Floor Statements

Madam President, I rise today to recognize the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled on its 90th anniversary. The National Library Service, or NLS, is an important part of the Library of Congress, an institution that has long been committed to serving readers with disabilities. The concept of a national library for the blind was introduced in 1897 by the seventh Librarian of Congress, John Russell Young, who established a reading room for the blind that included more than 500 books and music items in raised characters.

In 1913, Congress began to require that one copy of each book be made in raised characters and deposited in the Library of Congress for educational use; however, as impressive as this collection was, it was only available to people who were able to visit in person.

In 1930, legislation was introduced in both the House and the Senate to fund a Library of Congress program to provide service to blind readers on a national scale. This led to passage of the Pratt-Smoot Act which, on March 3, 1931, established what we now know as the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled. The act has been amended several times, not only increasing funding for the program, but also expanding service to children and people with physical and reading disabilities and adding what is now the world's largest accessible music materials collection.

Missouri has wonderful local libraries that play a key role in connecting the NLS program to my constituents across the State. NLS and the Wolfner Talking Book and Braille Library serve nearly 6,500 individuals and more than 600 intuitions in Missouri, providing daily access to all the incredible resources NLS has to offer.

NLS is continuing its innovative and adaptive approach to serving Americans with disabilities. NLS has a vibrant history that spans phonograph records, cassette tapes, flash memory cartridges, and the internet, all while continuing to supply hardcopy and digital braille materials. With its modernization efforts underway, NLS no doubt has a very exciting future ahead.

Today, it is my pleasure to congratulate NLS on its 90th anniversary. I wish the wonderful staff at NLS continued success as they work to ensure the NLS mission ``that all may read.''

Mr. President, on January 20, the world watched as we inaugurated the 46th President of the United States on the west front of the Capitol, as we have done now for the last four decades. But this was the 59th time in our Nation's history that we have gathered to witness one of what has really become one of our most iconic and sacred ceremonies. I described it that day, as President Reagan did 40 years earlier, as ``commonplace and miraculous.'' Commonplace because we have done it every 4 years since 1789; miraculous because we have done it every 4 years since 1789.

This is the second time I have had the privilege to serve as the chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies or, as it is normally known, JCCIC, and that is how I will refer to it in the rest of these remarks. Senator Klobuchar, the ranking member at that time on the Rules Committee, was a big part of helping with that, as were the other four members of that committee.

In a normal year, organizing an inauguration is a major undertaking, but when you add a pandemic and then you add the events of January 6, it is uniquely challenging. Without a doubt, this was an inauguration of twists and turns, where adaptability, creativity, and determination were crucial.

Today, I am here on the floor to thank the staff, the partners, and the volunteers who met those challenges and made this year's inauguration a success.

As I mentioned earlier, the two factors that posed the greatest challenges this year were the pandemic and security. In order to keep the inauguration from becoming a superspreader event, we consulted with public health authorities at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Cleveland Clinic. We engaged experts from the National Football League, the Major League Baseball, NASCAR, the National Hockey League, Disney, Ardian Group, and CLEAR about pandemic protocols and technology that relates to them.

We were in regular consultation with the Office of the Attending Physician, particularly Dr. Monahan and his chief of staff, Keith Pray. And we relied on support from the Defense Health Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services' COVID-19 Joint Command Cell. Testing was required for all attendees, and over 7,000 tests were administered at two sites, one in the Capitol and one in the Pentagon.

Masks were required to be worn by all attendees. Graciously, Ford Motor Company produced a significant quantity of masks, truly a first for this or any inauguration, and we are grateful to them, and 3M provided some specialized masks for the limited indoor activities that we had.

The health and safety measures put together really created significant logistical challenges. All of this couldn't have been done without the leadership of Robin Mangan, our director of operations for that health activity and that testing activity. Her team,

Dr. Alex Lazar, who was on sabbatical from MD Anderson; Jordan Wilson was with us from Rob Wittman's office; Shannon Ryder, detailed from the Capitol Police Office of Emergency Management to help with that part of what we did.

Security is always the foremost consideration for an inauguration. It is a time of great exposure, frankly, for our democracy and our Nation's leaders.

And, as I said earlier, just 2 weeks earlier, the inaugural platform itself had been stormed and damaged. The officers who fought valiantly that day to protect the Capitol were also in charge, 2 weeks later, with keeping the inauguration safe. And while carrying the burden of the events of January 6, the U.S. Capitol Police officers, with the assistance of the National Guard, ensured that the inauguration was secure and that the events of the day would occur without interruption.

Our committee's Capitol Police liaison, Lieutenant Jillian Jeffers, seamlessl coordinated the work of the JCCIC and the department's Inaugural Task Force. I want to thank Lieutenant Jeffers, the U.S. Capitol Police, and the Inaugural Task Force, along with the National Guard, and the entire Executive Steering Committee, and law enforcement elements of this National Special Security Event for maintaining the security of the Capitol Complex during the inauguration.

Because COVID significantly limited in-person participation, we had to put a particular emphasis on ensuring that people at home could also experience the inauguration. I believe we succeeded. Viewers of the 59th Inaugural Ceremonies totaled more than 108 million people. The enhanced viewing experience provided by JCCIC was viewed by more than 75 million people across social media platforms and the committee's website. This was more than double--surprising to me, at least--the viewership of the traditional national television news broadcast, which tallied about 33.8 million people. In addition, the JCCIC was able to generate 5.2 million individual impressions on Twitter, making it one of the bigger Twitter events ever.

One of the most well-received aspects of the JCCIC production was the narration provided by two Capitol Visitor Center guides, Janet Clemens and Ronn Jackson, who described the various events through the day, offering viewers a behind-the-scenes experience that only somebody who spent day after day totally understanding the Capitol Building could have done.

We appreciate the technical expertise and the creative insights offered us by industry professionals, like Gorilla Flicks and Razor Management, Showcall, Castle Technologies, and TRI Leadership Resources. All of those groups came together to help give us advice and assistance.

I want to especially thank Paige Waltz, the JCCIC's communications director. Paige was on loan from Senator Romney, and her vigorous efforts to overhaul the JCCIC brand and the website and to realize innovative ways to make our ceremonies more inclusive for Americans and viewers around the world really paid off on inaugural day. I think we can all agree that Paige and her team--Spring Binsted, Corinna Schutte, Channing Foster, and Matthew Mondello--outshined any expectations anybody would have had for what we were able to get across in this different kind of Inauguration Day.

There was much to be seen on what we call ``I-Day,'' as the staff called it, and there is so much that we didn't get a chance to see. The staff worked tirelessly in the background. That is the work we didn't see--the months for some, weeks for others--to make the inaugural presentation seem like it was basically effortless, even though there was incredible effort.

Jen Jett, on loan from Senator Wicker's office, was our director of administration and kept a master timeline, a lengthy document and intricate task that allowed the President to be sworn in before noon, as required by the 20th Amendment to the Constitution. We all watched President Biden take the oath of office at 11:48.

Jen was ably assisted by Abby Stahl, who was the first to greet you when you called or visited the JCCIC offices, as we made preparations for this inauguration.

Todd Beyer, our director of advance, made certain we all knew where to be and when to be there through all the ceremonies of the day. Jackson Blodgett skillfully supported those advanced efforts and facilitated an immense undertaking of credentialed access.

Grace Higgins, hired to support our alternative plans for inclement weather, instead became responsible for successfully managing a complex technical solution and the integration of elaborate health screening processes to ensure everyone's health safety.

Sam Burke, most recently a Marine Corps Senate liaison officer, served as the JCCIC's operation manager and military liaison, where he worked closely with the joint task force officials from the military district of Washington, who also played an incredibly instrumental role on that day.

Martha Scott Poindexter, now the Republican staff director of the Senate Agriculture Committee, served as our director of member services and ticketed and was responsible for assisting Senators, Representatives, Governors, foreign dignitaries, former Presidents, and former Members, frankly, as only she can, through the complexities of participating in this year's ceremonies.

