Floor Statements

Mr. President, I thank the majority leader, and I thank the Presiding Officer for allowing me to speak this evening.

I just returned from the southern border and want to give a brief report and talk about some potential ways forward to deal with what is happening on the Mexican border. I went with Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas and also with the chair of the Homeland Security Committee, my colleague from Michigan, and also with my colleague from West Virginia and my colleague from Connecticut, who are the chairs and ranking members of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Committee. We had a bipartisan group and those of us who were involved on the authorizing side and on the appropriations side.

You probably heard that the situation is bad, and it is. There is a record number of unaccompanied children coming to our border today, being let in, and ending up in Border Patrol detention facilities.

Just yesterday, CBP reported that there were more than 15,500 unaccompanied kids in Federal custody. That is a record. But it is not just children. More than 100,000 migrants were apprehended in February alone. This is a 15-year record, representing a 28-percent increase just since January. All the numbers from March look even higher. We won't know the final numbers for another couple of weeks, but the point is, it is getting worse, not better.

These numbers, by the way, are worse than the previous two surges at our southern border--both the 2014 surge, we all remember, during the Obama administration and the 2019 surge during the Trump administration. And, by the way, we have yet to

reach the predicted peak because that normally would happen in April and May. In fact, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, who was with us on this trip, said that he believes this will be the worst year in 20 years for unlawful entry into the United States.

However, the numbers only tell part of the story. This is also a humanitarian crisis. Migrants often face violence, sickness, and tough terrain on their dangerous journey north--predominantly, those from the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador. Many are abused by the smugglers who charge them large amounts of money and bring them.

Unfortunately, this is a crisis that could have been avoided. On day one, the Biden administration issued five Executive orders to overturn Trump policies and since has taken more than a half dozen additional actions to dismantle policies from the previous administration.

These included a 100-day pause on all deportations; no longer using the COVID-19 healthcare emergency under title 42 of the United States Code to turn away unaccompanied children and some families; suspending the construction of the border fence and technologies, such as sensors and scanners used by the Trump administration to help our overworked Border Patrol agents secure key stretches of our southern border; and abandoning the migrant protection protocols, also known as ``Remain in Mexico,'' which required some asylum seekers at the southern border to remain in Mexico rather than in the United States while their claim for asylum is being processed; and, of course, proposing an amnesty bill on day one.

The administration has every right to do that, but it creates a disincentive to push back on new migrants coming in who are trying to get into the United States before that amnesty might become law. It certainly does unless you also make it clear that you don't qualify for amnesty unless you are already here. And I think that is an important message that I hope will be part of any future discussions about any kind of an amnesty bill so it doesn't encourage more people to come.

The Biden administration took these and other actions that incentivize people to head north but then said: Please don't come yet. We are not ready for you.

It was no surprise that didn't work. An unprecedented number of children and families came to take advantage of the new policies. As I heard on the southern border over the last few days, actions speak louder than words. And the actions of the new administration were clear.

These abrupt moves to dismantle the immigration policies that were working to provide a disincentive for unlawful migrations hit the green light to a lot of people seeking a better life, but it also gave the smugglers and the human trafficking groups in the Northern Triangle and in Mexico the ability to convince more families and more children to take the dangerous trip north. It gave them a narrative, and, of course, they used it to their full advantage. That has overwhelmed Border Patrol and our immigration system, in general, unequipped to handle the surge.

I heard directly from Border Patrol agents about how the current surge of unaccompanied kids is draining resources and endangering not just those vulnerable kids but the security of our own border

It was stunning to see people who unlawfully crossed the border during a ride-along patrol I joined on Thursday night. People just kept coming. The Border Patrol told me they are seeing an increase of about 150 to 200 percent of illegal entries in the El Paso sector, with many illegal crossers escaping into the United States because they have not apprehended them.

Just as concerning, they told me unaccompanied children and families are being used by the smugglers as a distraction so the smugglers can more easily move dangerous and illicit substances across the border into our communities.

While the Border Patrol is busy processing the kids and the families, which takes a while, the smugglers move. In fact, Customs and Border Protection has reported an increase of 360 percent in seizures of the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is 50 times deadlier than heroin.

There is no question that more of this is now coming across the border. It is already resulting in a surge of overdose deaths, by the way, over the past year during the COVID-19 pandemic. In my home State of Ohio and around the country, it looks like, sadly, we are in for a record year of overdose and overdose deaths, primarily from fentanyl and fentanyl being mixed with other drugs.

Fentanyl used to come from China directly, mostly through our mail system. Now, increasingly, it is coming from Mexico, since we passed legislation here to stop it coming through our mail system.

Down at the border, I also had the opportunity to visit with the facilities where they are currently holding unaccompanied kids. These children are being kept in tightly packed facilities, supervised by overworked Border Patrol agents, law enforcement, who should be out in the field.

Due to a lack of space for children in the Department of Health and Human Services facilities, Border Patrol is having to detain unaccompanied kids for an average of about 137 hours, nearly double the 72-hour limit required by law.

I am concerned about the well-being of these kids, as we all are, because when the system gets overwhelmed, people, and especially the kids, suffer. And the processing system right now is overwhelmed; it is overcrowded; it is irresponsible. It is a situation you would never want your own children to be in. Not only are these children crammed into the facilities that are, by their own rules and regulations, overcrowded, there is no testing for COVID-19 in these facilities. Current policy is going to result in tens of thousands more children being released into our communities, waiting for their immigration court cases.

During previous surges at the border that overwhelmed our immigration system, HHS stopped doing background checks on sponsors for unaccompanied kids, and many fell into the custody of abusive human traffickers. In 2014, for example, HHS placed Guatemalan children with criminals who put the children into forced labor on an egg farm in my home State of Ohio, where they were forced to live and work in squalid conditions.

It is an issue I have worked a long time on. Between 2015 and to 2020, as chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, I led three bipartisan reports and hearings across two administrations that found repeated failures by the Federal Government to ensure the well- being of these vulnerable children once they were handed off to sponsors, as well as the fundamental refusal by HHS to accept that they were responsible for the welfare of these kids they placed with adults who are not their legal parent or guardian.

Obviously, we are going to see a lot more pressure to get these kids out to as many sponsors as quickly as possible, and, again, I believe we are going to have some of these problems.

Last week, I introduced bipartisan legislation called the Responsibility for Unaccompanied Minors Act that will direct the Federal Government to meet the stringent requirements necessary to ensure children are not abused or exploited by their sponsors; that they show up for their asylum hearings to determine their eligibility to stay in the United States. These are necessary steps to address the current crisis at our border and safeguard these children.

By the way, on the debate as to whether to call the chaos at the border a crisis or not, when I was on the border talking to Border Patrol agents, one of them told me, although he believes it is a crisis, that he is fine not calling it a crisis now because he knows it is going to get much worse, and he wants to have something to call it then. He wants to see, like all Americans, concrete actions and a change of course at the border, much more than having a debate about words. By the way, we should all sympathize with those migrants who want a better life for their families. I sympathize with them. I am sure we all do.

There are millions of people around the world who want to come to our country. We have a legal immigration system that accepts a million people a

year. In addition to that, we accept refugees and those who apply for asylum. At the end of the day, those individuals coming to our southern border right now are making a rational choice to come to the border based on policy decisions by the Biden administration. What we need is a legal, orderly, and proper system to be sure the people follow the rules.

The bottom line is, what I saw at the border is unsustainable, and, unfortunately, it is going to get worse. We are working against the clock to try to find a way forward.

When the Biden administration changed the rules and dismantled the existing provisions that were keeping people from coming across the border, they could have put their own policies in place to try to deal with what everybody predicted was a surge that was coming. They didn't. More to the point, even if they weren't going to put their own policies in place, they should surely have waited until they had the facilities ready to handle the surge. They didn't. That is why you see this terrible overcrowding at Border Patrol detention facilities, holding these kids much longer than they should, and why you see HHS not having the beds prepared that they should have.

By the way, some have said the Trump administration dismantled the asylum system. Well, because of the rules they had in place, there were very few people coming to apply for asylum. The facility I saw, which was a modern facility built just last year with $48 million of our taxpayer money, was built to try to deal with the next surge. Unfortunately, it is not big enough, and, again, it is overcrowded, so you have kids sleeping on the floor on thin foam mattresses with only a space blanket. None of them have been checked for COVID. They are living not 6 feet apart, as we are required to do here with social distancing, but inches apart and together.

It is one thing to say we are going to change all these policies. It is another thing to say we are not going to put anything in its place or because that is OK--we are OK to have a surge come--at least to be prepared for that surge, and that is not what is happening.

I believe there is a path forward for the Biden administration and the Congress to address this crisis in the short term; then work on medium- and long-term solutions to lower the risk of future surges.

Here is what I would propose. First and foremost, the Biden administration should recommit to enforcing our immigration laws by providing overwhelmed Border Patrol agents and our Immigration and Customs the help they need to be able to ensure they can get what they need to be able to enforce the law. That means better pay for our Border Patrol. It also means better overtime provisions. We have legislation to do that.

It also means ensuring that they have the tools they need to be able to protect the country. That means not stopping construction of the fence, which, by the way, is almost done. In the El Paso sector, I think there is 150 miles of fence totally--in total, 124 miles is already done. The parts that are not done, unfortunately, are some of the gates, so you have gaps. Border Patrol are very frustrated by this because they literally have to have people at the gaps because they can't monitor them as they can with the fence because with the fence, it takes people a while to get over the fence. With monitoring devices, which are, to me, more important even than the fence itself, they are able to do their jobs.

They are also being told they can't continue the technology, so although there is 124 miles of fencing, there is much less technology than that. Yet they have been stopped from doing that as well.

Let's give them what they need to be able to do their jobs. They are in an impossible situation. I am not talking about a new fence or a new wall, but at least for the part that has already been appropriated by Congress, let's complete it. Let's not leave these gaps.

I literally saw the supplies they have. Construction material is on the ground, and the Border Patrol agents told me--these are rank-and- file Border Patrol agents: This is bad for morale. We see this stuff right there. If that could be put up to take the place of the temporary fencing migrants are able to simply push over or walk through, that would make our jobs much easier.

No. 2, the asylum system needs to be changed immediately. Now, with a backlog of 1.2 million asylum seekers, they are waiting several years for court hearings to find out if they are qualified. During that time, they are living in the United States and often vanishing into the United States. We know from the data we have--and, by the way, the data is not very good on this--that only about half of them, maybe more or maybe less, are even showing up for their court cases. We know this because, for about 48 percent of those who are seeking asylum, there are now removal orders out for them for not showing up for their hearings. So about half of them have removal orders to be removed from the country because they haven't shown up for their hearings. Remember, this is a 1.2 million-person backlog, so it may be 3, 4, 5, 6 years before they get to their court cases. Is there any wonder some of these people are not showing up?

Finally, at the very end of the process, after you go through all the adjudication, guess what the percentage of success would be for someone to achieve an asylum status: only 15 percent--15 percent--have a successful claim. So people are being told to go into the country and await their court cases, and 1.2 million people are doing that. It takes several years for that to happen. At the end of the day, only 15 percent will get asylum.

Yet, again, many are not being removed even though there is a removal order out on them because the immigration system is overwhelmed, so they are focusing on those who have a criminal record, which I understand. This means, if you don't have a criminal record and you are in the United States, you know that it is unlikely you will actually be removed even if there is a removal order for you.

So one policy change would be to simply resume a practice that was started in the last administration as a pilot and ended in November 2020. It is called the Prompt Asylum Claim Review process. An efficient and timely determination of who is eligible for asylum and who is not would really help. It would enable us to start reducing the number of migrants being held in custody and deter migrants who do not have a valid claim.

You might say: Why not start with the 1.2 million backlog? That would be great. We should do that as well. We need more immigration judges. We need more lawyers involved in the process, on both sides, representing those who have the claim and representing the government. That would be good, but in the meantime, these rapid adjudications on the border with due process would have the effect of deterring the next migrant. Think about it. If you are just dealing with the last person on the list, the person who comes in most recently gets more of a deterrent than if you are dealing with the person who came in 4 or 5 years ago because they think: Well, if I get up there and make my claim and come into the United States and go out into one of the communities represented in this body, it will be 4 or 5 years before my court case comes up. Perhaps there will be amnesty during that period or something else or perhaps I will just stay.

If you come to the border and you seek amnesty--you seek asylum--your claim will be adjudicated immediately, and you may receive asylum or you may not. Again, 15 percent is the number now. That is the best number we have, and that is from 2019. We don't have the numbers from 2020 yet Most think that is about what it will be.

I think this is a good system. I don't know why it was ended in the Trump administration back in November. It shouldn't have been. I hope the new administration will take it up.

As part of this, my colleagues from Texas and Arizona, Senator Cornyn and Senator Sinema, have suggested we stand up multiple regional processing centers to rapidly and fairly conduct asylum cases in one location. I support that. I think this idea is consistent with what I am talking about to discourage illegal immigration and to ensure that we have a quick decision with regard to asylum. Have all the Federal Agencies together--Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection, ICE, the Justice Department, HHS--everybody together in one place, and quickly

make these decisions so that people aren't held for a long period of time, so they can have the decision made.

I think it is worth the funding because it will be expensive. It will be expensive to hire the new immigration judges to have the system set up, but it is well worth it, in my view.

Third, to deal with the asylum process, the Biden administration should look at the new Migrant Protection Protocols or ``Remain in Mexico'' policy. ``Remain in Mexico'' allowed us to keep our detention center populations down in the United States and asylum seekers close to the immigration courts while officials sorted out the claims. Getting rid of the policy served only to overcrowd our temporary housing and sent a lot more people into the interior, awaiting a hearing by an immigration judge.

There are concerns about ``Remain in Mexico'' in terms of the conditions at some of the camps in Mexico. Although nongovernmental organizations play a substantial role there already, perhaps for those who are still in that process--and there are probably 45,000 people who are still in that process; there were initially maybe less, but, initially, there were about 75,000 people--a lot of people have just gone home because they don't want to remain in Mexico for their asylum claim. They would rather go back to their home in Northern Triangle countries--Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador--but for those who are there, perhaps there should be more oversight of those camps and more Federal funding provided through the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, HCR, and others to ensure those conditions are better.

What the Biden administration is doing now is saying ``We are going to stop the program,'' and they are bringing people over the border. I saw this, the processing center. About 350 or 450 people a day are leaving the ``Remain in Mexico,'' the Migrant Protection Protocols Program, and coming into the United States. Those people are given the ability to come into the interior, so they are coming into communities in the United States.

One thing you would hope they would get would be a notice as they go through the processing that says: Here is your court date. You have to show up at this court date.

What we have learned in the last several days or what I learned down at the border is that they are not being given those court dates. They are given a piece of paper that has 24 ICE offices in the major metropolitan areas in America, and they are told: We don't know where you are going to end up. We don't know where you are going. You are welcome in the United States, but wherever you are going, please check into the ICE office in your region.

My hope is we can at least get a system together where we don't, again, dismantle a program until we have something in its place to ensure people are going to their court dates to be able to have the asylum claims dealt with.

On my trip to the border, I asked a reporter to come with me to the border wall because I believe it is important that the public know what is going on. I was surprised to learn that was the first time this reporter or other reporters had been able to kind of see what was going on for quite a while. They haven't been able to come into any of the detention facilities, including the processing center I talked about earlier, where the kids are crammed into--100 kids crammed into 1 room. I think the press should be able to see that because I think that will provide more transparency for all of us.

My constituents don't know what is going on at the border, in part because the media haven't had that level of access. I know we have to protect the confidentiality of individual migrants, and I get that. I think that should be done. I think it can be done, but also by letting the media have that access, we would be able to have more transparency about the realities of what is going on along the border.

So, fourth, I think the Biden administration should invest in finishing the work on the fence, as I said, but they should also work to enact something that is even more important than a fence, and that is to relieve the magnet. This is going to involve Congress.

