats wrote years ago under the guise that it is a commonsense voting rights bill.

We have a President who ran on protecting norms flirting with proposals to hot-wire the Senate rules and pack the Supreme Court. And then we have the latest example, where even one Ivy League expert says Democrats' spin ``does a bit of violence to the English language.'' They have assembled a patchwork of leftwing social engineering programs and want to label it ``infrastructure.''

Now, as I pointed out before, the first notable thing about the Bide administration's plan is what it doesn't focus on. Less than 6 percent of the alleged infrastructure bill would invest in roads and bridges. The total amount of funding it would direct to roads, bridges, ports, waterways, and airports combined--all together--adds up to less than what it would spend just on electric cars.

The far left sees a strong family resemblance between these proposals and their socialist Green New Deal. Yesterday, the House and Senate authors of that manifesto reintroduced it, while noting and boasting that the DNA of the Green New Deal is all over President Biden's legislative proposals. No wonder that White House's document rolling out the President's bill mentioned the words ``climate'' and ``union'' more often than ``roads'' and ``bridges.''

It would pick winners and losers in automotive manufacturing. It would force-feed the electrical grid some of the least reliable forms of energy. It would hector school cafeterias to stop using paper plates and force new standards and mandates on family homes.

And the relative pittance this proposal does allocate to actual infrastructure would have to creep through a tangled environmental review process. Without serious permitting reform, it won't build back better; it will build back never.

But at least some of these bad ideas have a tangential relationship to the actual concept of infrastructure, not so for some other statements we have heard from actual Democrats in recent days:

Climate action is infrastructure.

Police accountability is infrastructure.

Caregiving is infrastructure.

Supreme Court expansion is infrastructure.

Now, unsurprisingly, this liberal omnibus is not exactly an efficient engine for driving our economy. The White House's inflated claims of expected job creation have been fact-checked and received Pinocchios from the Washington Post.

Even under the rosiest scholarly assumptions--the rosiest assumptions--the White House's own favored estimates, taxpayers would pay more than $800,000 for each job the plan might create. Now, I know a lot of small businesses that could create more than one job if we handed them $800,000.

And then there are the tax hikes. This proposal is a Trojan horse to roll back the historic 2017 tax reform plan that helped spur big-time wage growth and the best job market in a generation before COVID-19. So the administration's proposal bears little resemblance to the bipartisan infrastructure bill Americans need and deserve. It just reads like customer service for the radical fringe.

Mr. President, now on another matter, over the past few months, Senate Republicans have made clear we believe a President is entitled to choose qualified, mainstream nominees to staff the executive branch and receive prompt and fair treatment from the Senate. I would say the 50 Senate Republicans have treated President Biden's nominees considerably more fairly than Senate Democrats treated the last President's, but the nominee we are considering this week is way outside the mainstream.

I will strongly oppose confirming Vanita Gupta to serve as Associate Attorney General, and I would urge colleagues to do the same. Ms. Gupta has spent her career, in large part, as an activist for leftwing causes. Her work for high-profile liberal interest groups and the Obama Justice Department have left a record of astoundingly radical positions. Those far-left positions were loud and proud until this prospect of promotion seemed to change the nominee's tune.

Previously, this nominee stated that ``states should decriminalize simple possession of all drugs.'' She said ``states should decriminalize simple possession of all drugs.'' Ah, but now Ms. Gupta claims her position has ``evolved.''

At her confirmation hearing, she refused to say she would accept any--any--limitation on abortions, up to and including partial-birth. That puts her at odds with nearly 70 percent of Americans across the political spectrum.

Recently, Ms. Gupta has insisted she can be trusted to oppose efforts to defund law enforcement, but she told the Judiciary Committee just last year that State and local leaders should ``heed calls'' from groups demanding that they decrease--decrease--police budgets.

This nomination has revealed a lengthy trail of radical claims and hasty backtracks, but there are also questions of temperament. The nominee has repeatedly amplified leftwing fearmongering toward judicial nominees and sitting Federal judges. She has levied ad hominem attacks on Members of this body. And during the confirmation process, she employed the loosest possible interpretation of her oath to deliver honest testimony, even drawing the ire of the liberal Washington Post for transparent flip-flops and misleading Senators about her own public statements.

This nominee contrasts sharply--sharply--with the resume and reputation of Attorney General Garland, whom I voted to confirm. The White House needs to make a better choice for this key post. The Senate should create that opportunity by voting no today.

Mr. President, my friend Joe Grossman has approached his work for the last 35 years with a head for numbers and a heart for people. As an accountant turned CEO of the largest healthcare organization in Southeastern Kentucky, Joe's experienced leadership has helped improve the quality of life for hundreds of thousands. This summer, Joe will close his chapter leading Appalachian Regional Healthcare, ARH, and a career of excellence and accomplishment. As he begins a well-deserved retirement, I would like to share my congratulations and gratitude for his many contributions to the Bluegrass.

For nearly two decades, Joe has been entrusted with key financial and operational positions at ARH. At each step, he has helped the system expand and thrive. When the position opened, Joe was the obvious choice to take over as president and CEO. He pushed ARH to continue growing in service to its patients, employees, and communities.

Today, the system operates 13 hospitals in Kentucky and West Virginia as well as 80-plus clinic locations. With a team of more than 6,000 dedicated professionals, ARH serves nearly 400,000 individuals across the region. The system's extensive reach makes a transformative impact on rural Kentucky communities every day and helps make the area a destination for top-tier medical talent. Joe's leadership even contributed to a national magazine naming ARH one of the Top 10 Employers in Kentucky.

Overseeing an organization of ARH's size and importance would be a remarkable feat in any year, but Joe exceeded expectations once again during the pandemic. Last month, I visited the ARH facility in Hazard to speak with Joe and his team about the rollout of the multiple safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines. At that time, three

of the five counties in Kentucky with the top vaccination rates were in ARH's service area. I was proud to congratulate Joe and his team of healthcare heroes who were getting shots in arms to beat this virus.

Joe's contributions to Kentucky extend beyond the hospital doors. He has gone to great lengths to personally partner with the communities he serves. His work with organizations like One East KY, the Hazard-Perry County Economic Development Alliance, and One Harlan County has helped encourage new growth and opportunity. Joe developed a vision for a healthy and successful Kentucky, and he worked tirelessly over the years to bring it closer to reality.

So, we are all going to miss working with Joe. But now he gets to spend more time on his most important roles, husband to Leigh, father, and grandfather. Along with Joe's colleagues and friends, I extend my best wishes for a fulfilling retirement. On behalf of the Senate, I would like to congratulate Joe on all of his success and thank him for his leadership in Kentucky.