Volunteers manager, Molly Harris Stevens, who was on loan from Representative Stauber, and Vincent Brown, on loan from Senator Klobuchar's Rules staff, recruited and managed 278 essential volunteers over months of unacknowledged tasks. Molly also helped design and implement a brandnew and seamless integration of our health and security operation, fielded by our volunteers.

Without the volunteers, an inauguration would not be able to be carried out. We want to thank each of them, and the names of each of them I would like to be printed in the Record.

I ask unanimous consent that those names be printed in the Record

While the JCCIC had to make the difficult decision to forgo a traditional congressional luncheon this year, we are grateful to partners like Korbel, Lenox, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum for working so closely with us on planning.

Emily Kearney, the first person hired by the JCCIC, who early on worked with our partners at the Government Printing Office to design the tickets, invitations, and programs, is certainly to be commended for her work and to later coordinate and maintain the tradition of gifts presented to the President and Vice President in the Capitol Rotunda.

Lauren McBride, detailed from the House Sergeant at Arms to manage our exercises and rehearsals, expertly led our JCCIC team and core partners through a series of new ways to prepare for inclement weather, and she directed the massive undertaking of the dress rehearsal.

There is also a small group of dedicated staff who returned to support inauguration after inauguration: Celeste Gold, from Senator Romney's office; Michelle Reinshuttle, from the House Appropriations Committee; Tim Mitrovich from the Senate Sergeant at Arms returned to the JCCIC and once again loaned their experience to benefit the ceremonies.

Special thanks to Jen Daulby and Tim Monahan, the Republican staff director and deputy staff director, respectively, of the Committee on House Administration, for their assistance in the inauguration's performers and program participants.

I also want to thank the JCCIC staff representatives of our committee members, my personal staff, and my Rules Committee staff, who, in addition to their normal duties, were also able to lend their considerable talents and expertise to the JCCIC.

I especially want to thank Rules Committee staff Fitz Elder, who served as the dedicated staff director of the JCCIC, overcame the extraordinary challenges presented to the committee, and was undeniably paramount in the ultimate success of the ceremonies; Rachelle Schroeder, deputy staff director; Jackie Barber, chief counsel; Cindy Qualley, chief clerk; and James Ferenc, director of information technology.

Cami Morrison, the deputy inaugural coordinator, was once again responsible for the organization of the Presidential platform. She seated every single person in attendance and made certain we were 6 feet apart or sitting right by somebody whom we sit by all the time. I am thankful for her tireless efforts, patriotic heart, and inaugural expertise. This was Cami's fifth inauguration on the JCCIC staff.

Maria Lohmeyer, chief of inaugural ceremonies--this is the second inauguration that I have asked Maria to take responsibility for, and she helped once again to plan and execute this in a way that I am very grateful for. I am glad she did it the first time and even more pleased she was willing to come back and do it again. Right before she joined us with JCCIC, she had been deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as part of her duties in the Navy Reserve. Maria, ever the determined professional, developed a plan and then another plan and then another plan and then another plan. She built a staff and a positive culture in a really challenging time. She exceeded expectations and with determination made certain that democracy prevailed on January 20.

Finally, I want to thank the Office of the House Chief Administrative Officer; the Appropriations Committee and especially the Legislative Branch Subcommittee clerks, Jessica Berry and Lucas Agnew; Julie Adams and many of the behind-the-scenes staff in the Office of the Senate Secretary, especially Sydney Butler, Senator Curator Melinda Smith, and Senate Historians Betty Koed and Beth Hahn; and Clerk of the House Cheryl Johnson for lending the technical expertise of her communication editorial staff, Catherine Cooke and January Layman-Wood.

I want to thank Architect of the Capitol Brett Blanton and his staff, who not only had to build a platform and put in a sound system, but they had to repair that platform and replace the sound system; from Brett Blanton's staff, in particular Mark Reed, Jason McIntyre, Raynell Bennett, and Dwayne Thomas.

I thank Acting House Sergeant at Arms Tim Blodgett and his staff, especially Ted Daniel and Davita Jones, and Acting Senate Sergeant at Arms Jennifer Hemingway and her staff, especially Becky Schaaf and Carly Flick.

I also want to thank Acting Chief Pittman of the U.S. Capitol Police and in that case especially Inspector John Erickson, who commanded the ITF and took personal responsibility to safeguard our JCCIC staff.

On January 20, 2021, the world witnessed the 59th inaugural ceremonies--``Our Determined Democracy: Forging a More Perfect Union''--as a periodic event that has really become, as I said earlier, both commonplace and miraculous. The inaugural ceremonies are not only a hallmark of American governance and democracy but also fulfill our constitutional duty and give assurance of our unbroken commitment to continuity, perseverance, and democracy.

With great thanks to everybody mentioned and with tremendous cooperation from Members of the House and Senate, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, a year ago, schools began to close due to the coronavirus. Teachers quickly scrambled to try to figure out how they were going to teach kids who weren't there. They set up virtual classrooms on the internet. Parents started googling activities to keep their children motivated and active, but they didn't start that a year ago. They started 11 months ago. It didn't take long to figure out that kids at home are different than kids at school. And even before that, many parents had to start accommodating their schedule to try to figure out how they were going to deal with this new and unanticipated schedule.

Congress stepped up. On multiple occasions, we passed emergency legislation to get money to schools to clean classrooms, to buy laptops for students, and to do almost anything else that schools thought they might need at the elementary and secondary level. But what started as what I believe everybody thought was a stopgap--certainly no longer than until the weather got hot in the summertime as we finished up the last school year--has become, in many places, permanent, full time now, where students for a year have not been in school. That is despite a lot of widespread consensus that both scientists and medical experts think that kids can be back in the classroom.

The science on studying and learning is also clear that when schools are closed, students suffer. There have been a lot of studies to show that prolonged remote learning puts kids at higher risk for falling behind, for failing classes, for suffering from mental health problems, and, in many cases, just deciding not to show up. And, you know, the one thing about virtual is it is pretty easy to not virtually be there as well.

The risks on all those areas--the mental health problems, the falling behind, the failing grades--are even greater for students with disabilities or for minorities or people who live in generally underserved areas. A study by McKinsey looked at the toll prolonged remote learning has taken on students. It estimated that when it comes to mathematics, students, on average, are likely to lose 5 to 9 months of learning by the end of this school year. It said that students of color--this is according to McKinsey--could be 6 to 12 months behind at the end of this school year. Think about that. One year of remote learning could leave students 1 year behind where they should be in math if you look at these expert studies.

In addition to the academic damage, remote learning has led to an increase in mental health challenges facing students. A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that mental health problems accounted for a growing proportion of students' visits to hospital emergency rooms. Visits were up 31 percent for kids between ages 12 and 17 and 24 percent for kids between ages 5 and 11, and according to the CDC, many of those visits are based on a mental health challenge rather

than some other kind of health challenge.

The risk of keeping kids at home are significant. What is worse, they are unnecessary by the growing number of people who are looking at this. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who is the head of CDC, recently appointed by President Biden--she began her work there on January 21--talked about what we should do earlier this month. She said that there was ``increasing data''--``increasing data that schools can safely reopen.'' That ends the quote, but she went on to say, even if teachers aren't vaccinated for the virus.

Anthony Fauci--Dr. Fauci echoed that point. He said: ``I would back the CDC recommendation because that is really based on data . . . we need to try and get the children back to school.'' That ends Dr. Fauci's quote. He went on a step further by saying that it is not even workable to wait for every teacher to be vaccinated before schools reopen because, when you think about that, if every teacher had their first vaccine today in the double-vaccine world we are still in, it will be the end of March before every teacher had their second vaccine, and you are so far down the line, before you know it, the school might not be able to reopen in that circumstance.

Dr. David Rosen, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Washington University in St. Louis, said:

There is no situation in which schools can't be open unless

they have evidence of in-school transmission.