We did pass an immigration bill in this body with a strong provision called E-Verify several years ago. It basically says that for employers, there will be a sanction if you hire somebody who is not legal. The difference between E-Verify and some of the earlier programs that attempted to do that unsuccessfully is that E-Verify lets us use the new technologies we now have to ensure that fraudulent documents that are often used can be determined to be fraudulent. In other words, you can use technology--facial recognition and so on--to ensure that the employer knows for sure whether the person is legal or not.

Again, this requires some Federal funding. Some of that software for small businesses, in particular, may be expensive, but to have an E- Verify Program that says you mandatorily--by the way, it is not mandatory right now either. It doesn't have the technology. It is not mandatory. You have to make it mandatory and say: If you want to hire somebody, you have to run them through the system. Make it as easy as possible to use the technology.

In talking to the migrants I met--and my colleagues have spoken to many people who have come to this country, and I am sure they have had the same experience--when I asked them why they are coming here, they all have the same answer, basically, with slight variations, which is, as one guy told me from Guatemala, he can make 10 times as much money here. He cares about his family and their future. The economy is much better here, but that is because he knows he can get a job probably with a document, either a driver's license or a Social Security card that will be fraudulent, but he can buy it for 25 bucks. So we need a system here to stop the magnet.

Don't put the Border Patrol and all of those involved--the immigration system is in such an impossible position that we have a wide-open system here where anybody can come and work.

Let's do E-Verify. That is more important to me than any other enforcement tool that we have. Federal Reserve economists found that States that mandate the use of E-Verify reduce the number of likely unauthorized immigrants who stay in that State. Of course it does.

Sixth--and this is the final one--the Biden administration should work with our Central American partners, including the Governments of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, to discourage unlawful migration. They can do that by incentivizing migrants to apply for asylum in their countries of origin. Some have said this should be mandatory. To me, that seems to make sense. Maybe there is a reason it shouldn't be mandatory, but it certainly should be encouraged, and these countries should certainly offer this.

We should provide more aid to the countries of Central America because there is a push factor. Everything I have talked about so far is the pull factors, bringing them in. But if we do that, that aid ought to be conditioned on them helping us to provide people the ability to seek asylum in their own country. Where they have such a fear of persecution that they can't do it in their own country, they should be able to do it in a third country.

There was a program started in the Trump administration that never really got off the ground, and it was called Safe Third Country. The program with Guatemala was starting to work. Honduras and El Salvador had signed up, but it hadn't started to work yet. Mexico didn't provide it. But what it says basically is, if you cross through a third country, you have to seek asylum in that third country.

Specifically with Guatemala--as you know, you have to go through Guatemala coming from Honduras or El Salvador or Ecuador or elsewhere. Why not have the asylum claims done there? Again, due process, yes, but don't make people take this long and treacherous journey up to the southern border of the United States. Don't make them go through this process of the detention facilities and so on. Have them seek asylum in their own country or in other countries. That, to me, seems like it makes a lot of sense.

The Biden administration suspended the Safe Third Country program on February 6, shortly after the inauguration.

One program they would like to restart that I think makes sense is called the Central American Minors Program. They are going to restart that program

now, starting in March. This is a program where, during the Obama administration, if you had a family member, a parent--it had to be a parent or a guardian--in the United States legally, then you could come through this program called CAM, Central American Minors Program. I am glad they have restarted that program. That makes sense. I will tell you, over 5 years, only 3,500 kids were processed in that program. Again, your parent has to be in the United States legally. There are 3,500 kids coming across our border every 9 days right now. So the program is not going to solve all our problems, but it will help, and that is a good idea.

We need to take a hard look at all of this, at all of these pull factors we talked about and certainly at the push factors.

I will say that the Biden administration has proposed $4 billion to go to these three countries--Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras. As a Congress, we have appropriated and $3.6 billion has been spent in the last 5 years in these three countries. So we have done almost that much in the last 5 years, and yet, because of the corruption, because of the lack of transparency, because of the lack of rule of law, the money has not been as effectively spent as it should have been. So we have to be sure the money is conditioned upon reforms to actually improve the lives of the individuals in those countries. Despite the corruption, we need to cut through that and say: If you take this money, you have to commit to the reforms. Second, again, it should be contingent upon helping with our asylum system to be sure that we can deal with this surge that we are now facing.

If the Biden administration takes these six recommended actions I have laid out today, I believe we would move toward bringing a quicker end to this crisis on the border, and we would be able to secure our southern border with regard to the drugs that are coming over and other contraband and be able to say that we, together, worked on this.

I know this is a time where everybody is in their corner, the Republicans and Democrats, and it is impossible, it seems like, to make progress. But I think these are pretty sensible ideas, and the alternative is a bad one: that this is going to get worse. You will have more and more kids in detention centers. You will have more and more families released to communities in the United States where they don't come forward for their hearings. And it is something that discourages people about our immigration system. It just doesn't seem to work. It is certainly not working on the border today.

So my hope is that these ideas or others--maybe others in this Chamber have better ideas, but hopefully they can be bipartisan, and we can get some of this stuff done and actually deal with the crisis we all know exists and we have a responsibility to face.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I want to start by thanking Senator Ernst for once again setting up the Government Sunshine Week event and for her commitment, as was just discussed by my colleague from Florida, to ensuring taxpayers know where their money is going. This includes the $150 billion that the U.S. Government distributes every year in taxpayer funds for research grants. More transparency will help ensure that research isn't stolen by China and other countries.

In 2019, as the then-chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, or PSI, I led a bipartisan investigation with then- ranking-member Senator Tom Carper into China's theft of U.S. intellectual property and U.S. research at our research institutions and college campuses.

As many of you know, China has made no secret of its goal to surpass the United States as the world leader in scientific research. This has become even clearer, by the way, during the COVID-19 pandemic, as China has attempted to get information in the United States to help produce their own vaccines to rival ours. But what most don't know is that China has been using our taxpayer-funded research enterprise here in the United States to accomplish this long-term goal. China uses talent recruitment programs--most notably its Thousand Talents Plan--to recruit researchers at American universities and research institutions using taxpayer-funded grants to do the same research at shadow labs in China or transfer taxpayer-funded research back to China--research that has been used over the past two decades to strengthen China's military and its own economic rise.

Along the way, they have been aided by a lack of transparency in our Federal grant-making process that has allowed researchers to receive taxpayer funding without disclosing their ties to foreign governments. What is worse, Federal law enforcement officials at the FBI knew about this for years and admitted at our PSI hearing last Congress: ``We wish we had taken more rapid and comprehensive action in the past.'' I wish they had.

I am pleased the Trump administration chose to follow through on their promise to do better in this regard. Since our report, prosecutors have charged at least 13 researchers here in the United States for failing to disclose their ties to the Chinese Government and Chinese Communist Party--researchers at prestigious institutions like Harvard and the Ohio State University. Many of our colleges and universities around the country have been part of this.

The Biden administration must stand by the promises made on the campaign trail to keep the pressure on China, and that includes on this issue. We can also help here in Congress by shining a light on the grant-making process and passing laws to help us keep track and protect these important investments in our research.

In the coming weeks, I will be reintroducing bipartisan legislation called the Safeguarding American Innovation Act, which uses the key findings from our bipartisan PSI investigation and report to protect the research enterprise--in part, through more transparency.

First, our bill creates a cross-governmental council at the Office of Management and Budget to coordinate and streamline unauthorized access and grant-making processes between Federal Agencies so that there is greater transparency in where the money is going and how it is being used.

Second, the Safeguarding American Innovation Act makes it illegal to lie on a grant application about ties to

foreign governments like China. Transparency here will make it clear that researchers are liable for attempting to mislead the government when trying to receive taxpayer funds.

Third, our legislation closes loopholes exploited by China and other foreign actors and empowers the State Department to deny visas to foreign researchers aiming to steal U.S. intellectual property and research.

Fourth, the Safeguarding American Innovation Act requires research institutions and universities to safeguard against unauthorized access to sensitive technology and to be transparent with the State Department about what technologies a foreign researcher will have access to on campus.

Finally, the act requires transparency from our colleges and universities as to what money they are getting from foreign sources. They will have to report any foreign gift of $50,000 or more, and it empowers the Department of Education to fine universities that repeatedly fail to disclose these gifts. Current law requires reporting, but at $250,000. We found that nearly 70 percent of U.S. universities consistently failed to do even that. Lowering the threshold increases transparency, and adding the penalty ensures the schools will report.

The American Council on Education has supported our PSI report's recommendation that research institutions should establish a ``know your collaborator'' culture.

Greater transparency in our Federal grant-making process, great transparency from our research institutions and universities--these are the steps we need to take to ensure that there is proper accountability in place for the $150 billion that taxpayers entrust with the government for federally funded research every year, while still keeping our fundamental research open and collaborative.

The Safeguarding American Innovation Act will shine a light on the Federal grant-making processes and allow us to maintain our world-class lead in innovations, while protecting our investments from foreign theft.

Again, I want to thank my colleague Senator Ernst, in particular, for this event today to talk about transparency, and I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation that will provide long overdue transparency in our federally funded research enterprise.

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

Mr. President, I am here on the floor today to talk about workforce training, a critical issue always but particularly now as we get to the point where we are coming out of the COVID-19 crisis, the economy is picking up, and we need more workers in this country.

It is a significant issue to be able to help individuals to be able to achieve their God-given potential in life, but also it is really important to our economy because workforce is one of the big challenges we have. So to be able to get good-paying benefits for those workers, it is important but also to help our economy fully recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It has been over a year now since the pandemic changed all of our lives. In the early weeks and months of that crisis, it looked like things were going to continue to be really tough. I stayed in touch with business owners and workers across my home State of Ohio to hear how they were handling the closures, the layoffs, the other painful side effects of the crisis in those early months. Finally, things are getting better, and we are beginning to see more reopenings.

In Ohio, we just learned that people are going to be able to get vaccinations if they are 40 years old or older versus 60 years old and older as of the end of the week. And within another 10 days, everybody 16 years and up will be able to get a vaccine. And we have opened up some wonderful mass vaccination centers. I volunteered at one on Saturday. I spent 5 hours directing people and heard a lot of emotional stories about people really excited about getting back to their families--grandparents being able to see their grandkids for the first time in a year and the opposite, children being able to visit their parents or grandparents for the first time since the COVID-19 crisis hit, and people excited about getting back to work and back to school. So we are going to be able to see this because of Operation Warp Speed and the heroic efforts of our medical researchers and begin to help move our economy forward.

In fact, we just found out that the economy added a healthy 379,000 jobs in February. That was encouraging. And more and more businesses, again, are reopening and replacing the signs that said ``Closed Because of COVID'' with signs that now say ``Help Wanted.''

I was at a hearing today, and the representative from the National Association of Manufacturers told us that there are over 500,000 manufacturing jobs that are being offered right now. In other words, there is a shortage of manufacturing skills right now. So that is a good thing in the sense that that means there will be opportunity, but we have to have the skills to be able to fill those jobs.

Perhaps most promising, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, called CBO--it is a group around here that gives us advice on the economy--said that even without the most recent spending package, the $1.9 trillion package, that the economy is going to recover to where it was prepandemic by midyear. So by June 30, they think the economy will be back to where it was prepandemic. And we had a good economy then. In February, a year ago, we had the 19th straight month of wage growth of 3 percent or more. We had 3.5 percent unemployment, a 50-year low. We had historically low unemployment for Blacks, Hispanics. We had the lowest poverty rate we had in 60 years. Things are going well, not just for the economy but bringing people out of the sidelines and in to work. But, obviously, the pandemic hit hard. And, now, as the economy begins to recover again, we have to be sure that people have the skills they need to take advantage of a growing economy.

The pro-growth policies that we have had along the way, including the tax cuts, tax reform, regulatory relief, had helped to make sure that economy was not just strong but also inclusive. So we have to keep that up as well

But just as the biggest challenge pre-COVID, when we had a strong economy, was finding workers with needed skills, we are back there again. So if we want to get back to the kind of economy we all want, the workforce challenge has to be addressed.

In fact, again, I think it will be an even bigger challenge now because during COVID-19, there has been a dislocation in the economy. Some jobs have been lost, and people have to find new jobs and develop skills. Some are going to have to leave the hospitality industry, for instance, and they might want to go into the tech sector or go into the manufacturing sector or the healthcare sector. So that ability to shift jobs and develop skills is more important than ever.

I am hearing it from employers all over Ohio; that as unemployment continues to fall, there are thousands of job openings for positions like welders and machinists in our manufacturing plants. I mentioned the national figure of 500,000 jobs are available right now, so we are certainly seeing that in Ohio in our factories, medical technicians in hospitals, a lot of interest in techs and in people who are willing to work in healthcare to help others, computer programmers, coders. Almost every sector of the economy is looking for people who have coding skills. So these are the kinds of jobs that economists call the midlevel skills; you know, they need more than a high school degree, for sure, but don't need a college degree. And they actually are jobs that pay quite well with good benefits. So these are the kinds of jobs that we need to be sure that we are providing out there.

The supply of skilled workers in that category, students pursuing post-high school certificates in one of these skilled areas, falls way short. They call it the skills gap. And it is holding back our economy from reaching its potential, just as it is holding back individuals from achieving their potential.

There was one study from 2019 that found that the skills gap could cause us to miss out on nearly $1.2 trillion of economic output over the next, at that point, 10 years. So, unfortunately, that skills gap hasn't been closed. In fact,

again, I think it is more important than ever that we address it.

The best option, I think, is to tackle it head-on by getting more people enrolled in these programs that can provide the skills training and equip them with the specialized skills that they need.

When people hear the words ``skills training,'' their first thought is often of career and technical education, CTE. There are some great CTE programs around the country. Some in my generation called it vocational education, but this is not your father's Oldsmobile. This is not the same old vocational education; this is high-tech stuff. It is really exciting what is going on. These programs are run by middle schools and by high schools that teach students an incredible variety of skills: health sciences, business management, culinary arts, manufacturing skills. By the way, they are incredibly popular. The good programs are really oversubscribed.

One data point that I found interesting said that 92 percent of high school students are taking at least some kind of skills training course from the CTE programs. That doesn't mean 92 percent are enrolled full time in CTE but taking at least some of those courses.

I have visited those schools all over Ohio. Again, they are exciting. They are specialized high schools that offer students a more specialized path than the traditional path that many students are encouraged to take, which would be to try to get a 4-year college degree.

By the way, again, this path, this specialized path, where you get these skills, leads to no student debt--assuming you could find a way to pay for the skills training, which we will talk about in a second-- and a good job with good pay and good benefits, as opposed to many people who go to college and end up having a lot of debt and not having a degree that enables them to get the kind of job that they want. So it is a great option to do CTE and to get the skills training.

I am cofounder and cochair of what we call the Senate CTE Caucus, Career and Technical Education Caucus, with my colleague Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. And we have worked to strengthen CTE programs, made them more accessible, made them more affordable, provided more Federal help for them. We have gone now from 2 to more than 29 Senators in our CTE Caucus. Our goal is to increase awareness of these CTE programs and the skills training they provide and get students interested in that kind of career training, provide the resources and opportunities that will then provide them what they need for good jobs with good pay.

We have also worked together on bipartisan legislation to make sure that the Federal Government is a better partner to States and local communities as they work to ensure these young people have the skills to find good jobs.

But CTE at the high school level alone isn't going to solve our workforce needs. Most industry-recognized certificates require more than the CTE training. They require a higher level of training. And CTE programs, as outstanding as they can be, are usually inaccessible to Americans who are no longer of high school age but would stand to benefit greatly from these skills programs. So people who are out of high school, adults, to get that more advanced certificate or to help older learners, the best option is to instead attend a certificate- granting technical workforce training program, the kind offered by your community college or your technical school.

