Floor Statements

Madam President, I rise today to offer my sincerest congratulations to my friend George Nee on his upcoming retirement as president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO. George is a friend of many years, and I have long admired his dedication to fighting for Rhode Islanders--for good-paying jobs, affordable healthcare, safe workplaces, and retirement security.

George was born in Syracuse, NY, and first came to New England in the late 1960s to attend Boston College. He left his studies to oversee the United Farm Workers grape boycott in Massachusetts and, a few years later, came to Rhode Island for the Farm Workers' lettuce boycott. Through his work, he met legendary activist and organizer Cesar Chavez and became part of the security team protecting Chavez as he worked to organize farm workers. Inspired by Chavez, George returned to the Ocean State in 1976 to form his own union, which would become the Service Employees International Union Local 76, representing jewelry, clerical, and healthcare workers.

In 1983, George joined the Rhode Island AFL-CIO as its executive director, then secretary-treasurer, then president. Under George's leadership, the AFL-CIO improved access to opportunities for workers, including Climate Jobs Rhode Island, an initiative to help transition Rhode Island toward a clean energy economy. Along the way, he met and married Anne Sliney, the best of a great many good decisions he has made. She has made her own magnificent contributions, and together, they raised three children Katie, Brigid, and Patrick, who are each following the family tradition of making a difference in ways that matter.

I got to know George best in the early 90s when Rhode Island's workers' compensation system was in crisis. George brought the union voice and perspective to the table and advocated for reforms to revamp the broken system. The result was a law that dramatically reduced costs without cutting benefits--a win for workers and employers. George was one of the keys to the law's passage and went on to protect that reform and the workers' compensation system over many years. George stands in a Rhode Island tradition of leadership in the national labor movement, along with legends like Ed McElroy, Armand Sabitoni, Frank Montanaro, and now Michael Sabitoni. George puts his head down and works hard, so workers in our State can hold their heads high.

Bravo, my friend. We owe you a debt of gratitude and appreciation for uplifting the lives and livelihoods of workers across our State. My very best wishes on your exciting next chapter.

Madam President, I rise today to honor my friend, J. Michael Downey, who was the president of Rhode Island's AFSCME Council 94. Mike passed away in August, leaving behind his wife Claudette, their three children Corey, Faith, and Michael, and their spouses. He also leaves behind two siblings and nine grandchildren. Mike was born in Providence and grew up in a union household. Both his father and grandfather served in leadership roles in their local unions.

After graduating from LaSalle Academy, Mike earned his master plumbing license through a 5-year apprenticeship program. Mike went on to work as a plumber at the University of Rhode Island and later as chief plumbing investigator at the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training. It was during Mike's time at URI that, like his father and grandfather before him, he found his passion for organized labor and advocating for the rights and well-being of workers. For more than 27 years, Mike served as president of Local 528, which represents workers at URI. Mike also served as president of AFSCME Council 94 from 2005 until his passing.

Mike was an avid sports fan and loved New England's teams--the Celtics, Red Sox, and Patriots. He also enjoyed coaching youth sports and could often be found cheering in the stands at his grandkids' sporting events. Mike was a great guy, an enthusiastic leader, and a good friend in the fight. I thank him for his tireless advocacy on behalf of workers across Rhode Island. I will miss him.

Madam President, I rise today to wish a happy 100th birthday to J. William Middendorf II, known to family and friends as Bill. Bill lives in Little Compton, RI, and celebrated this remarkable milestone on Sunday. Bill led a distinguished career in public service. He served in World War II as a naval engineering officer and navigator. He was appointed U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands in 1969. Following his ambassadorship, he served as Under Secretary of the Navy.

In 1974, Middendorf was appointed by President Nixon to serve as the 62nd Secretary of the Navy. During his leadership in the Navy, Middendorf championed the Navy's submarine program and oversaw the creation of General Dynamics Electric Boat's Quonset Point location. Rhode Islanders know well the importance of the Quonset Point facility to our State's economy and its role at the forefront of our national security efforts. Bill was also instrumental in the development of the F/A 18 Hornet, which was in part named for the Revolutionary warship, the USS Hornet that had been commissioned by his ancestor, Captain William Stone. And he approved the first Marine Corps Marathon, which is still run to this day.

