Floor Statements

Madam President, the Senate is designed to be a place where the Members of the minority party and the millions of Americans they represent are heard. In this Senate, the minority could not be any bigger. In fact, if the minority were any bigger, we would be in the majority. This is a 50-50 Senate, and it is no time to take away the protections that the Senate for almost 200 years has afforded to the minority. The considerations given to the minority are important not only to the Senators and the millions of people they represent, but I think they are important in how the country moves forward.

I served in the House. I like the House. I watch the House as closely as any Senator does. Every time the House changes, the House passes a bunch of pretty dramatic legislation. Then it comes to the Senate. That dramatic legislation they passed in the House doesn't go anywhere in the Senate. When the House changes again--and it has a number of times in the last 20 years--the other side comes in and passes legislation that reverses all of that and maybe does a little dramatic legislation of their own that also doesn't go anywhere when it gets to the Senate.

If all laws were passed by a simple majority, there would be the potential for the majority to rewrite the country's laws constantly, no matter how small the shift in power was. It is always a mistake, frankly, to act like you have a mandate if you don't have one. It is a mistake for the country to change direction dramatically before the country has had time to think about it. The bureaucratic whiplash could be enormous. The economic impact could be enormous of the changing policies on regulation and taxes and everything else in a dramatic way every time one side gets some small advantage over the other side.

For the past year, we have heard a constant refrain from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle that the legislative filibuster--the supermajority to move to finalize a piece of legislation--must be reformed. At the present moment, we are hearing it must be reformed only, maybe, for elections, that we should have a carve-out for elections. Just a few weeks ago, it had to be reformed to have a carve-out for the debt ceiling. I am sure, if we had done either of those things, in a few weeks, we would be talking about a third carve-out. And what are we doing it for? We are doing it for what I see as a federalization of the election process.

When asked in a Morning Consult/POLITICO poll that was just released today--so this is something the American people have just weighed in on today. When they were asked which of the three voting ideas that were polled should be a top priority of the Congress in the voting area--one was reforming Congress's role in counting electoral votes; one was expanding voting access; one was expanding the oversight of the State changes in elections--they were all beaten by ``none of the above.'' ``None of the above'' got more votes in that poll than some of the top priorities the Democrats were talking about.

We hear that we have to extend the Voting Rights Act. We have even titled the Voting Rights Act after a person whom I served with in the House, whom I traveled with, whom I had a close friendship with--John Lewis. That would be a good reason for me to vote for the Voting Rights Act, and certainly I voted to extend the Voting Rights Act before. In fact, I would vote to extend the Voting Rights Act today, and I would even be more happy to vote for the Voting Rights Act today if it were the Voting Rights Act that just happened to be named for John Lewis. The Voting Rights Act in 1965 was 12 pages. The extensions have all been about the same size. This bill has another 110 pages of additional legislative things that don't deal with the principles of the Voting Rights Act at all; they deal with the Federal Government's taking over the election process.

We have seen our colleagues talk about this in one bill after another. I think the motives are pretty transparent right now; it is another way to break the filibuster. But we hear that the laws that States are passing--and by the way, the States have been passing election laws for the whole country, as it relates to their States, for a little over 200 years now. The Constitution was pretty specific as to who would conduct elections in the country and who would set the rules and regulations in the country for those elections.

We hear that these laws are very restrictive. Now, mostly, these laws are laws that the legislatures leaned forward, as they should have, in my opinion, in a pandemic environment. It was an election that, in at least 100 years, we had never conducted anything like with the pandemic experience we were in. So they leaned forward. They allowed things that had never been allowed before: more mail-in voting, voting from your car, voting from a parking lot, all sorts of things. Then those same legislatures looked back at what had happened as a result of that and said: Do we want to keep all of this as if we were going to have a pandemic every year or do we want to keep part of it? In every case that I have looked

at, the changes in election law made it easier to vote in 2021 than it was in the last election before the pandemic.

I would encourage all of my colleagues, who are such sudden experts on Utah and Iowa and other election laws, to look at the 2018 election laws and see how they compare. What the legislatures did was exactly what you would hope they would do--respond to a crisis and, when the crisis is over, evaluate how much of that we want to keep as part of our permanent system and how much of it was only in crisis.

What do these laws do?

In Utah, the State legislature determined it would be appropriate for the Lieutenant Governor, who is the chief election official of Utah, to get the names of deceased individuals from the Social Security Administration and give them to county officials, who would take their names off the rolls. That is listed as one of the things that make it harder to vote--well, harder to vote for dead people. That is fine. I, actually, asked this question in a hearing of someone--one of the election-monitoring people who said this was difficult.

I said: Well, what about that?

He said: The Social Security Administration is often wrong.

Well, if anybody is going to get something straightened out pretty quickly, it would be a living person who no longer is getting their Social Security check because the Social Security Administration had them on a list of people who were deceased. What a foolish argument that was for that to be a repressive thing.

In Georgia, the State legislature adjusted their mail-in ballot deadline to ensure voters who requested mail-in ballots got their ballots with enough time to cast them. They brought their date more in line with the advice of the U.S. Postal Service. The truth is that lots of States did this.

States like Georgia and Florida now include specific provisions in State law that allow for the use of drop boxes. In fact, they have to have at least one in every county. There were no drop boxes in Georgia anywhere before the 2020 elections. Now there have to be drop boxes everywhere, and it has to be understood where those locations can be found.

States like Iowa and Georgia implemented more early voting days than the so-called Freedom to Vote Act would require. In fact, these States had more days of early voting than many States that have Democrat-led legislatures, like New York and Connecticut and the President's home State of Delaware.

They also forgot that many Republican States, like Arizona, Florida, and Georgia, have already implemented no-excuse absentee voting.

I was an election official for 20 years, part of that as the chief election official in our State, the secretary of state. I am absolutely confident that nobody takes the security of the elections and the confidence in the elections and the ability to register and vote in an easy way more seriously than people who are directly answerable to their neighbors, if they are the local official, or to the people who vote for them, if they are the State official.

President Obama said in 2016 that the diversity of this statewide system was one of the strengths of our system--the State-run system-- and one of the reasons it would make it really hard for any outside entity--any foreign entity, any outside group--to truly try to rig a national election.

I have got more to say. I am going to submit the rest of my remarks for the record. I am sure there will be more time to talk about this next week.

On ballot harvesting, 62 percent of people in one poll are opposed to ballot harvesting. Ballot harvesting is when you ask somebody to give you their ballot. You say: I will turn it in for you.

Well, maybe--who would know?

I will put it in the mail for you.

Who would know? If it never gets to the counting place, it just got lost in the mail.

One of the reasons it might have gotten lost in the mail is the ballot harvester knows, with almost certainty, that the way you marked your ballot is not the way the ballot harvester would prefer to have the ballots marked.

Seventy percent of Americans support voter maintenance. That is eliminated in many ways by the law being proposed.

One proposal even went so far as to tell States the kind of paper their ballots would be printed on. If you really want to make it easy to impact an election, be sure that somebody knows the exact paper that every entity in America prints their ballots on and gets some of that to use to try to divert the election and make the election less secure.

We are going to hear a lot about this over the next couple of days. I certainly would welcome the opportunity to have more time, and I am sure I will have more time, to talk about what is in these bills, both the State bills and the Federal bills, as opposed to what people are saying is in both bills.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, on Monday, the United States set a new pandemic record with more than 1 million new cases in 24 hours. I am sure you and I and everyone who is thinking about this would have hoped we would be in a very different place right now than we are, but it is pretty significant, 2 years into the pandemic, to set that kind of record.

