Floor Statements

Madam President, in calculating, it may be possible that I have served on the Intel Committee longer than anybody besides Richard Burr currently on the committee, with some time in the House--but not all of the time in the House--and in the Senate. It is truly amazing the depth of understanding he has of programs, of

capacity, of the places we are all over the world.

I think he and Senator Warner have done a great job of maintaining that committee as a bipartisan committee, working together, understanding that most of what we do and that most of what we talk about is only seen by us and the staff of that committee. It is an important responsibility to ask questions and hear answers that others Members can't. Richard's leadership has been incredible.

I want to spend a few minutes talking about the other portfolio he has that I am also involved in as the appropriating chairman on the Health and Education and Labor Committee.

In so many ways, particularly after COVID, Richard, we became the team--the authorizing and the appropriating--so we could make this all work together.

Efforts are extraordinary as well. We heard the long list of things he did to create an understanding of what we needed to do--the whole idea of rapid response, of BARDA, of having a stockpile. All of this is--not only is so much of it Richard's idea, but also Richard has kept the idea alive.

I will just tell you this is from absolute personal and occasional knowledge in the press--they are wondering: Now, why are you still spending that money on the stockpile? We didn't use it last year, and we didn't use it the year before. Why do you think we need to have things in that stockpile that are usable and have efficacy now?

Richard has been there. Often, the only people advocating for the stockpile, advocating for being ready for things we hope don't happen, are the manufacturers who are willing to manufacture this and Richard Burr and others--that very small group of people who say: We have got to be ready.

Now we are talking about, with Richard's leadership again, being ready in other ways, where we are ready to manufacture and have a rapid response like we did with COVID, where we now, maybe, have the capacity to figure out very quickly what we need and produce that, but you have to have the kind of relationship to have that rapid production.

You know, when something like this happens, everybody is willing to do everything, and, frankly, everybody is willing to spend everything, but that is likely too late. You have to be willing to plan everything and be prepared to execute a plan rather than ``Now we have a problem; let's do whatever it takes.'' Richard Burr has been there in thinking about how we plan, how we prepare, what kind of relationships we need to have.

On top of that, the biomedical research and the new interest in synthetic biology--so much of that leaves this building and this floor when Richard leaves. I think there are so many ways he can be and will be available to the country and will be a service to the country, but showing up every day, in every Congress, in every session, and to every meeting with the knowledge he has brought to those issues is incredibly important.

We see the possibility of health used in a warlike way. We see the interest and the need to look into this to see what has happened or what could happen. Let me just say that, from the Health, Education, and Labor job that I have had, I have been able to see, maybe like nobody else has, the Health, Education, and Labor commitment and understanding he has. I am grateful for that. I am grateful for his friendship.

I look forward to things he and I could continue to find to do together, but I am grateful for the fact that he has been here when he was so needed and stepped up in such a significant way.

Our good friend Lamar Alexander on that committee, in the height of COVID, also very close to both of us, was very dedicated to this work. When Lamar left, I said one of the things I am most grateful for is that I got to serve in the Senate that included Lamar Alexander. I am also grateful that I got to serve in the Senate that included Richard Burr.

Madam President, a moment ago when I saw Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy shake hands warmly in the middle of the aisle, I thought of it as a century of service in the Congress. It is a century of learning lessons that fortunately they have both been able to share with us.

I mentioned in my farewell remarks the other day Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy and how, working with both of them on the Appropriations Committee and the Rules Committee, I learned so much from them. But I was reminded today--I have heard a number of these speeches in the time I have been in the Senate, and I don't think anybody ever has reminded us quite so well of the oath we take--the oath we take to the Constitution, the oath we take to do this job as well as we can, and the promise we make, frankly, to find a solution.

It is a lot easier in Washington these days and in the Senate it is a lot easier to find a fight than it is to find a solution. We have kind of fallen into a place where so many people now run for office talking about what they will never do. Frankly, when you start talking about what you will never do, that usually takes us out of the conversation of what can be done, and if anybody here has been a determined participant in finding what could be done, it is Senator Shelby.

That certainly does not mean that he gives in easily. Many times I have been asked by other Members or the press: What do you think Senator Shelby is thinking about this final deal? I would say: I don't know what he is thinking,

but I know he is thinking, and I know we are not going to find out what he is thinking until he is ready to tell us what he is thinking. But he is trying to figure out a way to come to a conclusion that can actually solve the problem. And in the appropriating process, that problem is usually keeping the government in business.

The other thing I have noticed especially about Senator Shelby is how often he is willing to share things that he hears from his family. His older sister used to--I would hear from him: Well, I got advice from my older sister. And I must think--I am wondering, Well, how old is your oldest sister? So I would usually ask him and be reminded of that.

But I benefit from the advice too. Just like his sister was calling him and saying whatever it was they were talking about that day, he was always talking about his sons and always talking about Mrs. Shelby. You know, I have such great respect for her.

He said to me: You know, you are married to a strong woman too.

I said: Yes, I am.

He said: We better not forget it.

And he hasn't forgotten it, nor has he forgotten to appreciate her and brag on her and understand what an important part of his life and his career she has been. I hope I have learned something from that as well.

Team Shelby is pretty good. You know, Richard has surrounded himself with people who have stayed in his working orbit. They may go from one committee to another or maybe they stay right where they are, being sure they keep him on time. Maybe they find out that if you are going to travel, you are going to travel in a way that absolutely reaches the diplomatic conclusion and the helpful conclusion for the country and Alabama it was designed to make. So I have always been a big respecter of Team Shelby as well.

