Floor Statements

I announce that the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Merkley), the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Wyden) and the Senator from Arizona (Ms. Sinema) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, it has been a great source of debate over the past couple of years over a very basic question: How was Jeffrey Epstein able to take his own life in Federal prison on August 10, 2019?

Last week, we found some answers in the New York Times. It pointed out a series of stunning failures within the Bureau of Prisons.

According to the Times: ``The newly obtained records offer no support to the explosion of conspiracy theories that Mr. Epstein's death was not a suicide. . . . But they do paint a picture of incompetence and sloppiness by some within the Bureau of Prisons.''

That incompetence and sloppiness was evident from the moment Jeffrey Epstein entered the Metropolitan Correctional Center. On his intake screening form, Mr. Epstein was described as ``a Black male,'' with no prior record of sex offense convictions. A 5-second Google search would tell you that not only was Jeffrey Epstein White, he was one of the most notorious sex traffickers in recent history.

And what about the night he died? He had already attempted suicide in the weeks leading up to his death, so you would think that the officials in the Bureau of Prisons would keep close watch over this potentially suicidal inmate.

In fact, the opposite happened. Jeffrey Epstein was left alone, unmonitored, in his cell. The two officers on duty were allegedly dozing off and scrolling on their phones. And the next morning, Epstein was found dead with a bed sheet tied around his neck. Because of these failures, the survivors of Epstein's despicable crimes will never get to see him brought to justice.

Six months after Epstein died, former Attorney General Bill Barr handpicked Michael Carvajal to lead the Bureau of Prisons. It could have been a new beginning for the Bureau, a chance to get to the bottom of widely publicized neglect and mismanagement--and to hold the appropriate parties accountable. But that fresh start never came because, since day one, Director Carvajal of the Bureau of Prisons has shown no intention of reforming that institution.

Consider the case of the warden who ran the Metropolitan Correctional Center the night Jeffrey Epstein died. How did Director Carvajal respond to that warden's failure of leadership? Well, if you can imagine it, he actually rewarded him. Director Carvajal appointed the same warden to lead a different facility, the largest Federal prison in the United States: FCI Fort Dix in New Jersey.

And it seems that warden hasn't learned any lessons in leadership since Mr. Epstein's death. Last month, an inmate in FCI Fort Dix was attacked from behind and stabbed in the eye.

These are not isolated incidents. For years, the Bureau of Prisons has been plagued by corruption, chronic understaffing, and misconduct by high-ranking officials. And in the nearly 2 years since Director Carvajal took control of the Bureau, he has failed to address the mounting crises in our Nation's Federal prison system.

It is far past time for new, reform-minded leadership in the Bureau of Prisons.

A few weeks ago, the Associated Press published a breathtaking investigation into the Bureau. They concluded that it is a ``hotbed of abuse, graft and corruption, and has turned a blind eye to employees accused of misconduct.''

Since 2019, more than 100 Federal prison workers have been arrested for, charged with, or convicted of crimes, including sexual abuse, murder, and introducing contraband into the prison. Altogether, these crimes account for two-thirds of the criminal cases against all Department of Justice personnel, even though BOP employees comprise less than a third of the workforce.

I want to share a few of the stories from the Associated Press report. At one Federal prison in Mississippi, an official responsible for investigating the misconduct of other staff members was arrested for his own misconduct. He was not only accused of stalking and harassing his fellow employees, but he was allowed to remain in his position. He was even authorized to continue investigating one of his accusers.

In California, a warden of a Federal women's prison was arrested and indicted earlier this year for molesting an inmate. He even kept lewd photos of the victim on his government-issued cell phone. He allegedly told the woman that she shouldn't even try to report the assault because he was ``close friends'' with the official who would investigate it.

The list goes on. It is a recurring pattern of misconduct by officials within the Bureau of Prisons who believe they can abuse inmates and break the law with impunity. In some cases, that is exactly what they have done.

The details in the AP investigation are shocking. And for those of us who have been following Director Carvajal's tenure, they are the latest disturbing examples of failed leadership.