The Biden White House actually immediately said they just didn't agree with the experts on this, even the ones in their own administration. The President's Press Secretary said that Dr. Walensky was speaking in her personal capacity when she said that you can go back to school even if teachers weren't vaccinated, even though she was speaking in an official White House coronavirus briefing. Now, how the head of the CDC speaks in her personal capacity at an official White House coronavirus briefing on this topic, I don't know, but that is what happened

The White House just keeps repeating these points that teachers should be a priority for vaccination. I don't have a problem with that. I think that would be a great thing. It would make teachers more comfortable and might make parents more comfortable. In fact, when we were debating the budget resolution just a couple of weeks ago, I offered an amendment that would have incentivized school districts to get kids back to school after teachers had been vaccinated. That is more stringent than the President himself has said and more stringent than the CDC has said, but my amendment was blocked on a party-line vote. Every single Member of our friends on the other side voted against an amendment that would say we should incentivize, financially, getting kids back to school when teachers have been vaccinated.

Now, a couple of my friends on the other side walked up and said: Well, we just need to work this language a little bit because all of us that have kids know how important it is that we get our kids back to school. Democrats say we need emergency legislation to help the schools. I have been part of five bills that did that, and we provided $67.5 billion for K-12 schools to reopen safely. So far, States have spent just under $7 billion of that $67 billion, so clearly money is not the obstacle to getting back to school.

The new plan would give an additional $128.6 billion for schools, according to the CBO, and, again, only 5 percent of that money would be spent by the end of this fiscal year, only about $6.5 billion. The rest of the money would be available over the next 7 years. Hopefully, that money is not money that is designed to get kids back to school. We don't need to be waiting 7 years to get kids back to school.

If schools need money right now, they, first of all, should spend the money that the Congress has already provided. There is no reason to have over $60 billion still waiting to be spent if that is what it takes to get kids back to school.

This probably isn't about funding. It is really a discussion about whether the schools should reopen and what else we need to do with money that might be available right now because of this coronavirus legislation.

We need to be sure we get back to school. Our goal should not be to keep the schools closed. If it is, why are we providing all this extra money so that schools can reopen, even though it will be a long time before that is spent?

I started out my career, after college, as a high school history teacher and then later I was a university president. I know the challenges educators face every day and the ways well-meaning policy experts sometimes miss the reality of the classroom. I also know that teachers are used to big challenges. They see them every day. They meet them every day. They do their best every day to overcome the challenges in front of them. Teachers want to help kids learn, and they don't know what to do when they can't have the contact they need to have with the kids. They know that kids won't be doing as well as they need to do, in more cases than not, until they are back to school.

In a recent Axios poll, teachers said they would return to school and are ready to do that. It is really time for a commonsense appraisal of what needs to be done to get kids back in school. This should not be something that we wait till next fall to do. It is something that needs to happen right now.

The CDC guidelines are helpful, but they need to be more flexible. We need to constantly look at all the data. As people working hard to get kids back to school, we need to be sure that we understand where that is working, why that is working, how that is working, and we are getting that information out to school districts all over America. It is time to go back to school.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I call up my amendment No. 48 and ask that it be reported by number.

Madam President, I am offering an amendment today to reopen our Nation's schools once teachers are vaccinated and the potential for tying COVID funding to that reopening.

The evidence is clear, school closures are hurting students, prolonged remote learning puts kids where they are at high risk of falling behind, of failing classes, and of having mental health problems. And even a greater number of students with disabilities in underserved areas are impacted by not going to school.

Science confirms schools can and should reopen safely. Just this week, the CDC Director said that vaccines aren't even a prerequisite to getting kids back to school. There shouldn't be any further delay. This amendment does include teachers vaccines as part of the criteria; but with vaccines, we should get back to in-person school. The case is strong. I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment.

Madam President, may I have additional time?

Vote yes on this amendment.

Vote on Amendment No. 48

Mr. President, this week, the Senate is engaged in what I personally believe to be a disappointing exercise of, really, partisan political power at the expense of American taxpayers.

When it became clear that the Senate was going to be split 50-50--by the way, it doesn't get closer than that--there was a moment of hope, I think, on both sides that this would be the opportunity that we would all have to really begin to seek ways to find how we could work together and not have any 50-50 votes and not keep the Vice President busy in breaking ties on votes. So far, that hope appears to be a little bit short-lived.

We are supposedly voting to pass a budget right now that expresses the priorities of the Congress on how limited tax dollars should be allocated. Now, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that passing a budget--October, November, December--4 months into the calendar of the budget year probably isn't, technically, just to determine how you are going to allocate limited tax dollars. Frankly, there seems to be very little discussion in this budget about limited tax dollars. What we are really doing here is passing a budget that allows us to set up what, I think, is an ill-advised, partisan moment, where one side believes it can do whatever it wants to without the other side.

President Biden, when campaigning, said over and over again that he wanted to work with Republicans. I actually believe that is true. In his inaugural address, he said: ``We have never ever, ever, ever failed in America when we've acted together.'' Now, the inaugural address was only a few days ago. Here we are, 2 weeks later, and the President and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have decided to go forward, and the only way to go forward is to go forward their way. If that happens to be the way forward, it is going to be a long 4 years, and for the majority, it might be a pretty quick 2 years because I don't think that this is the message that people sent on election day-- that they wanted one side to be able to do whatever it wanted to do. We have the narrowest House majority in about 150 years, and the Senate majority--again, I will say--couldn't be closer than it is.

We haven't finished taking down the platform from the inauguration, and our colleagues are already forcing a one-sided endgame. Now, I would suggest that the endgame in this case really just sets the stage for the rest of the time we are going to be trying to work together, and I think we will look back and find out it didn't set the stage in a helpful way.

The plan is to muscle through a really partisan $1.9 trillion package that claims to be about COVID relief but covers really a number of totally unrelated things.

People have talked a lot about the fact that the minimum wage is there and whether it would meet the standard of reconciliation.

We haven't talked very much about the fact that the education money in the proposal that we are looking at for reconciliation doesn't include private schools, even private parochial schools. It doesn't include the schools that more than any other have done their best to stay open during the pandemic. It really breaks a pattern of recent years for all schools and post-World War II for higher education to where public schools was not the defining thing. The defining thing was, if you could qualify for government assistance, you were able to take it to any accredited institution that you wanted to.

Clean energy is in the COVID relief package. COVID relief is different from clean energy. It is certainly a debate worth having, but let's not suggest that it is COVID relief when it is not.

If one-half of the Senate is determined to impose its will on the other half without even working to find a real path forward, I think that is an unfortunate sign.

Democrats have said there is an urgent need for this COVID relief--so urgent we can't wait to have a real debate. You know, we just passed $900 billion in relief. Now we are beginning to talk about such big numbers here that suddenly $900 billion is sort of passed away as, well, that is not nearly enough. But the truth is, the $900 billion bill was just signed into law December 27. That was 5 weeks ago--$900 billion. Most of that money remains unspent, and suddenly we want to spend another $1.9 trillion. That is an aggressive pace even by the standards of some of my friends in the other half of this Chamber or the other half of Congress.

It really in so many ways is simply too soon to really know exactly what we need next. We haven't taken the time yet to get the other money out of the door. We haven't taken the time to see how it is going and whether the policies we planned are the policies that really work. We haven't taken the time to decide what else we might need to do.

But here is what we have done already: We have provided $8.75 billion to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for vaccine distribution. So far, they have released $3 billion of that money. So we are rushing with billions more when 5.75 of that 8.75 amount of money for vaccine distribution hasn't been released yet. With nearly $6 billion left in that fund, how do we know exactly how it is working or exactly how much we need? We seem to be sure that what we have isn't enough. I am not sure we even know that yet. But I have been an advocate in every one of the bills we have done for money for distribution of the vaccine, and I would love to see how the money that is out there works.

We need to be thinking about what to do next, but there was a time when debate was part of the Senate. Debate was very much part of the Senate when President Biden served in it. It should be part of the Senate now.

