Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to speak about the legislation we are going to be voting on later today, including an amendment that I have, and it has to do with the Crime Victims Fund. And I just want to explain and remind my colleagues just how important the Crime Victims Fund is.

This is a very, very major funding source for people who do some of the most important work in America. I know. I have met these folks. I have toured their facilities all across Pennsylvania. I am referring to the advocates for victims of crimes. And these advocates, my goodness, the heinous and horrendous crimes that they guide people's recovery from--I am at a loss for words to describe what these folks do often for children, often for very vulnerable people who are victims of these heinous crimes.

Well, thank God there are people who dedicate their lives, professionals who dedicate their lives to helping people with their recovery, to helping people who are victims to cope with what can be horrific reliving of the experience when they have to recount it to law enforcement or go through physical exams and on and on. It is very, very difficult work, and it is very, very important to help completely innocent victims get through what is undoubtedly the worst experience in their lifetime.

So the Crime Victims Fund provides resources for the people who help the victims of crime and for victims themselves. It is important to point out that the fund is funded entirely by the proceeds from criminal penalties. There is no taxpayer money in this fund. There never has been. It is entirely from criminal penalties.

And there is a statute that created this account in the Federal Government that requires the money that goes into it, these criminal penalties, to go to the victims and their advocates. But it doesn't say when the money has to go, and so that gave rise to a serious problem that developed.

For years, it turns out that money that was put into this fund--money from criminal penalties that went into the fund--didn't go to victims, didn't go to the advocates for victims. It was intentionally withheld because we had these crazy budget rules that created an incentive to withhold it.

The way the budget rule worked is, if there was money in the fund that did not go to the victims of crime and their advocates, as it is supposed to, under the budget rules, you could pretend that that was a savings, and it would therefore allow you to spend more money in other areas. It was effectively a way to circumvent spending caps, and that is how it was used.

Year in and year out, money was systematically withheld from victims of

crime and their advocates, and it was a big problem. I will give you a sense of scale. In 2014, for instance, only $745 million was obligated, despite a balance of $9 billion. There was over $8 billion in funding that was supposed to go to crime victims and their advocates intentionally withheld. In 2013, only $730 million was obligated out of a little over an $8 billion balance. There was over $7 billion intentionally withheld.

From 2001 to 2014, the value of the funds--the money going in-- increased by almost 600 percent. Funding for victims of crime and their advocates increased by 39 percent.

This was wrong. It was an abuse. It was based on an arcane and ridiculous budget rule, and it had a very, very deleterious effect. So when I discovered this, I began fighting this aggressively. It was brought to my attention by the people who serve victims of crime.

These groups came to me and asked me to help them in the struggle for them to get the resources they needed to meet the unmet needs of victims of crime all over my State and, I am sure, all over the country.

For instance, in 2015, the National Children's Alliance sent me a letter, and they said:

The [Crime Victims Fund] caps have been set too low;

deposits--

Meaning the criminal penalties going into the fund--

have skyrocketed while disbursements have remained almost

flat. . . . We look forward to further working with you to

make all of the statutory changes needed to update the VOCA

Crime Victims Fund and in turn better meet the needs of all

victims and survivors of crime.

In 2016, the Court Appointed Special Advocates wrote:

Since 2000, when Congress began capping disbursement from

the Crime Victims Fund to prevent fluctuations in deposits,

funding has not kept pace with the needs of victims,

including the growing population of child victims in America.

In 2015, I got a letter from the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and they said:

The most frustrating thing for someone who has done policy

work is that there is money available for these unmet needs.

That is all true. There was money available. It was because money was deposited into the fund. It was just being systematically withheld from the victims of crime and their advocates.

But I got the message, and I think these folks were exactly right. So in response to these groups, I began working closely with appropriators on both sides of the aisle to address this problem and worked extensively with Senator Shelby and his staff. The fact is, since about 2015, appropriators, the folks who control the effective allocation of this, have voluntarily obligated appropriate levels of disbursements since 2015, and the chart illustrates this very clearly.

Everything to the left of the green line is prior to 2015. You can see these very, very low levels--less than $1 billion every year-- despite huge amounts of money being poured in; and then afterwards, starting in 2015, large, large increases in disbursements from the fund. Very, very important.

This has changed the circumstances for advocates of crime. They have grown enormously. I know this. In Pennsylvania, they have been able to hire more counselors. They have been able to open more facilities to treat and to help these victims of crime.

This is tremendous progress, but there is no guarantee that it is going to continue. So I have sought to make this simple principle: The idea that the money flowing into the fund should also flow out of the fund to the victims. I have tried to make this a permanent arrangement.

Now, let me be very clear. I am not trying to change budget rules. I am not trying to reopen some general budget. This is one egregious example of a category of budget flaws, and I am not trying to change it. I would love to change that. I should qualify that. I am trying to change it in other venues, but not here, not today. Today, all I am trying to do is something very, very narrow and very specific, and that is to make sure that victims of crimes and their advocates get the money they are supposed to get. It is really and truly as simple as that.

I have introduced legislation to do just this, repeatedly--you know, legislation that would simply require that we appropriate the appropriate dollar amounts each year. It was reported favorably out of the Senate Budget Committee in 2015. It was unanimously adopted in the congressional Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019.

So there is broad bipartisan support for this idea. But we have never been able to get it across the finish line. Again, I am not trying to change all the budget rules, just this one fund. I just want to make sure that crime victims get the money that the statute says they are supposed to get.

The Senator from Illinois, I believe, is the Senator who has introduced legislation that would create a new category of resources for the Crime Victims Fund, and that is specifically to add deferred and nondeferred prosecution agreement payments to the Crime Victims Fund. So it wouldn't be just criminal judgments. It would also be these prosecution agreements.

I fully support that money going into the Crime Victims Fund. It is a new, important source of revenue that can help to serve these victims of crime. There are no tax dollars involved. I support this goal. I support this legislation. I just want to make sure that we don't go back to these days, that weren't so terribly long ago, when money going into the fund stayed in the fund because it served people's purposes.

And that is a problem I have with the underlying legislation in its current form. That legislation has no requirement whatsoever that any increase in funding will actually be matched by an increase in outflows for victims and their advocates.

You see, making the fund bigger doesn't by itself guarantee that there will be any more money for victims of crime or their advocates. Ensuring that money goes into the fund is just not enough. We saw this. We need to ensure that more money is actually leaving the fund and going to victims, not remaining unspent so as to offset some other category of spending, who knows what.

I was appreciative back in 2018 for the endorsement from the National Organization for Victim Assistance, who wrote:

A permanent solution is needed. . . . There is no mechanism

to stop Congress from diverting money from victims in the

future, should it choose to do so.

Well, my amendment solves this problem. It is very simple. It would just require a reasonable minimum level for victims and advocates based on the amounts that have been deposited into the Crime Victims Fund from both of the sources.

As I say, Congress has been adhering to this voluntarily since 2016. What my amendment would do is it would simply create a point of order. If legislation came to the floor that violated this principle and that went back to these days of withholding--intentionally withholding-- money that should be going to victims of crime, then that legislation would be subject to a point of order. Now, 60 Senators could override that point of order, but at least it would create the presumption and an incentive for appropriation legislation to actually provide the funding to victims and their advocates that it is supposed to.

I should also be clear. The policy only creates a spending floor. It would be at the discretion of the appropriators first and Congress as a whole later to decide if they wanted to disburse more money than what the floor contemplates, but the floor would at least prevent the worst of these abuses.

So you can imagine my surprise when some of the folks who are big advocates for putting more money into the fund are adamantly opposed to my language that would actually require that money to also come out of the fund and go to the intended beneficiaries.

You have to ask yourself, Why would someone oppose such a requirement? It is hard not to think that maybe one of the reasons that some people are adamant that they not be required to actually disburse this money is maybe they are thinking about going back to what used to happen routinely around here.

Remember, if the money is withheld from victims, if we go back to when the money didn't make it out the door to victims, why, that amount that is withheld can be spent on other things, and that is a powerful incentive for a

lot of folks around here. You can see how it was done.

Now, I have heard people say, some of my opponents say: Don't worry. We have no intention of diverting any of this money. Just trust us, they say.

If they have no intention of diverting the money, then why are they so adamant that they not be required to disburse it to its intended beneficiaries?

Well, we don't really have to speculate anymore because the President of the United States, President Biden, has been very clear about his intentions. In his budget, he has explicitly called for withholding this money from victims. It is right here in black and white. You don't have to be creative here. You don't have to be conspiratorial. The President has declared to the world in a published budget that he wants to withhold the money from crime victims. In fact, he laid it out there. It is in table S-8 of his budget.

I think this is a well-founded concern that we might go back to that practice. And in any case, if nobody wants to go back to that practice, then why wouldn't they agree to a requirement that this money actually be disbursed?

Now, over the course of debating this, much has been made of a letter that has been signed by some victims' organizations. Let's look at this for what it is. Organizations that depend overwhelmingly on congressional appropriations are asked to sign a letter by the very people who control whether or not they get funding, and the letter is advocating against codifying the stable increased funding that would benefit those folks.

I think we know what is going on there. I want to thank the many groups that are supporting this amendment: the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Heritage Action, FreedomWorks, the R Street Institute, Taxpayer Protection Alliance, Americans for Prosperity, and others.

But, folks, this isn't complicated and it isn't about overhauling budget rules and it isn't about anything that is terribly complicated or arcane. It is about ensuring that crime victims and their advocates get the money they are supposed to get.

I urge my colleagues to stand with me and support this amendment and make sure that the neediest and some of the most vulnerable among us-- victims of crime--receive the increased funding they deserve.

Mr. President, my understanding is that I would have 1 minute to close out debate on this; is that correct?

Could I claim that minute now?