I was particularly impressed to watch Team Shelby--whether they knew it or not, they just produced their own Senator. I think Katie Britt is going to be a great Member of the Senate. One of the reasons is she was such an important part of Senator Shelby's efforts here. He listened to her, she listened to him, and when it came time to step up, I don't think any Member in the Senate who I am aware of has ever made a greater commitment to try to be sure that they were replaced by somebody who would do the best possible job of following their legacy for the State.

It has been wonderful for me to get to be on the Appropriations Committee and the Rules Committee and work with Senator Shelby but also all the many times we have had just to talk about what is going on that day, what was going on with his family, what was happening with his staff.

I am glad to be here today and share with him how much I benefited from the great friendship we have had but more importantly the great example and to be reminded again of our oath to the Constitution and the importance of being a problem-solver rather than being the person who always wants to talk about the problem. Richard always wants to solve the problem, and the country is better for that, and so is the Senate.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, you know, it is often said here that everything has been said, but not everybody has said it yet.

(Laughter.)

This is actually a case where everything won't be said today and can't be said. The remarkable legislative accomplishments that Rob has made are truly that--they are just remarkable.

When we were serving early in the House together, there was this big retirement bill. I thought, for a while, of Senator Portman that then- Congressman Cardin's first name was ``Portman'' because it was all about the Portman-Cardin Act, the Portman-Cardin ``this and that.''

(Laughter.)

I had a little piece we were able to put in that was called the SIMPLE Plan. Maybe that is because the only thing I understood was the SIMPLE Plan. It was a helpful plan, but we probably wouldn't have gotten it done if Rob hadn't been constantly making the legislative things happen that he makes happen.

As I have said in my remarks, I have never served on a committee with Rob Portman, in the House or in the Senate, in our more than 20 years of working together, but I have probably spent more time with him in meetings, as we have tried to figure out how to move forward, than I have with almost anybody else, whether they had been the House leadership meetings or have been the Senate leadership meetings. I knew so much about Rob that not only did Abby I and really know and appreciate the friendship with him and Jane--and I knew their kids--but there was a while when I knew the names of both of their dogs. That shows that you spend a lot of time with somebody if you know the names of both of their dogs. I did that with Rob.

He has done so well here. I was the whip in the House when Rob was the U.S. Trade Ambassador, and those trade bills are always hard to get done no matter how easy it seems. There was the Central American trade deal that we took to the floor, and like with so many was the case, we just decided: OK. Now is the time to go. I think we are going to get this done today. The work is good. Now we have just got to get the Members willing to go home and admit that they did this.

Trade agreements are good for the country, but often Members don't want to talk about them when they get home because you can always find, somewhere, somebody in your State who might think you could have done a better job in negotiating part of this.

Then there is another thing, I think, that Rob and I had in common and understood. I just heard today, on NewsRadio, while I was driving in this morning, their talking about the new, highly competitive States. They mentioned, for decades, Missouri and Ohio were always considered to be the two bellwether States. Those were the two States. I think, in our State, for 100 years, we voted for the Presidential winner every time but one. Ohio had about that same record.

We have also seen a political transition in our States--where they have gone from highly competitive, where you are really out there in so many

ways on your own when running for office, to where the parties have changed in ways that we may appreciate more than a lot of other people here would.

I had not thought about the support group. I am not sure--I hope I don't need that--but I sure do need and hope to have the additional time to continue our great friendship and times to talk. As several people have said, you always listen when Rob talks because he knows what he is talking about. That is a relatively rare currency anywhere-- even in the U.S. Senate.

I hope we are going to spend enough time together that we won't miss each other, but, certainly, I will miss the times we have had to work together on both sides of the building. It was sometimes when you were with the administration and I was here, but congratulations on what you have done for America and what you have done for your family and the future of the country.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I want to thank my good friend Senator McConnell for his comments this morning, and I have reserved some time this afternoon for what would be my official farewell address in the Senate.

But as it relates to our leader, Mr. McConnell, he and I were whips-- when I was a whip in the House, he was a whip in the Senate. We met every week. We have had a long and close relationship. I am grateful for his advice, his friendship, and his comments today. Thank you.

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

Mr. President, when I gave my first speech on the Senate floor 12 years ago or when I cast my first vote in the House 26 years ago, I had really no way to anticipate the challenges and opportunities that were ahead of us.

I come to the floor today grateful for my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and on both sides of the Capitol. When we agree and when we don't, we are bound by the Constitution to seek a more perfect Union.

Of course, I am most grateful to Missourians, who have given me the chance to work with them as a county official, as the Missouri Secretary of State, and in both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate.

Missouri is where the country comes together--the North meets the South, the East meets the West. No State has more States at its borders than us and only one with as many States as we have. We have been the population center of America for the last five decades in kind of moving down Interstate 44 as the population has moved west and south. We sit in the middle of the biggest piece of contiguous agricultural farmland in the world, and it is the only one that has its own built-in transportation system--the Mississippi River Valley.

St. Louis is sometimes described as the westernmost eastern city, and Kansas City, really, may be more like Denver and Omaha than it is St. Louis. Springfield, where I live, kind of looks to the west and the south to Tulsa and to Fayetteville. The bootheel of our State is the Delta South in every way--the economy, the topography. What happens there is reflective of other places more than it is the rest of our State.