Time and again, he has categorically failed to uphold his chief responsibility as Director. And what is that responsibility? Protecting the health and safety of inmates and correctional officers.

Today, the Bureau suffers from chronic and significant understaffing. Director Carvajal has failed to contain outbreaks of COVID-19, which has led to tens of thousands of inmates and staff contracting the virus. And when it comes to reforming our Federal prison system, he has failed.

In 2018, congressional Democrats and Republicans came together on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis to enact the FIRST STEP Act. It was a historic piece of reform legislation to create new pathways for prison inmates to better themselves while they serve their time, so they can return to society once released.

Nearly 3 years later, the Bureau of Prisons still hasn't implemented most of these reforms.

One example, under the FIRST STEP Act, low-risk inmates are eligible to earn time credits, reducing their sentences. They do this by completing programs designed to prevent them from committing another crime.

Last month, the inspector general at the Department of Justice found that

the Bureau of Prisons has not applied these earned time credits to any of the approximately 60,000 eligible inmates.

Now the Senate Judiciary Committee, which I chair, is charged with overseeing the Bureau of Prisons. We have tried to get answers from Director Carvajal and his team. We have repeatedly requested information.

We have asked for details about the inmate banking system. Now, there is a heck of a story. It purportedly has little oversight by the Bureau of Prisons, has allowed inmates to avoid paying child support and restitution to crime victims and other obligations.

The Bureau reportedly allowed Larry Nassar, the so-called doctor who abused hundreds of young gymnasts before he was sentence to life in prison, to spend thousands of dollars from his Bureau of Prisons account on himself but pay only $300 toward the debt he owes his victims.

The Bureau has delayed responding to our questions--or just flatout ignored them.

It is past time to replace Director Carvajal. This can't wait any longer. The Associated Press's investigation shows us that lives are literally at stake.

I know Attorney General Garland understands the urgency. I am calling on him today to move immediately to dismiss Director Carvajal and to bring real reform to the Bureau of Prisons.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise in support of my Connecticut colleagues in their effort to pass the bipartisan background check bill, H.R. 8.

I want to thank my friends Senator Murphy and Senator Blumenthal for their leadership on this issue.

I am sure, as Senator Blumenthal just recounted, that tragic experience at Sandy Hook Elementary School 9 years ago is still fresh in their minds and motivates them to stand up, time and again, and to speak out on behalf of the families who lost their children and those wonderful educators and administrators who gave their lives that day.

What will it take? Is there a crime involving guns in America so horrific that finally we will say enough?

Other countries have. Australia did. They had a terrible shooting. They came to the conclusion that this was just unacceptable in their nation. They wouldn't let it become normal. Some States have done that. Connecticut did after Sandy Hook. They said our State will be different. We are not going to stand just idly by.

But when it comes here to Washington in this national legislature, in this Senate, it appears there is nothing sufficiently awful, so specifically outrageous that it will move us to act.

This last week, it was Oakland County, MI, Oxford High School. Four children got up in the morning, blurry-eyed, brushed their teeth, grabbed their lunches, headed off to school--and never came home. That was the reality of this.

Senator Murphy has said those other students, lucky enough to survive, will never forget that day as long as they live. They will be telling their grandchildren about the day they had to dive out of a window to escape this gunman who was going through their school.

I have always thought, of the most terrible gun crimes that have happened--and there have been so many, so many--Sandy Hook is the worst. I can't imagine a classroom of 20 first graders and the teachers being gunned down at their desks. Oh, my God.

For every parent and every grandparent, it is the worst nightmare in the world, and it happened there--20 of them. Certainly, many of us believed that would be the moment that America would come to its senses and say: Let's do something. If we can't do everything, let's do something to show we care. But as a national legislature, we failed.

And the proposal that we brought to the floor that was objected to today is the most basic thing in the world. OK. You have second amendment rights, unless--unless--you have given those up by committing a felony crime and being convicted of it, unless you were so mentally unstable that you shouldn't own a gun. That is basically it. That is all we said. Are those unreasonable? I think not. Eighty-four percent of Americans happen to believe that is a pretty sensible thing to do-- 84 percent. But when it comes to the U.S. Senate, we can't get 51 percent to vote that way--at least not yet.