Frankly, if we debated and figured out a bipartisan plan, we would get that done quicker than reconciliation. It is going to be several weeks before we can have the vote that we could have had to provide part of this money right now. A significant amount of this money is agreed to, particularly the amount that does relate to vaccine purchase and vaccine distribution. The parts that relate to testing, the parts that relate to getting kids back to school--that could all be available in a couple of weeks. But it won't be a couple of weeks when we go through this process of reconciliation that I think my friends on the other side will find out is harder to do than they thought and substantially harder to do in a 50-50 Senate than it would be anywhere else.

You know, in December, we provided $82 billion for schools and for education. Elementary schools that were supposed to get almost $70 billion of that money to reopen haven't reopened. Many of them haven't had a chance to spend the money. In fact, many of the K-12 schools haven't even spent all the money they got in April. So money from April not yet being spent, and we are rushing to decide how much more money they need right now in these last few weeks of the school year.

Last week, Dr. Fauci said in an interview that it was the goal of President Biden to get K-8 students back to school in the nex 100 days, but at another event that same day, he said--maybe as truthfully as you could possibly be--it might not work out that way. We need to be really committed to getting kids back to school.

Now, there are more than a million people who have lost their jobs in education at the State and local level since the pandemic started. That is often given as the reason we need more State and local money. But many of that million-person number were the busdrivers, the cafeteria workers, the coaches, the support staff who, frankly--if you are not going to school, most districts have decided they shouldn't be paying that staff who is not part of what the school is doing right now. Those losses are not about loss of revenue; they are really about the loss of in-person school.

You know, I have served as the chairman of the Labor, Health, and Education Subcommittee in Appropriations. I am now the top Republican in that 50-50 committee. Last year, our subcommittee provided funding for schools that would help them address the pandemic and reopen. We provided money to develop and distribute vaccines and treatments. We provided money to continue critical funding for programs to address substance abuse and mental health and suicide and things that have been a real problem for an isolated, pandemic-bound population.

We need to do all of those things. I am more than happy to be part of that discussion. I want to help meet these

challenges. I have hope the administration understands that. I believe my colleagues on the other side of the aisle understand that. But we need to be sure that we know what we are doing before we commit another $1.9 trillion, as if that money is really--I am hearing occasionally-- not nearly enough. Two trillion more dollars after five bipartisan bills that produced real results, just kind of out of hand not nearly enough?

Now, that is easier to say because virtually nobody in this Chamber or in the country, including me, really has a concept of how much money $1.9 trillion is. So it is easy to say ``Well, it should be 2.9 or 3.9'' or ``Whatever it is, it is not enough'' because we really, I don't think, have a sense of how much it is.

We have had real success in developing vaccines. We need to have more success in getting out those vaccines.

I have not seen the administration or my colleagues on the other side of the aisle make the case yet as to why we need to spend the amount of money they are talking about spending. I have not seen anyone make the case of why it is good to start off this administration and this term of Congress in the most partisan, one-sided way possible before we have really had a chance to talk this out.

There are a lot of things here we agree on. There are a lot of things here that could be improved around the margins, but you have to have the willingness to talk about that before it goes forward.

I was glad to see the White House accepted the offer of 10 of our Republican colleagues to at least meet and talk about some bipartisan issues, but the unwillingness of the Democratic leader here to slow down this process made it clear that, really, there may not be that much interest in really trying to find a solution, but at least there was some interest in talking about trying to work together.

Bipartisanship is not something you do just for show. Compromise is not ``my way or the highway.'' Unity is not telling everyone else that the only option is to accept your side of the argument.

I hope my colleagues think better of this bipartisan exercise, come to the table, and explain what we really need and why we need it. If they don't, I hope we can still figure out how to recover and move forward in the only way a 50-50 Senate can move forward, and that is working every day to find things that more than 50 Members--and I would hope substantially more than 50 Members--of the U.S. Senate agree on and send those to the President and get our work done.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, this week is the 48th annual March for Life. It is an event when thousands of Americans come together to advocate for the value and protection of unborn human life.

They will be coming together this year differently than they have for almost 50 years, but for almost 50 years, millions of people have marched to Capitol Hill to try to build a culture wherein every human life is valued and every human life is protected. That includes tireless women and men and children from my home State of Missouri who come to Washington, both individually and along with the Missouri Life Caravan, every year. It will be the first year in a long time I haven't spoken to that group in person, but as they meet virtually, their cause is still as resonant as it is in person.

I know that Missourians will continue to advocate for life. They will continue to remember the unborn and those whom we have lost from abortion. This year's theme of the march is ``Together Strong: Life Unites!'' It is a pretty hard theme to argue with no matter how you feel about this particular topic. ``Unity'' doesn't mean believing the same thing about everything, but it does mean agreeing about one very important thing in terms of this event, and that important thing, of course, is the value and protection of life.

This belief in life cuts across religion. It cuts across party lines. It cuts across geographic boundaries. People and organizations from all religious backgrounds--and even those who have no religious affiliations--are part of the pro-life movement, and they oppose abortion in almost all cases. Polling shows that more than a third of Democrats in America support protections for life, and there are groups dedicated to showing that pro-life is not a partisan issue. Frankly, that is a move in the right direction to where you don't feel like you are included in one party or excluded from one party because of your view on this issue.

Last year's Geneva Consensus Declaration brought together more than 30 countries to promote women's health and strengthen the family, including the preservation of human life. We need to do everything we can to save the lives of babies and of mothers. Maternity mortality is a big problem in our country and around the world. It has become a focus of the Congress in recent years and needs to continue to be. Even though the issue of life so often is polarized in the U.S. Congress, I am still encouraged that we see a powerful commitment, over and over,

to protect the unborn and how that breaks through in other areas outside of the Congress. For the past 4 years, we have seen an unprecedented advance in the protections for the unborn in State legislatures.

In the next few years, we can expect to see efforts to try to move things in another direction, to weaken or remove life protections in, for instance, the title X family planning program or in our foreign aid programs. There is a well-funded effort to abandon even the longstanding Hyde amendment, which prevents taxpayer funding of abortion or abortion coverage in Federal healthcare programs.

As the chairman of the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Committee, I oversaw the yearly renewal of the Hyde amendment, which has been included in that bill for the past 40 years. Now I won't be the chairman of that committee in this Congress, but I will still be fighting to see that we maintain this area where there has been great consensus that went beyond political parties.

I will continue to support and advocate for the Hyde amendment and for permanent Federal protections for the unborn through legislation like the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, among other things.

Although the pro-life movement can expect challenges in this Congress, there are still many signs that one day we will succeed in creating a culture where every human life is valued and protected. For now, however, I want to thank the men, women, and children who dedicate their time and talents to making this happen, who today are marching virtually as they join together to talk about this important cause and remember the theme of this year, which is ``Together Strong: Life Unites!''

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I request to have printed in the Congressional Record my full remarks delivered on January 20, 2021, at the 59th inaugural ceremonies.

Madam President, first of all, let me say that I couldn't agree more with the Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Wicker, than I do. His points are exactly right. A democracy is finding a way forward. It is not finding your way forward necessarily. It is obviously finding as much of your way forward as you can find. But it is finding a way forward.

Clearly, a top priority of the Federal Government is to defend the country. It is my top priority. I think I would be safe in suggesting it is Senator Wicker's top priority. And it is an important priority for our friends on the other side, but it may not be quite the same priority on the other side.

For this to work, the House and the Senate have to work together and the White House has to work together to come up with just that spending number. Once we have the number that we are going to spend, having the debate on the floor is suddenly possible.

I am fully in agreement with that, but I want to talk for a few minutes today about a program that we need to extend for a short period of time to get it extended to the end of this spending year.

Madam President, I know the minority leader, the Democratic leader, just arrived, and he has heard a lot about this program from my friend Senator Stabenow. The excellence in mental health program--something we started 2 years ago. We passed legislation in 2014. We have come to the end of the first 2 years of that trial program. I want to talk more about why we need a longer term expansion of that trial, but first of all, we need to get a 3-month extension to get us to the end of this spending year.