What is most concerning about this is many people who are concerned with catching the virus or who think they may already have it can't get access to tests. I just heard earlier today on a call where the administration was providing information that they have asked for a request for information about who could provide a test and then made a request for proposals about who might be able to provide tests.

But we are way down the road to be asking about who can provide tests. Congress has provided more than $80 billion for COVID testing. If you look at the size of the defense budget, this is a pretty big percentage of the defense budget.

We have lost track, I think, of how much money $1 billion or $1 trillion or $80 billion is, but the administration has had $80 billion. Over half of it, $47 billion, they got in March in the American Rescue Plan. This is supposed to cover everything from research and development of new rapid tests to manufacturing and purchase of these tests, to funding for State and local governments to distribute these tests. Here we are 9 months later, and we are concerned that we don't have tests because we don't have enough tests.

For the last month, Americans have faced long lines at testing centers. They have gone to places where they thought they could purchase a rapid test to find empty shelves.

The question I really have is the same that many Americans have, which is what went wrong? Why are we facing such a shortage of tests now? How could we possibly have had $80 billion available for a minimum of 9 months and now we are back in a testing problem?

I think the answer surely is not a lack of funding but, I think, more fundamentally, a lack of strategy, a lack of priority, and a failure to anticipate the ongoing testing needs by the administration.

When this administration came into office, their COVID-19 policy could have been called ``Vaccines First.'' And while I have been vaccinated and while I have urged all Americans to get a vaccine unless your doctor tells you not to, it has always been clear to me that the vaccine was only one part of the process.

In fact, if you remember, from the very first, the vaccines were at a level that indicated that roughly 1 out of 10 people that had a vaccine would also get COVID. What we know now is that person who gets COVID that had a vaccine is not going to be incredibly affected by it, in all likelihood, but it shouldn't have been a shock that many people who got a vaccine would also get COVID and would also want to know if they had

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the rollcall vote be announced.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Madam President, Dr. Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health, will retire this month after serving as the Director since 2009. That will be 12 years in one of the most challenging jobs in Washington, maybe even in the world.

Dr. Collins served under three Presidents in that job. No other person has served under more than one President. During that 12 years, certainly there had been amazing advances in healthcare.

As a Washington Post reporter put it, and this was a quote from his article, ``News that Francis Collins is stepping down as Director of the National Institutes of Health is a bit like hearing that Santa Claus is handing off his reindeer reins.'' This is the time of year to think about that.

When he announced his retirement earlier this year, it was certainly followed by a flood of comments from the scientific community. They used words like ``brilliant,'' ``national treasure,'' ``smartest man in any room,'' ``beloved,'' and ``gentleman.'' I would also echo those words. I think I would add, from the great opportunities I have had to work with him and spend time with him, ``straightforward,'' ``kind,'' ``respected.'' By the way, he never seems

to need to act like the smartest person in any room even if and when he is.

You know, throughout the 12 years he has been Director, he has made countless contributions to biomedical research and public health. Under his leadership, the NIH started groundbreaking research programs like the BRAIN Initiative, which is aimed at revolutionizing our understanding of the human brain, and the All of Us Precision Medicine Initiative, which is a historic effort to try to tailor medical care to the individual, and we see that is where medical care is going.

As the Director of the NIH, Francis presided over the creation of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, which translates basic science discoveries into cures. He started the Cancer Moonshot and the Accelerating Medicines Partnership and increased investment in Alzheimer's and opioid research. He also steered the U.S. Research Enterprise during a once-in-a-lifetime infectious disease pandemic. Without his vision and leadership, we may not have been able to develop and deliver several FDA-approved COVID vaccines, COVID therapies, and diagnostic tests in less than a year.

We wouldn't want to forget that this wasn't the first major health challenge that Dr. Collins navigated us through. He also led the responses to the H1N1 flu outbreak in 2009 and to the 2014 and 2015 Ebola outbreak. It does sort of make you wonder why he was still there when this pandemic came along, but, again, we are fortunate that he was.

His impact on health and healthcare really didn't start when he became the NIH Director. In fact, before becoming Director, he made significant contributions to the research field of genetics. He codiscovered the gene that causes cystic fibrosis, and he found genes for Huntington's disease and type 2 diabetes.

Maybe his most significant scientific contribution was to head the Human Genome Project, which mapped and sequenced the full human genome for the first time. That monumental effort has allowed scientists to unlock some of the great mysteries of human life. It has created the potential to develop treatments and cures for some of our most serious diseases. What it has really done is to have allowed us to begin to think about personalized medicine--realizing that every person is different than every other person and that everybody has the capacity to fight back against any disease that challenges them. Usually, the disease can quickly overwhelm that capacity, which is why the addition of immunotherapy and the addition of personalized medicine are such critical tools for today.

His work had a tremendous impact at the time, and it will have an even greater impact. We can see that impact as we move forward and look at how we need to look at personalized medicine. All of this has been accomplished in a way wherein very few scientists, I think, could have had the articulation of vision that Francis has to share it in a way that people can not only begin to understand these concepts but buy into the concepts.

Certainly, one of the proudest accomplishments I had in the Senate with him was in working to increase NIH funding. When I became chairman of that committee 7 years ago, we had a 10-year stagnation, really, in funding. In working with Senator Durbin, who was here earlier this morning and talked about Dr. Collins--I tried to grab, to join, that moment but couldn't--and with Senator Alexander and Senator Murray on our side of the building and many others and in working with Congressman Cole and now-Chairwoman DeLauro of the Committee on Appropriations on the other side, we just decided we were going to make NIH research a priority and, over the next 7 years, increase funding by 43 percent at a time when so many things were happening so quickly.

Francis Collins, of course, not only was part of sharing that goal but, frankly, was also part of saying: Don't come up with a goal where, when you get there, you are going to stop. Let's keep moving forward as long as we are making the kinds of scientific advances that we know the country needs to make and the world needs to make. And we are doing that.

Finally, he may be remembered the most in many cases for the hope he just has been able to bring to patients and communities. He is a physician. He is a scientist. He has been the Director of NIH, as I said, for 12 years. But part of his real ability is the ability to share who he is and to share the potential of science.

During the time of COVID, we saw Francis coming up with songs and other ways to really focus on the pandemic and the way we need to respond to that pandemic. He is an incredibly skillful person. His legacy, I think, will live through generations of researchers. He has inspired the countless lives he has touched. His impact will be felt for a long time.

I just want to say, on behalf of all of my colleagues--all of whom have been part of that progress of making NIH and health research a priority--thank you, Francis, for your leadership, for your friendship, and for your public service.

I think we are a little beyond our time on this side, but I am grateful for my friend from Rhode Island who is willing to let me have a chance to make the points I wanted to make. And I think, as is often the case here, many of them have already been made and were just made pretty well by Senator Portman, certainly, in the spending bill he was talking about and the tax bill that he was talking about.

We keep hearing that a majority of all Americans like these programs; that if they could just know what was in the bill, they would like the bill. We are going to have some time now over the next few weeks, I am confident, to talk about what is in the bill. These are programs that are supposed to make life better for everyday Americans. Things like paid family leave, I am sure would be helpful in many, many cases.

But what the Senator from Ohio was just talking about, you know, four times what this bill would spend on paid family leave it pays on tax cuts for the wealthiest families.