So I thank my colleagues Senator Murphy and Senator Blumenthal for reminding us of the terrible tragedy in their lives and in their State just 9 years ago. But I will tell you that as horrible as Sandy Hook was, 900 people have died by gunfire in Cook County, IL, which I represent, just this year, and 40,000 Americans lost their lives to guns last year. We can't do anything about that. They are gone.

But what about tomorrow's victims? What about next week's victims? What about the next high school? We can do something about that, and this bill would pass today if Republican Senators would allow it.

Let's be very candid about this. This is a partisan issue. It shouldn't be. Those gunmen--I don't think anyone reports their political status, and certainly the victims are not identified that way. But in this Chamber, it is an article of faith, political faith, that Republicans won't touch anything related to gun safety--anything.

The bill that was objected to, proposed by Senator Grassley, the protecting communities bill--first, let me say Chuck Grassley is my friend. I mean it. I don't just say that as political, idle talk. He is my ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee. We disagree on a lot of things. We sure do agree on a lot of things too.

The bill that he described is a step in the wrong direction, as was mentioned by Senator Murphy. That bill doesn't fix the gaping holes in the background check system. It makes them worse. To say that people who have been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital can leave that hospital, walk out the door, and buy a gun, that doesn't even make sense.

You would certainly want to ask someone, some medical expert, what is their state of mind? Have they fully recovered? Are they ready? Can they make a basic decision that we can trust? That is not too much to ask for those who are involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Unfortunately, the Grassley bill, which we objected to, would automatically restore a person's right to buy a gun the minute they walked out of the hospital. The bill also wipes away the NICS background check system for the records of--listen--175,000 people in this country who have been found, in the words of the statute, ``mentally incompetent.'' This bill would allow them--permit them to buy guns immediately.

How can that make any sense at all?

Surely, the definition may not be the best, but let's work on that instead of just saying, on a blanket basis, go out and buy a gun if you want to.

The bill also weakens gun laws on the books. The bill would allow gun dealers to sell handguns directly to people from other States. How does that make us safer? And it would bar the ATF from requiring gun dealers to submit reports of multiple purchases of long guns--a key indicator of gun trafficking in many border States.

We are a long way from where we should be, but Senator Grassley has challenged me as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold a hearing, mark up the bill.

I accept the challenge. We may not get to first base on this, but we are not going to stay in the stands and in the bleachers as kids are being gunned down at Oxford High School, and we are ``celebrating''--if that is the word--all of the gun deaths of the past with anniversaries that bring back bitter memories and tragic occurrences.

So, yes, the Senate Judiciary Committee will have a hearing. We are going to move forward as best we can. Maybe there is common ground out there. I pray, for the victims and their families--I pray that there is.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print the following letters in the Congressional Record.

Mr. President, earlier this month, while we were all home for the Thanksgiving recess, an American patriot passed away. His name was MAJ Ian Fishback.

During his life, Major Fishback defended our Nation during four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was an accomplished scholar, with degrees from both West Point and the University of Michigan, and a lifelong champion of justice.

Tragically, like too many of our Nation's veterans, Major Fishback's life ended far too soon. He died at the age of 42. Though his time on Earth was short, he left behind a legacy. He changed our Nation for the better. He inspired the Members of the Senate to make a historic stand against injustice.

You see, in 2005, while Major Fishback was serving as captain in the U.S. Army infantry, he spoke out against America's inhumane treatment of detainees after 9/11. In a letter to then-Senators John McCain and John Warner, Major Fishback wrote: ``I have been unable to get clear, consistent answers from my leadership about what constitutes lawful and humane treatment of detainees. I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment. I and troops under my command witnessed some of these abuses in both Afghanistan and Iraq.''

Major Fishback's courageous letter shed light on the atrocities that were being committed shamefully in the name of our Nation, and he felt that he had ``failed'' the servicemembers under his command. The reality is, our leaders failed Major Fishback.