Thank you very much.

Listen, it is very clear that we have very broad agreements on a provision in this legislation that will dramatically increase the money that goes into the fund. What my colleagues on the other side of the aisle object to is a requirement that the money actually go out of the fund to the victims and their advocates.

And we know that, systemically, money was withheld from this fund for years, and we know that President Biden has stipulated in his current budget that it must happen again.

I am simply saying, if we all agree that this nontaxpayer money coming from criminal penalties and nondeferred agreements, if it is supposed to go into this account, the Crime Victims Fund, which I support, it should actually have to go to the victims of crime and their advocates.

If my amendment passes, this bill could be passed by the House later that same day or the next day. It could be on the President's desk before the end of the week, easily. If it were to pass and be signed into law, then we would be assured that appropriation bills would be brought to the floor with the proper allocation done. So I urge the support of my amendment, and then the adoption of the underlying bill.

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

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I have good news for my colleagues from Illinois and Rhode Island, and that is that the modification that I am suggesting to the unanimous consent request proffered by the Senator from Illinois is not complicated. It has nothing to do with budget rules, and, in fact, it is the simplest thing in the world.

Now, the Senator from Illinois wants to put more money and money from a new source into the Crime Victims Fund. I completely agree. I fully support it. I have liked this idea from the first time I heard of it, and I supported it.

But there is something that is important to note here. The Crime Victims Fund is a Federal Government account, and the Senator is very determined that more money go into that account.

So what do we disagree on? Well, it is very simple. The Senator from Illinois seems to be equally determined that there can be no requirement that the money actually come out of that account and go to crime victims and their advocates. That is the only thing that I want to do differently. It is to insist that money going into that account actually comes out and goes to the victims of crime and their advocates.

Now, if my concern that this money is not going to end up going where it is advertised to go is not valid, then, I don't know why my colleagues wouldn't agree to my very narrow amendment which, by the way, doesn't have a thing to do with budget rules. I don't attempt to change budget rules in this effort. We should change them, but this isn't where I am trying to do it. What I am simply trying to do is to make sure that the money that goes into the account--the increase, too--actually goes to where it is supposed to go, which is to the victims of crimes and their advocates.

So you have to ask yourself: Why would somebody oppose the proposal that this money actually be required to go to victims and their advocates? Why would somebody oppose that?

Maybe it is because there is some other place that some of this money is meant to go, and that is at the heart of this. See, under the ridiculous rules we operate under, if the money doesn't end up going to crime victims and their advocates, then, it frees up additional money to be spent on whatever anybody else wants to spend it on. The money that is withheld from the people who are supposed to get it, crime victims and their advocates, creates the opportunity to spend more on who knows what.

Now, would anyone actually do this or is this just a theoretical construct that I have made up? Well, let's take a look at the recent history. The fact is, since 2000, in the year 2000, over $80 billion that could have and should have gone to crime victims and their advocates was intentionally withheld so that more money could be spent in other categories.

What this chart shows is the amount of money year in and year out. It starts in 2000. You see these low bars. Well under a billion dollars was actually allocated to crime victims.

There was much more money going into those accounts--much more money--because, you see, how much going into the account isn't the only thing that matters. What is actually, ultimately, much more important is how much comes out of the account and goes to the crime victims. And only when I and some of my colleagues started raising hell about this-- the dishonesty, the deception, the fact that the crime victims and their advocates weren't getting nearly what they were supposed to be getting--only then--this is the red line that represents when we started doing this--that is when the allocations started to change.

This graph represents the huge surge in funds that we have been sending to crime victims and their advocates in recent years because some of us were no longer willing to tolerate this and we were raising Cain about what had been going on.

Now, what I am simply trying to do is to prevent us from going back to what was routine around here, what was standard operating procedure, which was to deceive people, pretend that money was going to end up going to the Crime Victims Fund when everybody knew it wasn't.

Now, why would I be concerned that we might be going back in that direction? Well, I will tell you why. President Biden has been very instructive about this. In his budget that he released just months ago, he actually specifies that in his budget he wants money to be diverted from the crime victims fund, which is mentioned by name, and one other fund, so that more money can be spent on other purposes.

This is my concern. This isn't something that has been made up. This is President Biden in his budget asking us to go right back to what we used to do.

So, then, when I come down here and I suggest one modification to the very constructive idea that we add this settlement money to the fund, and the modification is that the money actually has to go to crime victims and their advocates, that is objected to. People are insistent that we not have a requirement that this money actually be allocated.

So someone might think that that is a pretty strong body of evidence that suggests that maybe all of this money isn't going to end up where it is supposed to go.

Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator modify his request to include my amendment, which is at the desk; that it be considered and agreed to; and that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Reserving the right to object, this is an amazing argument that the Senator from Illinois is making. He is saying: Don't worry. He would never do what the Senator from Pennsylvania is suggesting might happen and which, by the way, always used to happen, and, which, by the way, the President is asking us to do. We would never do it. Oh, but I will object to a requirement that the money actually go where we say it is going to go.

I think that tells us all we need to know. So I object.

Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, let me say I think I agree with 98, 99 percent of what I just heard from my colleagues.

In the 11 years I have been in the Senate, I have lost track of how many rape crisis centers and how many child advocacy centers I have visited. They have expanded the number, fortunately, because they have gotten additional resources from Congress. They do some of the most important work I know of--incredibly painful work--in helping a child through an appalling, traumatic experience when there is a law enforcement need to get information that can further traumatize a child. I mean, the work these folks do is amazing, it is essential, and the Senator from Alaska is exactly right in that there is a real need here.

The good news is that there is a real, very clear, and easy path forward here. The legislation that the Senator from Illinois is proposing creates a new source of money for the Crime Victims Fund. It is a new category, it is substantial, and it is going to be new resources for the advocates for crime victims to better be able to continue to do their very, very important work, and I fully support that.

So where do we disagree? Here is where we disagree: The legislation does require a lot of money--new money--to go into the Crime Victims Fund. The Senator from Illinois is exactly correct in that it is not taxpayer money; it is money from the settlements for criminal and civil penalties. I fully support that. What their legislation doesn't do, however, is require a dime of that money to actually get to the advocates of crime. It is very nice to put a lot of money into an account that has a name on it that is the Crime Victims Fund. That is very nice, and I support that, but I would like to take one more step and make sure the money actually gets to the victims of crime and their advocates.

Now, there is a little bit of budgetary information that explains why, if we don't adopt my approach here, this money will not get to the victims of crime and their advocates. You see, the appropriations process, the spending process around here, always operates under some limit. It could be a statutory limit or a limit passed by a budget resolution, but there is a limit. There is no limit as to how much people want to spend around here, but there is a limit as to how much they actually can.

We have a very perverse budgetary rule, and that rule says that, in any given year, if there is money in this Crime Victims Fund--mind you, not tax dollars, but if there is money in it--and Congress doesn't give it to the crime victims as it is supposed to, you can pretend that it is a savings, and it allows you to spend more than you would otherwise be able to spend on any number of other things, on anything--tanks, buildings, roads, whatever. That is the dynamic. That is what happens here. It actually creates an incentive, however perverse this is, for Congress not to allocate this money to the victims of crime and to their advocates. By not doing so, they get to claim a savings which isn't real--but that is the way the budget rules work--and spend that money elsewhere.

Now, you might say: Well, who would do a thing like that? Oh. Ha. Well, it used to happen all the time. In 2014, there was $9 billion available in the Crime Victims Fund, but in order to spend more money elsewhere, less than $1 billion was actually allocated to victims of crime and their advocates, so they got $8 billion of difference that they could spend on whatever else they wanted, and they did. In 2013, it was the same story.

This was going on routinely until 2015 when I and some of my colleagues said: Wait a minute. This isn't right. This money is supposed to be going to crime victims, and it is not.

That is the first and most objectionable problem. It is also dishonest because there is no savings of taxpayer money here; this is just not giving crime victims the money from criminals that they are supposed to get. It is outrageous

For a while, we got some cooperation, and they did less of this. In other words, more of the money that was supposed to go to crime victims for a while did, in fact, go there. But I am very concerned--and I have been concerned since 2015--that, at any point in time, we will go back to this process. So I introduced legislation called the Fairness for Crime Victims Act. I introduced it in 2015. What it does is it just requires that the money going into the fund actually go to the victims of crime and their advocates, and there are various mechanisms for doing it. The bill was reported out of the Senate Budget Committee in 2015, and it was unanimously adopted by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019.

I have been working as closely as I can with the appropriators to address this so that we will actually send to crime victims the money that is supposed to go to them. Since 2000, over $82 billion of money has not been allocated to crime victims, as it should have been, precisely because of this mechanism.

Some might say: Well, hasn't it gotten better? Yes. The answer is that it has. But how do I know it is going to get worse? How do I know we are going to go right back to this? I will tell you

how I know. All I have to do is read the President's budget.

President Biden's budget, if you look at table S-8, explicitly calls for withholding money from victims of crime and advocates for those victims from the Crime Victims Fund and also the Children's Health Insurance Program so as to spend more money in other areas. It is right here: ``changes in mandatory program offsets: $26 billion.'' It says the limitation enacted will come from the Crime Victims Fund program and cancelations in the Children's Health Insurance Program. This is not like wild speculation; this is President Biden's budget, saying: Oh, here is what I want to spend, and part of how I will spend it--part of how we will get there--is by withholding money that should be going to victims of crime.

So I am fully in support of this new allocation of money into the account, but money in the account doesn't solve the problem. We need one more step, that is all--the step that says we are actually going to send it to victims of crime instead of whatever spending people in this town decide they prefer. That is what this is about. That is what the difference is.

