Floor Statements

Madam President, before I get to my topic today, I would like to say that when Senator Sullivan first came to the Senate, I hadn't been here very long, either, and this was my presiding time every week. I loved the Alaskan of the Week. I don't think they are ever going to run out of Alaskans of the Week as long as Senator Sullivan is here. So I was right back in that chair, where you are, thinking of the many times I heard Senator Sullivan do the presentation on the Alaskan of the Week and how much I enjoyed it.

Yes. I think the point you are making here, too, are that these are--we now have 5 years of evidence in several States, multiple years in other States. So this isn't just assuming what will happen but looking at what we have carefully tried to keep track of, of what does happen. And as you pointed out, that de facto mental health system, mental health delivery system of the emergency rooms and police--nobody was well-served by that. Certainly, the police weren't well-served. The emergency rooms weren't well-served. And people had many mental health challenges that weren't served by that as well. And seeing those numbers go down dramatically of people having to go to the emergency room for mental health services or being kept in jail overnight or longer than overnight for mental health services, nobody benefits from that system.

And so we are seeing real numbers where the people who work at the emergency room, the people who are in the police department are among the biggest supporters of this system when it gets in place. Also, the whole idea of crisis intervention, there are opportunities in this law for that to happen.

In any of the new structures, whether that is drug court or veterans court or other places you would go to try to be sure somebody is getting the help they need when they need it, there also would be due process involved in anything added; that we use this bill to add to the system due process where people have a right.

If there is an emergency moment, obviously, you have to deal with that as an emergency moment. But people then have a right to have their day in court as well, if they are not part of that crisis intervention moment of seeing that happen. And so that is important.

But in Missouri, 150,000 people are now part of this excellence in mental health effort. That is about a 40-percent increase on what some of the same facilities were doing before, but now, they do it with more certainty that they are going to get their cost reimbursed. They do it with the right kind of staff, and 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, they have to be available. And the new States that enter the program will go through that same type of competition to be among the 10 States every 2 years that could enter the program and get us to all 50 States in that program and have the kind of staff they need, the kind of accessibility they need.

I think, originally in our bill, which was 8 years ago now--2014--24 States applied to be one of the first 8 States in the pilot program; 19 of them went through the whole process, and 8 States were selected. But in the other States, there are now 30 States that have big units that were able to qualify as individual demonstration grant units to show what they could do. And we really, I think, both believe that those units in those States will become both the models and the incentive to bring the whole State into that program now that that is possible and seeing what we are seeing with results and also results on the nonmental health side.

One of the unique things I think that this pilot did was--part of the pilot was to see what happens with the other healthcare issues that people have who have mental health concerns. And what has happened is that they have seen those costs go dramatically down. If you have a behavioral health problem that is being dealt with, you are much more likely to show up to your doctor's appointment. You are much more likely to show up to dialysis. You are much more likely to take the medicine that has been prescribed, whether it was for your mental health situation--and occasionally, that is the best way to deal with mental health--or your other health situations. And so those costs go down.

And even in the immediate healthcare space, we are seeing that States believe they are saving money in the immediate space of healthcare. There has never been any question that in the long run you would save money if you treat mental health like you treat all other health. There has never been any question, whether it is the prison system or law enforcement or your personal income capacity, that all those were good things to do.

I think what we have shown in these early States is that even in the immediate healthcare space, you save as much money or virtually as much money or even more money on the other health costs for the one in five adult Americans--and now big numbers among the younger Americans who have a mental health problem--you save as much space for their other health problems, and one in five adult Americans are going to have a lot of other health problems. It is a pretty big segment of our society.

And I think, Senator Stabenow, seeing what happened there has also been persuasive to States as they are beginning to think about making this part of their permanent program when these pilot projects are over.

Just one final thought, we want to be sure that we are encouraging people to get the healthcare they need. You know, if this system works like it should work, you really never know what you are doing in terms of how you have changed people's lives in the future or the lives of people they might impact.

We don't want to create any stigma here that a resilient, broad-based mental health system that is part of this bill means that you should be hesitant to seek mental health help. You know, if you have a mental health problem, you are more likely to be the victim of a crime than you are the perpetrator of a crime.

But if those problems get out of control--often suicidal thoughts first before you have homicidal thoughts--but if this system works the way it should, who knows what good you have done by just letting people go through their normal lives as contributing citizens with treating their mental health and talking about their mental health.

As Senator Stabenow said, being able to talk about somebody in your family that has a mental health challenge as readily as you talk about somebody in your family that has a cancer challenge or a dialysis trip that they have to make multiple times a week to go somewhere or medicine that they take for something else and talking about this in the context of the good it does in making our society safer should, in no way, be interpreted to mean that people with a mental health concern are unsafe.

But if you don't deal with that problem in the right way at the right time, it has the potential to be unsafe. Most of these shootings we have seen, the shooter goes into that shooting clearly anticipating that they will not come out of that shooting alive either. So it is suicide; it is homicide; it is things that if you dealt with that problem a decade earlier--and maybe in some cases, the specific problem even a week earlier--but if you dealt with it a decade earlier, as people began to see that, you know, We need to get you some help.

Just like if your hearing is going bad or your eyesight is going bad, people say, ``Let's get an appointment and go see what we need to do,'' and anybody can be seen at these certified community behavioral health centers. Anybody can be seen if you are covered by--it is very much based on the federally qualified health center model. If you have insurance that covers this, you can go there. If you have a government program that covers it, you can go there. If you need to pay cash, you can go there on a very affordable sliding scale. But people are seen, and nobody--in our State, at least, and I think this would be the case in all nine of the pilot States--nobody who needs to be seen that day is not seen that day. Nobody who needs to be seen that day is not seen that day.

And nobody who needs to be seen isn't seen pretty quickly as you have time to schedule that appointment. It changes people's lives; it changes communities; it changes the way we talk about mental health.

As Senator Stabenow said on the floor, the last 50 years after President Kennedy signed his last bill into law--now, here we are, almost 60 years after that bill was signed into law taking what would be, so far, the biggest step toward accomplishing what that Community Mental Health Act envisioned.

And Senator Stabenow, I will turn to her for any final comments.

Madam President, I want to talk a little bit about the whole idea of loan forgiveness, student debt forgiveness. I have spoken many times on the floor about the importance of higher education--both college education and apprenticeships and other kinds of work preparation. I was the first person in my family to ever graduate from college, and later was the president of the university. And it is important, there is no doubt about that.

I have often also talked about one of the reasons I think our system works so well is in post-World War II America, we have not tried to run higher education; we have tried to encourage and support higher education.

You could use your student benefits, whether they were student loans or VA benefits or other benefits, at any accredited institution, and the Federal Government doesn't decide what is an accredited institution.

I think the way that we have found that balance has been really important for higher education. I think it is why we have the best higher education in the world, but I think the balance is one that we ought to be thinking about maintaining.

We should be concerned when we begin to get into that balance in a way that the government does more than it should do or, frankly, less than it should do.

This is the 50th anniversary of the Pell Grant Program. I have been a big supporter of Pell grants. I know you have too.

And during the time we have worked here together, we have expanded Pell grants to year-round Pell grants. One of the great ways to keep college costs down is to finish. If you have got a pattern that is working, particularly if you are a first-time college student in your family or an adult that has gone back to school, if you have got something that is working and you can keep it working, we ought to do that.