I am always glad to talk about this program because what it does is it really begins to close the gap between how we talk about physical health and how we talk about mental health. Somewhere between one in four and one in five adult Americans, according to the National Institutes of Health, has a mental health problem that is diagnosable and almost always treatable, but less than half of the people who have that problem actually receive the care they need. These are people who are our neighbors, our family members, and our colleagues.

There is no stigma to seeking care, and society needs to do a better job--as I believe this program is helping us to do--talking about mental health like all other health.

On the last day of October 2013, on the 50th anniversary of the Community Mental Health Act, which was the last bill President Kennedy signed into law in 1963, Senator Stabenow and I came to the floor to talk about that 1963 bill and how many things have been closed down because of that bill and how many things have not been opened to replace them when that happened.

In the decades that followed, about half of the proposed community health centers that bill anticipated just simply were never built, and the facilities used for people who had substantial mental health challenges were closed.

What really happened over these 50 years is that the emergency room and local law enforcement became the de facto mental health system for the country, and nobody has been well served by that, including law enforcement, emergency rooms, and most importantly, people with mental health challenges and their families.

The Excellence in Mental Health Act was signed into law in 2014 to try to begin to address that problem. What the bill did was it created a 2-year, eight-State pilot program that would provide mental health care at locations that met the standards, just like any other help would be provided. These would be certified community behavioral health clinics that would have, among other things, 24/7 crisis services available, outpatient mental health and substance abuse treatment, immediate screenings, risk assessments, and diagnoses available, and care coordination, including partnerships with emergency rooms, the law enforcement community, and veterans groups. All of that would have to be done in order to be part of that eight-State pilot. Twenty-four States initially applied. Nineteen States went through the entire process. Eight States were chosen, including Missouri.

Among other things, our State participated in the Emergency Room Enhancement Project. This is a project that is designed to identify people who present themselves at the emergency room as people who really need treatment for addiction issues and mental health issues, not other health issues, and then get them to a place where that treatment is going to be much more appropriate than it is likely to be at the emergency room.

In just 6 months of working with the emergency room, law enforcement, and mental health services in our State, we think there has been a reduction in homelessness of people who came to the emergency room of about 72 percent and a reduction in emergency room visits of 72 percent. Unemployment was reduced by 14 percent among the people who have gone to the emergency room with a mental health concern, and law enforcement contact was reduced by 59 percent.

So we have 2 years of study that indicates where we have gotten in our State, and I think other States are seeing similar kinds of numbers. I have been to clinics all over our State and have talked with those who have dealt with this. I talked particularly to law enforcement people all over our State, who have seen the change in the people they are dealing with and the options they have available. Suddenly, the option is not just to go to somebody's house at a crisis moment in the middle of the night and be taken to the emergency room for one night to have that problem solved; the option is actually to go somewhere where your mental health challenge is being dealt with, just like if you had a heart attack or a kidney problem or some other problem.

That is why we have introduced legislation to extend this for another 2 years and, if money is available in the pay-for we have proposed, to see whether we can add more States to the program.

When we announced this new legislation, Laura Heebner, who is with Compass Health systems in Missouri, was one of the people who joined us. She said that in the past, before this program was able to help in our State, roughly half of the people who sought an appointment from their mental

health facility could not get scheduled for several days, sometimes several weeks, and half of the people didn't come back. If a person shows up that one time and says ``I am here because I have a real problem and I need help'' and the answer is ``We are not going to help you today; we are not going to do an evaluation right now,'' more often than not or as often as not, they don't come back. So at Compass Health, as well as many of our other certified clinics in our State, we increased access. We established same day walk-ins to attempt to look at their problem and see if they needed help that day or could, in fact, come back a few days later for an extensive visit. At that facility and others, everybody is being seen when they come in. The suicide care path they established has reduced suicides by 70 percent since last year.

I will make two quick points as I conclude.

No. 1, the goal of this program is not for the Federal Government to take over the behavioral health costs of the country; the goal of this program is to look at mental health and keep track of 24 or 25 other healthcare markers and decide how much other healthcare is impacted in a positive and, in fact, a cost-saving way if you are dealing with mental health at the same time.

The second point I would make is that we need to see Congress step up in the next few days and extend the current program through the end of this spending year, and then let's have a debate about why 2 more years of putting all that information together gives States and communities the information they need to find out. As a result, I believe everybody will understand that it is not only the right thing to do, but fiscally it is the smart thing to do. By dealing with mental health like all other health, the overall healthcare cost of that big mental health community goes down dramatically if you are seeing your doctor, showing up for your appointments, and taking your medicine. Our other problems are much more easily managed when adding the cost of mental healthcare to all our other healthcare priorities. It isn't just the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do.

Hopefully the Congress will deal with that and the Senate can take a leadership role in dealing with that. The House has already sent us a bill. We need to respond to that by doing the two things I just mentioned. Let's treat mental health like we treat all other health.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to talk a little bit about a bill we should pass this week--I believe we will pass this week--for the 59th straight year.

There are very few things we authorize every year--frankly, there are very few things we need to authorize every year--but the authorizing bill in defense is the opportunity for the country and the Congress to look at what we need to do now that is more appropriate than what we needed to do a year ago to defend the country.

Certainly the men and women who serve in the military do that job in a selfless way, and they deserve the best we can do to be sure they are never involved in an unfair fight. We want to be sure they are always involved in a fight in which they have every possible advantage. They put their lives on the line to keep us safe, and it is up to us to be sure they have the equipment, the training, and the authorization they need and the authorities they need to carry out their work.

Every year about this time, we move toward the authorizing of what the Congress thinks the military needs. That is followed later by an appropriations bill that is directed in substantial ways by what this bill says should happen. In fact, the only thing the appropriations bill normally does is determine whether it can all be funded and in what segments it is to be funded.

We are debating this bill. I hope both Chambers--the House and the Senate--can pass this authorization bill as we move on to our next step in this process of defending the country.

I think you can argue about almost anything else the Federal Government does, but the No. 1 priority of the Federal Government is to defend the country--the No. 1 thing that we clearly cannot do by ourselves; the No. 1 thing that State and local government can be a partner in on some occasions, but it is not their responsibility, and they do not have the capacity to do what we need to do to defend the country. So we are here to take this important step in that.

This version, the Senate's version for this year, authorizes $750 billion to support the Department of Defense and the nuclear and other defense responsibilities of the Department of Energy. Our adversaries are clearly increasing their military capabilities and their military commitments, and we need to be prepared to do just the same.

The burden of defending the country is an important one, and, frankly, it falls on a very small percentage of our population. About one-half of 1 percent of the American people serve in the military. We owe an obligation to that one-half of 1 percent to do our best for them.

This bill supports an across-the-board pay increase of 3.1 percent--a little more than inflation. It is the largest increase in nearly a decade at a time when the people who serve see challenges in more areas than we have seen in a while and coming from different directions than we have seen in a while.

This bill reforms military housing. Leader after leader in the military will tell us and make the point that the strength of the military is military families. So in military housing, particularly the family housing, there was thought to be a great idea a couple of decades ago to privatize family housing. For a couple of years, it looked like a great idea, but I think it is time we look again at our housing obligations and how they are being met.

We need to look at what we can do to be sure that the spouses of those serving have an opportunity, when they are transferred to a new location, to be able to get to work as quickly as possible in the field they are prepared to work in. In Missouri, in January of this year, the first spouse of someone who had been transferred to our State was sworn in immediately to the bar so she could immediately begin practicing law. Like any attorney, there are probably some future legal training requirements during the course of the following months. But to be able to go to work--whether as a medical technician or a doctor or a lawyer or an electrician or a welder--should be a priority of the country.

I asked Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson, when she testified before the committee: What is the best thing we can do for military families? I sponsored some legislation a few years ago so that military families can move earlier or stay longer for a job, for work, or for school. That makes a

difference to their families. If you need to go 2 months earlier than your serving spouse to get started in the school year at the right time or if you need to stay 2 months later or need up to 6 months of transition time, that is available now. Of course, that is beginning to have an impact on people's decision to stay in the military, if their family is considered as a priority and flexibility is part of that priority.