We have developed a process. We have worked with people on both sides of the aisle, and we have passed legislation in committee to do it. We want to simply require the money that is meant for victims of crime and their advocates to get to them, and we are being told it won't all get to them under the status quo.

There is a simple solution here. There is a simple path forward. I think there is a genuine, sincere agreement, among everybody who has spoken, about the need for this service. All I am asking is that we actually have a mechanism to get them the money rather than to do what we all know is coming: Pretend they are going to get all of this money when, in fact, it is going to be diverted to other purposes.

Therefore, I ask that the Senator modify his request to include my amendment, which is at the desk; that it be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, I will just say briefly that, clearly and certainly, this is not a scorekeeping debate, and this is not about budgets. This is about whether victims of crime and their advocates will actually get the money that we say they are going to get. It is not about what could be; it is about what has been. This money was routinely raided for other purposes until we brought a stop to it recently, and it is about what will be because the Biden administration is telling us it intends to do this.

In order to ensure that crime victims and their advocates actually get the money that we say they are going to get, I object.

Madam President, I rise in opposition to S.J. Res. 15.

This is a misguided resolution. It would overturn an important banking

resolution, the OCC's true lender rule. That is a rule that helps give consumers more access to credit.

Overturning the true lender rule is a bad idea. It would reduce access to credit for consumers, especially those who have the most difficulty obtaining credit. It would stifle innovation, and it would inhibit the functioning of our markets, our Nation's banking and credit markets.

Let me explain why preserving this rule is so important. In the last decade, we have seen financial technology companies, often referred to as fintechs, use technology to revolutionize financial services.

Community and midsized banks that often lack the resources to develop banking technology in-house are partnering with these fintechs to compete more effectively and to offer their customers terrific services at ever-better prices. That is what these partnerships do. They help consumers because they increase competition in lending markets, they lower the price of financial products, they improve credit options, and they expand consumer choice.

Unfortunately, a patchwork of different legal tests in different courts had made it difficult to predict whether the bank or the fintech partner, when they have teamed up, would be considered legally responsible for a given loan they would make together. So last year, the OCC issued its true lender rule to provide the needed regulatory clarity. The rule--a simple version of this is, it simply holds that a national bank will be responsible for a loan if it is named in the loan agreement or if it funds the loan, which banks often do when they team up with fintechs in these ways.

Some of our Democratic colleagues have claimed that the rule, the true lender rule, allows unaccountable ``rent-a-charter'' arrangements, as they call them, but in fact, the true lender rule prevents the rent- a-charter scheme, and it does so because it ensures that the national banks are accountable for the loans they issue through these lending partnerships, and it requires the OCC to supervise those loans for compliance with consumer protection and anti-discrimination laws.

Other colleagues have expressed concerns that the rule will ``trap'' consumers in arrangements with high interest rates and a principal balance that can never be paid back, but actually that is not possible with these OCC-chartered banks, which are the only ones affected by this rule. That is because a bank is required under the OCC resolution to assess a borrower's ability to repay before making the loan. If a bank is systemically approving loans by this fintech partnership to consumers who can't repay the debt, they will face serious consequences from their regulator, and that is a lot more protection than what would otherwise exist for consumers.

Some of my Democratic colleagues claim that the true lender law fundamentally changes existing laws around interest rates. In fact, it preserves existing law. For over four decades, Federal law has allowed banks to essentially export the State law governing interest rates from the home State where the bank is based. So this allows the bank to comply with 1 law of the bank's home State rather than have to try to comply with 50 different laws of the 50 States in which its customers may reside. Having this single standard allows for a competitive national credit market.

The true lender rule simply allows fintechs that partner with banks to get the same treatment. It is really not very different from what happens today with credit cards. And may I remind everyone, credit cards can often have high interest rates.

So if you believe that bank-fintech providers shouldn't be able to ``export'' interest rates from the State in which the bank is headquartered, then I suppose you ought to be in favor of eliminating credit cards for all Americans.

Well, that would be a terrible policy. It would be a bad policy to get rid of the true lender rule as well. Now, I have heard the argument that the true lender rule somehow harms low-income consumers. In fact, the true lender rule benefits low-income consumers most by preserving their access to well-regulated, bank-issued credit.

Absent the rule, uncertainty about which partner, whether it is the bank or the fintech company, is the true lender means there would be uncertainty about what laws to apply to the transaction and whether or not the loan would be considered valid. Well, without the rule, without that certainty, the secondary market for these loans would be disrupted, and, again, that disproportionately harms lower income borrowers.

Why is that? Well, it is because banks frequently sell these loans after they are made so that they free up the capital to make the next loan. Banks can issue far fewer loans if they can't reliably sell the ones that they have into the secondary market. Uncertainty, as we would have in the absence of the true lender rule, diminishes their ability to sell into the secondary market, and that means fewer loans are going to get booked altogether. Those that are are going to be more expensive, and they will be limited to people of higher credit ratings.

And this isn't just my opinion. Forty-seven leading financial economists from Harvard, Stanford, and other leading universities made exactly these points in an amicus brief supporting the existing rule.

And we have empirical proof. Studies show that after a 2015 court ruling created uncertainty about the ability to export interest rates to New York, it became significantly harder for higher risk borrowers to get loans in New York.

This is not surprising. This is exactly what you would expect. This is what will happen nationally if this CRA is successful in repealing the true lender rule.

Now, some of my colleagues want to overturn the true lender rule because doing so would subject more loans to State interest rate caps, they say. But, in fact, the more likely effect is that the loans will just never get made in the first place, and that is terrible for the low-income consumer for whom that loan is the best available option.

The true lender rule preserves access to well-regulated, bank-offered credit.

At end of the day, we need to remember, if the CRA is successful and the true lender rule is repealed, demand for credit won't disappear. The need for credit doesn't go away because we get rid of a good rule. You simply make it harder for people who need loans to get them, and you will drive consumers to unregulated alternatives.

Voting in favor of the CRA, which would kill this rule, is also a direct assault on fintech. It will make it harder for Congress to legislate in this area. It will make it harder for regulators to issue guidance and rules to promote the healthy competition that fintechs represent. Courts will see this as Congress buying into this completely false notion that fintechs are somehow inherently ``predatory''--they are not--and it will scare away State legislators from promoting fintech.

If you believe financial innovation and competition are good things for consumers, as I do, then you should oppose this CRA.

For all these reasons, I urge my colleagues to join me in voting against S.J. Res. 15.

I yield the floor.

Continuing the reading of a letter from a Birmingham jail.

Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up

with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at

Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched

the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across

the pages of history, we were here. For more than two

centuries, our forebears labored in this country without

wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their

masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful

humiliation--and yet out of a bottomless vitality they

continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible

cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now

face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the

sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are

embodied in our echoing demands. Before closing I feel

impelled to mention one other point in your statement that

has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the

Birmingham police force for keeping ``order'' and

``preventing violence.'' I doubt that you would have so

warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs

sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt

that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were

to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here

in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse

old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see

them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were

to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give

us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I

cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police

department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of

discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they

have conducted themselves rather ``nonviolently'' in public.

But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of

segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently

preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must

be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make it clear

that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends.

But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps

even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

Perhaps, Mr. Connor and his policemen had been rather

nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany,

Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to

maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Elliot

has said: ``The last temptation is the greatest treason: To

do the right deed for the wrong reason.'' I wish you had

commended the Negro sit inners and demonstrators of

Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to

suffer, and their amazing discipline in the midst of great

provocation. One day the South will recognize its real

heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble

sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and

hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that

characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old,

oppressed battered Negro women symbolized in a seventy two

year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a

sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride

segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical

profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: ``My

feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.'' They will be the

young high school and college students, the young ministers

of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and

nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going

to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know

that when these disinherited children of God sat down at

lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is

best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in

our Judeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation

back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by

the founding founders in their formulation of the

Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts, and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the

truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to

forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the

truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to

settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to

forgive me. I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith.

I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for

me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-

rights leader but as a fellow clergymen and a Christian

brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial

prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of

misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched

communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow, the

radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our

great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,

Mr. President, I rise today to join my Sikh friends, Pennsylvania's Sikh community, and Sikhs around the world in recognizing two important Sikh celebrations taking place this week: (the holiday of Vaisakhi and the 400th anniversary of the birth of Guru Teg Bahadur.

Sikhism traces its origins to the Punjab region of India and has flourished around the world for nearly 600 years. The Sikh tradition is built upon ideals of peace, respect, and equality. Further, Sikhs are dedicated to the principle that every person is created equal before God, no matter their race, gender, religion, or creed. Today, Sikhs number 30 million globally, making Sikhism one of the world's major religions. Nearly 700,000 Sikhs live in the United States, and many of them have made Pennsylvania their home.

Sikhs share a strong sense of community, family, and selfless service, as evidenced by their commitment to welcoming and serving individuals from all religious, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sikh communities across the country, including in Pennsylvania, mobilized to deliver meals, groceries, masks, and other supplies to tens of thousands of families in need. In my own travels across the Commonwealth, I have witnessed firsthand the spirit of this community when meeting with Sikh constituents. It is clear they have enriched their neighborhoods and contributed in numerous ways to the growth and vitality of Pennsylvania and the United States.

As a proud member of the American Sikh Congressional Caucus, each year, I join many voices across Congress and the United States in commemorating the holiday of Vaisakhi, which took place on April 13 this year. Vaisakhi marks the spring harvest and serves as a day of reflection of Sikhism's origins. During Vaisakhi, Sikhs commemorate the founding in 1699 of the Khalsa Panth, an order of devout Sikhs who played a fundamental role in cultivating the religion's history and identity.