There was about a 10-year period where we had two semesters of Pell grants and then there was a summer without Pell grants, that didn't really work out all that well. And every higher education person I know believes we did a really great thing by going back to year-round Pell.

We have also increased the Pell grant award. In fact, in the last 7 years, we have increased the annual individual award by over $1,000-- $1,120. We have reinstated year-round Pell.

The Pell grant is targeted. It is targeted to people who need help going to school. When we were talking, I think very wrongly, about free higher education--which I think would really be expensive if you had free higher education and the government became the payer. I have said the Pell grant is really the way to adjust that.

If the Pell grant is not high enough, Congress can raise it. If the income levels are not high enough, if you had to have higher income levels or lower income levels to get the full Pell or partial Pell, Congress can do that as well.

I think the one thing that would be a mistake here would be to ask the taxpayers of America to now pay the loans off of other Americans who made those loans. The President is talking about the potential, at least the administration is, of forgiving up to $10,000 in student loans for everyone who has a student loan and makes less than $150,000.

You know, a lot of Americans make less than $150,000. I think the median family income in America today is under $70,000, but, suddenly, for those who make under $150,000, we would be giving them $10,000. And what did they get for that $10,000?

They went to school. They got an education. They had choices they made as they did that, and we will talk about that in a minute. And also the legal problems here. You know, the President has said in the past that he didn't think he had the legal authority to forgive these loans. The Speaker of the House has said in the past that she didn't think the President had the legal authority to forgive these loans.

And by the way, there is a way to get the legal authority--I will talk about that in a minute, too--coming to you and I with a proposal to give them the authority to do that.

Even the New York Times Editorial Board says that loan forgiveness is--this is their quote--``legally dubious, economically unsound, politically fraught, and educationally problematic.'' Those are pretty good reasons not to do it. The best one would be the ``legally dubious'' one, and the President himself has thought that was the case in the past.

You know, 87 percent of Americans don't have a student loan. The President is telling them, frankly, we are going to forgive the loans for the 13 percent that the other 87 percent don't have.

People who decided not to go to college wouldn't get that $10,000, neither would those who avoided loans by attending a more affordable school, working harder part time, doing the things that lots and lots of people have done to get through school.

The same is true of people who have gotten out of school, and as they are paying off their loans, they have sacrificed vacations or better cars or bigger houses or other things to pay the student loan that they agreed to pay back when they took it.

So the President's plan disproportionately would benefit people who are in the upper income group, the top 40 percent of American households hold 60 percent of the student loans.

The bottom 40 percent have less than 20 percent of the student loans. If you were going to talk about this at all, maybe we should be talking about the bottom 40 percent of incomes, not essentially the top 40 percent of incomes, which an across-the-board forgiveness of debt--and, by the way, that $150,000 would generally be in that higher percent.

Student loan forgiveness under the President's plan would largely benefit people who, frankly, you could argue, just don't need the benefit as well as many other American families and American individuals do.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimates that student loan forgiveness could be as much as $320 or $350 billion. That is on top of the $100 billion that we already have cost the system by stepping back, maybe for

too long, but certainly stepping back during COVID, and telling people they didn't have to make their loan payments.

To put that in some perspective, that amount of money, $320 billion and another $100 billion, would fund the entire Pell Grant Program for about a decade and a half.

So we ought to think about what we are doing here, how we are doing it. I think this plan would actually not drive college costs down; it would logically drive college costs up because colleges, just like students, would be told, when people make these loans, pay the school for the education they are getting, there is a good chance they won't have to pay it back, and there is a good chance we would have more income during this period of time.

It is more likely that you would have higher college costs and you would have people borrowing more money and borrowing it quicker than they currently do because we actually would be setting the precedent that there is a real chance you won't have to pay this back.

That is not a good precedent to set. What Americans really need right now is relief from the crushing inflation we see, not more bad policies that put more money into the economy and drive inflation to an even greater height.

President Biden has been bragging, frankly, about how strong our economy is and how low unemployment is. Well, if that is true, why do we need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a program that is unfair, that disproportionately helps upper income Americans? You know, it is either the strongest job market since World War II, which the President said just recently, or he has also said that this economy is the strongest economy we have ever had.

It is either that, or it is an economy in such rough shape that people can't pay their loans. Now, it really can't be both. And we are sending all kinds of messages here we don't need to send and, frankly, I think the administration shouldn't really want to send.

People made the decision to invest in their education. They borrowed money to do it. The initial plan was that people would borrow money, and as they paid it back, that money would be available for the next generation of people who wanted to borrow money.

If that had worked out that way, we would still be working off some of the first dollars that went into these student loan payments and student loan programs.

If we say that this select special group of people who happen to have the exact kind of debt, at this exact moment, don't need to pay it back later, I think that is the more logical thing that would happen. What if we say that this group doesn't have to pay their debt so maybe we should figure out other groups shouldn't have to pay their debt?

If it is a good economic policy not to pay your student debt, what if we decide we are not going to pay people's car loan debt, or we are not going to pay people's mortgage debt, or we are not going to pay people's credit card bills if they are somehow out of control?

There are ways to deal with that in the legal system, but government forgiveness is not one of them. The same arguments really apply to forgiving those debts as would apply to forgiving college debts.

If the President thinks it is a good idea, as I mentioned before, he could write a piece of legislation, hand it to one of his friends in the Congress and let us work through the process. Let's make the case as to why these debts should be forgiven.

Let's debate which other competing priority is less important than forgiving these debts. You know, we have spent a lot of time acting like the money is not money that you have to take from somewhere else to use for a current purpose. And I think we are all realizing just how untrue that is.

The President hasn't sent that legislation up. In fact, the President in his budget didn't even suggest that loan forgiveness should be part of his budget. It is not in legislation. It is not in the appropriations budget. It is not a priority in anything the administration has put out there for us to debate and talk about.

We just had a hearing this week with the Secretary of Education about the education budget request. There was nothing in that request about specific student loan proposals. I really hope that the administration will pause, will think about this, will understand the overall impact of effectively suddenly deciding we are going to put $321 billion or so dollars back into the economy that otherwise would be coming back into the Treasury as the debt repayment that those individuals have agreed to do.

We have got ways to help people go to school. We have got ways to debate whether or not this is a good priority to forgive loans, but I take the President's original position, which is the President doesn't have the authority to do that.

I agree with the Speaker of the House's original position that the President doesn't have the authority to do this. If the President wants to make the case, let him make it right here, and that will be a debate that I think would be worth having.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the bipartisan accomplishment by the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee and the expanded support we are delivering for veterans living with illnesses as a result of toxic exposure due to their service in our Nation's uniform through the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022. This legislation ensures veterans who need help now can get it. We are all too familiar with the challenges that exist for veterans as a result of toxic exposure.

I have been working to improve veteran services and benefits for more than 20 years as a member of both the Senate and the House VA Committees. During that time, I have heard a lot about toxic exposure issues and have come to understand the immediate need to make improvement to benefits and care for post-9/11 veterans who were exposed to toxic substances as a result of burn pits. This exposure is known to cause serious illness, including rare cancers and respiratory ailments. Those suffering deserve to know they have not been forgotten and their voices have been heard.

The promise our Nation made to the men and women who served in these dangerous conditions must be kept. This bill fulfills that promise and delivers immediate access to healthcare for toxic-exposed veterans. It directs the VA to evaluate diseases for presumption of service connection and streamlines the process for toxic-exposed veterans seeking disability compensation for their illnesses without overwhelming the VA system. The Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson PACT Act also invests in the tools and resources to help the VA process disability claims in a timely manner and deliver quality healthcare to veterans living with toxic exposure illnesses.