I asked Secretary Wilson for two things that we still need improvement on. One was to be sure to have the best schools possible near those military bases, and two was to be sure that spouses can go to work and that they can go to work, if they want to go to work, in the area they are trained for. So this allows for more effort to be made, to be sure that we are working with the Council of State Governments on a certification program where you could move to a State and quickly be doing that. Reciprocal opportunities for that quick transition is important.

There are changes in this bill that support families with special needs and support how you deal with a childcare provider on a military base, and there are things here to enhance suicide prevention and family advocacy programs. These are all critical, not only for people serving but for people wanting to continue to serve.

As I said before, the military family is one of our Nation's greatest assets, and the serving spouse is not the only one serving. The serving spouse is not the only one transferred to a new military location. The serving spouse is not the only one who has to be happy with the commitment to decide that you are going to go ahead and reenlist, and we need to be aware of that.

This legislation supports military construction projects, including the Army National Guard Readiness Center in Springfield, MO, where I live; the vehicle maintenance facility at Whiteman Air Force Base in our State; and the C-130 flight simulator facility at Rosecrans in St. Joe. They are all included in this authorization project. Projects like these are necessary to ensure that our military is ready to fight and also to support their needs when they are at home.

America's defense posture includes what is known as the nuclear triad. This means that we have three ways we can deliver a nuclear warhead. We hope to never have to have that happen. But if our adversaries have this capacity, our capacity has to exceed theirs, and this bill ensures that that continues to be the case.

The 509th and the 131st Bomb Wings at Whiteman Air Force Base host one of the legs of that triad. Earlier this year, the Air Force announced that Missouri will host the B-2's replacement. The principal B-2 location at Whiteman Air Force Base will host the B-21 Raider as it becomes available to replace that plane that has served the country for so long. I am proud to support what we need to do to make that transition.

There are other aircraft that we need to be sure have a viable part in the country's future. The NDAA bill we are talking about provides an additional 24 F-18 Super Hornets to the Navy and begins the purchase of 8 F-15s for the Air Force. All those planes are made in St. Louis.

The bill also includes critical mission support for the A-10 Warthog, a plane that our colleague Senator McSally is pleased to have flown and flown well. By the way, I had a chance to introduce her the other day, and I almost ran out of firsts. She was the first woman to fly in combat and the first woman to command a combat unit in combat. She has 356 combat hours that she herself flew. She is the first person, of 260 senior military officers, to graduate No. 1 in that advanced training class.

The Missouri National Guard also flies the A-10. I have been with them when they were flying in Eastern Europe. That A-10 capacity continues to be critical.

The NDAA authorizes missile programs between the United States and Israel, where we have actually learned that you can target an incoming missile. Things like the Iron Dome, Arrow 3, David's Sling, have all-- fortunately for Israel, fortunately for our military capacity--been proven to work against incoming missiles. These programs help Israel defend itself. They also increase our capability to do what they need to do.

Finally, Senator Hawley from Missouri, Senator Manchin from West Virginia, and I have proposed an amendment to the NDAA to make May 1 Silver Star Service Banner Day. Along with Senator McCaskill, my colleague who just left, I have been doing this annually for some time. We think this would be a great year to make this a permanent recognition of the Silver Star families.

I would particularly like to recognize Diana Lynn Newton, the cofounder of Silver Star Families of America, who passed away earlier this year. She and her husband Steve were the driving force behind the organization, and they helped thousands of veterans who were otherwise getting very little recognition for their Silver Star service. We are saddened by that loss. Hopefully, one of the things we will do in this bill to recognize her great commitment is to make the Silver Star recognition day an annual event.

There are bipartisan priorities here in this bill that deal with the needs of the military and their families. The pay raise is a significant part of this bill. But being sure that the No. 1 job of the Federal Government--defending the country--continues to be recognized as the No. 1 job makes this unique annual reauthorization of the Defense bill so important. I look forward to seeing this Congress pass this bill this week in the Senate and, hopefully, soon after that, in both the Senate and the House.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I want to talk about good news for two of our major cities in Missouri. I will start with the sporting news, which would be the July 12 victory of the St. Louis Blues, when they earned their spot in the history books when they defeated the Boston Bruins in game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals.

For the first time in franchise history, the Blues brought the Stanley Cup trophy to Missouri to celebrate their incredible achievement and to share it with some of the best sports fans in America.

Senator Hawley and I look forward to a chance, before too long, to host the Stanley Cup here at the Senate so all my colleagues will get to see the joy we have in seeing that come to our State.

It is hard to imagine that just 6 months ago, the Blues were the lowest ranked team in the NHL. I think at the first of the season the odds were 60 to 1 that the Blues would win the Stanley Cup. Those were the highest odds any team faced.

As it turned out, the odds aren't always what counts. What counts is how you play the season. So they got off to a rough start, changed their coach in January, and then as the season progressed, at the end of the regular season, they won 11 straight games.

A rookie, Jordan Binnington, led the team to an incredibly successful second half. His goalie performance in the second half of the season, and particularly in the Stanley Cup games, was extraordinary, especially in that last game.

The Blues eventually moved on to get the third seed in the Western Conference playoffs. They won their series against Winnipeg in four games to two in the first round. They advanced to the second round to defeat the Dallas Stars in a really dramatic double overtime victory in game seven. They continued their historic run, defeating the San Jose Sharks in round three, and then the Blues made it all the way to the Stanley Cup final and ended the season with a decisive 4-to-1 victory in game seven and at Boston.

I think, if you look back at the record on this, the Blues had clearly learned to win away from home, and they proved that in the Stanley Cup.

They played as one team, they played as one unit, but they had lots of people helping. Ryan O'Reilly set a franchise record with 23 points in the playoffs. He ultimately went on to win the Conn Smythe Award as the postseason MVP. Jordan Binnington, whom I mentioned before, became the first and only rookie goalie to win 16 games in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Patrick Maroon, a Missouri native, scored a heroic goal in the double overtime of game seven against the Dallas Stars.

There was another individual who was reflective of just lots of the fans whom the Blues had with them. This superfan, Laila Anderson, 11 years old, didn't let her battle with a rare, life-threatening disease prevent her from cheering on the team she loved.

At the beginning of game three in the Stanley finals, she took to the ice before the puck dropped and fired up the team and the nearly 20,000 fans who filled the Enterprise Center.

Laila became such an important factor to the Blues' victories that they flew this 11-year-old to Boston to make

sure their No. 1 fan would be there to cheer them on in game seven.

Shortly after the Blues were presented with the Stanley Cup, she celebrated with the players on the ice as they passed around that iconic trophy.

Her inspirational story is just another example of why this was a season right out of the storybooks. The city of St. Louis and our State will never forget the Blues' incredible achievement this year.

I would like to congratulate Tom Stillman, the general manager; Doug Armstrong, the head coach; Craig Berube; and all the coaches, the players, the fans, and the staff who brought this incredible victory home to St. Louis.

I look forward to hearing our fans sing ``Gloria'' many more times next year when the team defends its title as Stanley Cup champions.

Madam President, as the St. Louisans were celebrating the Stanley Cup, people on the other side of our State in Kansas City received some great news--this time great news from the Federal Government, when the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, announced on Thursday that two Federal ag research agencies would be moving their headquarters to the Kansas City region from Washington,

Madam President, I want to talk a little bit about the border--not the important need to secure the border, which I am for, but I want to talk about the humanitarian crisis we have seen occurring at the border. Frankly, the Senate and the House--the Congress--have been watching that occur for too long.

It has been several weeks now since the administration notified Congress that the money that was allocated for what would have been a traditional set of challenges at the border is about to be spent and that there is no money left for some of these issues we have to deal with at the border in a particular way.

We have seen the flood of people approaching the border to be not only incredibly different in numbers but incredibly different in context. Probably 20 years ago, 90 percent of the people who came across the border were coming directly from Mexico.

By the way, when that happened, the law was changed so that if they came across from Mexico, you could send them right back to Mexico. Hopefully, our neighbors in Mexico are working with us to still have some potential to do that with people who come across the border and come through Mexico--not necessarily Mexican in their nationality but come through Mexico to the border--to go back and wait for what needs to happen for their case to be heard in Mexico rather than here.