When people begin to look at that, they are going to have to wonder, how is that priority established to where

the second biggest spending item in the entire bill would be tax cuts for the wealthiest families in America--$230 billion of that $1.7 trillion is tax cuts for those families. The deductibility of State and local taxes goes from $10,000 as a cap to $80,000 as a cap.

Let me just repeat what I think I just heard, which was that 70 percent of this tax break--70 percent of that entire $230 billion--goes to the top 5 percent of all taxpayers; 94 percent goes to the top 20 percent; and 85 percent goes to the top 10 percent.

Those are pretty big numbers in a bill that is supposed to make life easier for everyday American challenges.

Now, I am sure the top 5 percent of all taxpayers have their own challenges. I am also sure they are different than my challenges, but they are not the challenges that everyday Americans face. It is pretty amazing, I think, in all the discussion of what this bill is designed to do, that that is what would happen.

Vaccine Mandate

Madam President, let me talk about one other topic as I make way here for the Senator from Rhode Island. I want to talk a little bit about the vaccine mandate and what I am hearing about that.

Yesterday, in a vote in the Senate on the Congressional Review Act, which is when we have an opportunity to look at regulations proposed by the administration, 52 Senators from both parties--Senators from both parties made up that 52--voted not to go forward with this mandate.

It is very possible to be pro-vaccine and not pro-mandate. I am pro- vaccine. Over and over again, I have recommended to my friends and my family that you get the first shot and, now, if you are available for the booster shot after you have had either one or two of the other shots, to get that one too. The vaccines have made a big difference. Frankly, my advice would be, unless your doctor tells you you shouldn't do this, I think you ought to do it.

The mandate just appears not to be working. I am not even going to assume it was designed in a way that the administration thought it would have the impact it appears to be having, but it is clear and it is out there. You know it, and I know it.

I have visited with Missouri hospital administrators, and they may have been at a place where, just a few days ago, if that mandate had gone into effect, you couldn't have gotten Medicare or Medicaid patients paid for at your hospital if you weren't 100-percent vaccinated.

Now, fortunately, a Federal court said: No, we are not sure the President has the authority to do that, so we are going to postpone that.

But as we approached that deadline, I kept hearing more and more hospital administrators say: We think we can get almost all of our professional staff vaccinated, but we are not even sure about that. We are absolutely sure we can't get 100 percent of the people--those who work in the cafeteria, who mop the floors, and who provide security for the building--vaccinated. So we wouldn't be able to participate in those programs, and that would create a serious problem, particularly in small, rural hospitals.

There is the next mandate, the one for every group that has more than 100 employees in it. All kinds of police officers, for whatever reason, either don't want to get vaccinated or don't want to be told they have to be vaccinated. You know, we have enough problems right now in finding police officers and firemen and first responders that, if you delete those forces, our current problems will be even bigger. That is what will happen.

If you have got that 100-person force but you still want to be a police officer, in all likelihood, within driving distance, there is a 20-person police force or a 5-person police force. It may be a little easier, safer job anyway, and you will not have to be told by the government what you have to do.

I am hearing that from schools. We have schools where the National Guard is driving school buses. By the way, a lot of the people in the National Guard are thinking about leaving the National Guard if they have to do something like this.

You know, what people really, I think, resent is when government tells them: You have to do this, and you have to do it for your own good.

If it is for your own good, that is probably a decision that you should be allowed to make.

Whether you are allowed to make it or not, this is the response to all of these mandates, whether it is the Health and Human Services mandate on hospitals; the mandate on Federal contractors--and, by the way, we need those Federal contractors or we wouldn't have contracted with them--or the mandate on policemen and firemen and grocery store workers.

I saw a number the other day of 50-some percent--I think it was 56 percent--of the people who work in a grocery store would rather work somewhere else after what they have gone through in the last year: shorthanded; more people getting food at the grocery store than ever before. They are looking for a reason to say: OK. I am done with this.

We need our grocery store workers. We need our healthcare providers. We need our policemen. We need our firemen. We need our school bus drivers. We need our schoolteachers.

This is not working. Fortunately, up to now, Federal judge after Federal judge has said: We don't think you have the authority to do this, and we are going to suspend the implementation of these mandates.

I think this gives the Biden administration a chance to look at this again and realize that the unintended consequences of what they were trying to do might be more significant than the consequences of what would happen if you forced compliance.

I thank my friend for giving us a few extra minutes.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this is always a very busy time of the year if we are still here, and it has been a long time since the Congress wasn't here in the first of December. There have been years within the last couple of decades where we actually got our work done fairly close to the time that the spending year started. We are not close to doing that now. In fact, the apparent best-case scenario is that we will need to extend this year's spending--the spending that ended on September 30--through most of the month of February before we really can get down to the work that you and I would like to see happen, as we serve on the Appropriations Committee.

We are here a lot of times in December, but we are seldom here in December without having made a real start on the work that has to be done. Instead of the work that has to be done, we seem to be down to the work that our friends on the other side really want to do. Of course, that means the trillions of dollars of spending beyond what we would normally spend.

That is being described by people as transformative, as once-in-a- century, as FDR-like. The one thing it is for sure is it is 100 percent partisan. Nobody expects a single Member of the Senate on the Republican side to vote for this reckless tax-and-spending bill.

You can tell, as you listen to the description of the bill, that there is beginning to be more and more worry about what the American people are thinking that this bill might really wind up doing to their families and to the country. When they hear that it is going to be transformative, when they hear that the entire economy will be different and people's problems will change in dramatic ways, people really begin to have to wonder how that happens, particularly when we hear that this won't cost anything.

Well, of course it is going to cost something. You can say all you want to, that the cost is zero, but the cost can't possibly be zero of something that is going to transform the economy and solve people's problems. Somebody is going to have to pay for that.

At one time, it appeared that, well, maybe we will just raise every bit of those extra spending dollars on new tax dollars. That hasn't happened yet in any bill that has been brought forward. In fact, the bill that the Senate is going to receive from the House has an actual deficit, even by the Congressional Budget Office standards, of about $350 billion.

In 2019, we almost decided that we couldn't move forward on the debt ceiling because the Speaker of the House said: We are not going to help on the debt ceiling unless there is another $19 billion of domestic spending.

This was 2019. We spent weeks fighting about whether we would spend another $19 billion. The Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary Mnuchin, was down here about once or twice every week in the negotiations that it would take to decide if we are going to spend $19 billion. Now we are talking about a $350 billion addition to the national debt, and that is even if you accept all the gimmicks in the bill.

There are other negative effects as well. One of those big negative effects will be, of course, the impact of inflation on families. We are already seeing the impact of the big--the spending bill in March, the $1.9 trillion of spending that out of nowhere came into the economy, totally unpaid for, totally partisan.

Last year, we had five bipartisan bills that both sides worked hard to do what we needed to to respond to COVID, to try to stabilize the economy. This year, we started off the year in March with an almost $2 trillion totally partisan bill, and that partisan bill is beginning to have the kinds of effects you would expect it would have.

Costs are going up. There is more money out there, and mostly there is just money that is just made up out of thin air. It is borrowed, where the government is borrowing from itself. We are issuing bonds and buying the bonds at the Fed and then sending money to people. They are spending that money, and, of course, that has an impact on costs.