These programs are outstanding. At Ohio technical schools, like the Eastland-Fairfield Career Center, the Vantage Community College, the Delaware Area Career Center, Stark State, and others, I have spoken to students in technical programs who tell me how excited they are to put these skills to work. Unfortunately, individuals potentially interested in these programs often cannot afford to make the investment in that education without some financial assistance.

I talked to Dr. Para Jones today. She is with Stark State in Summit County, Akron, OH. She told me an interesting story. She said that they have a real need in that area of Ohio, and, frankly, around the country, for truckdrivers. So for people to have the certificate, which is called a CDL--commercial truckdrivers license--they had openings in their courses, but it was $5,000. It cost $5,000 to get a CDL. And even though these students would be making that $5,000 and more in the coming years because truck driving is going to be quite a good career for them--50-, 60-, 70,000 bucks a year, plus benefits, depending on how much they are willing to drive--the 5,000 bucks was just too much of a burden, too high a hurdle So her view is: You guys have to help us to be able to help students get into the programs they want to get into.

I remember talking to a welder at a career and technical high school program. It was a woman, 1 of 2 women in a class of 12 people--10 guys, 2 women. She was doing some pretty sophisticated welding, but she said she wanted to take it to the next level; she wanted to be an underwater welder, which pays a lot. We are talking over a hundred thousand bucks a year, easily; yet she couldn't get the skills at the high school level.

And when she was offered a Pell grant to go to college, she decided to take that instead, even though she wanted to be a welder. The government couldn't help her go to welding school. And this welding school was expensive. It makes the $5,000 for getting the CDL look like nothing. So it was tens of thousands of dollars to get this advanced certificate.

But she was offered the Pell grant to go to college, so she was going to college, even though she would rather be a welder. By the way, these welders are highly sought after by the energy industry and others.

So it is one of those examples where, if we could direct some of these Federal resources, not taking it away from colleges or universities but into our training programs, it would make so much sense, particularly for low-income students. And that is how I get to the Pell grants.

So Senator Kaine and I have introduced legislation that is called the Jumpstart Our Businesses by Supporting Students Act, or the JOBS Act. So we came up with an acronym so we could end up with the JOBS Act.

It makes all the sense in the world. It says that instead of getting a Pell grant that can only be used for going to a college or university, you should be able to get a Pell grant to get one of these shorter-term, industry-recognized certificates. They have to be high- quality, industry recognized. I think it would be much better for the students and certainly much better for the economy. Those are the middle skills that we need so desperately. Yet we are not supporting those students.

By the way, of those students who end up going to college with a Pell grant, they say that fewer than half end up getting a college degree in the end. Why? Well, the Pell doesn't pay for your full expenses. There are very few colleges in Ohio where you can use a Pell and get through without having significant additional expenses on top of that.

It is tough, and a lot of people drop out to be able to go back to work, as opposed to these career and training programs where, No. 1, you are looking down the tunnel and you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. You have got 10 weeks in this training program. You can get there. And you see at the end of that--to mix my metaphors here, you see the rainbow at the end of that, which is a job, a great job, with good benefits. Plus, the $6,400 from the Pell Program pays for it. For the most part, these programs are fully paid for by the Pell grant. So it is a really good idea.

And the JOBS Act is something Senator Tim Kaine and I have introduced before and we are introducing again this week. We want these low-income students to be able to get what they need to be able to get the good jobs, and we want our economy to be able to get those positions filled so that we can continue to grow our economy as a country.

By the way, it doesn't mean these students aren't going to go on to a college or university. I was in a CTE program several years ago talking to some students, one of whom was going to a local manufacturer who was a supplier to GE Aviation, which makes aircraft engines. He ended up going--50,000 bucks a year at the time, good benefits--to this manufacturer. He was learning welding and other skills.

Well, that company ended up paying for his college later, which I later

found out, which is not atypical. So it is a good example of where it doesn't mean you are not going to go to college. Some people will want to, and some people won't. This young man wanted to get an engineering degree, and the company was happy to help him do that to be able to come back to that company and to provide those skills.

So whether it is learning how to conduct HVAC installation, how to operate factory machinery, how to program computers, these programs teach students practical, transferrable skills to be able to keep our economy moving.

Increasing access to the skills training through the JOBS Act can also serve to lend a helping hand for those who have lost their jobs due to COVID-19. As I said earlier, many jobs have come back and are continuing to come back as we reopen our economy, but we are still down about nine, nine and a half million jobs from before the pandemic.

Some are at businesses that are now closed or in industries that have struggled and may be fundamentally changed as a result of the pandemic. In other words, some of these jobs won't come back, so people need to re-up their skills training. Folks who had those jobs, giving them the option to invest in a new skill set through technical education funded by a Pell grant is a ray of hope, a chance for them to get back on their feet, to find new, exciting, good-paying jobs.

I am pleased to say the JOBS Act has been endorsed by the National Skills Coalition, the Association for Career and Technical Education, the Association of Community College Trustees--in fact, last year, it was their No. 1 priority, among the community colleges--the American Association of Community Colleges, and other groups.

The reason the JOBS Act has this kind of strong support is it is the best proposal out there that will help fill the skills gap we have right now. It will cover programs that, at a minimum, require 150 hours and 8 weeks to complete. Alternative proposals severely limit the programs by requiring them to have too many hours, 320 hours. Ohio community colleges have told me none of their short-term training programs would qualify under that higher number of hour requirement.

Programs like welding, precision machining, and electrical trades--we need the JOBS Act now. As we work to get our economy back up to speed, passing the JOBS Act is a top priority for Senator Kaine, for myself, and for other Members on both sides of the aisle.

Let's be sure that we work together to get this legislations across the finish line. It just makes too much sense. It is going to help tens of thousands of people have better opportunities. It is going to help our economy fill the critical jobs it needs to recover.

We need to seize this opportunity, seize it now, get this economy back on track, and ensure Ohioans and all Americans have this opportunity to develop the skills to grow in the career of their choice and fulfill their potential in life.

I yield back.

Mr. President, I am here on the floor today to talk about the unfolding, urgent situation on our southern border, and I do so as the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

This unfortunate situation at the border includes a lot of kids coming over the border, UACs, as they call them, unaccompanied alien children. These children are making a long and dangerous journey north, putting themselves at risk and bringing our immigration system and our shelter system along the border to a breaking point.

You may have heard that the Biden administration insists this is not a crisis. Here are the facts. You decide.

This chart shows the dire situation that we are in. On Tuesday, the most recent confirmed information we have is there were 3,400 of these children in Border Patrol custody. Ten days ago, that number was 1,700. So in 10 days, this number has doubled. To put this in perspective, at the very height of the border crisis in 2019 that we all remember being talked about a lot on the floor of this Senate and around the country, families and children were coming in, in big numbers. At the very height, it was 2,600 unaccompanied kids. Today, based on some information we just received anecdotally from the Customs and Border Protection folks, it is over 3,500. It is a 35-percent increase even from where it was during the crisis, and it is growing.

Under law, these children have to be transferred to the Federal Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, within 72 hours of their being apprehended, and why we had that law in place was to be able to help these kids. So instead of being in a Border Patrol detention facility, which, by the way, were all designed for single males--they don't have any separation, don't have any trained people to help provide care to children, and it is law enforcement, Border Patrol agents--but within 72 hours, we had said that you have to transfer these children to a Health and Human Services facility that is appropriate for children. How is that working?

Again, as of Tuesday, there were 3,400 of these kids in Border Patrol custody in the wrong kind of detention facilities for children. There were 2,800 children who were ready to transfer to HHS. In other words, they had been screened, gone through a process. As of Tuesday, there were 500 beds available, meaning 2,300 children are remaining in Border Patrol custody in overcrowded, adult facilities without proper care because there is nowhere to take them.

Look, it is a bad situation. HHS contractors are supposed to be trained to care for the kids. The Border Patrol

agents are not trained for that. They are doing their best, but it is not a safe situation for the kids. By the way, nobody in Border Patrol believes it is a good situation for the kids. These facilities, the Border Patrol facilities at the Border Patrol stations and HHS facilities are all at a breaking point. They are busting at the seams. Is that a crisis? I don't know. You decide.

This influx comes, by the way, during a season when you normally don't have a lot of people coming over the border. This is in the winter. Normally, in the spring and then in the fall, you see the biggest influxes of families, kids, individuals. So we expect these numbers to get a lot worse. We expect it to get a lot worse into the spring.

By the way, we spoke to Customs and Border Patrol folks today. They told us the numbers are up again today. In fact, we have some internal document from the Department of Homeland Security that a media organization reported on. It is an official document that says DHS, themselves, predict there will be 117,000 children who will be placed in this situation this year. So they know it just is growing.

Again, is it a crisis? You decide. It is certainly a dangerous situation. By all accounts, many of these migrants, including children, face serious threats to their lives and well-being on the trip north.

Just as happened in the past surges in 2014 and 2019, we know this includes many victims of human trafficking who are deceived and coerced by traffickers and smugglers as they are taken from Central America up to the U.S. border. The trip is treacherous. We have evidence that exploitation and sexual abuse occurs along the way.

In 2019, again, the last time this happened, estimates of migrants who were victims of sexual or physical abuse along the journey ranged from 30 to 75 percent. Individual victims have described incredibly disturbing accounts of being subjected to violence, sexual assault, rape by traffickers and other criminals. It is a bad situation.

By the way, this situation is the direct result of policy changes. The new administration came in determined to dismantle all of what the previous administration had done to try to disincentivize people from coming to the border, and they have been effective in doing that. They have dismantled the immigration practices and proceedings that were working to reduce these incentives. It had resulted in very few kids coming to the border, as an example--almost none.

Last week, the Secretary of Homeland Security said in a press conference that the surge of unaccompanied kids is a ``challenge'' but not a ``crisis.'' He then deflected blame to the previous administration. That is fine. Look, I wish it were just a challenge that didn't require an urgent response, but that is not the reality along the border today. I, frankly, don't care what we call it. Call it a difficult situation, a challenge, whatever you want, but I care a lot about what we do in response.

There is an old saying that says Washington only responds to a crisis. I think, unfortunately, there is a lot of truth to that. We have to respond here. We have to do something. That is why I think we need to consider this dire situation a crisis before it gets much worse.

The next chart shows the reality, which is this surge happened almost immediately after President Biden and his administration were sworn in and they made these announcements about changes in policy. Here we have the election. Here we have the swearing-in. Look at this huge surge in both family units and in these kids. As I said, we have twice as many kids today as we had 10 days ago.

This is surging up. Nearly 10,000 unaccompanied alien children and twice as many family members crossed our border in February, and that is the shortest month of the year. These surges stopped under the previous administration because they put in place policies that reduce the incentives for individuals, families, and unaccompanied minors to try to unlawfully enter the United States. In less than 2 months, the Biden administration has systemically taken away these tools that were being used to reduce these incentives. On day one, the new administration revoked the emergency declaration for the border, stopped construction of the border fence, and placed a 100-day halt to deportations. Not surprisingly, this gave traffickers the green light to exploit the situation, and more people and more drugs are now moving across the border.

Next, the new administration reversed what is known as the Migrant Protection Protocols or the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy, which required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico rather than being released in communities around the United States while waiting for their asylum claims to be adjudicated. About 20 percent of the asylum seekers who went through the entire application process, including all of the hearings, were granted asylum in 2018.

So, if you go through all of the process, about 20 percent of those individuals actually got asylum. Now, that is a self-selected group because I know not everybody goes to the hearing. In fact, the best data show that most don't show up for all of the hearings. The long- term data show that about half of all asylum applicants eventually get removal orders due to their not attending all of their asylum hearings. We don't have great data on this, to be honest, and some people say that very few go to these asylum hearings. Some say more do. The point is that about half of them are getting removal orders--we know that-- for not attending all of their asylum hearings.

Given that there is a 1.2 million-case backlog in America today for asylum applicants and that there were fewer than 5,000 noncriminals deported last year by ICE, that tells us that, under the current system, if you are a noncriminal asylum seeker who is denied asylum and is subject to one of these removal orders, it is highly unlikely that you are going to actually end up being deported from the United States. Asylum seekers know that. So do the traffickers. It is no wonder there has been a surge of those who want to live in the United States who have come to the border and sought asylum in recent years.

I went to the border in 2019, and many of my colleagues have been down to the border to see this situation. I will be going back again soon to see firsthand what is happening and to see how we can help. It should not be a partisan issue. It should be one in which Democrats and Republicans alike see what is happening--see the tragedy unfolding along the border--and do something to address it. This Migrant Protection Program put in place by the Trump administration had resulted in a sharp reduction in the surge of asylum claims as people realized, pending their asylum hearings, they were not going to be released in U.S. communities. Now we are seeing the reverse happen.

Second, the Biden administration actually suspended Safe Third Country agreements with the Governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, which allowed migrants to apply for asylum in the first foreign country they crossed into. This, of course, reduced incentives for migrants from those countries to make the long, arduous, and dangerous journey to the southern border.

These agreements were in the process of being fully implemented, but they were already helping and had the potential of finding a much more expeditious way to identify and process those who would qualify for legitimate asylum-refugee status before they would come all the way to our border. All that work that has been accomplished has now been lost. I urge the administration to reinstate those Safe Third Country agreements with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

Third, the new administration has also significantly changed the way we process migrants during the COVID-19 crisis. Instead of establishing the practice of turning away most immigrant and nonimmigrant visa holders to protect the health and safety of the American people, we are now learning from media reports, including the Washington Post, that this new administration has made an unofficial exception to the COVID- 19 rules for children and for families.

Border Patrol agents and CBP officers who are on the frontlines are telling us that they are returning to the pre-COVID practice of bringing people into the country despite the health crisis that all of us understand. The reports are that either the CBP officers are not testing kids and families for

COVID at all or, if they are, they are still releasing some of those who test positive to shelters or into the United States with a request that they quarantine after they travel to their final destinations in the interior of the United States. In fact, we know of one instance in which more than 100 unlawful immigrants in Brownsville, TX, who tested positive for COVID-19, were simply told to quarantine when they reached their final destinations regardless of how many people they interacted with when taking a bus--in that case, most were taking a bus, apparently--or when taking a plane to their destinations. Obviously, that doesn't make any sense.

The final policy changes that encourage illegal entry is the new administration's advocating for amnesty for those here illegally without making it clear that such amnesty would not apply to anyone not already here. That is important. As the experience of the last amnesty in 1986 demonstrated, unless it is very clear that illegal entry won't be rewarded, it will spawn more illegal entries. Now, let's face it. The traffickers and the smugglers are going to take advantage of this, and they are going to misrepresent the reality, but, still, it is important that all of us as policymakers make it very clear, as we talk about amnesty, that it is not as to the people who might come in the future; it is as to the people who are already here.

I will say that the State Department has announced that it will be reinstating the Central American Minors Program, which was a streamlined refugee process that existed under the Obama administration and was run by the U.S. Government and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, but it was discontinued under the Trump administration. I think it is a positive thing that they are reinstating that.

We don't have all of the details yet, but I will tell you that standing up this program without incentivizing people to use it is not going to be very effective. Even if it were to be as effective as it was at the height of the program, which was during the Obama administration, it would not be nearly enough people. In 2 years, the program resettled 3,300 individuals. So 3,300 children were resettled in 2 years. That is not going to make a real impact when we are receiving, right now, 3,300 children every couple of weeks at the border. Again, I hope they do reinstate that program, as I think that would be positive, but they have to do much more in order to avoid this tragic situation from continuing and getting much worse.

The decision by the new administration to change all of these policies, which were working, without having viable alternatives is causing this chaos. It was done without thinking through the real safety and security concerns for both communities and citizens of the United States as well as for these unaccompanied kids and their families. As a result, we have a surge of people being incentivized to enter our country unlawfully, and our systems are being strained during a public health emergency.

This influx is even worse than in 2019, not just because the numbers are greater but because we now have the COVID-19 pandemic, and children and families are being forced into tight quarters in detention facilities. Asylum seekers with COVID-19 are being released into our communities, and Customs and Border Protection officers who haven't been able to receive the vaccine yet, which is a problem, are being exposed to this influx of migrants who haven't been tested. So it is an even bigger problem--forgetting the numbers--given the situation we are in.