Traditionally, Sikhs recognize Vaisakhi with parades, dancing, singing, and other festivities. Sikhs also commemorate this special day with community service, both organizing and volunteering in various community projects. In years past, Sikhs from around the country have organized a parade here in Washington, DC to commemorate Vaisakhi as National Sikh Day. While the pandemic has prevented such largescale, public celebrations both last year and this year, I look forward to welcoming Pennsylvania's Sikh community back to D.C. in the years to come.

In addition to celebrating Vaisakhi, Sikhs will also mark the 400th anniversary of the birth of spiritual leader Guru Teg Bahadur on April 18. The Ninth Guru of Sikhism, Guru Teg Bahadur is remembered as a champion of religious liberty for all. In 1675, Guru Teg Bahadur confronted Moghul Emperor Aurangzeb against the forced religious conversation of Hindus, an act for which he was publicly beheaded in Delhi. In giving his life to protect a religion that was not his own, he is fondly remembered by Sikhs as Dhram Di Chadar, or Shield of the Religions.

I extend my best wishes to the Sikh community for the joyous celebrations of Vaisakhi and the 400th anniversary of the birth of Guru Teg Bahadur.

Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to discuss the nomination of Mr. Gary Gensler to serve as the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

To start this, I just want to remind my colleagues, the mission of the SEC is really threefold: It is to protect investors; it is to facilitate capital formation; and it is to maintain fair, orderly, and efficient financial markets, capital markets.

And the fact is, America's capital markets are, without a doubt, the envy of the world. There are no other capital markets anywhere on the planet that have the depth, the liquidity, the diversity, the flexibility that allow growing businesses to grow as readily as our capital markets allow.

And that is a big part of why we are outperforming the world in terms of a recovery from the pandemic--coronavirus infections and lockdowns and all the rest. It is one of many reasons, but it is an important one.

It is also worth remembering that that recovery can be stymied if regulators impose inappropriate, burdensome regulations, including, say, backdoor regulation by enforcements that we have seen in the past that hamper job growth, that limit access to capital or if these regulators mandate managers of publically traded companies to favor so- called stakeholders over the interests of the people who actually own the company, which is to say the shareholders.

The SEC has historically administered Federal security laws and pursued its mission on a pretty bipartisan basis, but increasingly, there are some who want the SEC to stray from this tradition and instead to push the bounds of its legal and regulatory authorities in order to advance a particular liberal, social, and cultural agenda.

Unfortunately, when he was the Chairman of the CFTC, Mr. Gensler demonstrated a willingness to push the legal authorities and the legal limits of that Agency's authority. He was responsible for a CFTC rule on position limits that was overturned in court and another rule on cross-border swaps that was viewed by many, including international regulators, as exceeding the CFTC's authority. This raises questions about whether he would be willing to exceed the legal bounds on the SEC's authority as well.

Let me acknowledge that Mr. Gensler, without a doubt, has a great deal of knowledge and experience in our securities markets. There is no question about it. He has a lot of expertise there. But based on his record as a regulator in the past and statements that he has made during the course of this nomination process, I am concerned that he will use the SEC and its regulatory powers to advance an agenda that should not be the purview of the SEC--specifically, global warming and climate change, political spending disclosures, and issues of racial inequality and diversity.

Securities laws and securities regulations are not the appropriate vehicle to address any of these topics. That is the reason why we have environmental and political spending and civil rights laws, and we have Federal Agencies that are responsible for enforcing those laws. If anybody thinks those laws are not adequate, OK, then take it up before Congress and have Congress change the laws. We are the people who should be responsible because we are the ones who are accountable to the American people. It is certainly not the role of the Securities and Exchange Commission--an independent financial regulator with no political accountability to voters whatsoever--to address difficult, challenging, sometimes contentious political, social, and cultural issues.

I have to say, nothing that Mr. Gensler said at his hearing or since has alleviated my concerns. Mr. Gensler did state that his regulatory approach would be grounded in the Supreme Court's definition of ``materiality,'' but he declined to explain what that really means, what that means to him, what are the limiting principles.

For example, I asked him if it would be OK for companies to be forced or pressured to comply with quotas with respect to the race, the gender, or sexual orientation of their board members. In response, Mr. Gensler did not disavow the idea of forcing or pressuring companies to use these kinds of quotas to achieve board diversity.

I also asked him if a company's financially insignificant spending on, say, energy or maybe political advocacy--if that can ever be material information that must be disclosed to investors. Again, I was talking about financially insignificant transactions. In response, Mr. Gensler essentially indicated that if a number of politically motivated activist investors wanted to know the information--for example, information related to global warming or political spending--then that makes it material information even if it is financially insignificant to the company, and therefore the SEC could presumably mandate its disclosure. I think that is completely inconsistent with the whole idea of materiality.

What it seems to me the bottom line for Mr. Gensler is, as long there are liberal activist investors who demand to know certain things about environmental, social, or corporate governance issues, then it would be OK to force disclosure of those issues, and I was not able to discern a situation in which Mr. Gensler would not be willing to mandate disclosure of that kind of information.

There is another issue that is concerning to me, and that is Mr. Gensler's answers to questions during his nomination hearing about recent stock market volatility.

We have seen some extraordinary volatility in a handful of companies for a variety of relatively novel reasons. Some have suggested that we have to take a paternalistic approach to grown adults and maybe limit their ability to

make investments because they don't know well enough what is good for them. And maybe there are apps that make it too user friendly to buy stocks, so maybe that leads to imprudent decisions.

I find it shocking that we would actually contemplate limiting grown adults' ability to make their own decisions. I wasn't sure where Mr. Gensler came out on this, and in some respects, I think, he indicated that there may be some sympathy to this paternalistic view that I think would be a very, very big mistake.

So the nomination process just never alleviated the concerns I have. Maybe my concerns will prove to have been misplaced. I certainly hope so. Mr. Gensler is a very intelligent, knowledgeable, thoughtful person. He is very likeable. I happen to like him personally. But because of these concerns I have, I will not be able to support his nomination, and I will be voting no later today.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Mark Uyeda, a detailee in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the Congress.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, my friend, the Senator from Oregon, suggested that the Senate rules precluded this provision from being addressed in the recently passed bill.

It is actually a little bit more complicated than that. So let's remember how we got here.

Last year, Republicans and Democrats worked together, and we passed five bills, adding up to about $4 trillion, authorizing another several trillion dollars of loans. It was an extraordinary reaction to an extraordinary moment, and Republicans and Democrats came together time and time again.

As the circumstances were changing, we passed new legislation to reflect that--passing a big bill, a trillion-dollar bill nearly, in December. But as soon as our Democratic colleagues had the ability, they decided they weren't interested in any bipartisan legislation

anymore. It was going to be strictly Democrats using the reconciliation process, and that is the only reason that this provision couldn't be addressed because it can't be dealt with under the reconciliation rules.

So now our Democratic colleagues perceive a problem with this legislation, and they would like the Republicans' consent to fix what might have been resolved with some kind of compromise had they pursued the path that we pursued when we were in control.

But let's talk about where we are and what we have done for individuals and families. The unprecedented financial support from the Federal Government has been really amazing. An average family of four has, by now, received stimulus checks of $9,200 and child tax credit checks of $6,000. That is $15,200. By the way, that has gone to people who never lost a penny of income. And if they did lose their job, as in the hypothetical that the Senator from Oregon suggests, then the unemployment benefits, in more than half the cases, paid them more than they made working because of the legislation that we passed. We designed it so they would pay people more not to work than they would make working, in addition to these stimulus checks that they got.

So the result of that is, in the aggregate, personal savings have gone through the roof. It is up by over $1.6 trillion. Total consumer credit is down. The fact is, we more than replaced lost income through the series of bills that were passed.

Now my colleagues want to come here and block a valid, legal claim from being honored with some of this money. And specifically, they want to block these stimulus checks from being subject to garnishment.

So what is a garnishment? That is just when money is withheld from someone because they owe something. They owe money that they haven't paid to someone else, and that someone else has gone to court, made the case, and it has been adjudicated that, yes, this is money that is owed.

So they want to forbid this windfall--which in many, many cases this is a windfall, let's be honest. They want to prevent it from being available to be used for the conventional way that we collect money that is owed. And whom might this affect?

Under this legislation, if it were to pass, it would forbid garnishment of the alimony payment that a needy former spouse relies on. That is a common expense for which garnishment applies. But in this case, the deadbeat former husband who is not paying his alimony payments, who forced his former wife to go to court to get a court order, he has been so far behind, now he gets this big check from the government, and she doesn't even get to catch up on the money that he owes her?

How about the deadbeat dad who is not paying his child support? That is another situation in which the mom, trying to struggle to support those kids, had to go to court and get a court order that his future income would be garnished because he just doesn't pay. Well, he gets this check in the mail, compliments of the taxpayer, and he doesn't have to give her any of that? That is so terribly unfair.

And, you know, in addition to all these direct payments, we have also provided massive financial support in all kinds of ways to alleviate expenses like nutrition assistance, $80 billion; housing assistance, $65 billion; increase of Medicaid, $170 billion; not to mention almost $1 trillion in payroll support so that people could continue to work.

When you pay for all of these things and you still give people money on top of that, I don't think it is unreasonable to ask people to pay their bills, especially their overdue bills to their former wife or to support their kids.

Here is the other thing. At best, this is now a political statement because, as one of many colleagues just alluded to, these payments have already gone out the door--most of them have. The Treasury has already issued probably over $250 billion in stimulus checks. And to the extent that a person was subject to garnishment, the garnishment happens automatically. So it has already happened.

So what does that mean if this bill passed? The legal chaos--I mean, first of all, it would actually allow the deadbeat dad I am referring to, to go back and claim that money back, to claw it back from the account that is meant to support his kids. How is that even possibly fair or reasonable?

This is a bad idea, and for these reasons, I object.