In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration tossed aside our constitutional principles as well as the Geneva Conventions. By condoning torture, they dishonored our Nation and actually endangered our servicemembers.

After reports emerged about horrific abuses at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, I tried for a year and a half to pass legislation to make it clear that cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees was illegal. Two military heroes, my former colleague Senator John McCain and Major Fishback, turned the tide in this effort.

In speaking out, Major Fishback rallied the Members of this Chamber to support a torture amendment authored by Senator McCain and myself, which was added to the defense spending package for that year over a veto

threat from the George W. Bush administration. That provision explicitly banned inhumane treatment of any prisoner held by the American Government--on American soil or overseas. It set us on a course to restoring American values that were cast aside after 9/11-- work that is still ongoing 20 years later.

We have a defense bill before us on the floor with many things in it that are positive, and I will vote for it. But it is a moment to also reflect that this bill does more than protect our Nation and help our troops; it also protects our values. That is why I have an amendment to this bill, which I hope we will have a chance to offer, that will close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay once and for all.

Since the first group of detainees was brought to Guantanamo in January of 2002, four different Presidents have presided over the facility. In that time, the Iraq war has begun and ended, and the war in Afghanistan, our Nation's longest war, has come to a close. A generation of conflict has come and gone. Yet the Guantanamo detention facility is still open, and every day it remains open is an affront to our system of justice and the rule of law. It is where due process goes to die. That is precisely why military officials, national security experts, and leaders on both sides of the aisle have demanded its closure for years.

The facility was virtually designed to be a legal black hole where detainees can be held incommunicado--beyond the reach of law--and subjected to unspeakable torture and abuse. In the words of a former senior official in the Bush administration, Guantanamo existed in ``the legal equivalent of outer space.''

It was created to circumvent the Geneva Conventions. What are those conventions? We know. They were the internationally accepted standard of humane treatment for detainees and prisoners. Guantanamo was designed to circumvent it and other longstanding treaties. This subversion of justice has harmed detainees, it has undermined our moral standing, and it has failed to deliver justice, which it promised.

For two decades, the families of Americans who died on 9/11 have waited for the alleged conspirators, who are being detained in Guantanamo, to be brought to justice. For 20 years, they have been waiting, but the case still hasn't come to trial. Imagine. If justice delayed is justice denied, how can this be justice at Guantanamo? Instead, the facility has become a symbol for human rights abuse, lawlessness, and everything Major Fishback decried in his letter to Senator McCain.

The stories out of Guantanamo and CIA black sites are shocking. Let me tell you one of them.

Last month, Guantanamo detainee Majid Khan testified before a military jury about the abuse he suffered in the facility and in CIA black sites. It was the first time a detainee has described his torture at a CIA black site.

Let's be clear. Majid Khan is a former member of al-Qaida who should be held accountable for his actions, but there is no justification for torture.

Mr. Khan recounted being abused in unspeakable, unthinkable ways by our government, including being waterboarded and shackled to a ceiling until his ankles swelled with blood. In one part of his testimony, he described a CIA medic sexually violating him with a garden hose.

As Mr. Khan shared the excruciating details of his torture, the members of the jury listened closely. But pay heed: These weren't average citizens sitting on the jury; they were Active-Duty, senior military U.S. officials on the jury. When the hearing concluded, these high-ranking military leaders did something unheard of. Seven of the eight jurors signed a handwritten letter recommending clemency for Majid Khan. This is what they concluded, and I want to quote it word for word: ``Mr. Khan has been held without the basic due process under the U.S. Constitution. . . . [He] was subjected to physical and psychological abuse well beyond approved enhanced interrogation techniques, instead being closer to torture performed by the most abusive regimes in modern history. . . . [T]his abuse was of no practical value in terms of intelligence or any other tangible benefits to U.S. interests.''

Remember, I have just quoted these senior U.S. military officials who sat on a jury where this man was being tried, and they, in a handwritten letter, wrote what I just read.

Now, that last point is crucial. The human rights abuses committed in Guantanamo and CIA black sites are not merely inhumane; they don't work. They are ineffective.

Khan testified: ``I lied just to make the abuse stop.''