That ties in another concern I have about the way this crisis has been handled so far, which is the administration's response to the overcrowding at the shelter facilities. It has been to rush and potentially cut corners to place these unaccompanied children with sponsors because their goal, after HHS detention in HHS facilities, is to get these children out to sponsor families. The standards of due diligence that are required to ensure these children are not being placed in danger are not being met, as far as we can tell, which continues a troubling trend that goes back years and administrations.

It is an issue I have worked on since 2015, when we had a terrible situation in my home State of Ohio wherein kids were given back to the traffickers by HHS--the traffickers who had brought them up from Central America by lying to their parents about what they were going to do: take them to school and so on. These kids ended up working on an egg farm, 6 to 7 days a week, below the minimum wage. I have seen this. I have seen what happens when HHS does not take its time and do it right, and it is very difficult for HHS to do that with the surge that it has.

Over the course of three bipartisan reports and hearings as part of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, and across two different administrations, we found failures to ensure the safety of or to even keep track of these vulnerable children once they were handed off to sponsors as well as a fundamental refusal by Agencies to accept that they were responsible for the welfare of these kids. That is the reality. Our bipartisan investigations also found that the Office of Refugee Resettlement failed to exercise appropriate oversight at its facilities and wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on organizations and on contractors that could not acquire State licenses to safely open the planned shelter facilities.

As those in this administration attempt to process this influx of unaccompanied kids and safely get them to longer term housing solutions, it is urgent that they do the due diligence on who is going to be looking after these children and not cut corners as some reports are indicating. That means fingerprinting the sponsors. That means background checks. That means home visits. The Federal Government cannot allow these kids to fall victim to human trafficking, to abuse, or other harm.

I, along with my bipartisan cosponsors, will be reintroducing the Responsibility for Unaccompanied Minors Act again in the coming days to help ensure these requirements are met to protect our kids.

Here is the reality: Once these children arrive at the border, there are no good options. The answer is to stop providing the incentives, the pull factor. That is the short-term imperative. We should not be encouraging these young people to make that arduous journey to then have them end up in a detention facility. That is wrong for them. It is a place where single males are crowded together but where kids are not taken care of. Then, when they have to go to the HHS facility, there is not enough room--again, making the point of there being 3,400 kids in detention and 2,800 kids who are ready to be transferred to HHS, to more appropriate facilities, but there are only 500 beds. So 2,300 are kept in these overcrowded facilities that are meant for single males. It is not a good option. There is no good option. The option is to keep them from coming up to the border in the first place.

Yes, we can do more on the push factors also. That means investing in Central America and other places to try to make those countries places where people would want to stay rather than come to the United States. Yet, my colleagues, that is what is called a long-term solution. Let's be frank. I am for it, but we have to recognize that this is not a solution to the current crisis that we face.

In the last 5 years, we have spent $3.6 billion of U.S. taxpayer funds in aid for these Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. President Biden is proposing to spend another $4 billion in those countries. I support smart investments that don't get wasted because of corruption or other challenges, but it won't fix the crisis this month, this year, or next year. The development of the Northern Triangle is a decades-long effort--one we need to do but one that is not going to address, again, the crisis that we face now.

I urge the Biden administration to also step up efforts to tie any aid to better collaboration with our international partners, including with the Governments of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, to address this challenge, discourage migration, and provide alternatives to those seeking to make the dangerous journey north. They need to help us, and they have in the past.

In the Trump administration, we had a valuable partner in Mexico, as an example. It used tens of thousands of its

own military to patrol its own southern border to ensure migrants could be processed, if necessary, and turned away if they didn't meet the requirements. That was very helpful. I am concerned that these troops have now been pulled back--that is the information that we are receiving--partly because, as we are told, President Biden is not encouraging the current Mexican leadership to continue this practice. I hope that changes. The current surge in unaccompanied children at our border, in the midst of a global pandemic, is a situation in which no one wins and the children lose the most.

I am disappointed that the Biden administration chose to overturn the policies put in place by the Trump administration, which were to help control the flow of migrants during this pandemic, without having any viable alternatives. I am concerned that leaders at key Agencies involved in the response to this crisis are somehow seeing it as in their interests to downplay the severity of the situation.

I urge the Biden administration to change course. Put back in place smart policies that reduce the pull factors, and address the need for legal and orderly processes for migration.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 1092 and ask that it be reported by number.

I ask unanimous consent that there be 6 minutes of debate equally divided.

Mr. President, everybody around here agrees that the U.S. economy is getting better--there is no argument about that--and that workers are needed. Yet, in this massive partisan spending bill, a lot of which is not even about COVID-19, the Democrats are insisting on a substantial increase to the already extraordinary Federal Government add-on to State unemployment payments, making it harder to get people who can go back to work.

Just this morning, we learned that the economy added 379,000 jobs in February and that the unemployment rate dropped to 6.2 percent. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the consensus of economists is that unemployment will continue to trend lower. It underscores what the CBO has said recently, which is that, without any additional stimulus, the economy will recover to prepandemic levels by midyear, this year--that is June 30--not in September as the Democrats' approach would suggest.

Look at your own States. Employers are looking to hire people. ``Help wanted'' signs are up. As the economy starts to improve, we want to get people back to work.

Adding to the good news, President Biden now tells us that vaccines will be available by the end of May for all who will want them. That will further kick-start the economy.

Despite the better news, as we understand it, the Democrats' approach actually extends the generous Federal supplement currently in place until September 6--by the way, even a little beyond what is in the $1.9 trillion underlying bill.

I was just told that it has a $31 billion tax increase that affects the so-called passthrough, which is primarily small businesses, to pay for a proposal to pay people more who are on unemployment insurance.

The Democrats' proposal makes it even more advantageous to be on unemployment by changing retroactively a longstanding policy that says UI benefits are taxed as income. You make up to 10,000 bucks in benefits, tax-free, even if you have made up to $150,000 a year. Remember, with that 600 bucks a week Federal supplement, which is what it was for a lot of last year when this would have applied, about 70 percent of workers on UI made more than they would have at their jobs. Even at 300 bucks a week, 42 percent of workers are making more on UI than they would make at their jobs.

Of the essential workers, think of the truckdrivers who are making 25 bucks an hour. They are being told ``you have to pay your taxes,'' but those who aren't working not only get the UI benefits, but now, for the first time ever, some of that income is actually going to be tax-free. So you have to pay your taxes, but they don't. That is not fair.

The underlying bill and the Democrats' alternative are going to hurt the effort to get people back to work. Our amendment would extend UI benefits in a responsible manner at the current low level of $300 per week through July 18. According to the CBO, this will save over $90 billion in outlays and actually raise $600 million in revenue. Why? Because people will be working. That is a good thing. We should want that.

I urge my colleagues to oppose unnecessarily lengthening the time of the Federal UI supplement that would make it even more advantageous to be on unemployment and would slow the job creation we all want. Our amendment strikes the right balance. It helps those who truly need it, promotes better stewardship of our taxpayer dollars, and encourages those who can return to work to do so. I urge its adoption.

(Applause.)

Mr. President.

Mr. President, let's be clear with what is going on here. The Republicans have offered a very generous unemployment system, including 300 bucks per week, as is the current law after March 15, when it would otherwise expire, and taking it to July 18.

Now, there is nobody in this Chamber that doesn't see that the economy is improving. And the Congressional Budget Office, which is a nonpartisan group here, has told us that, actually, by the middle of this year, we are going to be back to the prepandemic level in terms of our economy. Every economist looks at this and says that unemployment is going down.

I note that my colleague over there, from Oregon, said that claims were higher last week in terms of unemployment. The 4-week average is actually down, considerably.

Let me tell you what happened today, because I just looked it up. New York opened its movie theaters; Virginia announced they are opening their schools; West Virginia opened their bars, their restaurants, all businesses; Connecticut is opening indoor dining. This is happening every day. The economy is getting better.

And everybody says--including, by the way, Larry Summers, a famous Democratic economist, who was Treasury Secretary under President Obama--that when you look at what happens with regard to unemployment insurance, if it is too high, it is a disincentive to work.

I don't think Larry Summers is saying people are lazy. I think what Larry Summers is saying is that you want to have a system that is balanced, where you are encouraging people to work. There are so many employers in our States who are looking for people right now, and that is going to continue to happen as we open up more.

Look, our unemployment provision is very reasonable; it is very generous--taking it through July 18.

They are taking theirs through September 6. And then they are adding this new element that has never been in unemployment before, where suddenly if you are on unemployment insurance, you don't have to pay taxes, but if you are working you do have to pay taxes.

How does that make sense? Don't we want to encourage people to work? I think we do. I hope that my colleagues will vote down this amendment and continue to keep the Portman amendment in place, which, by the way, passed this Chamber only about an hour and a half ago.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 15 seconds to respond, and then I will stop.

Mr. President, No. 1, the 4-week average on unemployment claims are actually going the right way. Why? Because the economy is opening up, folks. If you don't see that, you are not going home to your States and talking to your employers.

Second, we have a situation here where the Republicans are saying we want to continue the $300 per month--or per week after March 15, but let's end it on July 18. If things turn south--which no one is predicting, by the way, not a single economist--I know a lot of us would be willing to work with the other side of the aisle to extend, but there is no reason to do that at this point.

With regard to your tax cut, it is a tax increase. It is a tax increase on small businesses.

Vote on Amendment No. 1378

Mr. President, this amendment comes after about 24 hours of discussion here as a surprise because we are just looking at it for the first time.

But there are two things that are very disturbing about it. One is it completely distorts workers' compensation for Federal employees, which has substantially increased costs to taxpayers, of course. It also sets a terrible precedent in terms of how workers' comp works.

Workers' comp, of course, is for people who are injured on the job, and you have to show you have been injured on the job. That is how it works. It is a basic principle for workers' comp.

In this case, this amendment changes the rules to require compensation for COVID-19 lost wages no matter how risky the Federal employees' behavior might have been outside of the workplace. In other words, no questions asked. If you are a Federal worker and you get COVID-19, you get this.

That is not the way workers' comp works. So this is a big change in workforce policy and establishes, again, a dangerous new precedent in workers' comp policy, generally.

It also creates a wrong incentive--think about it--for the employee and for the employer. So we oppose this.

For Federal workers, the statute is very explicit. It says: Federal workers' compensation ``for the disability or death . . . resulting from personal injury sustained while in the performance of . . . duty.''

Second--I ask unanimous consent for an additional 30 seconds.

Second, we are just finding out there is another $10 billion added through this amendment to State and local governments. I don't know if everybody was listening when Senator Romney gave his explanation during his amendment of what is happening with regard to our States, but a lot of our States don't need the money. Some do and some don't. And there is no requirements here that if you have got a surplus or if you otherwise don't have COVID-19 expenses that you don't get the money, and yet we are adding another $10 billion to that pot through this one amendment. So, of course, we object to this amendment, and there may be other stuff in there too. I hope everybody gets a chance to look at it because we have not had a chance to do so yet.

But I hope we do not create the wrong incentives. I hope we do not create this situation where we are substantially increasing costs to the taxpayer through changes in workers' comp and adding another $10 billion to a category where it has been shown, in many cases, not to be needed.

Madam President, I worked with my colleague from Pennsylvania on some of these home care options, and I think it is a very positive thing. In fact, it saves a lot of cost for the system, but the question is, What is it doing in a COVID relief bill?

You know, I just have to say, having been involved in a bipartisan way on five different COVID relief packages over the last year, I am just so discouraged that we can't sit down, Republicans and Democrats alike, and work out a targeted, focused bill on COVID, and, by the way, then move on to other things, including healthcare reform, including issues that traditionally have also been bipartisan, like infrastructure and broadband expansion, like retirement security or dealing with China and supply chain issues.

But this is not the way to start. We are looking at a $1.9 trillion package, the second largest ever written by Congress. The first one went through last year. And there was no input--virtually no input-- from anybody on our side of the aisle because the administration decided they didn't want it. They wanted to jam this thing through without our participation. And it is too bad, because they will end up with a product that is not going to be as focused and targeted, but, also, it is just getting off on the wrong foot and making it more difficult for us to figure out how to come together on other issues.

It is really the opposite. This process is really the opposite of what President Biden talked about. He talked about it in his campaign. I mean, he won a campaign, including in his primary, saying he wanted to work across the aisle; he wanted to change the tone in Washington. That was pretty brave of him to say, really.

And, then, in his inaugural address, he did the same thing; didn't he? He talked about the need for unity. He talked about wanting to get people together and to work with Democrats and Republicans alike and kind of get back to that. This is exactly the opposite of that. I just don't get it. I have to tell you, I am mystified why they want to start off this way.

I was one of the 10 Republicans who went down to the White House to meet with President Biden about this a few weeks ago, and we offered our own proposal and said we would like to work with you and negotiate with you. And, you know, there has been no interest, to be honest, and I wish it weren't the case.

And $4 trillion has already been allocated to the COVID-19 issue, and it was needed. It is a crisis. It still is. It is not over yet, although things are getting a lot better, both in terms of the healthcare crisis and in terms of the economy. But we did that, again, five different times--over $4 trillion, five different times in a bipartisan way.

So we know we can do it. It is hard for us to do it on other issues-- let's face it--like taxes or even healthcare, but it is not with regard to COVID-19. At least it hasn't been until now.

The most recent $900 billion COVID relief package passed at the end of December by a 92 to 6 vote--92 to 6. I came out to the floor to give speeches on this Senate floor over 20 times in the months prior to that legislation finally being passed, urging Congress to come out of our partisan corners, Democrats and Republicans alike, and to come up with a COVID relief package, because I saw so much middle ground. And we found it by the end of December. I was part of a group of five Democrats and five Republicans who sat down over a month-long period or so. We actually wrote a bill. The ``908 Coalition,'' we called ourselves because we wrote a bill for $900 billion that was the basis for that $900 billion legislation that eventually passed. So I have been there. I have done it. We have done it. We can do it. Yet we are looking here at an entirely different process and, unfortunately, a product that is not targeted, not focused.

It is interesting to note that of the $900 billion that we appropriated just a couple of months ago, at the end of the year, more than half of that, we are told, has not been spent yet. So while we are starting a $1.9 trillion new spending project, about half of what we just did has yet to be spent. So how do we know how much is needed? It is very hard to know.

I will say that it is troubling to me that this bill is loaded up with provisions that don't relate to addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, because we should be targeted and focused like a laser on that issue and not on other things. In fact, when you look at the healthcare part of this, most people would think: OK, what would you do with a COVID-19 bill? You would focus on the coronavirus. You would focus on the testing and the tracing. You would focus on the vaccine development and distribution. You would focus on the healthcare side, including healthcare providers.

Unfortunately, that is a very small part of the funding of this bill. It is $160 billion out of $1.9 trillion, so less than 10 percent of the bill is focused on that. And, by the way, the alternative I mentioned that we offered to President Biden--$160 billion. We totally believe in that part of the bill, and that we should put all of that in there, particularly with regard to the vaccines.

So it is frustrating because not only is the process not what we have done in the past and is best for this country, but also the substance of this bill is just not targeted on COVID-19. How do I tell hard- working families in my State of Ohio that there is a provision in the bill that asks Medicare to spend more money in New Jersey, Delaware, and Rhode Island but not in Ohio and other States? How do I explain that we need to set aside hundreds of millions of dollars that are in this bill in additional Federal funds for the arts? We can have that debate on the arts, but it has nothing to do with COVID-19. We have the highest deficit, as a share of GDP, since World War II--the highest debt as a share of GDP. You know, I don't think we should be spending that kind of money on things that don't relate to COVID-19.

Beyond these kinds of unrelated provisions, there are also proposals in this stimulus that are directed at important issues, but, based on what is needed to respond to the current challenges, are simply unnecessary and add up to more wasteful spending.