With this measure, we continue to correct past failures of the VA to provide healthcare and benefits to previous generations exposed to Agent Orange as well. These challenges have existed for decades, and it is time we fulfill our promise to Vietnam-era veterans once and for all.

The legislation we are poised to approve updates VA policies to provide veterans like Bill Rhodes of Mena, AK--a marine who served in Thailand during the Vietnam war era--provide them access to the care he and the others who served in that area deserve. Mr. Rhodes has been a relentless advocate of toxic exposure benefits.

The VA accepts that herbicides were used along the perimeter of military bases in Thailand but does not recognize the impact of the herbicides inside the perimeter. This current policy makes no sense and is not fair, preventing veterans like Mr. Rhodes from accessing benefits as a result of toxic exposure.

After developing illnesses linked to herbicide exposure, Mr. Rhodes turned to the VA for help, but his claim was denied. I have been working with him for several years to advance a provision that corrects this mistake, and I am pleased that this act eliminates the bureaucratic hurdles that have stood in the way of veterans getting the care they earned.

This legislation is the result of bipartisan cooperation. We can achieve great things for our country when we put partisan politics aside. I appreciate the leadership of Chairman Tester and Ranking Member Moran to get this bill to the Senate floor. I am proud to work with them to address these pressing needs that face our veterans and their families.

I would also like to recognize and thank the countless veterans, the families, advocates, and veteran service organizations that continued their persistence to ensure Congress fulfills its promise to the men and the women who served in our Nation's uniform.

This legislation is long overdue. We have heard the struggles of veterans and their families living with toxic exposure-related illnesses. We can end the hurdles they experienced and save lives by passing this landmark legislation. I encourage my colleagues to join me in supporting it.

With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, normally I don't like to use numbers in speeches because I think numbers get lost in people's minds as they are trying to wrap their heads around numbers, but I do want to use some numbers today because the numbers are just so incredible.

During President Biden's time in office, the Department of Homeland Security has encountered illegal immigrants crossing our border more than 2.8 million times. In not quite a year and a half, 2.8 million people were encountered crossing the border. Last month alone, they caught people trying to cross the southern border illegally 234,088 times. So a quarter of a million people just last month were caught trying to cross the border. That is the highest number in the Department's history. It is more than four times the average monthly number from 2018 to 2020. If you have a problem that is four times bigger than it was in the 3 preceding years, it is probably time to ask, what were they doing in those 3 preceding years that we are not doing now?

Some of the people who cross the border got sent back and may have gotten caught later in the month. They may have been a catch-and- release, and then they come back. But some people who cross the border didn't get caught at all. I am not sure that number is not bigger than the other number. But even if you had double-counting, it is still an incredible number: a quarter of a million people coming across the border illegally in 1 month who were caught--not who were coming across the border but who were caught coming across the border.

We have never seen such a massive or prolonged effort by people to illegally enter our country as we are seeing now. It has created a giant humanitarian crisis at the border. Ask anyone who lives in a border community the problem that has been created by this.

The Biden administration's response has actually been to tie their own hands by removing the most effective tools we have to try to manage the situation. We developed a reasonable approach to the border based on lessons we learned from previous surges--one in 2014 when President Biden was Vice President and one in 2019. These policies helped cut the number of people trying to cross the border illegally. They allowed us to deal with legitimate cases of people seeking asylum in a much more responsible way.

People who actually qualify for asylum come to the United States like people don't come to any other country in the world. We are still the most welcoming country in the world for people who have a legitimate request for asylum, but that doesn't include everybody who lives in a poor and dangerous place.

In contrast to what we have been doing to make it easier for people to seek asylum and harder for people to illegally cross the border, the Biden administration has over and over again reversed the progress that is being made.

As Senator Ernst just well pointed out, on their first day, they halted the construction of the border wall. The logical debate to have there was finish the wall in progress and then have a debate with the new administration about whether you needed more border wall, but they halted construction of the border wall. The material was there. The wall was in progress. In fact, the wall, in some places, had been removed so you could put the more effective wall up, so now there is no wall. There were places where we had known for several years now that people would come across if they could where there was no wall and there was no building the wall. They revoked a 2017 Executive order calling for stricter enforcement of the immigration laws. They canceled the Migrant Protection Protocols. They suspended asylum cooperation agreements known as safe third party agreements, third country agreements. If someone is unsafe where they live and has a legitimate claim for asylum, this is not a legitimate claim for entry into the United States; it is a legitimate claim to get to a safer place for them. Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador all had agreed to those third party, third country agreements.

Even the leaders of even Guatemala and Mexico said that President Biden's policies are incentivizing illegal crossings at our southern border, which, of course, create a lot of illegal transit through their country as well.

Now the administration seems intent on ending the public health policy known as title 42, which allows authorities to turn back many of the people caught crossing the border illegally. A Federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the efforts to eliminate title 42, but the administration immediately decided they would appeal that decision.

Now, that is exactly the wrong decision at this moment, particularly when the administration is arguing that we need billions of dollars of more money to fight COVID, and I think there is some merit to that argument, but you can't argue that we need billions of dollars to fight COVID and COVID is over at the border and is no longer a problem there.

In fact, just the latest example of the administration over and over again responding to the crisis at the border with the wrong decision. Time after time, the White House could have looked at problems that it was causing with its immigration policies and reverse course. And time after time, it responded by going ahead anyway, doubling down on more than one occasion.

According to the New York Times, there are tens of thousands of people who have been waiting in the border region for title 42 to be lifted. They are watching the Biden administration and the signals it is sending now and how it intends to deal with them the next time they cross the border.

Most of them will be allowed to stay in the country while they go through immigration proceedings, many of which can take years to just get a hearing. That is why waiting in another country like Mexico was a policy that we should have continued to improve and move forward with because most people, when they are waiting, would find out that they didn't have a legitimate asylum claim; that they weren't going to successfully get into the United States and disappear into the country that we live in. And they would wind up going back and making it easier for other people who had a legitimate asylum claim to have that asylum here.

What makes it worse, the administration has proposed taking away essential resources to enforce immigration law. With the budget that they requested for this year, the Department of Homeland Security specified cutting the enforcement and removal budgets to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement by $614 million. It doesn't sound like, to me, that that is the way to deal with a problem that is the size of the problem that almost every American has a sense of.

In April, the Homeland Security Secretary said that he will need to reprogram funding from other DHS accounts to respond to increased activity at the border, while the administration--his administration-- is asking for $614 million in cuts.

Other parts of the Department, like the Coast Guard, the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, could have their operational funding diverted to process paperwork for illegal immigrants at the border.

The human tragedy unfolding on our border is due, in large part, to the policies of this administration, a massive turnaround that occurred on day 1 and hasn't stopped since.

We need that act--and they need to act on border security effectively and restore order to our immigration process.

It is long past time for the administration people to be honest with the American people about the crisis it has created and to do something about it.

Mr. President, Dara Lindenbaum is the President's nominee to be a Member of the Federal Election Commission. We are scheduled to vote on that nomination today.

On April 6, the Committee on Rules and Administration held a hearing to consider this nominee. She shared her

credentials for the job and her understanding of the agency's mission and the role of a commissioner.