Then there are energy policies that have an impact on costs as well-- the immediate decision to not move forward with a significant energy pipeline that was being built; the immediate decision to do what we could to reduce the domestic production of energy. That has had exactly the results you would expect it to have, just like putting this money into the economy has had a result. So everything from home heating costs, which are estimated to go up as much as 50 percent this year if the weather is no worse than last year, to filling up your gas tank--we have a chance of setting a new personal record every time you pull up to the gas tank and wonder how much money you can put in that empty gas tank today--to buying groceries, to even getting people together for the holidays.

Independent analysts of the big tax-and-spending spree say that the number isn't $1.7 trillion, but it is about three times that, about $4.8 trillion. Now, how could you go from 1.7 to 4.8 just like that? You do it by assuming, as our friends who are sponsors of the bill do, that the spending in the bill will actually be spent over the entire 10 years.

There is one program where families with kids at home get a check every month from the government. That program costs about $450 billion a year, and it is in the bill for 1 year. Well, nobody on the other side believes it is going to be in the bill for 1 year, and nobody voting against the bill is at all certain that it is going to be there for 1 year. Most of the analysts say, no, that is going to be there for not 1 year but all 10 years. So you add another $450 billion times nine, and suddenly you have added trillions more in spending to the bill.

There are other programs that last 2 years, and some programs last 4 years. Almost none of the programs that are to be paid for in 10 years--and even with a $350 billion deficit--almost none of the programs to be paid for in 10 years last 10 years. They are just in there to get the program started, to get people convinced that they really need the government to do something for them that the government hasn't done before, and then see if we can extend that.

As I mentioned, back in March, we had already done this once with a totally partisan $1.9 trillion spending bill. What happened after March? We got inflation to a 30-year high in the August numbers and consumer confidence to a 10-year low. You have to work pretty hard to get inflation at a 30-year high and consumer confidence at a 10-year low, but that is what happens when you put $1.9 trillion into the economy that wouldn't have been there otherwise.

So what would happen if you put $4.8 trillion into the economy that wouldn't be there otherwise? The people who are most impacted by the results of that are the very people the bill purportedly is going to help, is designed to help. We are going to solve all of your problems. Well, first of all, the government is not going to get that done. We are going to solve Americans' everyday problems, but if you do that by raising their costs higher than their pay can go up, you haven't done anybody a favor.

President Biden campaigned on a return to normal, but he is governing on what his self-described allies say is radical change. Well, those two things seem to me to be in pretty big conflict. You can't have ``return to normal'' and ``radical change'' at the same time.

There was no mandate in the last election. The Senate is as evenly divided as it could possibly be--50-50. In the House, Democrats have the closest margin that they have had in 170 years and one of the closest margins that anybody has had in decades.

Americans want their elected representatives to stop selling every crisis as an opportunity to impose another one-sided view of how the country needs to move forward.

You hear and I hear at home and even from the press: When is the Congress going to work together? Well, we worked together last year to do five bills to respond to the COVID and economic crisis, and we did that together. That was a pretty good model. Frankly, I think it was the model that the American people were thinking about when they voted for this closely divided Congress and in a fairly closely divided Presidential race at the conclusion of the election.

Families need real solutions to the challenges they face. Reckless tax and spending, driving inflation, sending gas prices to alltime highs and home heating prices to alltime highs and increasing the cost at the grocery store--if there are things to buy at the grocery store-- by 15 or 20 percent surely, isn't what we want to pass on to our children, our grandchildren, our people, hard-working families out there today trying to make things happen and make things better for their families.

I yield the floor.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty), and the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Thune).

Madam President, one of the most striking things, I think, we are beginning to notice this year is that the holidays are taking on a really different look than we have seen in a long time.

Actually, for about a generation now, we have seen more choices and, more often than not, declining prices, which has made it possible for American families to have things that, in the past, they had not thought were possible for them to have.

The pandemic, of course, was a big obstacle a year ago, as people were forced to alter or cancel their plans for their families to get together. And I think many of us were really looking forward to a more traditional holiday season this year. Hopefully, that season still allows people to get together.

But I think we are also beginning to see people think they are going to have to scale back their celebrations or be prepared to pay a lot more for them; maybe just simply paying a lot more to get there, to start with, as gasoline costs have gone up dramatically. I think we are about 46 percent higher in our gas costs than we were a year ago. For a lot of families, that is a deciding item of whether you can actually get to Grandma's house or not.

This time, the change in plans isn't because of the virus; it is because of inflation and supply side issues that, frankly, the government has done a lot to help cause.

Jason Furman, who was the Chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, said recently: ``The original sin was [the size of the] American Rescue Plan.''

According to Jason Furman, he said: ``It contributed to both higher output [and] also higher prices.''

Now, what he was talking about was the American Rescue Plan. This was the so-called COVID relief plan from March. It was a law that the Democrats passed entirely by themselves--despite there being a lot of warnings that the economy was already beginning to recover--that put another $2 trillion into the economy, including a lot of money that went to State governments that, clearly, didn't need it and local governments that, maybe, needed it a little more than the States did.

We had States that were having alltime high revenues, and we had already

helped States in a number of different ways. Then, suddenly, we had to beat all of that by sending money to States and sending $2,000 to everybody, almost, and thought that wouldn't have any impact.

I am not sure who we were trying to save in this effort for relief. There was no reason to believe, in March, that the economy wasn't headed on the way back. What we did in March with that legislation was just pour more fire on an economy that was already about to roar back in a good way.

The warnings were right on the money. In October, inflation rose 6.2 percent over the cost of a year ago. That is the highest increase in inflation in 30 years.

A lot of Americans alive today and, certainly, a lot of Americans who are in the workforce today don't remember the inflation of the seventies and the early eighties that made it just hard for families to keep up; that made it hard for families to buy a house; that made it hard for families to pay the basic bills.

I hope that we are not going to get a strong reminder of that, but it certainly looks like we are.

The prices for many of the things that will be on the Thanksgiving table are going up. The New York Times, about 2 weeks ago, had a front- page article that this would be the most expensive Thanksgiving ever. Then they went through that list of things to talk about that.

The price of turkey, by the way, has gone down a little bit in the last few days. It was projected to be 20 percent higher. It is only 18 percent higher. So your principal protein on the Thanksgiving table will cost 20 percent more or 18 percent more than it did a year ago.

Other protein is even higher than that. Potatoes are 17 percent higher than they were a year ago. Green beans are 39 percent higher than they were a year ago.

I don't know if we are beginning to see a pattern here or not, but there, clearly, is one.

Butter is about 30 percent higher than it was a year ago. If your grandmother's recipe for stuffing--or, as my grandmother called it, dressing; we had turkey and dressing when I was growing up--includes onions, onions are 50 percent higher than they were a year ago.

So, between the labor shortages, the high costs of raw materials, and more expensive transportation, the food supply chain is just about as messed up as the rest of the supply chain.

We don't import nearly as much food as we may import other things, but that food supply chain isn't working for us either.

Now, shoppers are already beginning to see bare spaces on grocery store shelves. Places you were going 6 months ago, when you had a choice or even 6 weeks ago when you had a choice, suddenly there is one item there of what you are trying to buy or maybe no items of what you are trying to buy. There is just simply not a choice that you can make at the store because the product you want to get is not there--and not just the brand-name product, the product is not there in growing cases.

What are we going to see when the Christmas holiday--the holiday shopping season really begins right after Thanksgiving. Black Friday, or whatever other day you are going to do that shopping in, I think you are going to see--American families and American individuals are going to see lots of challenges.

Wait times for ocean freight--we have all seen those pictures now of the backup of ships waiting to get to the port in every port in the country--every port in the country. Wait times are about 45 percent longer than it was last year at this time.