Most of the people coming today are coming from Central America-- Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. In the last year, I think the principal place that has people coming to our southern border--over 1 percent of the population of all three of those countries has come from those countries collectively.

Clearly it is a problem, but it is especially troubling to look at the numbers of children who are coming to the border unaccompanied. Just last month, about 130,000 people came to the border. You can multiply that by 12 pretty quickly and see 1 million people or more coming to our border to come in without the right kinds of documents. Another million, by the way, come into

our country through the normal process. We have about 1 million immigrants a year who legally immigrate to the United States. We are not a country that does not want people from other countries to come here; we just want them to come here based on the law and the requirements for everybody else who would like to come to the United States.

Of that 130,000 people who came in May, 11,507 of them were children without families. It is really important for us to understand as we discuss this that we are not talking about children who came with their families and were separated from their families once they got here. There are plenty of those children coming right now with families because it is pretty clear that saying you want asylum and saying you have children with you and your family is one of the things that check a couple of boxes that more likely will have you in the United States waiting for your case to be heard sooner rather than later. But these are 11,507 children who came by themselves. About 30 percent of them are under 12, and about 70 percent of them are between 12 and 18.

You have 11,000 children coming a month. We think in the calendar year, that will be about 88,000 children--not in the calendar year but in the fiscal year, the spending year, the year that started October 1. We already believe that number is going to approach 88,000.

Usually, within 72 hours of those children showing up at the border by themselves, the Department of Homeland Security transfers them to the Department of Health and Human Services, which is much better positioned to take care of them than they otherwise would be. The Department of Health and Human Services enters into agreements with Lutheran charities, Catholic charities, and other groups--almost always not-for-profit--that would provide shelter on a clearly understood basis. This is something where HHS knows the kinds of housing these children are going into, provides shelter, provides medical care, and provides other services, such as education, that are provided by these groups that contract with us. As part of their goal, they also make an effort to find a safe and appropriate place as soon as possible for these kids to be with relatives who are already in the country or an alternative that would be appropriate.

Of the 14,000 or so spaces that we have--beds is one way to look at this, places to sleep--people are going into and out of those as soon as we can find somewhere safe for them to go. So, ideally, children would stay a very short time in one of these facilities while the Department of Health and Human Services, working with that security provider--security for the children--finds a sponsor. Again, it is usually a family member. But other people stay a long time.

The older teenagers tend to be harder to place, frankly. For some of the Central American countries, they don't have the family connections that immigrants at the border have had in the past, so there is no family to put them with. Some of these older teenagers wind up staying longer than they would want to or that we would hope that they would have to, but it is just the way it is.

Of those 11,507 kids who came to the border in the month of May, a few of them may have been in the facility for less than a day. Some of them may still be in the facility they went to because there is nowhere safer than that for them to go right now.

The problem is that Health and Human Services is running out of space, and they are also running out of money. In April, Secretary Azar, the head of Health and Human Services, came to Congress and said: I just want to give you a warning. We are going to be out of money on this current pace by sometime in June.

By the way, we are now in June, and Congress has not stepped up and done what is necessary to take care of these kids.

Let's think about all the alternatives that can happen. One of the alternatives is you just provide less assistance. Maybe the education goes first and the recreation time goes second, and you wait longer to get into the transitional space that we would want you to be in, and you are waiting more than 72 hours.

The other alternative is totally unacceptable, which would be what you would do with people who are over 18. You say: OK, if you are 18 or 28 or 38, we will hear your case at some future time. We are going to release you into the United States, and you come back at a future time, and we will hear whether there is merit. We will decide your case at that time.

Well, you can't release a 12-, 13-, or 14-year-old boy or girl into the United States and hope that is going to be a good thing for them to have happen to them. With the inadequate funding, they stay in facilities with the Border Patrol longer than anybody would want them to.

As I said, the administration estimates that by the end of September--that would be the end of our spending year, the one we have allocated money for--there will be about 88,000 kids who have come across the border by themselves, and the American people would want you to take care of them until you can find a safe place for them to be. No thinking American would say: Well, just let them go back across the border by themselves. Let them out in the United States and see what happens to them. Nobody would think that.

That is 88,000. The previous high was 59,000 in 2016. It looks like already we are probably just about to get to that number right now. With the time between now and September 30 left in the spending year, we have already had more kids come than we had in the previous high year.

Congress, which appropriated money for what we thought would probably be no more than 59,000 kids during the course of the year, didn't appropriate enough money. So we knew we might not appropriate enough money, so we had a transfer authority, where you could take some money--up to a certain amount--from other accounts, and you could transfer that into the account to take care of more kids than we would have thought. That money is gone too.

The Department is being forced to cut back on some of the things they have tried to provide for children who have come into our care through certainly no fault of ours and maybe not much fault of theirs-- redirecting money from programs like refugee programs that are designed to help people who come truly as refugees. That money is now being used for unaccompanied children.

Remember, Health and Human Services is legally required to take care of these children but is also legally required not to spend money they don't have. If Congress doesn't act quickly--and we intend to act on this bill within a week--HHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, will have to tell the grantees--these normally not-for-profit organizations--well, if you just keep taking care of these kids, at some point we will give you the money we had agreed to give you to take care of these kids. But between now and then, you spend the money and hope you will be reimbursed. It is kind of like a government shutdown, except just for this one group of people--unaccompanied children. It is a government shutdown. There is going to be no money available. These critical services--you go to the outside groups that have been willing to step forward and provide shelter, and you say: Just keep providing the shelter, and we will pay you if we can. Some of these groups may have all kinds of money and be able to afford to do that. My guess is, not so much so, and not many of them will have.

So we need to step up. We need to adapt to this change in circumstances that we didn't anticipate. We anticipate that as many people might come as has ever came before, but we didn't anticipate that maybe 30 percent more people would come in this category than ever came before.

In the disaster bill we just passed--by the way, this is a shameful thing to have to say--it took over 8 months for Congress to cover the disasters that Congress has normally covered right away. Health and Human Services has asked for money in an emergency funding situation to take care of this. Congress should take this request seriously and pass this funding before there is no money from any source to take care of even the basic needs that these unaccompanied kids in our country need to have taken care of.

Over the weekend and 2 weeks before, the New York Times--which is no advocate, by the way, for the Trump administration--basically said: Give the administration the money. This is a legitimate crisis, and it needs to be treated like that.

In their last editorial, they said: ``Unequipped to deal with the crush, border facilities and migrant shelters are dangerously overcrowded, and the staff is overburdened.'' They went on to say: ``Dysfunction, disease, and even death are a growing reality.'' The Washington Post said the same thing.

Let's deal with this immediate humanitarian crisis. Let's deal with it like the people whom we work for expect us to deal with this. Let's get this humanitarian crisis taken care of before we see a human catastrophe occur. I hope we can do it, and I hope we can do it quickly.

With that, I yield the floor.

nomination of rodney smith

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the votes following the first vote in this series be 10 minutes in length.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I want to talk a little bit about what we will be talking about around the country and around the world tomorrow. Tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of D-Day. There aren't a lot of days known in history around the world by just one letter, but June 6, 1944, is known that way. It is the greatest amphibious battlefield landing ever and probably the single greatest military operation in history. It was done to liberate people in Europe from one of the most savage regimes that ever existed.

At 15 minutes past midnight, 18,000 paratroopers began to step out of their planes high above Normandy, France, going in behind what would be the landing the next day. Below them, there were about 200,000 people streaming toward the Continent on almost 7,000 ships, with about 1 million others to follow after that landing was made on D-Day.

A journalist who wrote about the battle noted that by 4:30 that morning, the Stars and Stripes flew for the first time over a town liberated by Americans in France in World War II.

So a lot happened from midnight to 4:30, but a lot more was going to happen that day. Americans led the operation, but there were also troops from Britain, from Poland, from Norway, from Canada, and even French troops returning to help free their own country were there. They were told that when you land in Normandy, you will have only one friend: God. I am sure there was lots of praying going on that day.