On May 3, she was favorably reported out of committee. I supported her nomination to be voted out of committee. The Federal Elections Commission plays a vital role for Campaign Finance Committees. As a former Secretary of State, I work with the FTC on a regular basis; and since that time, I have run in many Federal elections. I know how important a fully functioning FEC is to Federal candidates who need to avail themselves of the FEC's guidance and advisory opinions. I also know how important the stability of the agency is to the regulated community.

While the commissioners to the Federal Election Commission are, by design, partisan, it is unlikely that every Senator will agree with the views of all nominees. Ms. Lindenbaum has expressed a willingness to work with the other commissioners and find consensus to do the important work of the agency. I am a Republican and Ms. Lindenbaum is a Democrat. This Commission only works with if there is an equal number of Republicans and Democrats.

Sadly, with the three Republican nominees from the last administration, the vote on the floor was 49 to 43, 49 to 47, 50 to 46. These should not be partisan nominations. They are partisans nominated to a partisan job; and, frankly, we have to do a better job than 49 to 43, or 49 to 47, or 50 to 46, which, again, was the vote on the floor of President Trump's Republican nominees who are currently serving.

Ms. Lindenbaum enjoys the support of a bipartisan group of election law practitioners. Senator Klobuchar and I received a letter from 30 practitioners on both sides of the aisle highlighting Ms. Lindenbaum's decade of relevant experience, especially her experience representing clients on matters of State and Federal campaign finance and election laws.

I look forward to supporting her nomination today. I hope many of my colleagues will join me in supporting her. This a commission, one, that doesn't work without an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, and it doesn't work if the commission doesn't have at least that equal number. Unless there are at least four commissioners, the Commission ceases to function. For too many months of the last dozen years, we had a Commission that wasn't fully functioning, couldn't make final decisions, couldn't issue opinions. I am looking forward to a six- member Commission.

I look forward to voting for Ms. Lindenbaum today when her nomination comes up early this afternoon.

Mr. President, in late 2016, soon after the Presidential election of that year, there was a significant portion of the political left that began referring to itself as ``the resistance.''

Apparently, these people were bent on fighting whatever the new President might try to do, only because of who the new President was. There were signs in yards. There were people who painted their garage door with ``the resistance'' on the garage door.

They weren't arguing against specific policies; they weren't making a rational effort to win support for their side; they were just trying to throw sand in the gears of the executive branch and interfere with how the government serves the people. One Senator on the floor of the Senate said: ``The resistance starts here.''

Now, they did it while trying to cloak themselves in maybe the compelling language of ``the resistance,''as if in their minds they were starring in the World War II movie ``Casablanca,'' where the resistance was the heroes as they were all over World War II.

The damage ``the resistance'' was willing to do to the executive branch of our government was bad enough. On the floor of the Senate, at virtually every nominee the President nominated, the minority insisted on 30 hours of debate. We finally had to change that rule to 2 hours of debate, which those in the majority now know is a big enough challenge without 30 hours of debate. And I think the average time used was closer to 20 minutes, during that 30 hours, than 30 hours.

But 30 hours still had to be set aside. No other business could occur. People were nominated early on for Ambassadors to countries, for instance, that they eventually got to serve 1 year in because that ``resistance'' element appeared right here as well.

Then the group of political activists began to insist that we degrade the legislative branch as well, trying to change the Senate to get rid of the motion to proceed. And, frankly, ever since Democrats got control of the Senate, by the smallest margin possible, there has been a constant discussion of why we should change that rule.

Of course, many of us understand the so-called filibuster rule is what makes the Senate. President Biden said, when he was a Senator:

[A]t its core, the filibuster is not about stopping a

nominee or a bill, it is about compromise and moderation.

End the quote that he made at the time that I agree with now.

Many of the people who have been calling to end the filibuster changed their tune, not because something changed in America but because they are now in charge. And without the filibuster, we would see wild swings in policy when different parties would take control of the majority of the Senate, and we see that constantly in the House now. A lot of bills pass, and very few of them get to the President's desk. When the other party gets in control, they pass bills that reverse what the earlier majority passes, and, frankly, very few of them get to the President's desk either because the Senate has to take a little more time to think about what direction the country really wants to go in.

In the last 20 years or so, complete control has happened four times, alternating between Democrats and Republicans. That is a lot of time for the pendulum to swing and the potential for bad ideas to become law without something to make us think about that before we head in that direction.

At a time of razor-thin margins in the House and Senate, activists should be extra careful about getting rid of institutional guardrails. Their efforts have failed so far because there aren't enough Senators from both parties who are willing to make that change, but that doesn't mean they won't keep trying.

In fact, I am confident we will continue to hear that, and I am also confident their position will change as soon as they are in the minority and don't get what they want.

This brings us to the disappointing effort we have seen to damage the third branch of government: the judiciary. For more than a year, we have seen some people on the left try to apply political pressure on the Court to rule in a particular way.

The Senator from Utah just gave us an example of that. I am going to repeat it. It is probably worth repeating. In March of 2020, the Democratic leader of the Senate spoke to a crowd in front of the Supreme Court Building, and he said:

I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh,

you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price.

Now, what would that possibly mean? If you are in the Supreme Court you have got a lifetime job, so the price clearly was not losing your job. What price was the Democratic leader suggesting and saying on the steps of the Supreme Court you would have to pay? And this is while the Court was inside hearing arguments on the case.

And the Leader added:

You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these

awful decisions.

That kind of language has no place and really no legitimate purpose.

This is not the kind of language that we need to use.

Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have talked about introduced legislation to add new Justices to the Court to pack the Court.

Judges should rule based on the law, not on their partisan allegiance. That is not a new idea, but countries rarely manage to put it into practice.

The American judicial system became the envy of the world precisely because of its independence. Renowned historian of the American Revolution Gordon Wood has described it as the creation of judges who are ``agents of the sovereign people somehow equal in authority with the legislators and executives.''

An independent judiciary is a critical element of the unique balance of power the Constitution created. Justices have frequently ruled against Presidents and parties that put them on the Court. Some of the most prominent, politically sensitive Supreme Court cases in history have involved Justices ruling against the parties that put them in power, including United States v. Nixon in 1974. And Harry Truman, who put his name on the desk that I am speaking from, would certainly have preferred not to lose the so-called steel seizure case of Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer, but he accepted it without threatening any of the Justices, without plotting to increase the size of the Court, even though the vote against it by, for instance, Fred Vinson, the Chief Justice who had been his Secretary of the Treasury and lifelong--in terms of Senate service--friend and his nominee to be the Chief Justice, voted the other way.

The supporters of these changes are calling very loudly, but, just like the damage that they sought with their resistance of the executive branch, their efforts to break the Senate, they could do lasting, even permanent damage to the judiciary. Once the Court has been clearly politicized, it would be hard to ever bring it back.

I am concerned about the anti-institutional fervor we see going on today. I hope it does not produce the stated results and goals.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, in reserving the right to object, my colleague Senator Paul is well-intended in this recommendation, and I listened to it carefully, as I am sure others did.

The Page Program, which has been in effect since 1829, has become a program of both opportunity and education and is a program that the Page Board, the Senate Page Board, has responsibility for.

I would say, in looking at the immediate future, the pages who are here now, the pages who have agreed to be pages in the summer, and the pages, I think, who are in line to be pages in the fall--and their families--have all looked at these recommendations. They have all decided they are recommendations they would be able to meet. Maybe more importantly, they also have decided to make that family decision for their children to be here and be pages as high school juniors, perhaps, because of the standards that have been set that they are well aware of.