I was in northern Missouri quite a bit this summer, and while in northern Missouri--those two counties that border Iowa--one of the people with me one day when I was the secretary of state said: When we are up here, I always feel like we are on top of the world.

I never go to northern Missouri now unless I feel like I am on top of the world.

Of course, every Senator thinks their State is unique, and it is. A couple of years ago, I spent a few minutes each day trying to figure out and, for about a period of 6 months, wondering how the other 99 Members got here. With a couple of exceptions, I was able to figure it out.

(Laughter.)

I have some question in my mind about a couple of our friends, but as I looked at it, I figured out somebody has unique people skills, and other people have extraordinary political skills. Maybe it is the ability to quickly understand complicated things or the ability to explain complicated things so that other people can understand them. Most of the time, however, we just have an incredible amount of wasted talent. If you could take the collective talent of the 100 U.S. Senators and make the most of it, there is absolutely no telling what might happen.

Now, part of that is because the Senate isn't expected to work efficiently. We don't have many rules, and what does get done usually gets done by either unanimous consent or total exhaustion. Those are our two stopping points. Our Federal Government was designed by people who didn't trust government and didn't want too much of it. They made it hard to get things done. They opted for inefficiency, and that inefficiency is really mind-boggling to people who are more familiar with the parliamentary system, where, if it doesn't get done and it isn't efficient, it fails. We certainly aren't built that way.

We have clearly found new levels of inefficiency in the past decade-- one big bill at the end of the year to fund the government plus whatever the four leaders of the House and Senate can agree to add to it. Once again, we are at that year-ending process to cobble together some kind of result. Now, the only thing worse than the way we do it would be not doing it. The only thing worse than the way we do it is just to decide not to get our work done and see what happens. So we are, once again, down to the next 4 weeks to get our work done or, even better, the next 3 weeks. It wouldn't be bad if we got it done in the next 2 weeks, but we are following the pattern here, in my view, we have followed for too long.

You know, I have seen the standard process of regular order work. In my first decade in the Congress, it never worked perfectly, but it came pretty close to the standard that had been set for two centuries. There is good reason for how a bill becomes a law whether you first saw it on a filmstrip, like I probably did, or on ``Schoolhouse Rock!'' like my kids did. You know how it is supposed to work: Members of a committee and staff who know the most about an issue hold hearings; they mark up a bill; the bill is to be debated and amended on the floor of both the House and the Senate before it goes to the President to be signed or vetoed. For 225 years, the topics of what to fund and how to pay for it have dominated the congressional debate, and we, frankly, need to get back to that, where people see what is going on and Members feel bought in to what is going on.

But then and now, during that whole time, whether regular order was working or not, the rules of the Senate really required finding someone on the other side to work with. There have never been more than 56 popularly elected Republican Senators and only a handful of times have there been 60 or more Democrats. Finding someone on the other side to work with produces the most lasting results.

A couple of Congresses ago, there were 52 on my side and 48 on the other side. My staff decided it would be interesting--they came to me one day and said: We just thought it would be interesting to check and see how many of the 48 Democrats you figured out how to be the principal sponsor of a bill with. The answer was 44. I thought that was a pretty good number.

My point then and now is you don't have to agree on everything to work together; you just have to agree on one thing. And if you find that one thing you agree on and, frankly, particularly if you are successful, both the Members working together and their staffs think: Well, gee, we could do that again.

In healthcare research, Senator Murray and I, along with Chairman Cole on the House side and, eventually, the ranking member, then- Chairman DeLauro, worked together to significantly change NIH research.

Senator Klobuchar and I have done lots of things together. We have worked on the travel economy, which is a big part of our economy. We have worked to rewrite the workplace harassment standards for the Senate. We have worked on adoption issues.

Senator Brown and I passed a bill of advanced manufacturing. We had known each other for years. Once we figured out we could pass one bill together, we passed five. It has the good effect.

Senator Stabenow and I have worked so hard on Certified Community Behavioral Health Centers. We have worked on this for well over a decade now, and we have made, I think, incredible progress. Neither of us would have gotten that done by ourselves.

Senators Capito and Shaheen and Portman and Manchin all worked with me and our committee on opioid and dependency issues. We were making real progress. I think the pandemic set that progress back, but it shouldn't stop us from moving forward.

Senator Coons founded with me the Law Enforcement Caucus. We worked, every time it came up, to expand it and the Victims of Child Abuse Act and the volunteer community efforts.

There are other retiring Members I want to mention whom I have worked with as well: Senator Leahy and Senator Shelby, both on the Appropriations Committee and the Rules Committee. You know, on the Appropriations Committee, I got to see the last of Senator Inouye and Senator Cochran still at their best and Barbara Mikulski--people who didn't have to have a perfect result to have a result--and it was wonderful to get to watch them work.

Senator Inhofe was, obviously, totally focused on what it takes to defend the country. He was here for his remarks, his farewell speech, the other day and pointed out that he found somebody he didn't agree with on hardly anything--Barbara Boxer--and they came up with public works bill after public works bill.

Senator Burr, who is leaving, has been my chairman on the Intelligence Committee and has been so capable and so knowledgeable on that committee. He has been really, incredibly, helpful to me.

Senator Portman and I have been at the leadership table in both the House and the Senate. I have been in more meetings with Rob Portman than I have ever been with anybody I have ever served on a committee with, and it has been great.

Pat Toomey, of course, brings incredible understanding of finance issues and the economy.

My longest relationships, of course, are with my House colleagues. Senator Thune, Senator Moran, and I all came to the House at the same time along with Senator Stabenow. Senator Moran and Senator Boozman and I all came to the Senate together from the House.