For example, we reached a point in this pandemic where the CDC, or the Centers for Disease Control, has said that schools can start to open safely with the right measures in place--thank goodness. We want to get our kids back to school. That should be a cause for celebration. But the plan here, the $1.9 trillion, doesn't reflect those findings. Last year, we appropriated $113 billion for schools to help navigate the pandemic, but, as of now, of that $113 billion, only $15 billion has been spent. So, roughly, $100 billion is left over from last year with regard to schools.

If we are already opening classes safely with that amount, why does this $1.9 trillion plan instead call for an additional investment of $130 billion in our schools, but especially when we are told that most of that $130 billion will not be spent in this calendar year? Nobody thinks that next year, at this time, we are going to have the crisis we have now, and yet the $130 billion of new money will not be spent until the end of 2028.

By the way, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that about half of the funds in the entire proposal won't even be spent in this calendar year. That is their analysis--objective, nonpartisan. No one expects, again, that we will be in this crisis at that time. So it just doesn't seem to make sense to me.

There are other provisions in this bill that seem to actually take solutions we have come up with in the past COVID-19 package and make them worse. Unemployment insurance is a good example. Republicans and Democrats alike believe there needs to be

some expanded help in terms of those who have been hit hardest by the pandemic and have lost a job, and the last bipartisan spending agreement reflected that consensus. But now, after finally reaching an agreement on expanded unemployment insurance, one that got people the help they need without creating a disincentive to work, Democrats want to jam through another UI proposal that increases the $300 per week that we just agreed to in December to $400 a week. Now, again, that is in the context of the healthcare crisis getting better and the economy getting better and the unemployment numbers going down that we are going to put more into unemployment insurance.

That creates a problem because it will mean if you go up to $400 a week, then more than half of the workers on unemployment insurance will be earning more on unemployment than they would staying employed. We want to get people back to work. That is what we all should want, at least. So why would you do that? We shouldn't want that. It is going to result in fewer people getting to work as unemployment continues to go down, as the vaccines are more widely available. That is the opposite of what we should want.

At the same time, a new provision in this bill would allow employees who are Federal employees to take 600 hours of taxpayer-funded emergency leave this fiscal year. To put that in perspective, 600 hours is about half of the total number of working hours remaining in this fiscal year.

There are plenty of problems with the way this plan is written. To give you one example, a Federal employee with children in school would be eligible for this leave program as long as the school is offering a remote learning option, even if the kids are going to the classroom every day for in-person learning. Federal employees would also be eligible for this leave if they are feeling unwell, even if they don't have COVID-19, and with no oversight, no doctor's note, and no supervisory approval.

This is far beyond the responsible bipartisan family leave proposal we did include, because we should have, in the Family First Coronavirus Response Act, which offered 80 hours of sick leave, about one-seventh of the time off in this new proposal, and which applies to millions of private and public sector employees, in addition to the Federal employees who are only covered by this new proposal.

When none of us knew exactly how long we would be faced with the COVID-19 crisis, we decided, on a bipartisan basis, that 80 hours was sufficient. But now that we have this new proposal, at seven times that leave with no test necessary, it is at a time when we are actually turning the tide on this virus, and we all acknowledge that. When more of us are being tested and vaccinated, our numbers are going down-- thank goodness--and we have a much better understanding of the dangers of COVID-19. So why does this make sense?

Furthermore, Federal jobs are pretty secure. Why should taxpayers pay for Federal employees to get 600 hours of leave when private sector employees are suffering more job losses than the public sector? It hardly seems like a good use of taxpayer dollars. It is also disappointing in this bill, which all of us are expected to vote on here in the coming days, because the end result is so different than the last five. As I said, the last five times, we put it together in a bipartisan basis.

The process has been frustrating, and I know many colleagues who were part of the group of five Republicans and five Democrats agree with that. We are, in effect, for the sake of expediency and partisan victory, forgetting about thoughtful policy and bipartisanship.

We have to show that we have enough Republicans to work with Democrats to get this done. I understand that. That is why 10 of us went down to the White House, because along with 50 Democrats, that would be 60, which is the magic number needed. But there is more than 10 Republicans who want to work with Democrats. There have been every time we have taken this up over the past year.

We proposed the $618 billion counterproposal that shares a lot of common ground with the Biden plan--not $1.9 trillion but $618 billion. Again, we take care of all the healthcare response to the virus. This is in the Biden plan. We have a similar approach on stimulus checks: Make it a little more targeted, which everyone, I think, agrees is a good idea.

Again, with regard to schools, we don't waste the money, which we talked about earlier, but we would be focused on getting kids back to school. The main difference in our bill is we take a more targeted approach to address the most urgent healthcare and economic needs.

We heed the advice of prominent Democratic economist Larry Summers and so many others who have now said that the $1.9 trillion Biden stimulus is not just wasting taxpayer money; it risks overheating an already recovering economy, leading to higher inflation, hurting middle-class families, and threatening long-term growth.

But rather than the counterproposal leading to this productive type of bipartisan negotiations we had last year, this time we have been told Democrats want to go it alone.

We will keep talking to the President's people. We will keep talking to Democrats in Congress, hoping they will follow through on the campaign message and the inaugural promise because that is what we should be doing as a Congress, not just on this issue but so many other issues as well. We shouldn't be going it alone.

Reconciliation has allowed Democrats to take what is essentially a ``my way or the highway'' approach to a response package that would be among the most expensive pieces of legislation in our country's history. As a result, dozens of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle are being shut out of providing their input on this bill, and we are going to be left with a partisan bill that fails to meet the most urgent and pressing needs.

In fact, because all of these unrelated spending measures we talked about and others are directed toward traditional Democratic constituencies, I would argue that this bill has not just been my way or the highway, but it has been my way and the highway.

The bottom line is, at the end of the road of this reconciliation process, we will have a bill that underdelivers in many respects and is overpriced, and that is sad to me. It didn't have to be this way. Again, we have done it before five times together, made it inclusive, listened to each other to come up with a bipartisan result. Let's put a stop to this runaway train that is going to add to the deficit unnecessarily and put a damper on the prospects for the bipartisanship promised by this new administration.

Wanting to heal the wounds is something all of us should want. Wanting to work together is something all of us should want. Getting back to an era where we actually sit down, debate things, work them out, and help bring the country together is something all of us should want.

I agree with what President Biden said in his campaign and the inaugural address about the need for unity. Let's do it. Let's not have rhetoric; let's have action.

We can work together to get this done. We won't get there if we continue to operate like this. It hurts not just our new President and his hopes for getting things done; it hurts the country and the ability for us to continue to work together to deal with this crisis and get back to a more normal life.

I yield back my time.

Mr. President, I am here on the floor today to talk about the need for all of us to redouble our efforts to combat drug addiction. One of the top priorities I have had in my time in public service has been to combat this crisis, which has devastated so many families, destroyed so many communities, and impacted us in so many negative ways.

Unfortunately, under the cover of the coronavirus pandemic, there is an epidemic that is growing, and that is the drug addiction epidemic. It is heartbreaking because we actually had several years of progress. We were making progress, finally, in turning the tide, and now, it is coming back with a vengeance to the point that overdoses and overdose deaths, hospitalizations, and all the other negative consequences of drug addiction is being raised up again in the context of the coronavirus.

Here, in the Congress, we have taken a leadership role on addressing this issue. Over the last several years, Congress has appropriated billions of dollars--and not that money solves everything, but the money has been pretty well spent on programs that are actually tested, evidence-based programs on prevention, on treatment, and longer term recovery.

Once called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, which I authored with my colleague, Sheldon Whitehouse, on the other side of the aisle, there is other legislation, too, called the 21st Century Cures Act. All of this has provided help that goes down to the local level, the community level, to be able to create a network, to be able to push back against the addiction crisis.

In 2017, Ohio's overdose opioid death rate was almost three times the national average. Ohio was one of the worst States in the country in terms of our opioid addiction. In terms of opioid deaths, we were top three in the country. It is not something you want to be at the top of. Nearly a dozen Ohioans were dying from these dangerous drugs every single day. This is in 2017. It surpassed car crashes as our country's No. 1 killer among young people and, for Ohio, the No. 1 overall.

But that next year, in 2018, much of what we were doing here in Congress, the work again on the CARA Act, the Cures Act, and other things that were being done at the State level and local level that were being supported by our Federal legislation, they were starting to work. So, in 2018, Ohio led the country again, but this time it wasn't in overdose deaths. It was in the reduction of overdose deaths. We actually had a 22-percent reduction from 2017 to 2018.

By the way, the same thing happened nationally. We had a reduction in overdose deaths nationally in 2018 for the first time since 1990. Think about that. From 1990 until 2018, every single year, we had more people dying from overdoses in this country, driven in large part by opioids, and, more recently, by the most deadly of opioids, synthetic opioids like fentanyl and Carfentanil.

Unfortunately, again, under the cover of this coronavirus pandemic, drug addiction has flourished, and that positive progress has been reversed. It is heartbreaking. While we need to remain committed to solving the healthcare challenges of COVID-19, there is increasing evidence that the stresses of this unprecedented time are driving a spike in drug abuse and subsequent overdoses, this making 2020 the worst year in the history of our country in terms of overdose deaths and other measurements of drug addiction.

Why? Well, I have asked a lot of people that. Common sense would tell you people are lonelier. Many people are distraught. Maybe they have lost their job. Maybe they have had someone in their family die of COVID-19. People are feeling anxious. People are unable to access recovery programs in person, so they can't go sit down with their recovery coach, which they might have been able to do but for COVID-19 and the isolation that is required. Many of those in recovery from addiction are stalled in their progress, or they are suffering from relapses.

There is a story that ran last week about a record number of overdose deaths in my home State of Ohio. It was on FOX 8 in Cleveland. One of the people they interviewed was a Cleveland woman who had lost her son to an overdose. It was pretty powerful. She talked about how important it is for people fighting addiction to have that network of support. It was hard to find during COVID-19. She said: ``An addict needs to talk to someone, they need constant reassuring from their support group.''

She is right. There are a lot of troubling statistics out there that should be a cause for concern and a call to action for all of us. The Centers for Disease Control reported that more than 81,000 people died of drug overdoses in the 12 months ending in May 20 of 2020, the highest 12-month total in our Nation's history. So, again, it looks like 2020 is going to be the worst year ever.

The American Medical Association reports that more than 40 States have reported an increase in opioid-related deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic. A recent study in the JAMA Psychiatry journal found that a 45-percent increase was the overdose death increase in emergency rooms from April to October of 2020 compared to that same time in 2019.

It would be worse, in my view, without the Federal response to the coronavirus pandemic, including some measures to ensure those suffering from addiction can continue to get the care they need through telehealth. We have cut redtape. We have provided some regulatory relief to expand telehealth and telehealth options specifically for opioid treatment, like eliminating requirements for in-person visits before prescribing lifesaving drugs like buprenorphine.

Without these expanded services, I believe the overdose spike would be even worse. Although there is no substitute for face-to-face interaction to help along an individual's journey to recovery, telehealth has kept patients in touch with their doctors at least and allowed physicians to prescribe medication-assisted treatment remotely.

In talking to those who are recovery coaches or those doctors back home who specialize in addiction, they tell me they believe that the telehealth option has been extremely important, so even though it has gotten worse, it would have gotten even worse if people had not had at least the ability to access their recovery program through a remote means.

Interestingly, these telehealth options for addiction treatments were put in place temporarily, but they have proven to be such a viable option for addiction treatment that now people are talking about making them permanent. I agree with that. I don't think it makes sense to get away from them as this pandemic goes away, which is why yesterday, along with my colleague, Sheldon Whitehouse, I entered this legislation called the Telehealth Response for E-Prescribing Addiction Services Treatment Act. The reason that is such a long name is we wanted to make the acronym TREATS, which it is. The TREATS Act makes permanent a number of temporary waivers for telehealth services and bolsters telehealth options for addiction treatment services.

Let's turn to a couple of things specifically. First, it allows for a patient to be prescribed lower-scheduled drugs like Suboxone through a telehealth visit on their first visit, as opposed to having to go in person for that first visit.

Current law requires an in-person visit when you need an initial prescription for controlled substances, but this has been a real deterrent for patients in crisis and in urgent need of treatments from Schedule III or Schedule

IV drugs like Suboxone or certain drugs for reoccurring mental health conditions, so our bill is important in that regard.

It also limits abusive practices by limiting telehealth visits to those who have both audio and video capabilities to be able to interact with the treatment providers to reduce fraud and abuse when it is your first visit. It would also keep the existing requirements for in-person visits when prescribing Schedule II drugs like opioids or stimulants that are more prone to being abused during these telehealth visits. So we have provisions in there to avoid abuse, but it is important to continue this telehealth option when other options just aren't there.

Second, our bill would allow for Medicare to bill for audio-only or telephone telehealth services for mental health and substance abuse treatment if it is not the patient's first visit. Due to distance or access to broadband, in-person visits or even video appointments aren't always possible for our seniors. We still need to focus on safety and robust treatment options, but in order to balance the needs of patients, we propose to allow our Nation's seniors under Medicare to use phones for subsequent mental health or behavioral health visits when they don't have access to the internet and where face-to-face interaction just isn't as necessary.

I believe this TREATS legislation will make a difference in the addiction treatment space and will help us prevent more untimely overdoses, but it is also important that we ensure that law enforcement officials can continue to go after the supply of lethal drugs coming into our communities, lethal drugs that are fueling these overdoses.

The most important thing, in my view, is reducing the demand dealing with prevention, treatment, and recovery, but by stopping some of the flow of these drugs, among other things, you are reducing the supply, which raises the cost of these drugs on the street. And, unfortunately, some of these drugs are unbelievably inexpensive, given how incredibly powerful and deadly they can be.

Data from the Center for Disease Control shows that the biggest driver of these surge in overdose deaths has been the class of drugs called synthetic opioids. We talked about that a moment ago. They are far deadlier than the traditional opioids like heroin but still cause far too many overdoses.

The most well known of these drugs, fentanyl, is about 50 times deadlier than heroin, and it is often less expensive. It is illegally manufactured primarily in China, and then it is smuggled across our southern border or through the U.S. mail. A pound of fentanyl is lethal enough to kill half a million people. Think about that. One pound is enough to kill half a million people.

We have made some progress keeping it out of the mail system. The STOP Act is now in effect. We are working with the Postal Service and also working with Customs and Border Protection to properly implement that legislation, which I authored on a bipartisan basis here several years ago, and it is finally being implemented to keep our mail system from delivering poison into our communities.

But the traffickers have changed patterns, and a lot of it is now going to Mexico and then coming over land across our southern border.

Across the country, law enforcement have had their hands full trying to stop the flow of synthetic opioids. Ohio State Patrol troopers seized a total of 129 pounds of fentanyl last year, enough to kill more than 60 million people. We have 11.8 million people in Ohio, but our troopers, just in Ohio, seized enough fentanyl to kill 60 million people.

In one Ohio county, Cuyahoga County, there were more than 1,700 seizures of fentanyl by law enforcement in 2020. One DEA initiative to fight drug trafficking that started just last August of 2020 has resulted in the seizure of nearly 440 pounds of fentanyl.

Fentanyl itself is a schedule II drug, which means that law enforcement is able to take appropriate actions to crack down on it, and that is good. But there is a hidden challenge with fentanyl, and that is that manufacturers can alter its chemical makeup in a lab to make what is known as a fentanyl analog or a copycat. It is all synthetic. So if some evil chemist somewhere can adjust the formula and make it an analog, it is not subject to the schedule II charges that law enforcement can bring. Because the chemical makeup is different in fentanyl, it is not automatically illegal at all, in fact. What is worse, these copycats can often be deadlier than fentanyl--take, for instance, carfentanil, which is 100 times as deadly as fentanyl and about 10,000 times more deadly than morphine. Just handling carfentanil, if you were to spill some on yourself, can kill you.