Shipping rates from China are around 400 percent, four times higher than they were a year ago. Things that cost $2,000 a container now are much more likely to cost something like $12, $15, or even $20,000, just for the container--moving the container from where it is filled up to where it gets off the boat at one of our ports.

Traffic jams at the big ports are a problem in every place. There is a shortage of 80,000 truckdrivers to move things once they get unloaded.

We made it so appealing for some people to stay home from work that they have, at this point, still decided not to go back to work or decided to retire early. They were getting that enhanced unemployment check for a couple of years, decided that maybe that life in the truck, which is a hard life, or that life on the dock, which is a hard life, or that life at the grocery store stocking shelves, which can be challenging every single day, or any other job was just not a job that they were going to go back to.

I mentioned President Obama's economic adviser earlier. Well, he said another pretty revealing thing at the same time when he talked about supply-side problems. He said, and this is his quote also: ``It would be foolish to count on a return to normal within the next year.'' Within the next year.

So things are not going to get better if we don't get back. They are likely to get worse.

Then he said inflation ``is likely to remain uncomfortably high.''

Now, I am not going to talk about what his personal economic circumstances may be, but if they are uncomfortably high for him, they are painfully high for lots of families.

So here we go again. By the way, not only was the $2 trillion bill done just by one party--not a single Republican voted for it in March. Not only did that feed the flames of inflation, but now we are right back talking about a bill that if every program was extended through the 10 years, it would be a $4 or $5 trillion bill. It is impossible to understand how you wouldn't see that as another thing that is going to really create great risk. We have had every warning sign we could possibly have.

When Washington pays people not to work, it gets awfully difficult to fill all the open jobs. When Washington gives people money that Washington has borrowed or just simply kind of made up, that is awfully hard.

The predictions that have been made about what happens with excessive unemployment payments, the predictions that have been made about money borrowed and put into the economy that we don't have, have actually turned out to be right on target.

So Republicans are warning again, if our colleagues on the other side continue to plan to move forward with another--however number you want to describe it. I think it is very fair, if all of these programs are extended, to describe it as $4 to $5 trillion. It is fair to describe it as $2 trillion, if actually you start these programs that people will like having government take this new responsibility and then think they can actually stop after 1 year or 2 years or 3 years.

Nobody believes that, and frankly I don't know anybody on the other side who thinks that is the plan. They understand the plan is to have a $2 trillion pricetag and a $5 trillion ultimate payout for the things that that pricetag starts to pay for.

Nothing about being uncomfortably high--let's talk about the pain that you could have as you tighten your belts not just for the holidays but for the foreseeable future.

Transportation, food, home heating in the winter, it doesn't get more basic than that. And if transportation costs go up, gasoline goes up 46 percent, food goes up 15 to 20 percent. Home heating costs are projected, in many places, to go up somewhere between 50 and 100 percent. Even if you got a little bit of a raise at work, that raise is immediately taken away by just the basic fundamental things you have to have.

We need to work with our friends on the other side. We need our friends on the other side to see the warning signs of what has happened with what we have done, what has been done this year already, and exactly understand what will happen.

If we do more of the same, we are going to get more of the same, and more of what is happening right now is not what people we work for need or deserve. I hope we get serious about the things that our actions create.

With that, I yield back.

Mr. President, there are lots of things we disagree on here on the Senate floor, but one thing we all agree on is the importance of getting the right people to help us do these jobs.

I rise today to honor one of my outstanding staff members, Derek Coats.

Derek has recently been awarded the Great Griffon Award by his alma mater, Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, MO. The Great Griffon Award is given to those Missouri Western alumni who have made outstanding contributions to the workforce, to society, or to Missouri Western. Derek has done all three.

After graduating from Missouri Western in 2002, with a bachelor's degree in political science, Derek began his service to Missouri in the U.S. Senate, in the office of my predecessor, Senator Bond. He served on Senator Bond's staff through 2010 in a variety of different jobs, rising to the role of district office director.

When I came to the Senate in 2011, I asked Derek to join my team. Since then, he has served as my State director and deputy chief of staff, overseeing day-to-day operations across five statewide offices.

Derek regularly spends his days traveling the State, meeting with Missourians and hearing their issues and concerns. The information he shares with me from those visits ensures our work in Washington aligns with the critical needs and priorities of our State. To provide just one of many examples, this information assisted in my efforts to work with others to restore year-round Pell grants to community colleges and all colleges and universities in our State. That, of course, included Derek's alma mater, Missouri Western.

Derek's knowledge and experience are an incredible asset to me and to

our entire team. The work he has done in the Senate has touched the lives of so many Missourians, and our State is all the better because of it. Missourians and I have benefited from having Derek on our team, and I am glad he is being recognized for his hard work. He has so much to be proud of, as does his wife Kellie Ann and his son Carter.

It is certainly my pleasure to join Missouri Western State University in honoring Derek Coats for his service to the State of Missouri and, frankly, for his service to the entire country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to thank my good friend Senator Moran for actually all he has done to try to make it possible to see the FIFA World Cup games come to Kansas City.

This is the biggest sporting event in the world. Frankly, soccer has become a bigger part of the entire American society. Kids are playing soccer out there before they can really focus on which way the soccer ball is supposed to go. There is maybe nothing more fun than watching the 3- and 4-year-old soccer match just to see what happens in that match. But around the world, it is important. It is important where Jerry and I live. Giant banners with the phrase ``We Want the Cup'' are proudly displayed on buildings. They are on the streetcar. They are everywhere you want to look. The Kansas City Chiefs' quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, and the Royals' catcher, Salvador Perez, are leading the charge to bring the World Cup to Kansas City.

There is no question that sports are a major part of where we live, professional and nonprofessional. The Women's World Cup in 2019 was celebrated by fans watching games in the Power & Light District. They were broadcast on TV all over the world. Watching Kansas City fans watch the World Cup, we saw hundreds of thousands of fans flood the streets to join the Kansas City Royals in celebrating their World Series title in 2015. We saw an incredible crowd when the Kansas City Chiefs brought home the Lombardi Trophy in 2019. In 2023, Kansas City will host the NFL Draft.

So if our friends from the World Cup selection team are watching, there are others things that have happened to give evidence to the great sports heartbeat of Kansas City. There is plenty to look at and plenty to see. We have the infrastructure we think we need to meet that world sporting event.

Arrowhead Stadium, as Senator Moran mentioned, is top notch. It is a great place for fans. It is a great place to feel the sense of the game and what can happen there. Local leaders have done everything they could, I think, to secure the right kind of practice fields, the right kind of facilities. Children's Mercy Park would be one of those. In 2021, the Concacaf Gold Cup was hosted there.

Mayor Quinton Lucas is here today. In fact, he is here watching us today from the Gallery. He is here advocating for all things Kansas City but is a particular advocate for seeing this world-class event come to Kansas City.

Location is another advantage we have. We are right in the middle of the country. We are close to the host cities in Canada and in Mexico that would be part of this event. I think we are better positioned than the other 16 cities to really move forward on this bid.

The new airport, as Senator Moran mentioned, will be welcoming to whoever comes to this event if they come to Kansas City. They are going to be pleased with that facility.

There are lots of opportunities in Kansas City to spend your free time and enjoy what we get to enjoy all the time: the famous barbecue, the world-class museums, the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City, the Nelson-Atkins art gallery. There is really a vibrant nightlife and music scene in Kansas City today.