Senator Cardin, Senator Graham, Senator Cassidy, Senator Blackburn, Senator Brown, Senator Wicker, and others have been part of my work life for a long, long time. Together, we have faced big challenges. You know, after 9/11, we saw a new terrorist threat. I was in the middle of that discussion of the continuity of government when I had the sudden realization that our government could dramatically change, and we had not thought about what might happen if it did change.

Dick Gephardt--my fellow Missourian and who was the Democratic leader at the time--and I came up with this structure for post-9/11 compensation for victims, which worked. Unfortunately, it has worked following now with a number of tragedies, but it was something I was able to be there for as we put it together.

You know, at that time, President Bush said:

[W]e bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our

enemies.

Four Presidents have now followed that standard.

For me, the legislative highlights would, of course, include what happens at the NIH, where I have been able to be part of increasing by 50 percent, over 8 years, with Senator Murray and others, the commitment we made to healthcare research.

I mentioned Senator Stabenow earlier, but as for the mental health efforts, the changing that I think we have all seen here in just the last few years in how we talk about that issue and how we understand we need to respond to that issue is something I am particularly proud of.

Now, maybe a bill with Senator Heinrich, the Recovering America's Wildlife Act, which every conservation group in America is supportive of--maybe we can add that to the list of things I am going to consider a great accomplishment before we leave here, and it has to go in that big bill I talked about earlier that we put together here at the end.

I have had an incredible opportunity to be responsible for two inaugurations. It is one of the most important things we do. That particular event, not me being responsible for it, 100 million people watched live. Tens of millions of people around the world watched all or part of it after that. It is so important we get it right.

In 2017, I decided our theme would be the peaceful transition of power. I remember at both inaugurations I quoted--the only thing I repeated, I think, at those two inaugurations was President Reagan who said in 1981: What we do here today is commonplace and miraculous-- commonplace because we have done it every 4 years since 1789, miraculous because we have done it every 4 years since 1789.

In 2021, I said, well, this time, let's talk about our need to have a more perfect Union.

The Founders didn't promise a perfect Union. They were, in that place, pretty reasonable in their anticipation of what we could do and what we could be, but they did promise a more perfect Union. And that is the effort we continue to be a part of.

To get all of that done, so many other people have to make it possible. All of us appreciate every one of our families. I think we all appreciate each other's families because, better than anybody else, we know what families mean and how important it is that your family is part of this.

My mom and dad were dairy farmers. They never suggested there were any limits to what a person could do in America. There was no sense that you couldn't do everything you wanted to do.

I am most grateful to Abby, my wife. I wouldn't be in the Senate and wouldn't have stayed as long in the House as I did if Abby hadn't been willing to work so much, so hard to make it easier for me to do what I love to do. We are full partners, and I am grateful for that.

All of my children and even their children, we are too often being asked to defend what I did or what I believed or, more often, what people assumed I believed that they got to be a part of history too. Charlie Blunt was flying on Air Force One with President Bush on his second birthday. Who gets to do that?

I will admit, though, however, no one in my family ever said, I wish you would quit. But when I did announce, did decide I was going to leave 2 years ago, I notice that no one said ``Are you sure?'' except Abby, who did say ``Are you sure?''

I have often said if you can only have one skill, that one skill should be hiring. And what a great staff that skill and good luck have produced for me.

My incredible chief of staff, Stacy McBride, has been responsible for so much of what we have gotten done. My deputy chief for the State, Derek Coats, led a great team that did so much for our State and in helping people deal with the Federal Government. My deputy chief of staff here, Richard Eddings, is, along with me, completing 26 years in the Congress and 26 years of working together. He managed the details for the whip's office in the House and the details for our office in the Senate.

The Rules Committee staff takes responsibility to help manage the daily infrastructure of the Senate. No issue is too small or too big. Everything from security decisions for the Presidential inauguration to a recent call to ask whether we could release someone's pet owl in the Russell courtyard so that the owl would have a home and we would all appreciate it. Senator Klobuchar and I quickly decided it probably wouldn't be good for the Russell courtyard or the owl, so that owl was not released.

The Republican Policy Committee staff deals with every vote on the floor, every nomination, every issue. There is

a paper out there explaining all of those things, every bill that has been filed, every amendment, even to the dreaded vote-arama that staff was getting an amendment ready so voters know what they see.

Let me end this farewell with two things: One is another thank-you to Missouri voters.

In my view, the need to find a solution to a problem really took place and took shape in the Greene County courthouse. I have been in all 115 of our counties since I announced I wasn't going to run again. There have been some question in my house as to the judgment of that schedule, but we are through that now, so it is done. In a lot of those courthouses, I was visiting with county officials and said: In my view, there is nowhere in America you are more likely to get a solution to a governmental problem than a county courthouse filled with local elected officials who want to do everything they can possibly do for you to feel like you left with everything done that could possibly be done.

And then, going to be the first Republican secretary of state elected in Missouri in 52 years when I won that office in 1984, I never thought my leading argument was: Why don't you vote for the first Republican ever. I thought it was: If you vote for me, I will do this job, and you will be pleased that you did give me a chance to do it. So I am grateful to them and grateful for the experience.

There is a story that Senator Klobuchar has told more often than I have. When I became the chief deputy whip, on my way to becoming the whip of the House, the first month of my second term in the Congress, I moved from the Cannon Building to the Capitol Building. And I looked on the top of the bookcase in my office, my new office in the Congress, and there was this bust of a person up there.