In 2018, the Drug Enforcement Agency, DEA, made the right call by temporarily making these fentanyl-related substances illegal to possess, transport, or manufacture. Thanks to that designation, our law enforcement officials have been better able to protect our communities by seizing and destroying these fentanyl-related substances.

Unfortunately, the temporary extension by DEA ends in only a few months. After May 6, 2021, these incredibly dangerous substances will no longer be subject to strict regulation by law enforcement. It will be easier for drug manufacturers in China and elsewhere to flood the United States with carfentanil and other synthetic opioids. We can't allow that to happen.

Of course, we can't allow that to happen, which is why yesterday I introduced the bipartisan Federal Initiative to Guarantee Health by Targeting Fentanyl, or FIGHT Fentanyl Act, along with my colleague Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, another State that has been devastated by the opioid epidemic. Our bill simply codifies the existing DEA precedent to permanently schedule fentanyl-related substances, allowing our law enforcement officials to continue to crack down on synthetic opioid in all of its forms. Let's provide some certainty, some predictability here, and make this permanent.

Just as importantly, it is going to send a signal to both the American people and the manufacturers and smugglers that produce synthetic opioids that we have not forgotten about this threat, and we are going to do everything in our power to keep these deadly drugs out of our communities.

The FIGHT Fentanyl Act and the TREATS Act are a couple of things that we could do right now on a bipartisan basis, and we should. I urge my colleagues to support them.

But we have a lot more work to do in the months ahead. The authorization for the Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act, the CARA bill we talked about earlier, expires in fiscal year 2023. And Senator Whitehouse and I will soon introduce a CARA 2.0 Act to build on the successes of CARA with an unprecedented investment in expanding access to proven treatment and recovery programs--again, programs that are shown to work by evidence for treatment and recovery than longer term recovery.

CARA 2.0 includes dozens of provisions to address addiction from all fronts--research and education, treatment and recovery, criminal justice reform, dealing with prescription drugs--making it the most comprehensive legislation in our country's history. When added with the existing CARA programs that are reauthorized through 2023, we would be investing well over $1 billion to address this longstanding epidemic, again, at a time when under the pandemic the epidemic is growing.

We need to be sure that as we continue to invest in the coronavirus vaccine development and distribution, we are also focusing on this epidemic. As we come out of this coronavirus pandemic--and I believe we are starting to see some signs of that--let's be sure we are not leaving in its wake more and more deaths and more and more addiction with regard to the drug addiction crisis.

We need to all recognize the urgency of working to reverse this surge and nationwide overdoses and overdose deaths. As we emerge from this coronavirus pandemic, let's act now to ensure we have the tools in place to also turn the tide on this disease and get those affected the help they need.

I yield my time.

Mr. President, I strongly support this amendment. The most important thing we can do right now is to get the vaccines distributed. One of the problems we have is that about 40 percent of Americans are still saying they are uncomfortable getting the vaccine. Part of that is because we haven't been able to get a proper public awareness campaign out there--not with politicians but with folks with white coats and people who are respected and trusted on this issue--to say it is necessary for us because these are safe and effective, and by getting these vaccines in place, we can turn things around.

I support the amendment.

Vote on Amendment No. 716

Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 816 and ask that it be reported by number.

Colleagues, this amendment shouldn't even be necessary, but it is.

We are being asked to spend another $1.9 trillion to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, and yet we have no idea how much of the $900 billion that we just enacted 5\1/2\ weeks ago has gone out the door. We don't know. We don't know how it has been used.

For that matter, we don't know how much of the roughly $2 trillion of additional coronavirus funding has gone out the door. So we need to have that information to be able to legislate responsibly, to be sure that we are doing the right thing here to help the folks whom we represent.

I am going to ask for a voice vote on this. I hope we get it, but I would also like to yield to my colleague from West Virginia, Mr. Manchin.

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

Mr. President, I am here on the floor today to talk about the way forward for this new Congress and the new Biden administration.

Specifically, this afternoon, we are talking about the budget resolution that the Democratic side has proposed. There was a vote today to begin to proceed on that. My understanding is that by the end of this week, we will have a number of amendments about the budget, and this all goes toward a process called reconciliation. If the two budgets are agreed upon, that would enable us--with 50 votes rather than the normal 60 votes--to take on a really important issue, which is the issue of how we should address the COVID-19 pandemic.

But, to me, this is an even bigger question. It is a question about how we are going to proceed, as a Congress, working with this new administration. If you recall, the Senate is now a 50-50 split. That is as closely divided as you can possibly be. There are 50 Senators on this side and 50 Senators on that side. The House is more closely divided than it has been in years. And, significantly, the American people are more divided than they have been in years.

I think the American people, as a general matter--not everybody, but I think the American people are looking for us to deal with these divisions here in the country by working together to try to get something done, by working together to help heal the wounds that are out there.

As for me, one Senator, I am very interested in helping President Biden make good on the pledge that he made on the steps of the Capitol. On the west steps, just that way in the U.S. Capitol, on Inauguration Day, January 20, the President said that he wanted to bring our country together. He wanted to help heal those wounds. He wanted us to work across the aisle. He wanted to go back to an era here where we actually sat down, debated things, worked them out together, and, therefore, helped bring our country together.

I hope, with regard to the COVID-19 discussions, that Republicans and Democrats will agree to keep working on charting the Federal response to the ongoing healthcare and economic crisis in a bipartisan way. It is the one area where we have done it.

Yet when you think of all the division in all of the times when we haven't been able to find agreement on things around here, one place we have been able to find agreement has been with regard to COVID-19. Specifically, we have passed five different bills--five bills--with big majorities, bipartisan majorities. One was actually by unanimous consent.

The most recent one was just 5 weeks ago or less, at the end of the year, when Congress passed a $900 billion COVID-relief package in an entirely bipartisan way. And $900 billion, by the way, makes that the second most expensive legislative package that Congress has ever passed--$900 billion. The first one was the CARES Act, which also related to the coronavirus pandemic that we are in. Over $4 trillion-- that is trillion with a ``t''--has been spent on this, larger than our typical annual budget for everything in government. And do you know what? It is a crisis, and we needed to step up to the plate.

But now, while the ink is still drying on the bill that we passed at the end of the year, the Biden administration has proposed another $1.9 trillion to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

My own view is that, again, this is an area where we have been able to come together. Let's do it again.

Is there more need out there? Well, when Congress passed the $900 billion legislation, we all said: This is a bridge to get us to between now and when the vaccines are readily available, which

we all hope happens sooner rather than later.

But there may be some things we need to do in the interim--I think there are--and maybe some things after the March, April time period that we hadn't thought about for the vaccine availability. The vaccines are moving out more slowly than expected.

So I, for one, am willing to sit down wit Republicans and Democrats alike, as we have done, again, five different times, to work on how we can come together to provide that bridge to a better time when the economy will improve because the COVID-19 issue will have been addressed.

My concern is that, again, today, we started down a track, by starting on the budget, to end up with budget reconciliation, which would mean a 50-vote rather than a 60-vote margin because the other side of the aisle--Democrats--think it would be better not to try to work out something on a bipartisan basis but to simply use their majority to get something through here that they would like to do that is consistent with where President Biden's $1.9 trillion package is.

We will see. Maybe they could be successful at that, maybe not, because it would require every Member on that side of the aisle to agree with the $1.9 trillion package, which is a comprehensive, complicated package, which includes a number of things addressed to COVID-19 but another number of things that are unrelated to COVID-19, some of which are popular on the other side of the aisle in particular, like changes in tax law that have nothing to do with COVID-19, changes to the Federal minimum wage that have nothing to do with COVID-19. But we will see.

But even if they could pass it by the barest majority, given that it is a 50-50 Senate, it is not the right way to go for our country. I don't think anybody truly believes it is the best thing for our country.

Again, if we can't come together as Republicans and Democrats, as we have proven that we can time and again over the last year, what can we come together on? And wouldn't that poison the well? Wouldn't it make it harder for us, then, to find that common ground on things like infrastructure investments, on things like retirement security? I think it is going to be harder if we start off on the wrong foot, if we start off in a purely partisan way.

I was part of the group of five Democrats and five Republicans who sat down--we call ourselves the 908 Coalition because we put together a bipartisan framework, actual legislation, on COVID-19. This was over the last few months before Christmas. Then, at the end of the year, Congress passed the $900 billion bill. Our framework provided a basis for that. It wasn't exactly the same, but it provided a basis for that.

Frankly, because Republicans and Democrats alike--five and five--were able to agree, it helped get our leadership more focused on how to find a bipartisan result, as we had done previously, because things weren't going very well. They weren't talking to each other. They weren't making the progress that we had hoped. That group has shown that we can, indeed, come together and make tough choices. Not one thing in that legislative effort was not bipartisan.

By the way, there were five of us on the Republican side, five on the Democratic side. None of us agreed with all of it. It was a matter of compromise--a word that maybe isn't too popular anymore, but that is how you get things done around here. You have to figure out: What is that common ground? What is the way in which you can make progress without having everything your way?

We have shown we can do it. The 908 Coalition is ready to go again.

I will say that what we were able to do with that coalition was to help move the process forward in a bipartisan way. And, in the end, we got $69 billion in funding for vaccine development and distribution, $82 billion to support our students in school, $325 billion to restart the highly successful small business program called the Paycheck Protection Program.

At unprecedented deficit times, where we want to be sure every dollar is wisely spent, that $900 billion was about one-seventh of the size of the Democratic proposal that was originally out there and was supported by a lot of Democrats here in the Senate--not one Republican, by the way. That was a $3.5 trillion bill called the Heroes Act. We ended up doing something that was smaller but more targeted and more effective in dealing with the immediate problems with no extraneous provisions that had nothing to do with COVID-19, which was the case of the Heroes Act.

So we have done it time and time again--five different times. Let's do it again.

If we are going to continue responding to this crisis in a smart way that meets the needs of our constituents, it is going to require us having that kind of a good-faith, bipartisan negotiation.

Again, in his inaugural address, President Biden said: ``This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward.''

I don't think he meant just unity with one party or another. Clearly, the context of that speech and his other comments were about outreach to Republicans and Democrats alike to get back to an era where we worked together.

Unfortunately, since that address, the President's team and his party appear to have chosen a different path, introducing this new COVID-19 package I talked about without any input, any consultation with any Republican or, for that matter, I think it is fair to say, any Democrat in this Chamber. I may be wrong. But I know the Democrats who are on the 908 Coalition were not consulted, period.

That is not the way forward. Why would we do that? Why wouldn't we, once again, do what we have proven we can do, particularly following what I thought was an excellent speech, talking about how we can work together.

The $1.9 trillion package that was sent up does have extraneous matters that have nothing to do with COVID-19, as the Heroes Act did. I understand that these are popular proposals, particularly on the Democratic side. We can debate those, and we can have a vote on those, but let's do it outside of the COVID-19 context.

We should have a debate about minimum wage. We should have a debate on changing the child tax credit, the earned-income tax credit, which would not affect COVID-19 at all because no one believes that a year from now that we are going to be in this position, which is when people could take advantage of those tax credits. But they are in the legislation, as an example.

There are provisions in there for clean energy. That is a good debate for us to have but not in the context of this. There are provisions in there for cyber security--$10 billion for improving our cyber security in the Federal Government. The Presiding Officer and I actually like that idea, to have cyber security funds and to set up a new way to push back against these terrible cyber attacks that we have had, particularly recently--a massive one. But that is not appropriate for the COVID-19 bill. As much as I would like to have that debate, let's do it separately. By the way, that can be bipartisan as well.

The $1.9 trillion proposal also has a new round of stimulus checks that are written so that a family with three kids making $290,000 a year can end up getting a check from the Federal Government, even if they have had no negative impact from COVID-19. That seems, to us, to be wrongheaded. And, I think, frankly, a lot of Democrats agree to that, too, and believe it ought to be more targeted toward those who need it the most.

The economic analysis in this is clear, which is that these higher income individuals who have received earlier stimulus checks have ended up not spending them, meaning they don't stimulate the economy, which is the whole idea of the stimulus checks.

There is some recent data out by an economist named Chetty, who is well respected, that says, of the $1,400 that the proposal that the President has laid out going to these families--of that $1,400, if someone makes over $78,000 a year, likely they only spend about $105 of that money. The rest they will save, put in the stock market, do something else with it but not spend.

So let's target it. We are not against stimulus checks, but we are against sending stimulus checks to people who are wealthy, who don't need it. That seems like not an effective use of taxpayer dollars at a time of these unprecedented deficits and debts, with our

debt being the highest it has been, as a percent of our economy, since World War II.

We also have to realize that the $900 billion that was in the package that just passed 5 weeks ago or less has not been fully spent. In fact, most analyses show that less than half of that $900 billion has gone out the door. So we can't know what the impact has been of what we just spent--again, the second largest expenditure of funds ever in the history of this Congress because half of it has not even got out the door, or more. Let's do an analysis there.

Apparently, without taking the time to see if there are 60 Senators willing to move forward with this new idea of a new bipartisan package, this reconciliation approach I talked about earlier is the one that Democrats seem to want to take. It is a rare process. You have to have a budget passed by both sides. It only happens every few years. The reconciliation is in the underlying budget we are voting on over the next couple of days here. It is something that can be used-- reconciliation--only for budget-related issues, only for mandatory spending and for revenue, for taxes, and for reducing the debt. So it has to be budget related.

Actually, some of the things in the $1.9 trillion dollar package can't even be done by reconciliation, which would mean we would have to be changing the rules of this body in order to include them in reconciliation. That is another bad idea. First bad idea, not to work on a bipartisan basis. At least try. At least try. The second one is, using reconciliation, which is a mere 50-vote margin for something that is not directly related to the budget that has a direct impact. It can't be merel incidental to the budget, as an example.

There are a number of provisions in there that fit that category. And there is at least discussion, I am told--and we have heard it openly from my colleagues on the other side of saying: Well, we are just going to overrule the Chair--essentially nuke--going the nuclear option, as they say. The nuclear option means that you overrule the Chair--and by a mere 50 votes, change the rules of the Senate.

Please don't do that. That would be, again, setting us down a path of partisanship we don't need to do. It would be poisoning the well. It would be saying--just as getting rid of the filibuster would--we are going to change the rules now that we are in charge.

The rules are there for a reason. And that is to ensure that, to the extent possible, the Senate is a body where you find at least some modicum of bipartisanship to move forward because you have to get those 60 votes, not just 50 votes or 51.

By trying to jam through this $1.9 trillion legislation, it sets exactly the wrong tone for the country and also for the administration. I think President Biden has a real opportunity to help heal our country--I really do. By the way, I think he sincerely wants to. That is why I don't understand this process.

Our 908 Coalition--this bipartisan group, which is now 20 Members, 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats--and we took it up to 10 Republicans because we wanted to show that you can get to 60 votes. If you had 50 Democrats, you would have 10 Republicans willing to work with them. And I am sure there are many, many more than those 10. I know there are. This group is now being tested.

This group was bipartisan under President Trump. I hope it will be bipartisan under President Biden. I hope that that bipartisanship shows up quickly before we go down this path.

We had a meeting last week of our 908 Coalition, and our Democratic colleagues asked us: What can we support? If it is not $1.9 trillion, what is it? Fair question. Again, many of us think we ought to find out what happened to the $900 billion first, hard-earned tax money that hasn't been spent yet. But we said: OK. We will put together a proposal that we could support--not that we support all elements of it but we could support in order to respond to the President's $1.9 trillion package in addressing all of the major issues that he addressed.

Over the weekend, we outlined a $600 billion package that does just that. It addresses the most urgent needs of our country. It does not include any of the unrelated provisions in the Democrats' package that have nothing to do with COVID-19. What it does contain is the same $160 billion that is in the $1.9 trillion package as it relates to healthcare.