I would hope that Senator Paul would continue to talk to the Page Board. I think the Page Board has a very important job to do. They accept an incredible responsibility of the relationships that they have decided to enter into between the pages, their families, and the Page Board in representing the Senate.

That Board has some oversight from the Rules Committee, and I yield to the chairman of the Rules Committee.

Madam President, I want to continue to talk about some of the challenges the administration is facing and the country is facing. Let me talk for just a little bit about the border, about the economy, and about our ongoing concerns on COVID.

First of all, the border--we have had a number of people come to the floor and talk about the border, the problems at the border. Many of these problems were really self-inflicted on day 1. The President, on the first day of his Presidency--and I chaired the inauguration on January 20. Hours after that, the President decided to stop building the wall.

I was never an advocate of needing a wall everywhere along the southern border, but we had a wall in lots of places already. It was doing some good, but it wasn't doing as much good as it needed to do. And just the idea that we--with the material on the ground and the old wall torn down--would decide to stop building the wall, I think, started these problems.

And if that wasn't enough, then-President Trump had made arrangements, the State Department had made arrangements--everybody involved--with Mexico to have people who were applying for asylum wait for their court date in Mexico. It was my view at the time that we should do anything we could to help the Mexican Government make that work because the alternative was people would come into the United States and not show up for an asylum date later.

In Mexico, they have learned that they weren't going to qualify for asylum because fewer than--9 out of 10 people, roughly, will not qualify. You found that out before you got into the United States and successfully had entered our country, even though you weren't eligible to. If you were waiting in Mexico and you found a lawyer to talk to and maybe even a way to hear your case in some way there, you would find out that you weren't going to qualify for asylum 8\1/2\ times or 9 times out of 10, and that is where you should have found that out.

To come in the country and wait for months to have a court date that you may or may not show up for just simply has not worked, and everybody that understands this system understands it doesn't work. And everybody that understands the obligation of a government understands that a government has some obligation to control its own borders, and you don't control your own borders by having people come into the country that aren't legally eligible to come into the country and then just stay here. So that policy produced real chaos.

And then title 42, under the public health law, was another thing that we put in place, as we put all kinds of other COVID-related protections in place. And now we want to eliminate title 42. The only place, apparently--if you follow the CDC closely right now--that we don't need to up our game on COVID protection is the border of the United States.

None of these things makes sense. We have too many people who have been encouraged wrongly and told: You come to the United States, you ask for asylum, they let you into the United States, and then you don't show up for your asylum hearing.

I am for legal immigration. I am for solving the Dreamer problem. I am for doing a lot of things that we need to do to make our immigration laws work properly.

We need to understand the workforce needs of the country. We need to understand what to do about people who came or stayed illegally. But we also need to understand how to secure the border. And that is where, for any of these other things to work, you have to do that.

The COVID problem, as I said, appears to only be a problem at the CDC--well, actually, it appears to be a problem everywhere but the border. The CDC, just yesterday, had a new rule that even for domestic travel, people should now--their advice is have a test for domestic travel--before you get on an airplane to go domestically, to have that test.

The efforts that we were working on and working hard on to replenish the categories that have been spent for research, particularly for the therapeutics that we need to have a stock of that haven't been fully certified yet--so they have to be the Government is the purchaser of those--we were working on a $10 billion bill. And even this morning again, the Secretary of Commerce, at our appropriations hearing, said: Well, that would just be a start. We need 10 or 20 or 30 billion more before the end of this fiscal year than we currently have, and it is an emergency--10, 20, 30 billion more than we have now.

But at the border, no problem at all. At the border, this is no problem. We need billions of dollars to deal with it internally. We need to not only have fewer tests, which everybody agrees, fewer standards for domestic travel; we now need a new standard, they say, for domestic travel. Surely they will think about that. And while we are negotiating, again, spending, this issue comes out simultaneously that the border is a problem.

And then, of course, everybody knows the economy is a problem. All you have got to do to find out the economy is a problem is go to the gas station or go to the grocery store, and most Americans do that and do it a lot. And when gas prices go up, when food prices go up, every family knows it.

What we are seeing now is inflation that I think it is 8.5 percent. It may be settling in at 8.5 percent. But wherever it settles in, it is a whole lot higher than it was at any time during the Obama administration. The highest month in the entire Obama administration of inflation--that is not a year average--the highest single month was 3.4 percent. Under President Trump, the highest single month was 2.9 percent. We are now at 8.5 percent, and the Producer Price Index has been in double digits since December. That is usually a sign that the other index is going to follow that double-digit, scary number that is out there.

So energy policies that produced exactly the result you would think they would: higher energy prices; spending policies: the American Rescue Plan. I thought, at the time, it was a final COVID bill, but when you looked at the bill before we had a chance to vote on it and saw it, it really didn't have very much to do with COVID. Maybe 6 percent of the $1.9 trillion went to COVID. The rest of it went to things that put money in people's pockets to help them recover in an economy that was already recovering.

You can't spend $1.9 trillion in a short period of time, even in the biggest and most vibrant economy in the world, and not drive up prices. So whether it is inflation, whether it is the economic stress--I talked to a group of Missouri realtors today, and, of course, they are beginning to see people wonder if they can afford a house at the interest rates that are out in front of us. It makes a big difference if the interest payment is based on 3.5 percent interest or 5.5 or 6.5 or 7.5 or, as it was in the mid 1980s, 11 to 15 percent interest.

These are issues we need to get under control. Most of these issues have an explanation that is rooted in confused policy decisions in the administration.

I look forward to those confused policy decisions heading in a different direction. Let's look at the information. Let's be realistic. Let's not continue to see all of these things headed in a direction that makes no common sense in America today.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today to honor the 75th anniversary of the Memorial Baptist Church of Arlington, VA, for faithful ministry and service to Arlington and the greater Washington, DC area. For decades, they have lived up to their covenant to engage in Christian care for each other, through bible study and dedicated work for the advancement of Christianity.

Memorial Baptist Church's first public service was held on Easter Sunday, April 6, 1947, at the old Glebe Theater near what is now Langston Boulevard. Memorial Baptist was officially organized on April 28, 1947, less than a month after its first service, with Reverend James Farmer becoming the church's first pastor. One year later, on April 28, 1948, they celebrated the groundbreaking of their chapel, a building that is still the center of the church today. Since construction finished in 1949, locals from all over the area have come to worship and be a part of their congregation.

Since Memorial Baptist's inception, they have been a catalyst of community engagement, worship, and service. Along with being a center for Christian prayer and values, they have brought people together in weekly bible studies, adult classes, and family picnics. Memorial Baptist Church also has a long history of faithful ministry and service to the Arlington community and around the world, including mission partnerships in Kentucky, Ukraine, and India.

Memorial Baptist Church has forged 75 years of history and tradition for the local community. Memorial Baptist Church will continue to minister and serve in the name of Christ with a variety of services, programs, and activities in anticipation of a bright and productive future.

Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate Mr. David Hauck on his retirement and recognize his 35 years of dedicated service to the Congress and the American people.

A native of Minneapolis, MN, Dave began his Capitol Hill career while still a graduate student at American University, working part-time as an elevator operator in the Senate. After completing his degree, he spent 5 years working on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where he served as hearing coordinator and systems administrator.