And I said to my staff: Let's find out who that is. So they come back a couple of weeks later, and they have got these newspaper articles from the 1930s and 1960s, and they say: Well, nobody knows who that is.

It is obvious when you get that bust down and look at it that it is a cleric. So it was the unknown cleric, and it has been with me ever since in one of my offices here.

The point of the unknown cleric, this is a bust that was put in the Capitol probably no earlier than 1830, and by 1930, nobody had any idea who it was.

I had lots of meetings with new freshman members in the House when I was a whip and a number of meetings with people who just happened to be around and would listen to this. I said: The point of this is somebody is famous enough that they made a bust, put it in the Capitol, and then forgot who they are. The point is: What we do here is more important than who we are. Thanks for letting me do part of it with you.

I yield the floor.

(Applause.)

Madam President, I rise today to recognize my good friend, Mark Gordon, who will be retiring from his position as the president of the Missouri Broadcasters Association next year after almost a decade of distinguished service. Mark has been a broadcaster for over 40 years. He started his career as a copywriter and an announcer before moving on to being a newscaster and then switching to the advertising sales side of the business. Before agreeing to helm the MBA, Mark spent 10 years running television stations in Springfield, MS, my home town, which is where we first met each other.

Mark moved to Springfield to work for KY3 in 1997, shortly after I came to Congress. In a lot of ways, our professional careers have been intertwined ever since. He has been a tireless advocate for local Missouri communities and Missouri broadcast stations and has been a trusted voice on their behalf for as long as I have known him. Whether we were working together on spectrum issues, satellite television reauthorizations, or public service campaigns, Mark has always been a person I could rely on. And between seeing him back home in Missouri at one of his members' stations or on one of his numerous visits here to Washington, DC, I have always appreciated his advice and how he always worked on behalf of the communities we both serve.

I remember the meeting in my office almost 10 years ago where Mark and his predecessor, Don Hicks, let me know that Mark would be taking over the reins of the MBA. Don Hicks had served as the head of the Missouri Broadcasters for decades and left large shoes to fill. I can honestly say that Mark not only filled those shoes but also has left his own legacy on our home State and a high bar for whoever succeeds him.

Mark's proud legacy also lives on through his son Mike, who has made significant contributions in his own right to Springfield's broadcasting industry.

I wish Mark, his wife Lucy, their children Jaime and Mike, and their entire family nothing but success in this next chapter of his life. Forty years is a long time, and he has seen, and been part of, so much change in his industry. I am proud to have been able to call him my friend for the last 25 years, and I know that whatever he decides to do next he will continue to be a tremendous asset to his community and our State.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jeremy Pinson, a military fellow from my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the Congress.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Braun), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Cassidy), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty), the Senator from Mississippi (Mrs. Hyde- Smith), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall), the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul), the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Portman), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Sasse), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Scott), the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Sullivan), the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Thune), and the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Young).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall) would have voted ``nay'' and the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Young) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. President, I want to join my colleagues in my appreciation for the expansion of NATO--as others have said, the greatest alliance, maybe in history, certainly in the last 200 years, an alliance that has served great benefits and now is growing. NATO has been there since 1949.

The two countries that we are going to be voting to admit today have resisted since 1949 being part of NATO, but with the recent actions, they decided you now have to choose a side.

Now, they are not countries that have been on the sideline just hoping nothing would happen. They are countries that had significant defense capacities, significant military capabilities. They will be net security contributors to NATO. They bring to the alliance these advanced capabilities. They bring a neighborhood understanding of Russia, greater than maybe almost any other country, particularly Finland, which has been mentioned has an 800-plus mile border that will double the NATO border with Russia. They have been defending that border since World War II, and the Russians understand their capacity to defend it.

They, frankly, bring good real estate and good location. I wish I had a map here on the floor with me, but I don't. The Baltic really becomes a NATO sea. And that is an important thing--Norway already in NATO, Sweden joining NATO, Finland joining NATO; right across from the three Baltic countries that are much more in need of assistance than these two countries that are joining an alliance that will give them that assistance. It is an incredible day for NATO.

The Baltic Sea, the Arctic--I have heard more on this floor and in this country about the Arctic in the last 5 years than I think we have talked about in the previous 25 years. The Arctic basically becomes NATO territory with the sole exception of Russia.

The United States, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland become the countries that are bound not only in the neighborhood of the Arctic but also in a supportive alliance.

We have been hearing about how China wants to become an Arctic power. I think the change in NATO makes it incredibly harder for China to become an Arctic power or for Russia to become an Arctic abuser. And we are seeing that happen right here.

Again, great capability. The Swedes have an Air Force, a Navy. They have the best cyber offensive and defensive capability in Europe--that large industrial base. Finland just agreed to buy 64 F-35s to replace their F-18s.

Both countries have been working with us in military exercises for years. They are virtually immediately interoperable. They bring capacity to the NATO alliance that it doesn't have without them.

I am grateful that they are joining. Finland is already at the 2 percent goal

of their commitment to their own national defense. Sweden will be there by 2028.

Senator Durbin, who is here on the floor with me, and I met with both of these countries recently. And they are absolutely committed that this is the moment when the NATO alliance takes on new meaning, not only to their two countries but I think to--and not only Western Europe but, frankly, to the world.

This is an alliance that stands for shared values, that stands for border integrity, that stands for being sure that those things go into the future.