What does that mean? It means that if we are going to get out of this crisis we find ourselves in, we have to address the COVID-19 issue, right? We are not just going to have an economy improve immediately to the extent we would like to see it without dealing with the healthcare crisis. That is what is driving the fact that restaurants are closed down, the fact that people are losing jobs through no fault of their own, the fact that we have these economic issues related to COVID. So the sensible thing to do is to be sure we are dealing with the vaccine, development and distribution, dealing with testing, dealing with tracing, making sure we have proper PPE. All of that is in the $160 billion that is in the Biden proposal. It is also in the proposal that we Republicans on the Coalition put forward--$160 billion, the same.

For those issues, we are consistent with President Biden's plan on additional healthcare support. Our proposal also prioritizes getting kids back to the classroom, which we think is really important. Specifically, we have $20 billion toward getting children safely back into classrooms, which is on top of the $82 billion we just spent on schools at the end of year. As a parent, I couldn't feel more strongly about this; we need to get our children back to school, and we need to make sure we it is safe--and we can do both.

We also provide an additional $12 billion for nutrition programs to combat food insecurity and ensure that families, kids have food on the table. This is consistent, again, with the Biden administration plan. These are ones that we agree on.

Our proposal also includes $20 billion for the childcare and development block grants so our childcare facilities across the country can stay open, so the parents can go back to work. Childcare is incredibly expensive. Again, this is where we agree.

We have a new round of $50 billion in financial support for small businesses, but we use it in a program we know works rather than setting up a new program, which would take a long time to put in place.

We help the hardest hit families and individuals through expanding unemployment insurance for those who lose their job through no fault of their own. We expand it from where it currently ends now, in mid-March, to the end of June, so June 30.

We extend it at $300 per week, which is the Federal supplement now in place. There, the Biden administration wants $400 rather than $300 and wants to extend it into September, to September 30. There is no economic data that says that that will be necessary. If it is, we can take it up again. So there we have a proposal that is similar but more targeted to meet the real needs of our economy.

Our proposal also provides direct stimulus checks to Americans who really need that extra amount of money to pay their rent or put food on the table or pay their mortgage. By the way, we do it by lowering these limits. Instead of going to families that make 300,000 bucks a year or more--if they have got three or four kids, we say let's cap it at $50,000 for individuals, $100,000 for families, an additional $500 per child.

Again, all the economists say that is what makes sense because those are the folks who are really going to spend it and need it. Let's target this to those who really need the help.

We accomplish all these things at one-third of the cost of the Biden proposal. Much of the difference between our proposal and the Biden administration's is we don't include the extraneous matters, but also it is how we address these two crises: the healthcare crisis to defeat the underlying disease and the work we are trying to do to ensure the economy can recover. Both proposals rightly provide the resources needed to address the healthcare crisis, as I said.

But with regard to the economic crisis, we take a little different approach. Our focus is on getting targeted aid to those who need it the most. In contrast, a large portion of the administration's $1.9 trillion package is about spending taxpayer dollars to stimulate the economy that, based on all the data, is already beginning to recover. And that is something that, frankly, is not an effective use of taxpayer dollars.

Just yesterday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, reported that the economy is growing quite well right now. They project a 3.7-percent real economic growth in this year we are in, in 2021. That is significant economic growth. That takes into account inflation, real economic growth at 3.7 percent. That just came out yesterday.

By the way, the Wall Street Journal does a survey of a bunch of economists--60 economists--and their consensus for the economic growth in this year is not 3.7 percent, it is 4.3 percent. Even better. So the economy is projected to grow quite well this year.

Importantly, the CBO also said that the economy is expected to recover to prepandemic levels by the middle of the year. They say that by June 30, the economy will be back to where it was before the pandemic, which was a very strong economy. In fact, a year ago February, this month, we had 19 straight months of wage growth of over 3 percent. We had the lowest poverty rate in the history of our country. There was a lot of good things going on in our economy. And they say we are going to get back to that--this is CBO, not me--by the middle of this year.

Meanwhile, after record-high jobless claims we saw last spring when unemployment hit 14.7 percent, the national unemployment rate has fallen to 6.7 percent, which means Americans are able to find work, for the most part. Is it where I would like it to be? No. But the CBO says the unemployment numbers are going to go down, as does everybody else who has projected this over the next year. They say it is going to drop this year to 5.3 percent. Five percent used to be considered full employment. We would like to see it even better than that. But the point is, the economy is improving. And as we get these virus pandemic issues under control, the economy will improve even more. Having the vaccines readily available is going to make a big difference. And, of course, again, that is why we put so much money into that in our proposal.

CBO is basing these projections, by the way, without factoring any of the new $1.9 trillion. They don't assume that there will be any more stimulus than what we just passed several weeks ago. In other words, while the Biden Administration says we need $1.9 trillion in new spending or our economy will tank, CBO says very clearly that is not true.

Instead, we need to help those who are still struggling and cannot find a job because their industry shuttered or their business isn't allowed to reopen, and that is what our targeted proposal will do.

Other respected sources agree with CBO's optimism. I mentioned these 68 economists indicating 4.3 percent economic growth. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said yesterday that the CBO data underscores the need for a targeted package, saying: ``It shouldn't take $1.9 trillion to fill a $400 billion or $800 billion hole'' in our economy.

We have more data to suggest that the economy is on a path to recovery. For example, we know that household incomes rose slightly-- but they rose--in December. This was the first increase in 3 months. The personal savings rate in December rose significantly--13.7 percent--indicating there is a lot of pent-up demand right there for people to get out and start spending money again.

To me, all this points to a pretty clear conclusion that in the immediate aftermath of the $900 billion bipartisan package just passed at year end, there is simply not a strong argument to spend an additional $1.9 trillion on stimulus. Instead, we need to use this next COVID-19 package to focus on the ongoing healthcare challenges of the pandemic--that is the key thing--and on getting targeted economic relief to the hardest hit Americans, which is what our $600 billion proposal does.

I appreciate that, in the last few days, President Biden has expressed more willingness to work with bipartisan Members of Congress on this critical challenge. After we wrote to President Biden on Sunday requesting a meeting to discuss our targeted COVID-19 relief proposal, he quickly accepted, and, yesterday, we had a lengthy and, I thought, very productive discussion at the White House. While we didn't come to an agreement on a proposal--and as you can see today on the floor, Democrats are moving forward with this budget process, regardless--it was a productive discussion and gives me hope that we can follow the bipartisan approach we have taken from the previous five COVID bills. The meeting reaffirmed that there is a lot of common ground for us to build another bill upon and that we share the belief that we need to ensure the hardest hit individuals and families and small businesses get more support they need during this crisis.

My hope is that we can use these two proposals as a starting point for negotiations on a COVID-19 response package that Congress can pass, as we have before, consistently, with bipartisan support, not through partisan parliamentary maneuvers.

This pandemic gives us an opportunity to come together as Republicans and Democrats and show the American people we can put aside the partisanship and the divisions that have become the norm around here and get things done.

If we can't do it on COVID-19, as we have five times already, where can we do it?

I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and with President Biden to follow his desire to make good on his pledge in the inaugural address to work together to respond to this crisis.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I can say with certainty that General Austin has no better friend or ally in this Chamber than Senator Dan Sullivan, who has seen him as a person and seen him as a commander.

Those votes will occur later today.

Madam President, I rise today on the floor to talk about what happened yesterday at the Capitol and what happened 2 weeks ago at the Capitol.

Yesterday, we had the 59th Presidential inauguration right here. The citadel of democracy was once again the place where a President and Vice President were sworn in for 4 years.

Starting in 1789, every 4 years, America and the world have witnessed this remarkable event that provides for the peaceful transfer of Executive power and the continuity of government--something we sometimes take for granted but is rare, even today. It has happened through wars. It has happened through economic recessions. We have had our inaugurations today and during this unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.

What is more, the inauguration took place 2 weeks to the day on the very west steps of the United States Capitol where a violent mob stormed this building, desecrating these halls, and tried to stop our constitutionally mandated deliberations in this body.

It was the ninth inauguration ceremony I have attended. I was proud to be there as President Biden and Vice President Harris were sworn in.

I am here on the floor today to thank the Capitol Police and other law enforcement agencies, including the Secret Service and its Director, Jim Murray, who took the lead on this national special security event to ensure that things went smoothly and that we, indeed, had a peaceful transfer of power.

I also want to give special thanks to the men and women of the National Guard, who worked to ensure this ceremony was safe and secure. Over the past 2 weeks, 25,000 National Guard troops from across the country, including all 50 States and 3 territories, answered the call, leaving their families and friends and, for most, leaving their regular jobs to help defend this sacred celebration of democracy that occurred at this place yesterday.

This number of 25,000 troops includes nearly 1,000 guardsmen from my home State of Ohio. I had the opportunity to meet with a couple hundred of these citizen soldiers from Ohio yesterday. I was able to tell them how much we appreciate their commitment to the mission and what they have done, truly, to protect democracy and to help our Capitol Police during a stressful time. Because of their efforts, the ceremony was safe for everyone in attendance, and we were able to proceed with this transfer of power.

When I thanked them, they all told me the same thing--they were just doing their duty. They were proud to be here. They were protecting their country and their fellow citizens

I have seen this firsthand over the years when I have visited Ohio National Guard installations around our State, including the Mansfield Air Base, the Toledo Air Base, the Springfield Air Base, Rickenbacker Air National Guard.

During this pandemic, when more Americans than ever are facing severe food insecurity, I have had the chance to hand out food with members of the Ohio Army National Guard who have been working around the clock at food banks I have been at, like Greater Cleveland Food Bank or Central Ohio Food Bank. They are working hard alongside volunteers to respond to a true crisis.

But that is not all. The Ohio National Guard has played an essential role in providing critical assistance to our prisons and our jails when guards were out with the COVID virus. They have helped with testing. They have helped to get the COVID-19 vaccines distributed across our State, and they are continuing to do that. We can't thank them enough for what they have done during this time of crisis.

As I have visited with the Guard this week, both with regard to the Ohio members and Guard from all over the country, including some conversations I had this morning, I have told them all what I have heard from the Capitol Police this week. I have heard that they really appreciated the backup at a time when shifts have been long, sleep has been rare, and the effects of the attack on the Capitol are still acutely felt.

It has been a tough 2 weeks on our Capitol police officers. It has been a tough 2 weeks since the attack on the Capitol.

I want to take this opportunity to also express the gratitude of all of us in this Chamber and all Americans to the Capitol Police for bravely holding the line against an illegal, violent mob that threatened this building, our proceedings, and our colleagues.

In effect, the men and women of the Capitol Police Force put their lives on the line to defend democracy. It is that simple.

As I said on this floor that terrible night 2 weeks ago, it was because of their courage that we were safe and because of their courage that we were able to demonstrate to the American people and the world that we were going to accomplish our constitutional duty of certifying the election. They allowed us to do that.

As a Congress, we have begun a complete, impartial, and nonpartisan investigation into what went wrong that day. I am working across the Senate with the committees of jurisdiction--the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where I will be the ranking Republican, the Rules Committee, the Appropriations Committee, and the Intelligence Committee to ensure that our Capitol Police are never put in that kind of position again. We are performing oversight to ensure they have what they need to be able to protect the Capitol going forward.

Without prejudging our investigation, we must consider what reforms need to be made and take a hard look at the physical security of our Capitol Complex. While these buildings must remain accessible to the people, we need to look at incorporating the best practices in physical security, to include shatterproof windows and doors that can't be easily breached. This will

cost money, but it is absolutely necessary, based on what happened on the 6th of January.

I look forward to helping lead this bipartisan effort, and I urge my fellow Members of Congress to join in.

Again, I don't want to prejudge our review, but I know among the findings we will make is a finding that the officers on the line were heroic, and those officers deserve our gratitude.

We must never forget those who lost their lives that night, including a law enforcement officer and member of the Capitol Police, Officer Brian Sicknick, who, since 2008, had patrolled these halls and had been a familiar face to many of us. He was tragically killed defending this Capitol. He gave his life in heroic defense of us and our democracy.

Only a couple of days after the attack, I learned the tragic news that we lost another officer, a friend, Officer Howard Liebengood. Howie was on duty the day the Capitol was attacked and responded to the attack just as his many brave comrades did. He experienced some difficult experiences that night. I was devastated to learn of his death the next day.

Howie was someone I used to see almost every day. He was usually stationed in the Russell Building, where my office is located. He was an utmost professional--someone who took great pride in his work and had an ironclad commitment to keeping people safe. His dad was Sergeant at Arms here at one time.

He brightened my day every time I saw him. The last time was a few weeks ago, when he was standing guard outside the doors to the Russell Building, alone in the cold, alert, vigilant, and good-humored.

Today I reread a letter that I wrote to the Chief of the Capitol Police several years ago, commending the exceptional work of Howie and his partner, Chris Gallo, for their ``professionalism, coupled with their kind demeanor.''

Howie represented what is great and good about not just our police force but our country.

Rest in peace, Officer Brian Sicknick and Officer Howard Liebengood.

Through the tragedy of that day 2 weeks ago came other stories of bravery and valor too. We have heard about the heroic actions of Officer Eugene Goodman, an Army veteran whose quick thinking under intense pressure protected us here in this Senate Chamber by leading the mob away from the Chamber while many of us were still inside.

He unselfishly put himself in danger and, despite the risk, handled himself with the professionalism that defines the Capitol Police, and I was pleased to see his promotion.

Officer Goodman's heroic efforts are, to me, representative of the actions of all the brave officers of the Capitol Police, who, on that day of violence and lawlessness, held the line against the mob.

I am proud of another member of the Capitol Police. This is the supervisor. Inspector Tommy Lloyd is commander of the Capitol division--as compared to the House and the Senate, commander of the division to protect the Capitol itself.

This is a powerful photograph that I saw in TIME magazine. It is a photograph of him facing the mob, shoulder to shoulder with his line officers.

The Capitol was breached, but because of the valor of these men and women, we were able to complete our job and are able to be here today, discussing the workings of our democracy, confirming members of the new administration, doing our job.

The actions of law enforcement in the Capitol should serve as a reminder to all of us of the risks our police officers take every single day to keep us safe--not just here in the Capitol but around the country. On Monday, for example, the city of Toledo, OH, lost one of its own when Officer Brandon Stalker of the Toledo Police Department was killed in a standoff with a gunman. Officer Stalker, only 24 years old, was the father of two young children and engaged to be married. He had a promising life ahead of him. My thoughts are with the friends and families of Officer Stalker and the friends and families of Officers Sicknick and Liebengood during this difficult time.

Even with all the threats and challenges they face, our officers of the law here and around the country carry on in their duties to protect and to serve. They are truly the best of America. Officer Stalker's fellow officers will continue to patrol the streets of Toledo to keep its citizens safe. Yesterday, despite the hardships they have faced, the Capitol Police, once again, lined the Halls of Congress, keeping watch over the inauguration of the next President and Vice President of the United States.

Together, the National Guard, the Capitol Police, the Secret Service, and other law enforcement protected a Presidential inauguration that was at once like none other in recent memory, and yet also a continuation of a long and great tradition--an unbroken chain of peacefully transferring power that our Nation has cherished since 1789. They did their duty, as they do every day, in defense of the values we Americans hold dearest--democracy, liberty, rule of law--and we all owe them a debt of gratitude.

I yield the floor.

Mr. Vice President, you have fulfilled your duties as President of the Senate tonight with distinction, and we all appreciate it.

I thought about changing my mind and not speaking tonight, given the lateness of the hour, and I know all of my colleagues would have appreciated that greatly. But I thought it was necessary to speak because I want the American people, particularly my constituents in Ohio, to see that we will not be intimidated, that we will not disrupted from our work, that here in the citadel of democracy, we will continue to do the work of the people. Mob rule is not going to prevail here.