Mr. President, I rise this morning to oppose the nomination of Representative Fudge to serve as the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The confirmation of Cabinet Secretaries is one of the most important constitutional functions we have here in the Senate. I think most of my colleagues would agree that one of the important considerations is that Cabinet officials can be relied on to coordinate and work productively with Congress as they implement the policies of the legislation that we pass.

I am concerned that Representative Fudge's past rhetoric makes clear that she lacks the temperament to collaborate with Congress, particularly across the aisle with Republican Members, and her comments cast doubt on whether she even wants to.

Congresswoman Fudge has made multiple statements throughout the years attacking and disparaging the integrity and motives of Republicans with whom she has policy disagreements. Policy disagreements are entirely understandable. It is reasonable. They happen every day. They are expected, especially in a legislative body. But consistently attacking the integrity and motives of people with whom you have these disagreements is another thing all together.

In September 2020, during a speech on the House floor, Congresswoman Fudge attacked efforts to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat on the Supreme Court. In her speech, she said, among other insults, that Senate Republicans had ``no decency,'' ``no honor,'' ``no integrity.'' She went on to say, referring to Republican Senators, that we ``are a disgrace to the Nation.''

In June 2020, during a virtual townhall, Congresswoman Fudge admitted believing that Republicans did not care about minorities. She said that if Republicans ``want to save face and let this country know that they care even a little bit about people of color, which I don't believe they do, but if they want to try, I want to listen.''

Back in a January of 2013 PBS forum with Tavis Smiley, Congresswoman Fudge harshly questioned the motives and character of Republicans again, this time Republicans who supported cuts to the food stamps program.

Congresswoman Fudge said:

If we continue to send people to Congress who don't even

understand what their job is--who don't understand that

government's job is to take care of its people--then we are

never going anywhere as a country because we deal with nuts

every single day. These people are evil and mean. They care

nothing about anybody but themselves. And so if you think you

are going to have something bipartisan, you need to think

again. It's not happening.

Overtly partisan attacks on integrity and motive simply have a toxic and detrimental impact on the working relationship that ought to be a constructive relationship between Members of Congress and members of the administration. The Senate should really only confirm officers who are willing to cooperate with legislators, especially now when we have rapid expansion of many government programs--we just passed a $2 trillion bill that is probably going to pass the House and be signed by the President--and it is especially true for the administrator of HUD.

In addition to her recent statements impugning the integrity and motives of Republicans, Congresswoman Fudge has very little or no housing experience. Except for her service as a smalltown mayor, Congresswoman Fudge never worked in a capacity where she would be familiar with any of HUD's many programs. Even traditionally liberal media outlets criticized

Congresswoman Fudge's nomination for HUD Secretary on the grounds that she lacked knowledge and experience in housing policy.

She did not show an interest in developing housing policy expertise as a Member of Congress, introducing or cosponsoring very few housing- related bills and choosing instead to serve on unrelated committees. I acknowledge that not all Cabinet nominees are experts in the policy areas that their Agencies cover. That is not unusual. But when they don't have that expertise, it is especially important that their temperament and their policy views--and their willingness to listen to Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, especially the other side of the aisle, is all the more important.

Congresswoman Fudge's views as reflected in her response to questions for the record are also a matter of concern. When she was asked whether HUD should better target its programs so that they are actually helping the low-income Americans they are supposed to help, she responded by saying, ``The challenge for HUD programs isn't that they aren't targeted, it is that funding levels are inadequate to meet the need.''

The fact is, funding for HUD spending has grown dramatically in recent years. That is not even including the $15 billion for COVID assistance that the Senate appropriated and worked on, and it is not including the $56 billion for housing assistance passed in the December omnibus and the reconciliation bill.

The Congresswoman's answer ignores the fact that HUD programs certainly can be better targeted to help those in need. For example, families with disqualifying high incomes nevertheless participate in a number of HUD-assisted rental programs, and that makes housing unavailable for lower income families for whom it is meant. FHA insures mortgages for home buyers who could access mortgage credit through private capital, also thereby making it less available for people who really need it.

So I worry that Congresswoman Fudge's approach will simply be to ask Congress for ever more money without being willing to do the hard work of making the reforms that are necessary and working with Republican Senators to achieve those reforms. Those reforms are going to be necessary if we are going to ensure that HUD programs are improved so they actually better serve the low-income Americans they are meant for.

For these reasons, I cannot support Congresswoman Fudge's nomination.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 1010, and I ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, my amendment would simply strike the section that provides ``such sums as may be necessary to make payments of 120 percent of outstanding debts to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.''

There are only two requirements to get this money. One is to have a

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, the circumstances that we face today in the Senate are so disturbing. This is really, really unbelievable. I mean, there is so much good news out there on the healthcare front, on the pandemic front, on the economic front. But what we are going to do in this Chamber is absolutely, absolutely appalling.

The Members of this Chamber came together five times last year and passed overwhelmingly bipartisan bills to deal with this pandemic, to deal with the economic crisis that came from the lockdown that we experienced--five times, about $4 trillion, completely unprecedented in scope and scale, the nature of it. Never imagined before, but we did it. We did it because we needed to, and we came together. I think it was the biggest of the bills passed--the biggest by far--without a single ``no'' vote in this whole Chamber, completely bipartisan.

So President Biden gets elected, gives a great speech, a great inaugural speech, about uniting the country, coming together: We don't have to be divided the way we have been. We can work together and find common ground.

So 10 Republican Senators go down to the White House and say: Well, Mr. President, I know you would like to do $1.9 trillion, whatever it is, but we think there is a good case for $600 billion.

Now, I don't happen to agree with those 10 Republican Senators, as it happens. I don't think even that is appropriate, but they did. And the reason that is significant is that there were 10 of them, which just so happens to be exactly the minimum number needed of Republican Senators to join with the Democrats to pass anything they want on a bipartisan basis. So there, handed to him on a silver platter, to the President, was the opportunity to do a bipartisan bill to figure out where that common ground was. The Republicans were offering to negotiate from there. This probably could have ended easily at $1 trillion or so after just weeks before passing a $1 trillion bill. The President could have gotten so much of what he wanted, but President Biden didn't want any part of that. You have to ask yourself, why is that when he campaigned as the guy who is going to unify America, and he had every Republican vote he needed sitting in his office, asking him to work this out? He said: No, not interested. Effectively, that is what he said.

Well, when you look at the bill, it is clear why President Biden chose this path, because there is no justification for this bill. There is no medical justification. There is no pandemic justification. There is no economic justification. This isn't about coming together and doing something about a crisis; this is about a partisan leftwing wish list. And, of course, Republicans aren't interested in that kind of political gesturing that is going to do economic damage.

I am reminded of the words of Rahm Emanuel, who famously said: ``You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.'' Rahm Emanuel must be very proud of our Democratic colleagues and President Biden because what they have done is they have taken a crisis that is rapidly receding-- let's be honest--and they decided this is their chance to make one last mad dash to the door with a staggering amount of money and presumably claim credit for the recovery that is already well underway.

The good news is--there is a lot of good news, right? We went through one of the most trying times we have been through in a very long time in this country. This pandemic was devastating. It was deadly, it was scary, and the economic crisis was very, very real. But now we have over 100 million doses of vaccines that have gone into people's arms. You figure that we might very well have 100 million Americans who have had the disease and recovered. We have to have well over half of the American population who has either recovered or been vaccinated and is therefore no longer at risk to this disease--not a significant risk. That is fantastic news.

By the way, the vaccine administration is accelerating. Following that, we are unsurprisingly seeing this terrific collapse in the number of new cases. The daily count of new cases of the coronavirus, of COVID-19, peaked at around 250,000 new cases in a single day. We were running at that pace. By the time we got to the inauguration of President Biden, we were down to 185,000, and yesterday was about 60,000. So we are less than a quarter of the number of new cases on a daily basis that we were experiencing at the peak, and it continues to drop. It is going to continue to decline probably very rapidly as we continue to roll out these vaccines. That is terrific.

There is a sort of parallel recovery of the economy underway. If you go back to April of 2020, when it was at its worst, the unemployment rate was almost 15 percent, 14.8 percent. That is a terrible, terrible unemployment rate. As of January of this year, just a few months ago, the unemployment rate was 6.3 percent, less than half of where we were. We are not back to the fantastic economy we had a year ago just before this pandemic broke, but we are getting there. Eighteen States across the country have unemployment rates below 5 percent, so we are going to get there.

The economy is growing. After a collapse in the second quarter of last year, the third quarter came roaring back, and the fourth quarter grew. The Congressional Budget Office thinks that in this whole calendar year of 2021, our economy will grow almost 5 percent. Most private economists think it will be more than that. There is a lively debate about whether we will even reach 6 or 7 or more percent growth. We were told never again to expect to see 3 percent. But that is how strong this economic recovery is because of the resiliency of the American people, the tremendous ingenuity of the private sector to come up with vaccines that are incredibly effective--several of them--and do it in a record time, I mean a fraction of what was the previous record time. It is amazing.

And yes, you know what, we played a role in this too. I think we did. The bipartisan cooperation of Congress to pass one bill after another on a huge scale--like I said, five bills. The biggest was without a single dissenting--actually, I am not sure any of them had a dissenting vote in the Senate. And there was almost a trillion dollars in December, leaving tens of billions of dollars that we approved that haven't even been spent yet. The intended beneficiaries haven't gotten the money yet. It takes a little while to get the money out the door.

Given this context, given this history, this is why it is so dispiriting to see our Democratic colleagues insisting on a bill that has almost nothing to do with COVID. That is the truth. It is not about reopening the economy; it is a partisan leftwing spending binge. That is what it is. Let's take a look at some of the individual items.