Following his time on the Foreign Relations Committee, Dave became the assistant director of the Congressional Special Services Office. In 2008, Congress established the Office of Congressional Accessibility Services and made Dave its founding director. For over 29 years, Dave has worked to ensure that individuals with disabilities, including Members, staff, and visitors to the Capitol, have the best possible access to facilities and events throughout the Capitol Complex. In addition to helping Congress create and staff the Office of Accessibility Services, Dave also worked with Congress throughout the construction of the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center--CVC--to make the CVC accessible to all visitors.

Dave and his team have handled the day-to-day accessibility needs of Congress and played an important role in every major event Congress has seen over the last three decades. Dave has been a staunch advocate for the accessibility community throughout countless joint sessions of Congress, the lying in state or lying in honor of many beloved Americans, and the inaugurations of seven Presidents. When I chaired the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies for both President Trump and President Biden's inaugurations, my staff and I saw firsthand how invaluable Dave's expertise on accessibility issues was to planning a seamless inauguration.

Today, it is my pleasure to thank Dave for his many years of service and to congratulate him on his retirement. I wish him the best in his next chapter, as I am sure so many here do.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor a St. Louis, MO, resident whose name and family are synonymous with supermarkets across the Midwest. Todd Schnuck, a dedicated community and business leader, is being honored with the Glen Woodard Award for Outstanding Leadership in Public Affairs by the Food Industry Association.

Todd Schnuck is the third family member of the third generation of Schnucks to be CEO and chairman of Schnucks Markets, Inc., and has been a community and industry advocate since entering the family business in the late 1980s. During the next 30 years, his leadership built Schnucks into the food industry leader it is today.

Todd joined the family business after college in 1987 to help facilitate new acquisitions for the company. Over the next two decades, he would help Schnucks build its footprint throughout the Midwest through acquisitions and expansion. Schnucks has over 100 stores today and employs 15,000 associates spanning five States. In 2014, Todd was named CEO and chairman of Schnuck Markets, Inc., holding the same position his grandfather did when he started the company in 1939.

Along with the terrific work Todd has done for the business of Schnucks, he has been an even greater community leader. Todd has not only made Schnucks an employer of choice in the State of Missouri, but has worked closely with the United Way of Greater St. Louis. He is also currently chairman of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and holds board seats with the Opportunity Trust and the Arch to Park Equity Fund.

I know firsthand what a strong advocate Todd is for the food industry. He is in a unique position to be a credible voice for the supermarket industry, spending his career leading and growing the family business. I congratulate Todd on the Glen Woodard Award for Outstanding Leadership in Public Affairs.

Exactly.

I am so glad to be here with you, Senator Stabenow. We have been friends for a long time and have worked together on a number of issues both in the House, to which we came at the same time, and in the Senate, when I got to the Senate.

Clearly, this is one of the things of which, I think, we both have a strong sense that we have really made a difference in not only how we look at mental health but in also the way we talk about mental health.

To Senator Stabenow's point of treating mental health like all other health and ``what happens when you do that?'' we got an award last month when I was home and Senator Stabenow was virtually in Jefferson City, MO, for a few minutes with the Missouri Behavioral Health Council, and we received the Excellence in Mental Health award. Brent McGinty, the head of that council, gave a talk about what they were doing and what they were seeing from what they were doing.

Also, we talked about the partnership with community health centers, another thing we have worked together on.

Joe Pierle and Brent McGinty are actually both here today, coincidentally, as we are talking about this issue that is so important to both of them.

I have often thought about the same type of discussion we had in 2013 as Senator Stabenow just pointed out. We went through the Community Mental Health Act from 1963, and it became apparent that many of the things that probably should have been closed but were serving a need, did get closed, but then the support system didn't come in, in the way that anybody would have envisioned when that came together. I can remember it in Missouri when some of our mental health facilities or hospitals were closed, and that was a fine thing if you had what the bill that President Kennedy signed had in mind and, I think, what we have had in mind.

One of the things we have looked at is--we have looked at 41 States now that have some efforts, some unit, of excellence in mental health-- the Certified Community Behavioral Health Centers--in their States. Maybe it is a big county. Maybe it is a city that was able to qualify with the 365-days-a-year, 24/7 standards and with the kind of staff available that you have to have to meet that criteria first. We now have eight States, including Michigan and Missouri, in this process.

One of the things that is happening in all of those units is keeping track of the person's other healthcare challenges when you are dealing with their mental healthcare challenges. The NIH says about one in five adult Americans has a diagnosable and almost always treatable behavioral health issue, and one in five adult Americans probably has other health issues as well. In fact, obviously, they would have.

One of the things we have been trying to keep track of is what happens in the real, confined healthcare world when you deal with people's mental health problems like they were any other health problems. Do they start showing up at appointments more frequently? Do they take the medicine that they are supposed to take for either behavioral health issues or other health issues? Are they eating better or sleeping better or feeling better about themselves? I think it is pretty clear and totally logical that that would be exactly what happens.

Another thing we have seen, after the 50 years of whatever happened in mental health between October 1963 and the day we were on the floor in 2013, is that, in so many ways, the police department, law enforcement, and the emergency room became the de facto mental health system for the country.

We have had people come and be part of the press conferences with us, Senator Stabenow, when we are talking about fewer people being taken to the emergency rooms and the importance of having a contact that you can make or have, maybe, a place that is not only a place to spend the night but also a place for you and your family so you know that you are going to have an ongoing opportunity to have a relationship to deal with your mental health problem just like you would if you had to be taken to the hospital with other problems.

We have seen some things there, Senator Stabenow, that you may want to talk about a little bit--everything from the iPad that law enforcement officers and the crisis intervention team uses in Springfield, MO, and other places in our State to where they can immediately link the person they are dealing with up on the screen on the iPad with the behavioral health counselor who is there any time of the day--fully manned, 24/7--and see what begins to happen when a professional is dealing with a person in crisis.

I have seen that happen, and I am sure I was there with, probably, the best crisis intervention center person the police department had. You can tell the difference when they start looking at that screen and talking to somebody who is always a behavioral health specialist but also who is just a little bit removed and is totally prepared to enter into that discussion. We have had lots of people talk about the impact on departments and emergency rooms, Senator Stabenow.

Well, we are.

As to what you were talking about with getting people into the healthcare system instead of the criminal justice system, it is, obviously, one of the goals we should have.

Missouri's really got started in January 2017, and in the first 4 years in these certified centers, they served more than 150,000 Missourians and more than 3,500 veterans. That was a 41-percent increase over the 4 years of not being in the program to being in the program. Not only is it able to serve people, but because of the way this is set up, you are able to serve people so much more quickly. You are able to have the staff that you can have because you know you have got the funding you need to have the staff--largely, this is an increase of the Medicaid coverage, but the other Medicaid costs go down more than the behavioral health costs add to the system.

We have always known that this was the right thing to do--right thing to do in the long run, right thing to do for police officers, right thing to do for the emergency room, right thing to do for the prison system, right thing to do for the people being at work.

I think what we are showing here is, not only is it the right thing to do and

saves money over time, but it is the right thing to do and largely pays for itself and maybe more than pays for itself within the immediate context of healthcare; and that is one of the things we are looking at.

What we saw in the last 2 years with COVID was the real crisis that became part of that healthcare crisis with a mental health crisis, of isolation, of people who developed some kind of dependency. If you don't have a mental health problem before you become dependent on opioids or something else, you have one as soon as you become dependent on those. The suicide numbers went up.