Last December, I was very pleased to take to the Senate floor to celebrate that an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer was named USS J. William Middendorf, which follows the tradition of naming destroyers after U.S. naval leaders. That recognition was a testament to Bill's remarkable career in public service and many contributions to our State and country. Bill, my best wishes to you on your 100th birthday.

Mr. President, I submit to the Senate a letter from the Congressional Budget Office, dated today, that tallies the effect of enacted legislation on the fiscal year 2025 budget. There hasn't been any.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 included provisions that acted as a budget for fiscal years 2024 and 2025. On May 14, 2024, I filed the budgetary levels used for the fiscal year 2025 budget; since then, no legislation has cleared Congress that changes revenue or mandatory spending by more than $500,000 over 10 years. The effects round to zero.

I ask unanimous consent that CBO's letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, along with the distinguished ranking member of the Budget Committee, Senator Grassley, we congratulate Robert Sunshine on his retirement after 48 years of service to the Congressional Budget Office, Congress, and our country.

We would like to take a few minutes to honor this truly exceptional public servant and the legacy he leaves behind. Throughout his distinguished career, Bob has served as a mentor to countless members of the CBO staff--and to many a CBO Director--and he has remained steadfast in his commitment to CBO's mandate to be objective, impartial, and nonpartisan.

Bob joined CBO in 1976, when the Agency was in its infancy, and his first job was as principal analyst covering transportation issues. In 1995, Bob became the Budget Analysis Division's Deputy Assistant Director, and in 1999, he was named CBO's Assistant Director of Budget Analysis. He oversaw much of the Agency's work, including the preparation of cost estimates for legislation being considered by Congress and the preparation of the multiyear budget and economic projections that are the foundation of the congressional budget process.

Mr. President, 6 years ago, I sent all of my colleagues in the Senate this binder of economic warnings about climate change. Here it is. The warning signs were flashing, so I shared all of those different reports. When I assumed the role of Senate Budget Committee chair, I provided an updated version of that binder to my committee members. As you can see, it had gotten a lot thicker. The warning signs had kept piling up, imploring us to act now before it is too late. And what is happening now? The events warned of are coming to pass.

Over 19 Budget Committee hearings, we heard from serious experts about the looming economic, financial, and fiscal risks of climate change. We had economists, actuaries, industry analysts, scientists, healthcare providers,

farmers, academics, national security leaders; even some conservative political leaders shared the warnings. The witnesses and the topics differed, but the message was the same: Look out. Climate change presents an economic threat, and ignoring it poses severe, even systemic economic risks. We ignore it at our economic and fiscal peril.

Ignoring it is, unfortunately, the path my Republican colleagues have chosen to follow, but ignoring climate change does not stop climate change from hitting our economies even in red and purple States. The changes are happening in every corner of the country; and day after day, news reports only confirm the warnings.

We held hearings on communities facing coastal flooding risk and wildfire risk and how those risks affect insurance and mortgage markets and, ultimately, property values. A mortgage issuer looks forward 30 years--the term of the mortgage--and climate-driven sea level rise, extreme precipitation, hurricane damage, and river flooding will add big risks to residential properties over the next 30 years. I am a Rhode Islander, so the flood risk is close to home, but more than half of all U.S. properties face a wildfire risk, and that is also getting worse with climate change.

Insurers are taking notice. When climate-driven losses increase, premiums increase; and when climate-driven losses become too hard to predict, insurers pull out. Insurance becomes not only not affordable but not even available. Since our hearings, insurance and housing markets in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and California--States highly exposed to climate-driven hurricane, flooding, and wildfire risks--are in full crises.

In May of last year, State Farm announced it was no longer offering new policies in California. Then in June, Allstate followed suit. That July, Farmers announced it was pulling out of the Florida market entirely. Just last week, Progressive Insurance announced that the company was ``temporarily restricting'' new homeowners business in Texas.

After Texas got a double whammy--historic wildfires through February and March and then the Hurricane Beryl flooding in July, knocking out power to nearly 3 million Texans and leading to ``the most tornado warnings issued in the U.S. in a single July day since records began''--people sat in flooded homes, without air conditioning, in 90- plus-degree heat, with mold growing, and Texas politicians still denied climate change.