We have these so-called stimulus checks--I never heard anything more inaptly named--$414 billion. The fact is, real, personal income in the country

today is higher than it was just before the pandemic. Disposable, real, per capita income rose at its highest rate since 1984. Personal savings rate hit an alltime record high in 2020. Why? Because we more than replaced lost income through all of the bills that we passed. What about that data suggests we need another round of universal payments to people? It is not going to stimulate the economy. Even the last check-- 60 percent of that money went to savings accounts or paying down debt. According to a Penn Wharton study, about 75 percent of these checks are going to go into savings.

Why in the world are we sending so many checks to tens of millions of people who never had any lost income? Under this bill, the Federal Government is going to send out $5,600 to a family of four--$5,600 to a family of four who makes $160,000 a year and never had a dime of income loss, no interruption of income, no loss of income. They are going to get $5,600. By the way, that is on top of the $5,800 they already got last year, with no need, no demonstrated problem here. So $11,400 of money that we don't have, we are going to send to people who never had a dime of lost income. That is a big chunk of this bill.

It may not be the worst. It may be that the worst is the $350 billion we are going to send to State and local governments to bail out the mismanaged blue States and cities. The amazing thing is, you can't possibly make the case that they need the bailout. They don't even need it. Why do I say that? Well, if you look in 2020--the books are closed now. We know what we didn't know early in the year of 2020. We are in 2021 now. We know what happened in 2020.

What happened was States and municipalities in the aggregate brought in more revenue in 2020 than they did in 2019, which was a record year. So they set an alltime new record for tax revenue collected--alltime new record. And that does not include the $500 billion we sent them anyway. I mean, these States are loaded with cash. I don't know what they are going to do with it

There is $60 billion in rainy day funds. We heard: Oh my goodness, these States are going to have to cut essential services. All the teachers are going to be laid off. The firemen and the police officers are all done.

How is that when they have taken in more revenue than they ever have before in their history and then we sent them another $500 billion? Now we are going to send them yet another $350 on top of this? How does this make any sense at all? We are going to borrow or print this money so we can send it to a bunch of States, many of which are sitting on so much cash, they are going to probably cut taxes. It is just unbelievable.

Then there is the ObamaCare expansion. What does that have to do with COVID? This is just a decade-long goal of our Democratic colleagues to continue the endless expansion of ObamaCare. There is $45 billion in this bill to pay insurance companies more money to cover people who already have health insurance. That is what they are doing. Sixty-three percent of these new subsidies will go to people who already have health insurance through ObamaCare. By the way, it includes huge numbers of people who make over $100,000 a year. Never miss a chance to make more people dependent on government.

It has policies, big policies, that will absolutely slow the economic recovery. Let me be clear. This bill will slow down the economic recovery underway. Why do I say that? Well, the bill insists on adding $400 a week on top of whatever States are paying in unemployment benefits. Well, what does that mean? It means that more than half of everyone who is unemployed is going to get paid more not to work than they get paid working. Who could even think this up?

We have had unemployment insurance for decades in this country. We have never said: Let's systematically make sure that people can make more money not working than they can make if they go to work.

I hear some of my colleagues talk about the dignity of work. I think there is a lot of dignity in work. What is our message to people about the dignity of work when we say: You are worth more to us sitting on the couch than you are at your job. That is what this is. It is a terrible idea.

How do you know for sure that nobody on the other side is even pretending that this is really about the economic recovery? Well, you know for sure because the Congressional Budget Office has told us that only a fraction--a small fraction--of this money is even going to be spent this year. How long do we think the pandemic is going to be with us as a pandemic? How long do we think we are going to have these lockdowns? We are going to be out of the woods pretty soon here.

As I said, half of all Americans have already been either vaccinated or recovered from this. But the school numbers are a good illustration, the elementary and secondary education. This bill has $128 billion-- $128 billion--and $6.5 billion is going to be spent in 2021. The rest gets dribbled out for years and years. How long do they think before schools can reopen? Oh, by the way, this bill doesn't require schools to reopen. You don't even have to reopen. Just throw billions and billions of dollars at schools whether or not they are actually having kids in the school.

Some of these provisions are so blatantly unrelated to COVID or the economy that it is really just hard to even read them with a straight face.

There is $86 billion to bail out multiemployer pension plans without any reform whatsoever. Look, we all know we have a multiemployer pension problem in this country, and there has been a lot of discussion about what do you do about these grossly underfunded pension plans and how do you fix this. The conversation has always been, what kinds of reforms come with what kind of cash so that these errors of the past are corrected? There are no reforms here. None. Nothing. Just a big pile of cash. It is a clear message that you don't have to fix anything. You don't have to reform the flaws of these programs that got us here. And by the way, it is the same message to the insolvent public pension plans of most of the major cities in many States: Don't worry. Look what Congress will do if the Democrats have their way. They will just send you so much cash, you don't have to worry about the insolvency you are dealing with.

What a terrible message.

There is $270 million for the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. That is COVID-related. Thank goodness that is there.

There is $91 million for ``outreach'' to student loan borrowers. I don't even know what that means.

There is $50 million for environmental justice grants. I have no idea what that means.

But this one is really rich. There is about $4 billion for ``socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.'' I say ``about $4 billion'' because it says ``such sums as may be necessary.'' Here is what the money is for. It is going to pay off 120 percent of the debt of these farmers and ranchers, 120 percent of the borrowings.

So what in the world are the requirements to have 120 percent of your debt paid off? Well, you actually have to have debt. OK, so you have to have borrowed money from the USDA farm loan. There are tens of billions of dollars out there. They lend a lot of money. And you have to be a member of one of the following groups: African American, American Indian, Alaskan Native, Asian, Hispanic, Pacific Islanders, refugees, or immigrants.

As long as you are in one of those categories of mostly racial and ethnic groups, then the taxpayers are going to pay off 120 percent. It is not the whole loan but more than the whole loan--120 percent.

The thing that is so disturbing about this is that the essential criterion is your skin color. The essential criterion is your race. This is unbelievable to me. By the way, there is no income test and no asset test for the underlying loans. There is no requirement whatsoever that COVID caused any problem--caused any lost income or any other problem. It is not mentioned.

So what is the effect of this?

This means that, if you have a wealthy Hispanic rancher who has a $1 million loan from the USDA, he is going to get $1.2 million and pay off the loan--200,000 bucks with which to do whatever he likes. Meanwhile, if you are a poor White farmer in rural Pennsylvania and you have a $100,000 loan, you get nothing, exactly nothing. How

is that even remotely fair? I don't even know how that could be constitutional. It is, certainly, not in any way COVID related.

There was an amendment in the House that would have limited the payment. It would have allowed the program, which I object to, but it would have allowed this repayment of debt but only for debt incurred during the COVID crisis. The Democrats all voted that down. That failed. This is unbelievable stuff.

Even the provisions that purport to be about public health are completely divorced from any reality. As I think I mentioned earlier, we are administering almost 2 million doses of vaccines every day now. That is terrific. It is actually the highest daily rate of doses administered anywhere in the world. The government has already purchased 700 million doses. Now, we have fewer than 350 million Americans, and not all Americans are going to need two doses. You can do the math: We have bought more vaccine doses than we need to administer, and that is fine. Yet how many more do you need to buy when you have already bought more than enough for every single American?

That is not all we paid for. Through the previous bills that we passed, we paid for the research and development. We paid for the production. We paid for the transportation. We paid for all of the accompanying supplies, like the syringes, the vials, and the dry ice. We paid for all of that, and we should have. That was the right thing to do. Insurance covers the cost of the administering of the vaccines. Between Medicare and Medicaid and private insurance, it is free. What is left to spend money on? I am all ears, but I haven't heard what we need to spend money on.

So what do we have in this bill?

We have no justification for it in terms of public health. We certainly have no justification for it in terms of the economy. We certainly have no justification for it in terms of basic fairness. Frankly, it is going to do more harm than good, but you don't have to take my word for it. We could take the word of prominent liberal Democrat economist Larry Summers. He was the Treasury Secretary under President Clinton, and he was the Director of the National Economic Council under President Obama.

He said about this bill:

[M]acroeconomic stimulus on a scale closer to World War II

levels than normal recession levels will set off inflationary

pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.

Or consider the words of Steve Rattner, who is a liberal economist. President Obama named him the ``car czar.'' You may recall him administering that program.

He said of the American Rescue Plan, which is, apparently, what they call this:

The American Rescue Plan is also partly a legislative

Trojan horse--an enormous aid package aimed at addressing

needs that, in some cases, go well beyond the immediate

challenges of COVID. Some of the most expensive provisions

are the least well targeted to help the neediest.

That is from a liberal Democrat who, I think, supports the bill, but at least he is being honest in his description of it.

So my suggestion, my plea, to my Democratic colleagues and to the new President is to listen to some of the things you have said. Try an approach that is actually informed by the facts on the ground--the health facts, the economic facts, the reality. Look at what the science is currently telling us about the course that this virus has been taking. What about actually attempting to bring people together--the path of unity--after we demonstrated five times last year that we can work together and do something on a bipartisan basis?

I urge my colleagues: Don't push through this radically partisan bill that will probably, in the end, do more harm than good.

I yield the floor

Mr. President, I want to address the budget resolution we are going to vote on later today. To be clear, this is a device that makes it possible, subsequently, to pass this massive blowout spending bill that President Biden has proposed and to do it on a strictly party-line vote. That is what this is all about.

It is disappointing at many, many levels, not the least of which is that, just 15 days ago, President Biden made an impassioned call for unity. He said: ``This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward.''

Well, there is nothing about unity in this exercise. This is designed to be a partisan exercise. It is designed not to find common ground. It appears not to be informed by any objective measure of needs. The only organizing principle in this bill that I can figure out is the desire to spend a massive amount of money on things that aren't required.