Having a structure in place ready to reach out and man the suicide hotline to get people to where they need to get--there is no waiting list for somebody who is thinking about doing harm to themselves or others. We need to have a society where we understand that is an immediate problem; it has to be dealt with immediately; and it is a societal--not only a societal goal, but, actually, it should be one of our primary responsibilities in this society. And I think that is what we are seeing here over and over again, Senator Stabenow.

I think in almost--in all of the States, once they get this fully running the way they hope it will, that everybody who needs to be seen the first day is seen the first day.

There may be an occasional evaluation where you talk to somebody and realize this is something that you don't have to put at the very front of that day's line; but if you need to be at the front of the line, you get to go to the front of the line. If you need to be seen the first day, you get to be seen the first day. No more 7-day waiting period for a crisis moment.

People still may have to occasionally wait and come back tomorrow or come back Wednesday or whatever the schedule might be--and I think that is critically important.

Now, Senator Stabenow, what you and I are trying to do is to further expand the opportunity. You know, the President said in his State of the Union message:

Let's get all Americans the mental health services they

need.

That is a quote: ``Let's get all Americans the mental health services they need.'' That was a goal in the President's State of the Union message; it should be a significant goal for the country.

What we would like to see happen in this Congress is the expansion of excellence in mental health to every State that wants to do it. Initially, we had 24 States apply to be part of the 8 pilot States. Nineteen of them went all the way through that entire process.

You know, all 50 States may not apply, but we would like to create an environment where all 50 States could apply.

Frankly, every time we get a score on this bill, the score is a little lower than it was before because I think the facts are beginning to persuade even the Congressional Budget Office that this makes economic sense to do. And there may be some startup costs, but the long-term costs may be actually long-term savings. If you do the right thing and save money while you are doing it, Mr. President, that is a pretty good place to be in for a society or a government or a country; and that is what we are trying to get done, Senator Stabenow, in this Congress.

Right. Right.

You can have a community behavioral health center working with a primary care center or you could have an independent provider working with their other healthcare provider or vice versa. It is very interchangeable.

The one criteria for the certified community behavioral health centers is the level of staffing--24/7, 365 days a year, always available to be that critically important partner that people with a mental health challenge need. And, frankly, their families and people who care about them need it as well.

This is a big challenge for the individual that has a behavioral health problem, but it can be an equally big challenge for people who care about them.

We are, too.

Mr. President, we look forward to you joining us in this effort.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 5 minutes before the scheduled rollcall vote.

Madam President, there are really few jobs in the country as difficult, as dangerous, and as demanding as the sacrifice of being a law enforcement officer. I would suggest the one job that may possibly be harder--and certainly in my view is as hard--is to be the family member of a law enforcement officer, wondering all during that working shift what might be happening to the person you care so much about.

You know the challenges to these officers and their families--the challenges they face today are intensified as local departments struggle with the staffing shortages caused by record high departures and difficulty filling the open positions they have got.

The Eastern Missouri Police Academy had around half as many recruits join in 2021 as they had in 2020. In my hometown of Springfield, MO, they have 40 vacancies right now they are trying to fill in the department.

In January, the Columbia, MO, Police Department had around 20 vacancies in a force that its maximum size would be 187 or so people.

According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch in September, officer departures in St. Louis City and St. Louis County spiked in 2021 and were at a pace to be up to 60 percent higher in each of those departments than they had been in the average year.

In the police force here, I was with Chief Manger yesterday, and he pointed out that retirements and resignations were 50 percent higher than they have been in recent years in 2021.

The new chief of police at the St. Louis County Police Force said: My biggest priority is hiring and finding people who will do these jobs.

These staff shortages are unfortunate, but they are in so many ways predictable of a movement that villainized enforcement for, I think, political gain in many cases. Officers have been demoralized by the ``defund the police'' crusade. They have been discouraged by prosecutors who put dangerous criminals back on the street or even put out a list of crimes that people will not be prosecuted for.

That is well beyond the standard of belief that most people would have had, actually, until they heard it, my guess would be, that, no, these are crimes that we are just not going to prosecute people for.

Police saw themselves, in many cases, forced out of the force because of a vaccine mandate they didn't agree with, often going to smaller forces that had less than 100 people.

All this is happening, really, against a backdrop of a crime wave that is harming communities of all sizes all across the country.

When I talk to police chiefs, I hear concerns that a lot of good candidates are deciding maybe law enforcement won't be the career that they want to have. When I talk to the sworn officers that I see here every day and I see at home, I hear many of them feel they just simply have a job where they face danger but they don't get enough support that they need to do the job that they need to do.

Police work has always been dangerous. We have always lost officers. They have always been courageous in their willingness to stand up, but last year was the deadliest year ever for law enforcement officers. Four hundred fifty-eight officers died in the line of duty in 2021, 128 of them from gunshot wounds or fatalities from traffic.

You don't have to travel very far away from here, just down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, to understand what it means to lose officers and what it means to lose them in protection of the country. The marble walls there bear the names of thousands of officers who have been killed in the line of duty. Each corner of that memorial shows a lion protecting its cubs.

We have always seen law enforcement as our protectors, not as those we should somehow fear. It eats away at our society to say that we appreciate law enforcement but we really don't want to do what is necessary to support law enforcement.

I think there is no data that says one or more tweets that say ``defund the police'' leads to two crimes or two muggings, but it simply makes common sense that when police departments are understaffed and undertrained, it increases the risk of violent crime on the officers themselves and the communities they serve.

As the cochair of the Senate Law Enforcement Caucus, one of my priorities has been to ensure that law enforcement officers have the support and resources they need to do the job they are asked to do and do it as safely and effectively as they possibly can.

We certainty all can and I think would agree--I certainly would--that there really should be zero tolerance for police misconduct. Taking the oath to support and defend and then somehow not conducting yourself in the right way, if you cross that line, you ought to be held accountable.

We need to view people on the line as people who are there to defend us, to serve us. We need to make this a profession that people want to be part of, and if they are willing to be part of it, we have provided them everything they need to be safely doing the hard work that they are asked to do.

I yield the floor.

Vote on Bush Nomination

The ability to secure your border--to follow my good friend from Ohio, the ability to secure your border is actually one of the fundamental responsibilities of a legitimate government.

Even former President Obama, within the last few months, has looked at what was happening at the border, and I believe the word he used was ``unsustainable.'' We cannot continue to let this happen. It is a border crisis, whether the administration is willing to call it a border crisis or not.

There are drugs coming across, and I know my friend from Tennessee is going to talk about that, as the Senator from Ohio did. More than 2 million people were apprehended trying to cross the border last year. Of that number, more than 171,000 were unaccompanied children. The year before it had been 37,000. In 2020, it was 37,000 people.

It should have been a warning sign. Thirty-seven thousand children is bad enough, let alone 171,000--almost four times the number who came the year before.

We need to ask ourselves, what are we doing to encourage that? Why would parents let their children come or send their children or why would children come on their own to the border at the numbers of 171,000?

Obviously, we don't know exactly how many people actually entered the country illegally. So if 2 million people were apprehended entering the country, some of them may have been making repeat efforts to come into the country, but there is no real evidence that very many people get sent back, but let's assume some do.

So some of the apprehended people may have been multiple offenders, if you will, of trying to violate our law by coming in. I think it is more reasonable to believe that more people weren't apprehended than were apprehended multiple times, so we have a huge problem here.

The policies have already been discussed. Why would the number--just over 2,035,000 last year--be 272 percent greater than the year before?

Things happening in the countries they come from aren't different, substantially, than they were the year before. The weather is not in crisis in any way different than it was the year before.