Nearby States have agreed that Kansas City is the right choice. It has become the Midwest choice for this event. In May, associations that represent 310,000 youth soccer players, coaches, and referees from the Midwest came together to endorse the Kansas City bid.

The financial benefits are obviously benefits that we would be excited about if we get a chance to host this. According to the Kansas City Sports Commission CEO and president, Kathy Nelson, the economic impact on the region could be up to $1 billion.

With a rich sports culture, endless entertainment options, strong infrastructure, and an easily accessible central location in our country, Kansas City is the right choice for the 2026 FIFA World Cup host city, and Senator Moran and I and our colleagues from Kansas and Missouri endorse this effort and are glad that the selection team is looking today at what they are going to get if they decide to come to Kansas City.

I yield the floor.

Well, Madam President, in just a few short months this year, we have seen a long list of problems develop in the country. Some of them my good friend the Senator from West Virginia just talked about. They range from inflation and debt to the hiring crisis, major disruptions in the supply chain.

When I was home in Missouri last week meeting with all kinds of employers and all kinds of businesses, big and small, everybody said: We can't find workers; we can't get the supplies we need; and we can't keep up with inflation.

What is astonishing to me is the Democrats continue to move forward with their $3.5 trillion reckless tax-and-spending spree. And, you know, it is easy to take that number and just reduce the length of time you are going to try out all these new policies, and we are going to have to talk about that because that is going to be a big mistake.

In fact, the $3.5 trillion reckless tax-and-spending spree, I think, easily--if you extend all of the policies through the whole 10 years-- becomes a $5 trillion reckless tax-and-spending spree. If you reduce the policies, it is pretty easy to get it to $2 trillion.

But if you reduce the policies by just saying, ``Instead of 10 years, we are going to have this policy for 3 years; instead of 5 years, we are going to have this policy for 1 year,'' all you have done is put future Congresses in a place where, frankly, Democrats would hope they can't say no.

After a year of the program, they can't say no to the second year of the program; or after 3 years of the program, they can't say no. I wouldn't take a whole lot of solace in the idea that we are going to reduce the number unless we look at the policies behind the number.

Now, some of my colleagues and some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle--the side of the aisle that the Presiding Officer will be sitting on now, the majority side of the aisle--have jumped headlong into this for the most part, but some of our colleagues have really raised some important questions.

For instance, one Senator said recently that expanding social programs while ignoring the millions of open jobs--this is that Senator's quote--``will only feed a dysfunction that could weaken our economic recovery.''

And, of course, that is exactly right. Businesses across the country are trying to hire workers for the more than 10 million job openings. Half the small businesses say they have jobs that they are struggling to fill--one-half of all small businesses.

I was in Farmington, MO, one day last week, and somebody at that roundtable said: I used to say we need to do whatever it takes to get skilled labor, and then occasionally I would say we need to do whatever it takes to get part-time labor. Now I am saying we need to do whatever it takes to get labor.

Because they can't fill the jobs they have.

What I was hearing all over our State, and I think every Senator in this body is hearing the same thing, which is that people can't find the people they need to do the work. Part of the reason that there are empty store shelves is you can't get people to keep those store shelves stocked, but part of the reason is that they can't get things to the stores to put on the shelves.

Everything from shipyards to trucking routes, to supply chains aren't working the way they should right now, and, largely, it is because they don't have the help they need to have.

Now, I am all for looking at our long-term supply chain needs, bringing things closer to our shores when we can do that, but that is not the problem right now. The problem right now is we can't get the things that come to our country to the places that they need to go, nor the things that are made in our country to the places they need to go.

Businesses are trying to keep up with worker demand, but worker shortage is making that impossible. Expanding and creating government pay--government handouts, I think, was what one of our colleagues on the Democratic side had referred to them as--if they are not connected to need or to work

doesn't make sense. We all want to help people who are in need, but we all want to do that in a rational way.

Another Democratic Senator pointed out the danger of all this extra government spending the President wants is going to really drive up inflation. And that is also correct. You can't put hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy and not have that drive up inflation.

If people have money that they wouldn't have otherwise, particularly money we had to borrow to get there or money we had to take out of the functioning economy to get there, that money gets spent, but not in the way that you would want it to be spent to grow an economy and do the best things for individuals and families.

The big spending spree really began in March with a partisan--a totally partisan, one-side-of-the-aisle only--$2 trillion so-called COVID-19 relief law.

But, frankly, it was a recovery plan when a recovery was well underway. I think the recovery plan slowed down the recovery and made it less likely that people would get back to work. It made it more likely that people would have money to spend that they wouldn't have otherwise and drive inflation.

The expert opinion of economists on both sides of the aisle, who said that what was done in March of this year would assure inflation would rise, it is exactly the same thing they are saying about the bill that is being debated right now. It has already happened, and it is happening. Americans are paying more for everything from groceries to gasoline, to a big purchases, like a new car, or even a used car is selling at a new sudden premium.

Consumer prices have jumped 5.4 percent from 1 year ago. That is not the kind of thing that does anything to help families. In fact, according to Moody's Analytics, a family earning an average income of about $70,000 is spending an extra $175 a month on food, fuel, and housing because of what that article referred to as President Biden's inflation.

The White House Chief of Staff the other day, when I asked about inflation, said: Well, inflation was really a ``high class problem.''

I am not exactly sure what a high class problem means. If it means it is a big problem, that is right. If it means as I think it means, it is a problem that only wealthy Americans have to deal with, that couldn't be right. It is not an upper-class problem or a high-income problem. It is a problem that hits low-income households the hardest.

In the University of Michigan's latest survey of consumers said that only 70 percent of the people in that survey--that consumer survey, only 30 percent of people expect to be financially better off next year than they are right now. Seventy percent thought they would either be worse off or not make any gains at all.

That is not what we were seeing in 2018 and 2019 under the other tax policies where, for the first time in a couple of decades, the distribution of new income was strong at the lowest levels of working families.

The Democratic response is: Let's raise taxes. Let's spend trillions of dollars. Let's pile up more debt.

Or that one theory: No, it won't cost anything because we are paying for it.

Well, obviously, if you are paying for it, it had to cost something.

And how are you paying for it?

You are paying for it by taking things out of the economy in one hand and shoving them back into the economy with another.

At one point, one of our friends on the other side of the aisle expressed his opinion, as he put it, that ``any expansion of social programs must be targeted to those in need and not expanded beyond what is fiscally possible.''

That is, of course, the right position. All of us want to help people in need, but we don't want to expand that group beyond what you can fiscally deal with and not harm their own opportunities in the economy.

This reckless tax-and-spending spree includes a number of ways on how to expand social welfare programs and to cover people with high incomes. They are trying to create permanent, expanded subsidies for ObamaCare insurance plans. Now, we clearly have subsidies. They are clearly permanent. They are clearly substantial. But the bill wants to not only make the subsidies higher, but it wants them to be higher for more people who have higher incomes to start with.

They are also talking about tuition-free community college. Well, there is almost no community college in America today that is not already tuition-free for those people who we have decided are in the greatest need. That is what Pell grants are all about.

There is no community college in Missouri, and few community colleges anywhere in the country, where the full Pell grant doesn't pay all tuition, all books, and all fees with a little money left over to travel back and forth to the campus.

I am a big supporter of Pell grants. I worked a few years ago to go back to where we have year-round Pell grants. So if you are going to school and something is working for you, you can stay in school. You don't have to take a summer off and get a different job and then think you are coming back in the fall to find out that that just didn't work out.