I urge all of my colleagues to vote for this today. I am glad we are able to be among the first. We were hoping we would be the first country to approve the admission into NATO of these two countries, but we will be among the first. I think it sends a signal to the world and hopefully to all Americans that not only is NATO important, but it will be stronger with Sweden and Finland than it has ever been. And I look forward to the opportunity to cast this vote today.

Madam President, I just was able to watch the administration climb the inflation rate cliff, and I want to talk more about this problem of what happens when the administration ignores the warning signs that are going to produce the kind of results that they have produced.

You know, Democrats, all by themselves, after five bipartisan bills the year before to try to fight COVID and save the economy, decided that the recovering economy needed even more help to recover and passed a $1.9 trillion spending bill in March of last year. And that money almost immediately went out.

You know, we talk about $1.9 trillion. I don't even know quite how we compare that in a way that people can think about it. The normal annual spending for the whole discretionary budget is $1.47 trillion. So in one bill, in addition to the money that the government would be spending that year in the budget that we vote on--the discretionary budget we vote on--Democrats decided: We are going to spend that much and more. We are not going to spend just twice the normal discretionary spending. We are going to spend twice the normal discretionary spending plus another 25 percent or so.

You know, we spend every year about 700, and last year we spent $780 trillion to defend the country. That is a third of the money, roughly, in the $2 trillion American Recovery Act. We spent less than $700 billion to do everything else that we vote on. All of the debates we have here about spending are spending that results in a little less than $1.5 trillion of spending that is part of the normal budget.

So when you double that and then you add to the doubling of that, and you put all of that into the economy at one time, you are clearly going to create a situation where you have inflation.

That is what Democrats in previous administrations, like Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury and people in

the Obama administration, all said--that this will create runaway inflation. But if that wasn't enough, we hear that they want to spend even more.

But over the next year, after they passed that bill, inflation kept skyrocketing. Cracks kept appearing in the economy. There were plenty of warning signs, but our colleagues on the other side kept pushing to write the biggest check they possibly could and to write another one.

Their latest plan is a massive amount of government spending. This one will be really focused on the Affordable Care Act, sometimes called ObamaCare. Apparently, the Affordable Care Act wasn't all that affordable or isn't all that affordable, because if you believe the reason for this bill, almost nobody can afford it. If you don't get insurance at work, it is almost unaffordable.

In the original healthcare law, there were government subsidies for people who didn't make much money so that they could afford to be in what turned out to be an overpriced system. But that law capped how much you could earn and still get a subsidy.

The $2 trillion I talked about earlier, the reckless tax-and-spending spree from March of last year, got rid of those income limits. Apparently, the income limits--no matter how high they were--weren't high enough. So they eliminated the income limits. Now the amount you would get from the government would be based on how big a share of your income you were spending on insurance, no matter how big that income was.

One study found that a typical family of four making $106,000 would almost immediately--and did almost immediately--get almost $10,000 in subsidies. Before that, they got zero in subsidies. Four hundred percent of the poverty level appeared to be enough in the original bill. That is the system that should have provided insurance that people could afford, but, apparently, it hasn't done that.

The insurance on the government exchanges is so expensive in some areas that people making half a million dollars or more could qualify for thousands of dollars from the government under this new structure. This, by the way, is the structure that the next spending bill is supposed to be trying to make permanent or at least permanent enough that people will get so used to having it that they will never want to give it back.

The bill was called the American Rescue Plan. Its supporters kept telling us it had to be big because there were still people in real need and the economy was struggling. But we now know that while there are always people in need, it is not because the economy is struggling. Now people are in need because the economy is spiraling out of control, and whether it is at the gas pump or the grocery store, you are having to make decisions you wouldn't have thought you would have to make.

The health insurance subsidies in particular were meant to be temporary--at least if you believed the reason that was given when that bill was passed--and would only last until the end of this year. Now our friends across the aisle want to make these temporary subsidies permanent.

For purposes of the law itself, they don't want to admit that. So they say: Well, we just want to extend this year for another couple of years.

And, by the way, I think we are clear that when we get to the next deadline, once you have had these subsidies for 1 year, as it turns out--let alone 2 or 3 more--the whole idea is to get people so committed to getting this money that the government will never back up and take it away.

It is just a budget gimmick--everybody knows that--a gimmick to extend the program to further redistribute taxpayer money to people who are making big incomes but have decided it is better for the government to pay for their insurance than it is to pay for their insurance themselves.

This doesn't relate to everybody. In fact, the 400 percent of poverty, which many people thought at the time, and still think, sounds like an income where you ought to be able to pay your own insurance-- and, if you can't, there must be something wrong with the healthcare system. In fact, last year, my colleague from West Virginia, Senator Manchin, said he had serious problems with another version of this bill because there wasn't a cap. He said: ``What I see are shell games-- budget gimmicks that make the real cost of the so-called $1.75 trillion bill estimated to be almost twice that'' much during the full time of the bill.

So the Congressional Budget Office looked into this health insurance study plan or subsidy plan. They found that when it actually gets extended, this extension over 10 years costs another $250 billion. If we have people who are making more than 400 percent of poverty--in fact, if we have people who are unlimited in their income--who somehow need to have government help to buy insurance, we ought to figure out what happened with the insurance marketplace that ObamaCare created.

The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, figured that $36 million of that $250 million would go to people who make more than 400 percent of poverty, which works out to be about $140,000 for a family of 4. They also say that 48 percent of the new people entering the program would be making more income than that $140,000 level.