Now, let's face it. We did not reclaim this Chamber tonight. Brave and selfless law enforcement officers stood in the breach and ensured that the citadel of democracy would be protected and that we would be defended, and we are deeply grateful for that--as is the Nation

I have listened carefully to comments of my colleagues, and I have listened over the past couple of weeks as this issue has been discussed, and I tell you, for me, it is not a hard decision. I stand with the Constitution. I stand with what the Constitution makes clear: The people and the States hold the power here, not us.

My oath to the Constitution and my reverence for our democratic principles make it easy for me to confirm these State certifications.

By the way, I opposed this process some 15 years ago, when some Democrats chose to object to the electors from my home State of Ohio after the 2004 elections. I opposed it then, and I oppose it now. I said at the time that Congress must not thwart the will of the people. That is what we would be doing.

Let's assume for a moment that those who object to the certifications are right, that the Constitution intended that a bare majority of Members of Congress could circumvent the States that have chosen to certify the popular votes of their own State citizens. I ask the objectors to think about the precedent that would be set if we were to do that.

What if the majority in the House and the Senate were of the other party when a Presidential candidate of our party came through a close Presidential election? Would you want a Congress controlled by the Democrats to play the role you now intend for us?

It is asking Congress to substitute its judgment for the judgment of the voters and its judgment for the judgment of the States that certified the results. And even forgetting the dangerous precedent that would be set, what would be the basis for objecting in this election?

Look, I voted for President Trump. I supported him because I believe the Trump administration's policies are better for Ohio and for the country. And I supported the Trump campaign's right to pursue recounts--they had every right to do it--and legal challenges.

I agree that there were instances of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 elections. I think we all do. And by the way, there are fraud and irregularities in every Presidential election.

But it is also true that after 2 months of recounts and legal challenges, not a single State recount changed the result. And of the dozens of lawsuits filed, not one found evidence of fraud or irregularities widespread enough to change the result of the election. This was the finding of numerous Republican-appointed judges and the Trump administration's own Department of Justice.

Every State has now weighed in and chosen to certify its electoral slate based on the popular vote, as set out in the Constitution.

I understand that many Americans who would never storm this Capitol don't trust the integrity of the 2020 election, don't think the States should have certified, don't think we should have accepted the results from the States, and are insisting on more transparency and accountability.

In the 2016 elections, lest we forget, many Democrats objected to the results and distrusted the election.

I challenge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to listen but also to do our part to try to restore faith in our elections. We should all work to improve the integrity of the electoral system and the confidence of the American people in this bedrock of our great democratic Republic.

Today, I will do my constitutional duty and oppose these efforts to reject the State-certified results.

And tomorrow, in the wake of this attack on the Capitol, the pandemic that engulfs us, and other national challenges, let's work together for the people.

Thank you to my colleague from North Dakota. North Dakota has a lot of farmers and manufacturers. There is a lot of manufacturing in his State as well, and they never had a better friend. That is why he is so strong a supporter of this agreement. It makes a big difference.

My colleague from Arkansas talked about the fact that Arkansas's two largest trading partners are Canada and Mexico. It is the same for Ohio. China is actually kind of a distant third. These two countries are critical for our exports. That is why this agreement is so important.

I am a former trade lawyer. I also was the U.S. Trade Representative under George W. Bush. Now I am on the Finance Committee, which is the committee that handles these trade issues. I think having a balanced and healthy trade relationship is very important. We have to stand up for our country. We need to enforce these agreements we have. We also need to expand the exports because that is what creates jobs--by the way, better paying jobs. They pay about 16 percent more on average and have better benefits. That is why we need to be sure we have agreements like this one.

We have about 5 percent of the world's population and about 25 percent of the world's economy. We need to sell our stuff overseas. It gives us access to 95 percent of the consumers who live outside of our borders. Mexico and Canada, as I said, are our biggest trading partners. Thirty-nine percent of our exports go to Canada alone--twice the national average. All in all, Mexico and Canada now support more than 12 million jobs nationally, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

We all know the NAFTA agreement has to be updated. It is now 25 years old, and it looks like it. It doesn't have a lot of things I would expect in any modern agreement, such as taking care of the digital economy. So much of our economy is now over the internet; yet there is nothing in this agreement that deals with that part of our economy.

It is more than just a name change. It does include a lot of different aspects. We put in more modern agreements that we don't have in the NAFTA.

Another is labor and environmental standards. Not only are they stronger, but they are enforceable under this new agreement. They are not enforceable under NAFTA.

Auto jobs have left the United States of America over the last 25 years. One reason this agreement is necessary is that the USMCA shifts more auto production back to the United States. My colleague from North Dakota talked about the manufacturing side. This is going to get U.S. automobile assembly lines humming again because if you want to get the better tariff treatment under the USMCA, car parts and cars have to have higher content from North America--that means from us. Under NAFTA, that requirement was 62.5 percent, and under USMCA, it is 75 percent. There is also a new provision where 70 percent of steel that is used in automobiles has to be North American steel. Both of these things help to ensure that we have more manufacturing jobs in Ohio and around the country.

American farmers, as we have heard earlier, are going to gain access to new markets in Canada and Mexico. That is why Ohio farm groups are for this. That is why, by the way, nearly 1,000 farm groups from around the country now--I didn't know there were 1,000 farm groups--have come out to support this agreement.

Small businesses in Ohio and around the country whose bottom line relies on these internet sales, internet commerce is going to have much more access to Canada and Mexico, thanks to these new digital economy provisions. So it kind of helps across the board.

By the way, these stronger labor standards in Mexico we talked about are going to help level the playing field in terms of labor because labor costs are less in Mexico, but it goes even further than that. It actually requires that 40 to 45 percent of a USMCA vehicle made in Mexico, or anywhere in North America, must be produced by workers making at least 16 bucks an hour.

This is kind of revolutionary. It is a different kind of thinking in a trade agreement. Frankly, it is something you would expect from a Democratic administration to put into an agreement, but it is in there, and it is going to help autoworkers in this country.

Because of all of these changes I have discussed--by the way, many of which, like the higher minimum wage or like the higher domestic content, have been advocated by Democrats in the past. That has been their approach to these

trade agreements, not Republicans so much, but because these provisions are so good for workers, I must tell you I am surprised--even amazed-- to see so many of my Democratic colleagues not stand up to support this agreement because it has all of these things they have said they have wanted over the years, and they certainly don't like NAFTA. Many of them have campaigned against NAFTA for the past 25 years. In a way, if you vote against USMCA, you know what you are stuck with--NAFTA. So in a way, you are voting for NAFTA if you vote against USMCA.

That is the alternative here. It is a binary choice, as they say. It is either you are for this new agreement that is an improvement or you go back to the status quo, which is NAFTA.

So it will be interesting to see, but my hope is the media and others, outside groups, will hold people accountable and say: Why would you be against an agreement that is better, even if it is not perfect from your point of view?

By the way, no trade agreement is absolutely perfect. Every one of us would negotiate something slightly different. It is a question of trying to make sure you don't make the agreement, which is not perfect, the enemy of the good, and the good is to go to this new agreement.

There was an outside, independent study done by the International Trade Commission showing that 176,000 new jobs will be added to the U.S. economy just from this agreement alone. So this is better.

So the bottom line is, do we continue under the outdated NAFTA or do we adopt these new USMCA standards that will allow us to compete better in the global 21st century economy?

A vote against the USMCA, again, is a vote for the status quo, without enforceable labor and environmental standards, with a nonexistent digital economy provision, and with rules of origin that allow more automobiles and auto parts to be manufactured overseas instead of in America. USMCA addresses and solves all those problems.

I put together a little handy chart to talk about some of these specific provisions.

USMCA will create 176,000 new jobs. NAFTA? None.

Enforceable labor and environmental standards. USMCA, yes, checkmark, enforceable. Enforceable under NAFTA? No.

Rules for the internet economy, new rules, again, to help small businesses, internet economy, checkmark. NAFTA? No.

Seventy percent of the steel in vehicles has to be made in North America. That is a new provision. It is not in any other trade agreement, by the way. Yes on USMCA; no on NAFTA.

Finally, 40 to 45 percent of the vehicles must be made by workers earning at least 16 bucks an hour. NAFTA, no; USMCA, yes.

So it is pretty clear to me, if you actually are honest about this and you look at it objectively and you say here are these two opportunities, which way would you go?

So I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle take a look at this and apply logic and say: It might not be perfect. I might have wanted a little more here or there, but be sure that you are supporting what works for your workers.

If we can get this agreement passed, the President will sign it. It will make a difference for employees, for farmers, workers, service providers in my home State of Ohio and around the country.

Mr. President, I am here on the floor this afternoon to talk about a landmark moment in human history that occurred 50 years ago next week--the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first person on the Moon.

Today, 50 years after that incredible feat, we sometimes take for granted that we explored the Moon. But think for a moment about the generations of men and women from the beginning of time until July 20, 1969, who looked up at the Moon's pale light in wonder at what secrets and insights may lay on its surface. Think about the countless paintings and poems depicting the Moon as an unchanging and unknowable presence in the sky. Think about how, after hundreds of thousands of years of such mystery and reverence, we actually went there.

On July 20, 1969, the world watched in breathless awe as grainy footage came in of the Moon landing. It was beamed in from the lunar surface 289,000 miles away to millions of TV screens all around the globe. As a 13-year-old teenager, I saw two figures clad in bulky spacesuits bounce across the screen against the stark black-and-white landscape.

As anyone who witnessed it can remember and tell you about, there was a great sense of pride as Americans--Americans who broke the earthly bonds that had tethered our ancestors for eons, to set foot on the surface of a body we only saw in the distant night sky. I also felt pride as our pristine American flag was unfurled and planted on the Moon's surface, forever marking our country's trailblazing spirit. I felt pride in being from Ohio, as my fellow Buckeye, Neil Armstrong, was the very first man to step onto the Moon, continuing our legacy in the State of Ohio as a pioneer in flight and in aerospace.

In 2003, actually, Congress officially designated Ohio the ``Birthplace of Flight'' due to the Wright brothers. They were born and raised in Dayton, OH, and it was in their bicycle shop that they dreamed up and researched the first fixed-wing aircraft anywhere. But for such a lofty title, Ohio has played an even greater role in the story of mankind's progress in the skies and beyond--even beyond the Wright brothers. In fact, one of my predecessors in this seat here in the Senate was John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth. In all, two dozen astronauts to date are natives of Ohio--more than any other State--and I am proud to say that many more call it home today.

Our legacy of flight in Ohio continues today. In Dayton, OH, we have the National Air Force Museum, which houses more than 300 historic aircraft. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base--one of the largest in the country--trains not only our pilots in our Air Force, but those of our allies all around the world.

Just last month, I had the honor of announcing, with Neil Armstrong's widow, Carol Armstrong, that the Smithsonian will be bringing a special exhibit on the Apollo 11 mission entitled ``Destination Moon'' to Cincinnati's own Museum Center.

On that day in 1969, Neil Armstrong became all of our heroes, and it was at a time when our country was deeply divided over the war in Vietnam and other social and cultural issues. At a time when we were yearning for heroes, Neil Armstrong inspired us and brought us together as a country.

I have one story I would like to share that I thought about while walking over this afternoon. It is about how Neil Armstrong inspired a particularly important group of Americans.

In 2011, the year before Neil Armstrong died, he came here to the U.S. Capitol at my request to join my wife Jane and me at our swearing- in ceremony. I was elected in 2010, and the swearing-in was early in 2011. As we walked into the Capitol, we looked up on the left and saw a mural, and it is a mural that is still down on the first floor of this Capitol on the Senate side, and it is of Neil Armstrong on the face of the Moon. I pointed it out to Neil and his wife Carol--his wonderful wife Carol who was with us. Neil's comment was, that is interesting. The 30 or 40 people who were with us walking into the Capitol that day--they didn't think it was interesting; they thought it was amazing.

I later found out that Neil Armstrong was the only American living to have a mural painted of him in the U.S. Capitol.

That night at dinner, one of my other friends, Col. Tom Moe, came to me and asked if he could speak with Neil Armstrong and whether I would introduce him to Neil. I said: Of course.

Col. Tom Moe is a hero in his own right, an Air Force pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam. He spent many years in the prison called the Hanoi Hilton with our former colleague John McCain--a true hero.

When we went over to see Neil Armstrong, Col. Tom Moe shared a story with him. He said that the prison guards in the North Vietnamese prison were intent upon telling the prisoners that America was falling apart, that there were protests on the streets, which was true, that the country was deeply divided, and that America was going backward. He said in particular they didn't want the prisoners to know that America had accomplished what President Jack Kennedy had laid out as an ambitious vow, which was to go to the Moon by the end of the decade. They had kept that from them. Then one day, the prison guards somehow let a letter go to one of the prisoners from his mom, and that letter included a postage stamp, of course. Guess what was on the postage stamp. A photograph of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the Moon.

Colonel Moe told Neil Armstrong that it was incredibly inspiring. It lifted the spirits of all the prisoners. Immediately they went to the pipes and they tapped out what had happened, which was the way they communicated with one another in the Hanoi Hilton. Through the pipes and the tapping, he

said you could just feel the momentum building and the morale improve.

Neil Armstrong was not a very emotional guy, but when he heard that story, he became very emotional, as did Colonel Moe.

That is just one more example of where Neil Armstrong inspired all of us--in this case, a group of Americans who richly deserved and badly needed that inspiration.

Over the years, my family and I have come to know the Armstrong family. Carol Armstrong is still in Cincinnati, a dear friend. We were his neighbors in Cincinnati.

As we have shared stories in the lead-in to the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, I have been reminded of how extraordinary it was that this towering figure had truly been such a modest, unassuming man despite all the notoriety.

In my view, how he handled the spotlight into which he was thrust said as much about Neil Armstrong as the time he spent on the Moon a half century ago. He was a true hero, but even before he blazed trails through the cosmos, Neil was already contributing to Ohio's rich legacy of pushing the boundaries of flight. He had already served his Nation with bravery and skill on Gemini 8. As a test pilot pushing the envelope, he had strapped himself into terrifying-looking contraptions with gigantic flame-belching engines tied onto huge fuel tanks.

Before he was a test pilot, he distinguished himself through his service to his country as a naval aviator--among other things, flying 78 combat missions over the Korean Peninsula. In one such mission, in fact, he was forced to eject from his plane into enemy territory, holding out long enough, thank God, for the U.S. Marines to locate him and escort him to safety.

For all of these accomplishments, this son of Ohio received the highest honors a grateful nation could bestow: the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

God smiled upon Neil Armstrong throughout his extraordinary life. Neil returned the favor by living his life with honor and dignity.

In 2012, Neil returned to the heavens above, this time venturing into the Kingdom of Heaven. I had the honor of being among those who delivered the eulogy at his funeral. Then, as today, I remembered him as a hero and as a friend. He was a humble Midwesterner and a proud Ohioan who believed that the honor of serving his country and meeting great challenges in his own stoic way was all the reward he deserved. He was a refreshing counterweight to the celebrity culture we too often embrace today.

The Apollo mission was many things to many people. To the world, it was mankind's greatest journey to date, a daring sojourn to the crown jewels in the night sky. For Americans, it was an affirmation of America's exceptionalism, that we could beat the Soviets and respond to their Sputnik Program by following through on President Kennedy's bold vow to land a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s.

For me, and for thousands of other young boys and girls across Ohio, it was simply the next act in our State's leadership in aviation, done with that quintessential Midwestern resolve and humility.

As Neil once so eloquently said, ``The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet and our visions go rather further than that, and our opportunities are unlimited.''

Fifty years on, as we look ahead to chart our next voyage to the stars, let us always remember the bravery and patriotism and the humility of Neil, also of his other astronauts--Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin--and the thousands of men and women who supported them on Earth, and the many courageous astronauts who preceded and followed them. Let the Apollo 11 mission be an example of what our great country can do when we come together to achieve the seemingly impossible.

Let us commit to come together into the future, into the distant horizons. Like the Apollo 11 exhibit exhibiting American leadership and benefiting all of mankind, there is more for us to do.

I yield the floor.