Oh, and it is worse than that. It willfully ignores the adverse impact some of these policies are going to have.

Part of what is so maddening about this is we have demonstrated--up until now, anyway--that we can pass major bipartisan legislation. We have done it five times already--but no more. President Biden and the Democrats, who control the Senate and the House, don't want to pursue bipartisan legislation anymore. I guess those days are behind us for now, according to them.

But I would remind my colleagues of what a dramatic departure that is from what we have been doing about this COVID crisis. Back in March and April, when States shut down their economies and we went into a full- blown economic crisis, we responded with massive, bold legislation, the biggest of which, the March bill, had a huge category that was designed and, in fact, did replace lost income for people who, through no fault of their own, were out of work. It had a huge category to deal with healthcare expenses for hospitals, for vaccine development, for PPE-- all kinds of healthcare-related needs.

And we had a set of provisions that were designed to provide liquidity, provide loans and funding for businesses so that they could survive and people would have a place to go back to work after this was behind us. We did that. Actually, we did five bills altogether, every one of them overwhelmingly bipartisan.

In the Senate, each of the five got over 90 votes. The biggest of them didn't have a single ``no'' vote. My point is, we have demonstrated we can pass big, bold, unprecedented legislation if people on both sides of the aisle want to work together. We did it five times last year.

But our Democratic colleagues don't want to pursue that anymore because they have a different objective in mind. By the way, the last of the five was the second largest of all time, a COVID relief package of almost a trillion dollars, and it was signed into law 39 days ago. Literally, hundreds of billions of dollars of that money is still unspent, yet we are told immediately we need to get another $1.9 trillion.

This is unbelievable. Part of the reason it is so unbelievable is that the economy is not in the same place today that it was in back in March or April--not even close. We were in a situation we had never been in before. We had shut down our economy. It was absolutely devastating--very, very scary.

Fortunately, in part because of our response, I think, we were able to avoid a depression, an extended disastrous period, and we have begun a robust recovery.

Consider some of the data. In April of last year, the unemployment rate hit almost 15 percent. Today it is at 6.7. Most economists didn't think we would get below 7 percent until the end of this year, 2021. We got below 7 percent back in October. We have 18 States in the Union that have employment rates below 5 percent.

After a devastating downdraft of our economy in the second quarter, the third quarter came roaring back. The third quarter of the economy grew by 33 percent. That was a long way towards recovering what we had lost in the second quarter--not complete--and the growth has continued. The fourth quarter grew by 4 percent. The CBO's economic outlook for this entire year is nearly 5 percent.

We have a strong recovery that is underway. Look, we are not there yet. We are not back to the tremendously booming economy we had just before the pandemic hit, but we do know that the vast majority of the economic pain that people are going through is concentrated in a handful of very hard-hit industries. It is hospitality, travel, entertainment. We know that. What we should be asking ourselves is, have we done what we need to do for these particular sectors and the people who are in these sectors who are hurting? But $1.9 trillion for the entire economy?

I mean, think about this statistic: Total employee compensation in the second and third quarters of last year was down. That is not surprising, right? Total employee compensation was down because so many people were out of work. It was down by about $215 billion. Government transfer payments to individuals was up by almost $900 billion. That is more than four times the lost income. And now we are told we need another whole round of these universal so-called stimulus checks-- checks that go out to everyone regardless of whether you actually had any lost income.

Well, it happens that personal income is actually higher today than it was before the pandemic hit. Disposable, real per capita income rose last year at the fastest rate since 1984. The personal savings rate is at an alltime high for most of 2020--the highest since 1974 now--and that is all before the bill we passed 39 days ago that sends still more money to people. So I don't see the data that suggests we need yet another round of these universal stimulus checks, but in President Biden's bill that we are in the process of facilitating today, that is almost half a trillion dollars we are going to spend this way.

This money is not lying on the shelf, by the way; we are either going to print it, or we are going to borrow it from overseas. President Biden has pretty much admitted this is about fulfilling a campaign promise.

The fact is, the vast majority of the 160 million Americans who have received checks already never had any lost income. They never lost their jobs. They never lost their checks. What Federal employee, for instance--of the many categories I could cite, what Federal employee lost their paycheck because of the COVID crisis? I don't know of them. My staff continued to get paid throughout this entire period, but they all got checks.

Think about this: If President Biden's plan passes as our Democratic colleagues want to pass it and the eligibility criteria for these checks follows the methodology from the previous two rounds of checks, a family of four with a household income of $150,000 will receive $5,600. That is on top of the $5,800 they got from the previous rounds. It is a total of $11,400 that we are going to mail out to a family who had a six-figure income and no income loss. How does this make any sense?

Consider the expanded unemployment benefits. I was all in favor of it. I remain in favor of expanding eligibility for unemployment benefits because we have a lot of folks who work in the gig economy. They are self-employed, and they have not been able to historically participate in the unemployment insurance program. I am in favor of having made those folks eligible, but we have already done that. They are totally eligible.

On top of eligibility, back in March when we passed the CARES Act, we added $600 a week to unemployment checks. It turns out that 70 percent--according to the University of Chicago, their analysis, about 70 percent of everybody who was unemployed ended up getting paid more money not to work than they did to get to work. In what universe does that make sense?

We have had unemployment insurance for decades. Never anywhere, at any time, under any circumstances have we designed the program so that we would pay you more not to work than what you make working. The reason we have never done that is because it doesn't make any sense.

President Biden's plan is not for $600, but it is $400 of extra payments above and beyond what unemployment insurance pays. If that happens, then over half of all the beneficiaries will be paid more not to work than they would get paid if they actually worked. That will

only slow the economic recovery, as well as not make any sense--not to mention the invitation for fraud.

By the way, it is estimated that there have been $10 billion in fraudulent unemployment insurance payments in California alone.

Speaking of California, State and local governments--now, this is rich--in this $1.9 trillion spending bonanza, there is $350 billion to go to State and local governments. We know many of our Democratic colleagues have wanted to bail out these fiscally irresponsible and insolvent States and municipalities for a long time, but here is what is unbelievable. We are told there is a fiscal crisis here. Just look at the numbers. The total of State and local tax collections in 2020 was up by $21 billion over 2019.

Let me clear about this. In 2019--the amount of revenue collected by State and local governments hit an alltime record high in 2019. In 2020, they broke the record--alltime record amount of revenue collected.

This, by the way, does not include the $572 billion that the Federal Government sent to these State and local governments through the five bills that we have already passed, so they have alltime record revenue on their own. We sent them $572 billion more, and now we are told we have to send them yet another $350 billion.

Look, let's not kid ourselves. This is just a complete bailout of insolvent and irresponsible States. That is what this is. This hasn't got anything to do with a pandemic.

Minimum wage--that is in this bill as well, the President's proposal. It is another terrible idea. A $15-an-hour minimum wage--what this is guaranteed to do is destroy the jobs of lower income people. Guess what. A disproportionate number of them work in the hardest hit industries, like hotels and restaurants.

This isn't just my speculation; the Congressional Budget Office projects that if we have a $15 mandatory minimum wage nationally, which is what the President's proposal would do, we would lose at least 1.3 million jobs and maybe as high as 3.7 million jobs. Of course, this wil disproportionately affect young people just entering the workforce. That is the biggest category of people who are paid at the low end of the pay scale. So we will just take away the ladder that these folks need to step on to in order to build the ability to provide for themselves and their families.

We have a moratorium on evictions from the CDC that gets extended. This is unbelievable. First of all, it is absurd to think that the CDC has the authority to impose this universally and throughout America. They just don't. It is also a terrible precedent to say that despite the fact that our unemployment rate is below 7 percent and we have more than replaced lost income, people don't have to pay the rent.

Let's be honest about the consequences. There is only one consequence that is going to happen as a result of this, and that is, we are going to have less affordable housing and higher rents because the landlord is going to have to think long and hard about how long he is going to go without being able to collect rents in the future, and so he is either going to get out of the business, in which case there is less affordable housing being built, or he is going to raise the rents to cover that period when the government pursues this senseless policy.

Health provisions are an area that is in a category unto itself here. Specifically, I think every single person in this body would agree that it is absolutely essential that we get as many vaccines into as many arms as quickly as we possibly can. That is certainly my view. For the sake of eliminating human suffering, to prevent unnecessary deaths, and at a much lower level of importance, but also to help restore the vibrancy of our economy, that is what we have to do. We have to put as many vaccines into as many arms as quickly as we can.

Today, there are around 260 million Americans who are eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines. We have an average of about 1.34 million doses actually being administered every day. It is the highest daily rate of doses being administered anywhere in the world. I am trying to understand what more government spending now is going to do about that. In the Federal Government, we already purchased 600 million doses, which is enough to vaccinate 300 million Americans. We have multiple vaccine candidates. Some already have been approved, and some are about to be approved. We have already paid for them, and we have also paid for all the other related costs of administering the vaccine. We paid for the R&D in the first place. We bought the production--as they say, 600 million doses. The Federal Government pays for the transportation to deliver the vaccine to the site at which it is going to be administered. The Federal Government has paid for all the accompanying supplies--the syringes, the vials, the stoppers, the dry ice to keep it cold, all of that. Insurance--Medicare covers the cost of putting the vaccine into somebody's arm. We have even allocated money to fund the planning of the execution of this plan.

It is pretty clear to me that, in talking to Pennsylvania healthcare folks who are on the frontlines delivering this and actually vaccinating people, that the limiting factor now is production of the vaccine, and we are going all-out. I mean, you could take General Motors and get them to produce ventilators. General Motors can manufacture ventilators pretty quickly. They can do that. You can't get General Motors to produce vaccines--not in anything like the timeframe we would like.