Even if you think someone who makes $140,000 is low income--as maybe our friends on the other side of the aisle do--and deserves a handout from taxpayers to buy their insurance, again, I would say there must be something wrong with the insurance plan. If we have an affordable healthcare plan that nobody can afford, that should be our focus instead of focusing on making other taxpayers pay for the unaffordable healthcare plan rates that we have.

The Congressional Budget Office expects 2.3 million fewer people, by the way, to get their insurance on their job if the subsidies become permanent. Why should your employer pay for your insurance if the government will pay for it instead? Why would you pay some portion of the cost of your insurance if the government will pay 100 percent of the cost of your insurance? Another 200,000 people, because of this, would end up in Medicaid and the CHIP Program, or the Children's Health Insurance Program.

This is a plan to get people committed to something that just simply doesn't work. All it does is prove what President Reagan said, which he once said:

Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.

So we are going to be discussing, in the next few days, about how we want this 1-year program to become another 2- or 3-year program, which clearly would become a permanent program.

Temporary assistance in March of 2021 and the other things in that bill that were spent immediately--that $1.9 trillion bill--fed the fuel to the fire of inflation that we see right now. Combine that with terrible energy policies, and American families feel it every single day.

We don't need to do more of the same. We need to figure out what we did that created this problem and stop doing it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am glad to join you and the other Senator from Georgia, Mr. Ossoff, here today and join both of you in sharing some thoughts about Senator Isakson.

Senator Ossoff has already said a lot of things that are easily said. Not that they were easy for him to say, but anybody that knew Johnny Isakson would make many of those very same points and, hopefully, make them as well. I was glad to join him as the original cosponsor of this bill.

Johnny and I served together in the House from 1999 until 2005. I was the majority whip during most of that time. And he was one of the half dozen deputies that really are key to getting things done. And Johnny Isakson liked to get things done.

In 2005, he came over here to be in the Senate and brought that same determination to get things done, to find the place--wherever that place was--where something could happen. And he was a master at making things happen.

When I joined him in the Senate in 2011, I was pleased to get a chance to serve alongside him again. He was a fast friend and a friend that you could count on. He knew how to bring people together. He did view, as Senator Ossoff said, people as his current friends or people who--the only reason they weren't his friend is they hadn't become his friends yet. And that is quite a way to approach life. And Johnny did it really well. I don't think there was anyone more respected by the other Members of the Senate than Senator Isakson was.

In September of last year, I had the opportunity to join you, Mr. President, along with Senator Coons and Senator Graham, in hosting a bipartisan lunch that Johnny first started 13 years ago. I think we are going to do that again in September of this year. We have Democratic lunches, and we have Republican lunches. The Johnny Isakson lunch every year was the bipartisan lunch. And I think that is a great tradition to at least one more time do in honor of his service here and his friendship.

He understood the value of sitting down over a cup of coffee or over a meal, of talking to one another, of finding the things you agree on, and then working together.

And one thing I found here--and I think one of the ways I found it was watching what Johnny did--when a Democratic and Republican Senator find something to do together and get it done, invariably, they start looking for the next thing to do together. And their staffs start looking for the next thing their bosses can do together. And it is an infectious kind of thing that gets things done. And that was one of the great understandings of the legislative process that Johnny brought to the Senate.

I think when Johnny was in the Georgia House, there were a handful of Republicans in the Georgia House when he got there. He told me he got to be minority leader pretty quickly--maybe it was because he didn't show up in the room that day before they could choose who their leader was going to be. But he understood what it took to bring things together. He liked to help people. He liked to get things done. He especially liked to get things done for his fellow veterans.

Now, we are going to approach this veterans issue this week. And I am sure we are going to get it done. We just had a discussion about veterans and our commitments to veterans. But as chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, Johnny really led efforts particularly to increase accountability at the VA. And there was an accountability problem at the VA that Johnny was intent on making sure we got to the bottom of it, to be sure that veterans received the care that they were entitled to and the benefits they had earned.

Under his leadership, Congress also passed a MISSION Act, legislation that gave veterans real and permanent choice in their healthcare. This is something that particularly younger veterans care about. They want to go to the doctor that they want to go to. They want to go to a doctor close to home, or they want to still have the option, as they would have, to go to a veterans facility or be referred from that facility to another place where their care would be more easily available to them.

But what veterans really want was the idea of having not just a pilot project on choice, which was the case

before Johnny Isakson as chairman decided, no, we are going to have a permanent process where veterans are going to have those choices in the future. And so here we have just passed legislation designed to designate the VA facility in Decatur, GA, the Senator Johnny Isakson Department of Veterans Affairs Atlanta Regional Office.

I am certainly proud to join my colleagues today as we sought and received unanimous consent for this legislation to pass. I really can't think of a more fitting way today, as we talk about veterans, to honor Johnny's legacy than to have his name associated with an issue he cared deeply about.

Another issue he and I cared about and worked closely on was health research and what was happening at the CDC. There will be a building-- the ground is being broken right now, as I understand it, for a building--at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta that will also be named for Johnny Isakson.

Those are two very fitting areas of focus for what he did for the people in Georgia, what he did for veterans in Georgia, what he did for healthcare in Georgia, and what he did for all of those things as it related to the entire U.S.A. I am glad to see this legislation pass.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, that whole concept of going where real people live is an important one. When people are facing higher utility bills every month and a bigger bill every time they fill up their gas tank, it doesn't take long for them to figure out that policy decisions somewhere have changed something--and something that really dramatically affects their quality of life. And then it didn't take long to figure out that those policy decisions in Washington are the decisions that made that kind of difference.