Torturing him brought us no clarity, brought us no truth, and brought us no closer to eradicating terrorism. Instead, stories about the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo have only galvanized America's enemies. They have been packaged into propaganda and recruitment tools for terrorism, which in turn endangers our service men and women as well as our allies.

These accounts of abuse have also diminished our international standing. How can we claim credibility as a nation? How can we hold authoritarian dictators accountable if they can point to our own legacy of cruelty and indefinite detention? The man was held for 20 years, and others are still being held without being brought to trial.

Worse yet, the degrading conditions at Guantanamo are being funded by American taxpayers. How much is the cost of Guantanamo? Astronomic, that is how high it is. We spend more than $500 million a year to keep Guantanamo open--$500 million. Half a billion dollars a year American taxpayers are wasting to detain how many people for half a billion dollars? Thirty-nine. Thirty-nine prisoners, $500 million, and 13 have already been approved for transfer. That works out to nearly $14 million a year on each prisoner like Majid Khan--$14 million a year. Let me put that in perspective for a moment. That is enough money to expand Medicaid coverage to 1.5 million Americans over 10 years.

Setting aside the cost, we have to acknowledge the larger truth. Guantanamo does not reflect who we are or should be. Indefinite detention without charge or trial is antithetical to America's values. Yet more than two-thirds of the people detained in Guantanamo today have never been charged with a crime. How can that be any form of justice?

With or without the amendment I have introduced to this year's Defense authorization, we must accelerate the timeline to finally close Guantanamo. As I mentioned, 39 prisoners, $500 million a year?

President Biden transferred his first detainee earlier this summer, but that pace--one every 6 months--is not going to set us on course to finally close Guantanamo. Like the war in Afghanistan, America's failures in Guantanamo must not be passed on to another administration or to another Congress. Can this Senate summon the courage to finally close this detention facility? I would like to test it on the floor of the Senate. As a matter of fact, isn't that why we are elected--to test a basic question like that?

Next week, the Judiciary Committee is going to hold a hearing on how we can close Guantanamo once and for all. There are more steps the Biden administration can take to accelerate this closure. One is by appointing a special envoy to the State Department to negotiate transfer agreements for those inmates who are scheduled to be transferred--13 of the 39--to transfer them to other nations.

We must also reach swift resolution in the remaining cases where charges have been brought, instead of moving forward with military commissions. Let's finally accept the obvious: Military commissions are not the answer in Guantanamo and have not been for 20 years. If there is one lesson we can learn from the shameful legacy of Guantanamo, it is that we need to trust our system of justice. The use of torture and military commissions that deny due process have hindered our ability to bring terrorists to justice. Going forward, we should adhere to the long-held values of humane treatment and the rule of law.

Our Federal courts have proven more than capable of handling even the most serious, complex terrorism cases. Since 9/11, hundreds of terrorism suspects have been tried and convicted in our Federal courts, and many are now being safely held in Federal prisons. Compare that to the military commission case against the alleged conspirators behind 9/ 11. It still hasn't come to trial more than two decades after that horrendous attack. The families who

lost loved ones on that day deserve better. America deserves better. And American patriots like Major Fishback deserve better as well.

We all deserve better than these black holes that violate our national values and make true legal accountability impossible.

As Major Fishback wrote to Senator McCain all those years ago, ``If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession.''

It is time to live up to those ideals that our troops have risked their lives to defend.

It is time, at long last, to face reality and honestly say, Close the detention facility in Guantanamo. Let's put this dark chapter behind us once and for all.

And in the memory of Major Fishback and the U.S. officials on that jury who spoke out, I thank them. I know it wasn't easy. It is far easier to remain silent and to avoid the obvious. But they showed courage in disclosing to the American people what occurred at Guantanamo.

Now, do we even have the courage to even debate this issue and vote on it on the floor of the Senate?

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

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

Mr. President, it was 158 years ago tomorrow that Abraham Lincoln delivered what I believe was the greatest speech ever uttered by an American. He had been asked to say ``a few words'' at the dedication at the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA.