So I am all ears. If someone can show me how we can spend money that will actually result in getting more people vaccinated more quickly, then I am for it. I just haven't heard that explanation yet, and I haven't seen how it gets allocated in this bill to accomplish that.

President Biden had a commendable call to unity in his early addresses to the Nation, but this exercise we are going through today is suggesting that that kind of rings hollow. Just a few weeks into office and the President and our Democratic colleagues seem to be abandoning what had consistently been overwhelmingly bipartisan, successful, major responses to this COVID crisis. Now it seems they are on a one-party partisan track to pass a bunch of their liberal wish list items, much of which has nothing to do with the circumstances we face.

The fact is, what we ought to be working on is maximizing the speed of vaccinations and ensuring that we return our economy and allow people to get back to work so that we can have the prosperity that we had before this pandemic struck. What we shouldn't be doing is using the pandemic as the excuse to pass a longstanding partisan policy wish list.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 553 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, this amendment would allow withholding of community development block grants and Economic Development Act funding from States and municipalities that prohibit local police from cooperating with Federal officials to enforce Federal law.

It is important to note it would not affect any security-related funds.

It is important because sanctuary cities, like San Francisco and Philadelphia, in my State, have radical policies that actually forbid the local police from cooperating with Federal immigration officials, even when the local police would like to cooperate.

These policies are dangerous. They cost us time and money. But most importantly, by far, is the tragic cost to human beings, people like Kate Steinle, killed by an illegal immigrant who opened fire on a San Francisco pier.

This shooter had been convicted of seven felonies, been deported five times. Why was he on the pier that night? Because San Francisco chose to release him rather than cooperate with Federal authorities that wanted to take him off the streets.

I intend later to address the specifics of Pennsylvania if and when an objection is raised in regard to Pennsylvania.

For now, I want to address my remarks to what I think is the fundamental question being posed by the objectors, and that is, does Congress have the constitutional authority to decide which States' electoral college votes should be counted and which should not based on how well we think they ran their elections? This is what the objectors are really asking us to do--to federalize elections by rejecting electoral college votes from States whose processes they say they disapprove of and thereby having Congress select the President of the United States instead of the American people.

The answer, Mr. President, is no, there is no such authority under the Constitution. The Constitution assigns to the States the responsibility to conduct elections. It is clear in article II, section 1. It leaves courts with the responsibility to adjudicate disputes, and it assigns to Congress the ministerial function of counting ballots, except for extreme circumstances, such as when a State sends competing slates of electors to Congress, which brings me to the 1877 President.

Some objectors claim to merely want a commission to conduct an audit and then let States decide whether to send electors. Well, first, the situations are not at all analogous.

In 1877, Congress had before it two slates of electors from several States. There are no Trump electors from swing States; there are just Biden electors.

Second, legislators from the swing States--they have already spoken. They have made their decision. They have chosen not to send us alternative electors.

Third, a commission--really? It is completely impractical, and we all know it, with 14 days to go before a constitutionally mandated inauguration.

Look at it this way: If the electors are right and it is Congress's job to sit in judgment on the worthiness of the States' electoral processes, what is the criteria for acceptable electoral processes? What investigations have been conducted of these processes? What body has deemed that certain States' processes are unacceptable? What opportunities were these States given to challenge the findings? Why are the objectors objecting only to swing States that President Trump lost? What about the ones he won? I don't know--North Carolina? What about California? They have ballot harvesting, I am told. If this is all supposed to be Congress's job, you would think we would have answers to these questions and procedures in place because we would have done this every 4 years, right? But we don't because it is not our job.

If we adopt this new precedent that we sit in judgment of States' processes, then we are federalizing the election law. We would necessarily have to establish the permissible criteria and rules for the States' elections

The ballot harvesting example--it is illegal in some States; it is encouraged

in others. Does it become mandatory or forbidden depending on who is in control of Congress? And, as the leader pointed out, it would be the end of the electoral college. The electoral college is the mechanism by which the people select the President. But if Congress gets to decide which States get to vote in the electoral college, then clearly Congress is electing the President, not the people. Whichever party controls both Houses of Congress would control the Presidency.

The public would never tolerate Congress picking the President instead of themselves, so they would abolish the electoral college, as many of our colleagues would like to do, and the end of the electoral college, of course, means the Nation will be governed by a handful of big blue States and regions that can drum up very large numbers.

Mr. President, the Constitution does not assign to Congress the responsibility to judge the worthiness of State election processes nor its adherence to its rules. That is the responsibility of the States and the courts.

Let me conclude with this. I voted for President Trump. I publicly endorsed President Trump. I campaigned for President Trump. I did not want Joe Biden to win this election. There is something more important to me than having my preferred candidate sworn in as the next President, and that is to have the American people's chosen candidate sworn in as the next President.

A fundamental defining feature of a democratic republic is the right of the people to elect their own leaders. It is now our duty. It is our responsibility to ensure that right is respected in this election and preserved for future elections. I urge you to vote against this objection.

Mr. President, I appreciate the indulgence of my colleagues allowing me to speak twice today. But my understanding is that later this evening, objectors will object to the certification of Pennsylvania's electoral votes because they disapprove of the process that my State used in the last election. So in light of my expectation of this objection, I rise to defend the right of my citizens, my constituents, to vote in the Presidential election.

Let's be clear. That is exactly what this objection is about. It is what it would do. It would overturn the results of the Presidential election in Pennsylvania, and it would thereby deny Pennsylvania's voters the opportunity to even participate in the Presidential election.

Even if Congress did have the constitutional responsibility to judge the worthiness of a State's election process, which it does not, rejecting Pennsylvania's electoral votes would still be wildly out of proportion to the purported offenses and very damaging to our Republic.

Let me go through a few facts about Pennsylvania.

First, some of the objectors and, in fact, even the President of the United States this morning have observed that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court disregarded existing law when it ruled that mail-in ballots could be counted even if they arrived up to 3 days after election day.

Now, the objectors are right about that. In my view, the Supreme Court of the United States should overturn that illegal decision. But only 10,097 ballots arrived in Pennsylvania during the 3 days after the election, and those 10,097 ballots have been excluded from the vote count that resulted in President-Elect Biden winning Pennsylvania by about 80,000 votes. What greater remedy could the objectors possibly want than the complete exclusion of the late-arriving ballots? How could we possibly invalidate the entire Pennsylvania election over 10,000 votes that were not even included in the vote count?

A second charge we heard--and the Senator from Missouri alluded to it this evening--is that a 2019 Pennsylvania law that allows mail-in ballots for any reason--that that might violate the Pennsylvania Constitution. First of all, as Senator Casey observed, this was a bipartisan law passed with nearly unanimous Republican support. Clearly, the State legislators and the Governor believe it is consistent with the Pennsylvania Constitution.

Secondly, this law was not challenged when it was passed. It wasn't challenged when it was applied during the June primary election. It was challenged only after President Trump lost the general election. But 2.6 million Pennsylvanians voted by mail-in ballot in the general election. Over 37 percent of Pennsylvania voters, in good faith, relied on a law to cast their votes, as they had done previously. Now, I understand you can make a theoretical argument about whether this is consistent with Pennsylvania's Constitution, and that needs to be resolved for future elections. But because of this constitutional question that some people have, the objectors want to prevent Pennsylvania voters from participating in the Presidential election entirely. That would be an outrageous remedy to this purported offense.

A third charge we have heard is that Pennsylvania officials did not properly implement Pennsylvania election law in a variety of other ways. But the Trump campaign has shown that many of these issues have-- well, first of all, none of these issues would have changed the election outcome, but more importantly, the campaign had many opportunities, of which it availed itself, to litigate these issues. They did time and again, and they lost repeatedly, often in unanimous, bipartisan decisions.

Some of the objectors also cite Congress's own failure to investigate allegations of election irregularities, and that is their justification for refusing to certify the election results. But the allegations of election irregularities and fraud have been investigated. They have been adjudicated. They were adjudicated in the States in which they were alleged to have occurred.

In Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign took their case of election irregularities into the courtroom of Judge Matthew Brann of the Federal district court. Judge Brann is a conservative Republican Federalist Society member. Here is what he said about the Trump campaign case:

This court has been presented with strained legal arguments

without merit and speculative accusations . . . unsupported

by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot

justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone

all [the] voters of the sixth most populated state.

So the campaign then appealed Judge Brann's decision to the Third Circuit, and they drew a three-judge panel, all Republican-appointed judges, one appointed by President Trump. The panel concurred with Judge Brann.

Certainly there were irregularities in this election--there always are--but there is no evidence of significant fraud, conspiracies, or even significant anomalies that cast any serious doubt on who actually won the election.

You know, one of the ways you can tell is to look at the big picture in Pennsylvania. Look at what happened. In 2016, President Trump won Pennsylvania by eight-tenths of 1 percent. In 2020, he lost Pennsylvania by a little over 1 percent. Is there anything at all that is implausible or surprising about a 2-percent change in the election outcome?

Relative to 2016, in Pennsylvania the President lost a little ground in most of the rural counties he had carried. He lost a lot of ground in the big suburban counties, and he slightly narrowed his large loss in Philadelphia. There are no surprises here. This reflects a pattern that occurred all across the country.

My colleagues, as I have said, it is not our responsibility to sit in judgment of State election procedures in the first place, but if it were, there would not be nearly sufficient reason to deny my constituents their right to participate in this Presidential election.

Joe Biden won the election. That is not what I had hoped for, but that is what happened. It was an honest victory with the usual minor irregularities that occur in most elections.

We witnessed today the damage that can result when men in power and responsibility refuse to acknowledge the truth. We saw bloodshed because the demagogue chose to spread falsehoods and sow distrust of his own fellow Americans. Let's not abet such deception. Let's reject this motion