We have solved this problem. If we haven't solved it adequately, well, let's increase the Pell grant amount. And if that doesn't do the job, why don't we increase the amount of family income you can have and still qualify for the maximum Pell grant or some other portion of the Pell grant?

There is an obvious solution here. As a matter of fact, in the markup of the Labor-HHS bill, I think we added $400 to the annual Pell grant this year, which is a pretty substantial increase in that grant. The government already spends more than $28 billion every year for Pell grants.

If you really want to make higher education expensive, make it free. Go to every higher education institution in America, starting with community colleges, and say: We are going to make this free.

I was a university president for 4 years, and we have all seen what happens as we increased the government support for higher education.

I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. I am a big advocate for higher education, but everybody needs to have a stake in the game. You value what you pay for. You value what you have a commitment to. Free usually doesn't get you where you want to get. We don't want to duplicate what we are already doing, and we don't want to create free programs for people who don't need free programs.

Finally, obviously, a lot of emphasis and unease on these tax increases. One of my colleagues on the other side said our Tax Code ``should not weaken our global competitiveness or the ability of millions of small businesses to compete.''

That is undeniably true.

The 2017 Republican-led tax law followed a consensus that we need to bring the U.S. in line with our global competitors. Let's not get out of line and make it harder for us to compete. We were on an incredible trajectory of job creation and pay for all of the working-class families that had been left out of the system for too long. We could easily wipe out those gains with a corporate tax rate increase that loses our competitive advantage to people who we don't want to lose it to.

Democrats are also aiming several of their tax hikes at small businesses and family farms. They plan to hike, we hear, those taxes by 57 percent of the top marginal rate, from 29.6 to 46.4. There are a lot of concerns with the legislation that President Biden and his allies in Congress are trying to push through.

The American economy is struggling against the headwinds of an, frankly, administration that has done so much to create on its own. This terrible legislation would just make everything worse. Let's not work on one side only to make everything worse. Let's see what we can do to work together to make everything better.

With that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, obviously, when you look at what needs to be done in the fall and, frankly, if you look at what needs to be done in the next few weeks, there are important items ahead of us.

One of them that my colleague from Florida just did a good job talking about is setting the debt limit for how much Federal Government debt should the country be able to tolerate.

One way to do this is to set a limit. Another way that some of my colleagues appear to really prefer is just to set a date and say we are going to postpone any limit until that date, and we will just see what happens. We will see how deep the debt gets between now and then. But we really don't want to talk about a limit, and when you look at what that limit is likely to be, you would understand why you wouldn't want to talk about that.

We have really seen this coming for some time. It shouldn't be a crisis, except, frankly, our friends on the other side seem intent on making it a crisis and seeing if they can include all of us suddenly in a spending discussion that we haven't been in up until now. How much debt can we have? How much can we afford? But what we have seen this year is, how much money can one side spend without involving the other side in any way?

We have never approached the debt limit in at least the last 25 years, that I am aware of, in a way that didn't involve talking about spending. In fact, I would argue that there is no real reason to have the debt limit if it doesn't force a discussion on spending. Other countries don't have it; we have it.

One reason I have always thought it actually served a purpose was it always generated a discussion on spending--not just a discussion on full faith and credit but how much money are we going to spend. In fact, when President Obama was President and the debt ceiling had to be extended, we had a discussion about what our spending caps were going to be. We had a decade, because of that, of spending caps. We didn't always stick with them, but to not stick with them, you had to change the law, so that forced another discussion. We have all heard for a decade about the caps deal, the spending caps deal. Well, that was a discussion that was had so there would be a bipartisan agreement on the debt limit.

In June of 2019, we saw the debt limit coming again, and by that time, Speaker Pelosi, who was the Speaker of the House in charge of a majority in the House, said she wouldn't cooperate in doing anything on the debt limit unless the administration agreed to spend more money.

So there you have a spending discussion, but you also have one body of the Congress where the leader of the entire majority is saying: We are not going to be part of the debt limit unless we have an agreement on spending, and we want to spend more. From that moment on, Secretary Mnuchin, the Secretary of the Treasury, was up here over and over again, negotiating with the Speaker of the House on just how much more it was going to take for her to be part of the debt limit.

Now, here we are in almost October, 9 months through the year. Republicans really haven't been asked in any serious way up until now this year how to set parameters for government spending. We would like to spend less; the other side would like to spend more. But no Republicans--zero Republicans--have been involved in a plan to eliminate important parts of the 2017 tax bill that clearly were producing the kinds of economic results we had hoped for at the beginning of the pandemic.

No Republicans were part of the plan to spend right at $2 trillion in the March COVID relief bill even though we really saw our economy already coming back.

By the way--no surprise--when you spend $2 trillion, inflation is one of the things you are going to get when you put that much money into the economy on top of what we put in in 2020 in a bipartisan way to try to stabilize the economy.

Well, the economy was clearly stabilized by the first of last year, and no Republican, again, let me say, was part of how to spend that $2 trillion.

No Republican has been part of the discussion of how to spend what our friends on the other side say would be a $3.5 trillion, reckless tax-and-spending amount. Others estimate that 3.5 really would be 5 trillion. But, again, the point is not how big it would be; the point is, no Republican has been part of that.

If you look at what is actually in that legislation as it comes out of the House, some of the things are pretty amazing. There is $3 billion on a project called Tree Equity. Now, I don't think that is to make all the

trees the same size. I assume that is a project to be sure that everybody has their fair percentage of the trees, whatever that would mean and how you describe that.

There is $200 million for the Presidio, the park in Speaker Pelosi's district--$200 million.

They are talking about $8 billion in that bill for a new Civilian Climate Corps and $7 billion to buy electric vehicles for the Postal Service.

Their plan comes to us with $105 million for ``entrepreneurial training'' for people who are currently or have just been incarcerated.

There is even $5 million in that bill for electronic voting systems for union elections. I am not opposed to union elections and am not opposed to unions having them. It would seem to me that they have up until now figured out how to provide their own equipment for their own elections or rent it or lease it. It is certainly a new sort of government involvement in that activity.

Frankly, the list goes on and on. At $3 trillion, you are likely to have a lot of ideas. Seems to me that a lot of the ideas are, you come up with a number, which is what it takes to eliminate the 2017 tax cuts, and then start talking about, how many new things do we need to do to support that number?

Well, this shouldn't be an emergency. September is pretty late to reach out to the other side and not even now say ``Well, let's talk about our spending priorities,'' but say, ``Well, you need to help us with this because at some point, there is some money that had to be spent that was your responsibility too.''

I guess we could have said that to Speaker Pelosi in 2019 when she said: Not going to do it unless we get more spending. And we wouldn't have had an agreement in the Obama years if we hadn't set a cap on spending.

The truth is, this isn't Speaker Pelosi's money, and it is not Senator Schumer's money, and it is not my money. We are talking about the money that belongs to the American people. They need to have a say in this.

In a 50-50 Senate, one side deciding ``We are going to make all the decisions about spending money'' means that one side is likely to wind up making all the decisions about how to reach the debt limit.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in honoring the 13 servicemembers who were killed in action in Afghanistan last month doing what only the bravest and the most extraordinary Americans do: risking their lives to save others.

Every name has been mentioned on the floor today, but no matter how often we mention those names, we can't restore those individuals to their families. We can't restore them to their communities. We can't restore them to the people they served side by side with in the military.

But we can remember what they did--what they did collectively, and what they did individually.