Four months had passed since the great armies of the North and South had clashed on that hallowed ground. They had fought for 3 days in the searing July heat. When the slaughter finally ended, the battlefield lay covered with the bodies of 50,000 dead and wounded soldiers and officers. It was the bloodiest battle in the hellish Civil War.

What good could come from butchery and sorrow? What great purpose had been worth such staggering loss? Those were the questions which Abraham Lincoln pondered on his train ride to answer in Gettysburg.

He spoke for less than 3 minutes--just 272 words. In those 3 minutes, he redefined the war as not a battle for territory or property, but for human dignity and human equality.

He gave us a profound, simple, new definition of democracy: ``Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.'' He said the fallen soldiers had done all they could do. They had given their ``last full measure of devotion'' to ensure democracy did not perish from this Earth.

Now, Lincoln said, it was left to us, the living, to ``advance their unfinished work''--in his words, to salvage from all of that death a new birth of freedom.

He said that our Civil War was testing ``whether a nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal . . . can long endure.''

Can our democracy endure? It is a question that Lincoln pondered not just at Gettysburg but throughout his life.

Twenty-five years before Gettysburg, he had considered that question in a speech at the Young Men's Lyceum in Springfield, IL. He was a young lawyer and a newly elected State legislator, just 29 years old.

It was a challenging time in America, as it is today. Anxiety was high following a stock market panic the previous year. There was growing violence in America. Abolitionists were being killed by pro- slavery defenders. Blacks and others were being lynched with alarming frequency in the South. Lincoln feared that what he called ``the justice of the mob'' might replace the rule of law. Sound familiar?

In a time of such anxiety, he questioned whether people might elect a despot who would use his power to tear down the institutions of our democracy, rather than preserve them.

In his most famous passage, he warned that if American democracy were ever to perish, ``it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.''

I heard those words quoted by a thoughtful Member of the House of Representatives on the night of January 6, 2021, after the mob that attacked this Capitol had gone and Congress had returned to complete our duty to certify the electoral ballots and declare Joe Biden the President of the United States.

The weapons and military programs that we will debate in the coming days are important. They are essential to protect America. But weapons alone cannot save us if we don't understand what we are fighting to defend. There is only one sure way to preserve American democracy, Lincoln told us. We must know our history. We should study the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, he said, as if they were a Bible, so that we revere the principles upon which our democracy is built.

Our democracy can't survive if we reject the great proposition for which so many died at Gettysburg: that all people are created equal. Our democracy cannot survive if we abide by the rule of law only when it suits us. And it will not endure if we see each other as enemies rather than as friends and citizens of one Nation that we all love.

We have seen a demonstration of that particular issue this week in the House of Representatives.

In his book, ``Lincoln at Gettysburg,'' Garry Wills wrote that ``Up to the Civil War, the United States was referred to as a plural noun. `The United States are a free country.' After

Gettysburg, it became singular, `The United States is a free country.'''

As it says above your head, Mr. President, ``e pluribus unum.''

As we look forward to celebrating our national holiday of Thanksgiving, perhaps we could try a little harder to hear the ``mystic chords of memory''--what a phrase--that unite us.

I think about that Gettysburg Address, and I was asked to give a speech about the Gettysburg Address at Gettysburg many years ago. I tried to set out whatever I had to say in 272 words. I think I did a fair job, but I would give myself a passing grade, at best. But it was a complete shock to my audience when I stopped at 272 words, and Lincoln said that a speech doesn't have to be eternal to be immortal.

In our lives as public servants, we are called on to speak very often. And I am reminded, time and again, the impact that Lincoln had with so few words, to capture the moment, to give people hope, and to craft phrases which still endure to this day as some of the most masterful uses of the English language one can imagine.

Tomorrow, I hope we can take a moment to recall our childhood education, when we were taught the Gettysburg Address and perhaps recite what we can of it. And I hope we will remember, even in these dark times, that we have faced harder times than this and we were delivered and this Nation endured.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

I announce that the Senator from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen) is necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Hassan), the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mrs. Shaheen), and the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Hassan), the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mrs. Shaheen), and the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.