When a blackout causes the lights to go out and your refrigerator to stop working, the impact of energy policy becomes pretty tangible and you understand pretty quickly that this is impacting you. That is a prospect that a lot of Americans are facing this summer. It is not theoretical, but in too many places, it is happening and happening over and over again.

In late May, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation released a report that said that nearly two-thirds of the United States could experience blackouts this summer as a result of reliability challenges of the electric grid. Now, that group is a nonprofit regulatory authority that monitors the grid in the United States and Canada and some of northern Mexico.

They could see this coming and Americans can now see this happening. They said that it was sobering. They said that it was an understatement, really, in many ways, to see it any other way. The understatement is, in particular--and the report said--that in the West and the Midwest, there was a heightened risk of reliability challenges and energy shortfalls.

This report on the electric grid cited several reasons for heightened risk people are facing. One of them is that there is simply too little electric-generating capacity in the middle of the country where I live following the closure of older baseload generators. You can't make these decisions about energy policy without having a replacement in mind and not expect to see bad things happen to families, to individuals, to our economy. And that is what we are seeing now.

Earlier this year, the Energy Information Administration projected 85 percent of the generators closing this year would be coal-fired power plants.

So, if you close these plants and don't have a replacement in line, look what happens. Maybe we should ask Germany what happened when they shut down one of their major energy sources without having a replacement. Before you know it, they were dependent on a source of energy and a kind of energy and a country to get that energy from that didn't work out at all.

From day one, the administration has advanced policies to restrict the production of affordable and reliable American energy. We have gone from being a net exporter of energy to an importer--in fact, even a pleading importer of energy--in an unbelievably short period of time.

Electric prices in that period of time have gone up nearly 20 percent. Gasoline prices have more than doubled. If you are at the gas pump and you fill up your tank, whatever you are paying, cut that in half. That is what you

would have paid under the policies just a couple of years ago. Now you are paying 107 percent more than you were paying then. The push of a rapid transition to renewable energy sources will cause prices to go up even higher. We have already seen what happens. We should be able to figure out what happens if you do more of it without a plan.

What the administration wants to do here doesn't have to be painful. Transitioning from fossil fuels over a period of time doesn't have to be a painful thing. You just have to have a replacement in mind. You have to understand the economic consequences and understand, if your timeframe is right, there are no economic consequences.

Fossil fuels accounted for just over 60 percent of the electricity generated in the United States last year. Nuclear power generated nearly 20 percent of the electricity; wind, 9 percent; hydropower, 6 percent; solar power was about 3 percent. When you dedicate yourself to eliminating 60 percent of the electricity generated in the country, you have got to expect that bad things are going to happen, and they are.

We are seeing what happened with reliability challenges in California in its leading the way in this transition. But last summer, the State was doing everything they could, as quickly as they could, to build gas plants, natural gas plants, to supplement its power and to avoid blackouts. You went from plenty of power to new sources of energy and then, suddenly, to not enough power and then back to fossil fuels to desperately try to replace the power.

Surely, we can learn that this doesn't have to be the way you make these realistic transitions from one way of powering things to another. Just to replace every vehicle in the country with electric models would require 25 percent more electricity than we produce today. Forcing the electrification of homes and buildings will drive demand even higher and will cost more. Families will suffer.

For now, all of the above still works. For the long term, we have to find out what works for all Americans and how we may have reasonable energy policy moving forward. All of the above is serving us well. As we move from that, we need to know what we are moving to, how we are moving there, and how we can do it with the least impact on the economy, on individuals, and on families.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I know we have a vote coming up. I have brief remarks, and I ask unanimous consent to complete them before the vote starts.

Mr. President, I want to join with my five colleagues who have been here today and the two people who were with us, Senator Durbin and Senator Fischer.

I would say one of the great things about this effort was the unanimous feeling that all seven of us had about both what is happening in NATO and our commitment to win in Ukraine. We were able to demonstrate that to every group we met with from every country we met with. I think with the strong leadership of Chairmen Shaheen and Tillis that it made an impression on where we were and the unity we have on this.

It would be interesting to know if Putin was more surprised by the Ukrainian resistance, the poor performance of his own military, or my guess would be he may have been most surprised by what has happened at NATO--the great turnaround of the NATO--the current NATO countries and their commitment to NATO, their commitment to what they have been willing to do and pledged to do with NATO and then to see these two incredibly important security contributors join NATO after 73 years of being neutral and an important part of the world and saw that as part of their long-term commitment.

But both Finland and Sweden, which, by the way, have been NATO contributors for some time now in terms of being willing to be part of NATO missions, training with their future NATO allies--all that is incredibly important, but these countries not only bring incredible security contributions to NATO, they also bring significant geographic contributions to NATO. When you look at a map, suddenly not just Norway, which has been in NATO, but Sweden and Finland in NATO has an incredible impact on the ability of what happens in the Baltic. That is important to us as we look to the future.

Now, with the exception of Russia, every country that borders and has part of a claim on the Arctic will be a NATO country. This is a part of the world we have been talking about much more the last 5 years than we did the previous 25 years. To have this NATO unity as we look at the Arctic is an important thing.

The 800-mile border that Finland has shared for years and defended for years against Russia doubles the NATO border in Europe.

The intimate understanding that both Sweden and Finland have of Russia brings a different point of view and a helpful point of view to