One of the marines we tragically lost in the attack at Kabul airport was Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz of Wentzville, MO. He was just 6 months old on 9/11. In fact, we have seen that discussion many times of people who now give their life who were babies or not yet born on 9/11, 20 years ago.

Even though he was 6 months old on 9/11, he knew what he wanted to be, and he knew he wanted to be a marine by the time he was a sophomore in high school. He started training as a teenager, years before he enlisted. After graduating from Fort Zumwalt South High School in St. Peters, MO, he realized his dream. He joined the Marines and served as an infantryman.

Jared's father Mark Schmitz says his son--this is his father's quote and it is a great thing to be able to say about your son. Mark Schmitz said his son ``looked out for everybody. Anyone who needed help, he was there. He was selfless. He never put himself first.''

Of course, we see another moment when he and the others whose lives were lost and others who were injured--some dramatically injured-- didn't put themselves first; they put others first.

Friends remember Jared as energetic, as happy, as a faithful fan of the St. Louis Blues. Others will remember him as 1 of 56 Missourians who made the ultimate sacrifice as part of the either Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation Freedom's Sentinel.

We remember and honor each and every one of these heroes from our State and heroes from every State who have given their lives for freedom in this post-9/11 world, where we don't know exactly where the borders are or who--where the enemy might be at any given time, whether they are going to strike at home, where we live, or whether they are going to strike far away, where others are representing us and defending us. We remember and honor each of them.

We pray for their families and all who will feel the loss for the rest of their lives. We need to now do our part every day to live lives worthy of their sacrifice, never taking for granted the freedom and security we have because they were called to serve and support it and guarantee it for another generation.

I know I join all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle as we think of

those who are serving today, those who are willing to pay the ultimate cost and, particularly today, as we focus on these 13 individuals who did pay that price.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am proud to join my friend and my colleague Senator Klobuchar as we introduce and support this amendment.

You know, every day when I come to work at the Capitol, the first person I see is almost always a U.S. Capitol Police officer, and no matter how late I leave at night, the last person I see is almost always a U.S. Capitol Police officer.

I was working in this building on 9/11, and one of the last people to leave that morning as the Capitol Police encouraging us to get out of the building, but the last person I saw as I left the building who was still in the building was a Capitol Police officer.

The Capitol Police have a hard job to do. They not only defend us, but they defend democracy in a way that other police officers are not asked to do, and they always do it at the highest level of professionalism and dedication. That was never more evident than it was on January 6. It was a difficult and sad day for Americans but especially for law enforcement officers who serve and protect the Capitol and for their families.

I have often said that, very possibly, the hardest job to do in America today is to be the family member of someone who works in law enforcement. Maybe the second hardest job is to be the person working in law enforcement. But those families on that day were watching television, listening to the news, seeing their very worst fears play out for all the world to see on a day that was horrific for them, horrific for the person they love, and horrific for those who love this building and what it stands for.

I am incredibly grateful for the heroic actions we saw that day from the Capitol Police, from the Metropolitan Police, who, along with Chief Conte, who was the Acting Chief at the time, were here within 10 or 12 minutes of being called and here in force in that period of time.

Others came from around the region, and all those law enforcement people who were here to help that day, we are deeply appreciative of.

The legislation we have here really calls on us to recognize the selflessness, the dedication, the willingness to stand in the way of danger as others are able to try to get away from danger. It honors the sacrifices they make and their families make every day.

I hope, by passing this Congressional Gold Medal bill by unanimous consent, we send a clear message to law enforcement officers that we are united in our appreciation of all they do to keep us safe.

I urge my colleagues to join not only in supporting the unanimous passage of this bill but also to be quick in talking about our deep appreciation for those who serve in such a special way as we try to do our work here every day.

I yield back.

Madam President, when President Biden was campaigning last year, he made the pledge over and over again that he wouldn't raise taxes on any American making less than $400,000 a year.

Frankly, I think that is a good pledge, and it is one that he keeps making. But right now, it seems that the facts would prove that he and, frankly, our Democrat colleagues here in the Congress are pushing for this reckless tax spree, this reckless spending spree in a way that makes it impossible for him to keep that pledge.

The Tax Foundation--and people can check this if they want to verify these numbers--looked at President Biden's 10-year plan, the plan he outlined in his 2022 budget. This is not a plan that the Tax Foundation or any other group came up with on their own. They found that his plan would mean a higher average tax burden nationwide, including for middle-class Americans.

In some States, the average taxpayer would see increases immediately; in others, tax hikes would grow over time as the various provisions change in the way that the President's plan says they would change.

You know, no matter what the President says, the tax burden is getting heavier under his plan for middle-class families in every State.

In Missouri, the tax burden on the average filer would be $618 higher in 2026 than it is today. In New Hampshire, it would be $1,072 higher than it is today. And maybe most importantly, in Nevada, it would be $1,293 higher than it is today for the average taxpayer.

And if that doesn't convince you, there was another analysis recently. This one was from the reliably liberal Tax Policy Center. It predicted that three out of every four taxpayers earning $75,000 to $100,000 a year would be worse off next year under the Biden plan.

By 2031, that organization estimates that 95 percent of the people making between $75,000 and $100,000 would suffer losses on their tax bill

The tax-and-spending spree envisions monster tax hikes on business, but we all know when you raise taxes on business, they have to get the money from somewhere.

In fact, there are only a couple places to get the money, and one is from workers and one is from customers. And trying to figure out that balance where you don't lose customers and you don't lose workers is pretty hard to figure out. You really can't isolate middle-class workers from these tax impacts. You also can't isolate middle-class customers from these impacts. You can't keep those families from paying higher prices when a chunk of the business tax that the President and Democrats talk about have to get passed on to customers.

So President Biden's tax increases are likely to boost inflation even more than we have seen already, and we have seen a lot of it already. Go to the gas pump, go to the grocery store, go to buy clothes, go to have the basic necessities you have to have, and you are going to see that they are substantially higher than they were a year ago or 2 years ago before COVID, a year ago during COVID.

The President's budget effectively repeals the individual tax cuts enacted by Republicans in 2017. The cuts that were enacted in that law for Americans, really, across income levels, have rate reductions that have to be extended in 4 years. The President's plan doesn't call for extending any of those rate reductions.

Under the President's proposal, someone making $94,000 per year will see her marginal tax rate jump from 24 percent to 28 percent in 2026.

Added to that, you have got higher taxes that Democrats plan to impose on family farmers and ranchers who are hoping to pass along their family business to the next generation.

And, frankly, instead of advocating for these middle-class Americans I have just talked about, our Democratic friends seem to be fixated on restoring the tax break that overwhelmingly benefits wealthy Americans in high-tax States. They are pushing to allow people to deduct more than $10,000 in State and local taxes on their Federal returns.

That scheme, by the way, would allow the top 1 percent of earners to increase their after-tax income by about 2.5 percent, 2.8 percent, while the bottom 60 percent of all filers--if that law is changed back to what it used to be, the bottom 60 percent of all filers would gain less than one one-hundredth percent on average.

It is clear that President Biden's tax hikes will hit a lot of Americans and a lot of Americans that make less than $400,000.

The higher tax costs will hurt people who are already struggling with higher prices at the pump and everywhere they shop, and it will hurt our economic recovery.

My friends may not want to admit--and I wouldn't either if I was them--that they are going to raise taxes on middle-class families, but that is exactly what they are doing. And if anybody doesn't know it now, they will know it if Democrats in the Senate and the House get their way.

I yield the floor.