It became known in literature and on film as ``The Longest Day,'' and it gave the Allies the threshold they needed to free the Continent from the crush of the Third Reich. There was clearly chaos--that many people doing that many things in that many different ways. There were missteps, and there was bad luck, but in the end, there was an unimaginable amount of courage and sacrifice and just simple providence in what happened that day.

When one landing group was landed in the wrong place, a place they weren't supposed to land, the commanding general, Theodore Roosevelt, who was the son of the former President Theodore Roosevelt, told one of his officers just to keep on bringing the men ashore. He said: ``We are going to start the war from right here.'' It is not where they intended to be, but it is where they were, and in their view and General Roosevelt's view that day, where we are is where we are going to start; there is no going back now. They didn't go back.

One of the men who joined the fight that day--and there were millions who would eventually--with hundreds of thousands that day was Ralph Goldsticker from the Marine Corps Reserve.

He had signed up for the Army Aviation Cadet Corps right after Pearl Harbor. He said, when talking about this later, that his parents were scared silly when they found out he had signed up immediately to become a flyer in what would become World War II.

He flew 35 missions as a bombardier flying in a B-17 Flying Fortress, including two missions on D-Day. His first mission that day was to help take out the big German guns that guarded the beach where British troops were landing. He remembers the skies being so thick with airplanes that he had to fly from southern England all the way back to Scotland just to get in line to head to France.

Later that afternoon, he flew a second mission to attack German reinforcements who were headed to the beaches. Ralph was awarded the French Legion of Honor medal in recognition of his service.

You know, he was just one of thousands of Missourians from the lowest private to General Omar Bradley, who was commanding the American troops who were part of that mission, and many of them would never return.

We just had a series of votes a little earlier than we would normally have in the week because 17 or so of our colleagues are going to be part of the D-Day celebration on this 75th anniversary. I had an opportunity myself to be in Normandy a few years ago. We were in Normandy at the Normandy American Cemetery, where there were 7,000 graves out in front of us.

On what was a private trip, not a government trip, we were fortunate to have a good guide who understood the war and the cemetery. He took us through the cemetery, and then he took us over and sat us down on the stone wall with the English Channel to our backs and those 7,000 graves out in front of us. As we sat there at that spot, he flipped open his computer and on his computer he had some video of General Eisenhower and Walter Cronkite sitting exactly on that same spot on June 6, 1964, the 20th anniversary of D-Day.

General Eisenhower, of course, gave the orders in spite of weather and other things, hoping it would work out as it was supposed to. As for what happened on D-Day and what happened later, he said to Walter Cronkite something like this: You know, Walter, my son John graduated from West Point on D-Day. Many times over the last 20 years I thought about him and his wife and the family they have and the opportunities they have had, and I thought about these young men--Eisenhower said, looking at those graves--and I thought about these young men and what they didn't get to do because of what they were asked to do.

That, by the way, was the same commanding general who had that famous note in his wallet that day, stating that he would take full responsibility for what happened if it didn't go well. That was the kind of leader he was.

I mentioned that there were 18,000 paratroopers. He was told that 70 percent of those paratroopers would not survive the day. There is a statue here in the Rotunda of this building that is based on a photo of Eisenhower the day before D-Day, surrounded by those young paratroopers. They were 18, 19, and 20, and maybe even a few younger than 18 surrounding him. They had been told that he wouldn't want to talk to them, but when he got there, it was obvious that he was there to see them. That statue in the Rotunda shows Eisenhower making a gesture. Nobody knew for years what that particular hand gesture was, but it turns out that he was talking to a young man from Idaho, and he was talking about fly fishing. So that gesture of Eisenhower in this building, if you are in this building looking at that statue, is Eisenhower the day before D-Day, talking to a young man about fly fishing. Again, he had been told that 70 percent of those paratroopers would not survive the day because of what he and others were asking them to do.

The numbers weren't that bad, but they turned out to be plenty bad. The Germans had released water in an area behind Normandy in an unexpected way. So many of those paratroopers who expected to land on the ground instead went into flooded lands and drowned. Other things happened that couldn't have been planned for and weren't planned for, but they were there to do that job.

The fighting that first day, D-Day, paved the way for more men to come ashore. It began the long push from France into Germany and, for them, into history. I think there will be slightly more than a dozen D- Day survivors at that 75th anniversary. You don't have to do the math very long to know that if you were in the military on D-Day, you would be in your nineties today, and they are going to be there with our colleagues and others celebrating what they did and what they were willing to do.

One observer wrote on D-Day: There never had been a dawn like this one--700 ships, 200,000 people ready to land and establish the beginning of the end of World War II. So on D-Day, we remember again the sacrifice of those thousands of soldiers, sailors, and airmen. We honor their courage and devotion to the cause of liberty. We serve them by continuing to remain strong and preparing to fight for freedom everywhere. That means doing all we can for the men and women who defend us today. It means we carry the legacy of the generations that fought 75 years ago on D-Day and every other war where Americans fought and died.

They deserve our gratitude today and every day. We need to continue to understand the importance of our alliances and our willingness to stand for freedom. D-Day is a great day and this is a great, great week to be reminded of that.

I yield back.

Mr. President, I take this opportunity to honor the work and career of Chancellor Mark Wrighton of Washington University in St. Louis. On May 31, 2019, Chancellor Wrighton concluded his term as chancellor after 24 years at Washington University.

In 1995, Chancellor Wrighton began his career at Washington University in St. Louis. He was brought to St. Louis to serve as the 14th chancellor to one of the top institutions in the United States. Consistently ranked in the top 20 for best universities and currently ranked No. 8 for best research and medical schools, Washington University in St. Louis's reputation has grown; and its academic reach expanded under the leadership of Chancellor Wrighton. Although it was already a top school when he arrived, Chancellor Wrighton had a strong vision for boosting the full-time faculty numbers, making capital improvements to continue the high-quality learning experience for students, expanding their reach internationally, and enhancing the advancements in their medical research.

Under his guidance and leadership, Chancellor Wrighton saw the construction of 50 new buildings, including a state-of-the-art research facility, the Debra and George W. Couch III Biomedical Research Building that is home to top researchers involved in genetics, genomics, and regenerative biology. In addition, one of his projects that has arguably made the biggest impact in St. Louis and is playing an important role in cancer research is the development of the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center. His focus on capital improvements to enhance the quality of learning and research, as well as hiring the best leadership to oversee the faculty, doctors, and researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine, have led to pivotal results in the areas of treating, researching, and developing new approaches to dealing with diseases, such as cancer and Alzheimer's. His comprehensive vision for the best talent to work in top-quality facilities has pioneered the way for better approaches to personalized medicine and lifesaving treatment making a significant contribution to addressing many of the complicated diseases facing patients and the families that love them.

In addition to medical care and research, Chancellor Wrighton had a vision for contributing to the entrepreneurial climate in St. Louis and supporting the St. Louis community. There have been many positive local impacts made by Washington University, but an important commitment Chancellor Wrighton supported as an original collaborator was to launch Cortex. Cortex is the St. Louis home to the region's largest innovation campus for bioscience and technology startups and companies. Chancellor Wrighton's early and continued support of enterprises such as Cortex and other collaborations, like the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, demonstrate his commitment to support local economic growth and enhance job creation.

Over the years Chancellor Wrighton has been an instrumental leader not just in the St. Louis region but across the country. He is not only known for being one of the best in the field of chemistry, which is where he started his career, but for being the best in educating our next generation of students, researchers, and citizens to be productive, engaged, and to make a difference.

Chancellor Wrighton has led Washington University in St. Louis with great integrity. He has been a valuable partner to the St. Louis community. He has been and I am sure will continue to be an important adviser to me and to those that will seek his expertise to help address the many issues facing our region, State, and country. He has laid the groundwork for his successor to continue to enhance the quality education Washington University in St. Louis has been recognized for over the past several decades.

We thank him for his years of commitment to the University and to the St. Louis region.