So let's look at day 1 of the Biden administration, where one of the first decisions is, we are going to stop building the barrier that is in the process of being built--not we are going to debate whether we should do more of it or not, but we are going to stop building the barrier that Congress has appropriated the money for, that the equipment has been bought for, that the necessary metal and fencing and other things have been bought for, and they are delivered, and after we get that up, let's decide if we need to do more.

I have never been of the view that every inch of the border needs to have a barrier, but I have always been of the view that a barrier or a fence or a wall, whatever you want to call it, has to be helpful, particularly if it has the technology that was going into this fence.

So, you know, just watching that great investment that the American people made sit there and not be completed is a problem. Some wall and fence had been torn down already so the new wall and fence could be put back up. We have areas that don't have the kind of fence they had 5 years ago or 10 years ago or under the Clinton administration because we said, no, we are just going to stop doing what the Congress has already provided money and the authority to do.

And then the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy, which, frankly, I thought was one of the most amazing things that our government got the Government of Mexico to agree to. It was a major step on their part to help us not only secure our border but discourage people from needlessly coming all the way through Mexico. You know, most of our immigrants are not Mexican immigrants anymore; they are Central American immigrants; they are the immigrants whom others have talked about today from all over the world. But they come through Mexico, and Mexico doesn't like that either.

So why would ``Remain in Mexico'' work? ``Remain in Mexico'' was working because people, when they see that they are not going to be let loose in the United States or delivered somewhere in the United States and told to come back in 90 days or 5 years later, when they see that is not going to happen, and they talk to anybody who understands the law, 9 out of 10 of them know that they have no chance for an asylum claim.

And they are in Mexico. It is not that they have no chance for an asylum claim and they have arrived and been taken somewhere in the United States and told to return at a later date. It clearly just did not work. The ``Remain in Mexico''--we could have put more money there. In fact, we put quite a bit of money there but then walked away from the facilities that were just about to begin to serve the purpose in the way that the American people--the most generous people in the world about people coming to our country and some of the, I think, most liberal immigration laws in the world for legal immigration.

We could have made an investment so that people could have safely and securely understood that you are not going to be able to advance this asylum claim.

The easiest thing in the world to do is show up at the border and say we are claiming asylum. The U.S. Government sends you somewhere in the United States to wait and come back later for a hearing. Now we see people--single adults--getting on planes in the middle of the night and being flown to other airports and getting off in the middle of the night.

I have even heard--surely this can't be really accurate--that you are told to use your arrest papers as your identification to get on the plane. If we have come to the point where our border policy is use the arrest papers to get on the plane so wherever we take you, you are able to then be part of our society until somebody catches you and tells you, you can't be part of our society, it is a huge problem.

The border is out of control. There is clearly a border crisis. I am a major supporter of legal immigration. I am a major supporter of kids who were brought here by their parents illegally, grown up in America and not gotten in trouble. I think they should be able to stay, and we should want them to stay.

I am not a supporter of this blatant violation of the law and sending a message to the whole world, here is how you get done what you want to get done, even though it is against the

laws of the United States to do what we are clearly helping you do.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I have been on the floor most of the day today, and I think I heard virtually every speech given. I was reminded again, as the day went on, of really the broad-based talent of people in the Senate.

I spent some time, a couple of years ago, over the course of about 6 months, kind of watching individual Senators and trying to figure out how they got here. And with only a couple of exceptions, I could figure it out: that unique ability to communicate or to explain things in a way that people understood them or to appear to just know more than other people knew about things that people knew Senators need to know about. And I was reminded again of the tragedy of how little we use that collective talent.

There is absolutely no telling what we could do if we would decide, as 100 people who figured out how to get to the U.S. Senate, how we would work together and solve big problems.

And I think we all know where we are today. But I do hope, as Senator Schumer mentioned, that we listen to each other as people express different views. Certainly, the Senate would be a better place if we spent more time on the floor listening to each other and talking to each other.

Now, on this bill, I think we all know where we are headed. In my view, having watched election legislation for a long time, it seems to me this is just another version of an election bill introduced by Democrats. There is not much new in this bill. Both the Rules Committee, where I serve, and the Senate have already rejected this Federal takeover of elections several times this year.

Now, many of my friends on the other side said: Well, why wouldn't Republicans just want to debate this bill?

I don't think anybody said: Why wouldn't the Republicans want to amend this bill--because there was no opportunity to do that.

We have been on the bill now for several days. We got on the bill. It was a fairly crafty way to get on the bill, with a 51-vote vote. It is fine with me to be on the bill. But our friends on the other side decided there would be no amendments on this bill. And I think Republicans, from the very start, sensed that this would be a bill where we would get a ``yes'' or ``no'' vote on a bill that really would dramatically change how we pursue elections.

Now, while it has a new name--it is more than 700 pages--it is nearly identical to the Freedom to Vote Act. It is substantially the same as the two versions that couldn't get 50 on that side, S. 1; very similar to the Senate bill, H.R. 1; and very similar, frankly, to the election bills that I have been watching for 20 years. And there has always been a different reason to do about the same Democrat-sponsored bill in the House and Senate. After 2020, the reason was, well, the equipment is too faulty, and we have got to have more Federal control of what happens in the States. After 2016, the reason to have a massive election bill was, well, there is just not enough security in State elections, and the Federal Government has to intervene in some major way. After 2020, even though the Federal Government didn't intervene in a major way, suddenly the elections were the most secure in the history of the world. Both parties alleged that at one point.

Now, we need to have this bill because some States are passing legislation that in most cases looks at the real outreach that they appropriately did for the pandemic, and thinking in 2021 that the pandemic was over, thinking, what do we want to keep from what we did in that outreach, and what do we want to decide we should only do during a pandemic?

I haven't found very many places, if any, that couldn't be easily explained, like postal regulations and other things, where the States have made changes and rolled back their pandemic outreach, where they don't have more opportunities to vote now than they had in 2018, the last election before they should have done extraordinary things.

Actually, one lesson we probably taught State legislators here is, don't do anything to try to amend an immediate moment because if you try to undo it when that moment has passed, you will get on what Senator Lankford described as the ``bad list.'' He also did a pretty good job explaining that a lot of States that weren't on the bad list don't have nearly the opportunities to vote as the States that are on the bad list.

I was an election official for about 20 years, including the secretary of state for a good part of that time, and I always thought that the diversity of the system was one of the strengths of the system. I thought, as President Obama did in 2016, that the diversity of the system made it really hard for outsiders or insiders to figure out how they could rig a national election. I still think that.

This bill undermines, really, a lot of State voter laws that are pretty popular with voters, and we have seen that expressed even in recent elections in like New York City. Prohibiting voter identification for mail-in ballots would be one of the things that you wouldn't want to do. If you wanted to have mail-in ballots, you would want to be sure where those came from. Frankly, you would want to have an objective standard, like your voter ID number or some other number that was uniquely yours, rather than a subjective standard, like how you signed your name when you were 18 as opposed to how you are signing your name when you are 68. That was one of the changes, by the way, in the Georgia law, which should have helped more people than not.

This bill retains S. 1's mandate on ballot drop boxes and federalizes rules for redistricting. I think it chills free speech and requires felon voting. Now, why would anybody want to be against any of those things? There are reasons, frankly, to be against all of those things, but States make that decision for themselves, and in some States, it may work very well, and in others, it might not.

Of the top sweeping election administration changes in this bill, the