Well, homeowner's insurance companies don't deny climate change. Nationally, average homeowner's insurance premiums increased 33 percent between 2020 and 2023. In Florida, already high premiums more than doubled. Average insurance premiums in Florida are now more than $10,000 per year--average. Over in New Orleans, average premiums are closing on $10,000 per year. In Miami, they average almost $17,000 per year. This is fossil fuel-driven climateflation, and it presents an affordability crunch for American families.

Don't just take it from me; take it from Federal Reserve Chairman Powell, who testified that rising insurance premiums have been a significant driver of inflation. He warned that ``in the longer term, companies are withdrawing from writing insurance in some coastal areas. It's a significant issue.''

It even came into the Presidential debate last night, when Vice President Harris said what we know about climate change is that it is very real. You ask anyone who lives in a State who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences who now is either being denied home insurance or is being jacked up on insurance rates.

There is a cascade effect here: The crisis in coastal homeowner's insurance bleeds over into mortgage markets. And when mortgage markets suffer, that affects property values--a cascade that poses what economists call a ``systemic'' threat to our economy.

If your property can't get insurance, good luck getting a mortgage. Without mortgages, your only buyers are those able to pay cash, and that drives down your property values.

The chief economist of Freddie Mac actually warned of a coastal property values crash that would damage the entire economy, ``systemic'' damage, just like we saw in the 2008 financial crisis and great recession. Florida and parts of Texas are already in that spiral, as unsold condominiums pile up in those markets and values fall.

We face a national affordable housing challenge, so it is an added piece of bad news from housing nonprofits that the insurance rates squeeze ``could threaten to end affordable housing development as we know it.''

Back to wildfires. New York City saw this orange skyline, a phenomenon San Franciscans got to know too well in 2020's wildfire season. That is because extreme wildfires have more than doubled over the past two decades, with the six worst wildfire seasons occurring in the last 7 years. That makes wildfire risk the evil twin of flood risk for insurance, mortgages, and property values.

To quote our witness, Benjamin Keys, a professor of finance at Wharton:

This should be ringing alarm bells for housing markets all

over the country.

April's Economist magazine--I have got a bigger version for folks watching us on C-SPAN. April's Economist magazine--not exactly a green publication--went Dr. Keys one better, warning that the whole world should be concerned about climate change, putting $25 trillion of global real estate at risk, threatening a global financial meltdown-- cover article. Read it yourself.

Insurance, of course, isn't the only cost being driven higher by climateflation. Just go to the grocery store. At one hearing last year, we actually had bipartisan agreement that climate change is damaging crop yields and driving up prices. And those trends continue this year.

Just look at breakfast. The price of orange juice is at an alltime high, driven by the lowest harvest in Florida in 90 years and a 24- percent decline in yield in Brazil, which supplies about 70 percent of the world's orange juice--climateflation.

Brazil and Vietnam supply more than half of the world's coffee beans. In both countries, drought drove coffee prices up. Vietnam just reported that its July coffee exports declined nearly 30 percent year over year, and worse was June, which declined 50 percent year over year--more climateflation.

India and Thailand are the two largest exporters of sugar behind Brazil. Severe droughts in both of these countries have pushed the global cost of sugar to its highest level since 2011.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. consumers saw the price of sugar and sweets rise by 8.9 percent in 2023. USDA expects prices to increase another 5.6 percent this year. And cocoa production is also hit, with April prices up 235 percent in less than 6 months.

Olive oil, a kitchen staple, saw prices jump over 130 percent due to last year's Mediterranean drought. The International Olive Council expects even less production this year as droughts persists. In Spain, bottles of olive oil are now one of the most shoplifted items.

Climate change bodes ill for wine, too. A recent reveal of more than 200 studies predict that ``70% of current wine-producing regions face a substantial risk of losing their suitability for wine-growing if global temperatures increase more than 2 degrees Celsius.'' That is a danger threshold we are coming closer and closer to, giving new meaning to ``in vino veritas.''

When we wonder why grocery prices remain high, look at climate-driven disruptions, climateflation, not just to agriculture, as I have been describing, but also to the supply chains that move those products around.

Last October, a witness of ours warned the committee that ``the direct impact to extreme weather events can cascade through supply chains, affecting the flow of commodities and goods to regions and sectors leading to increased costs to business and to the broader economy''--more climateflation.

And while we were listening to that testimony, a historic drought had reduced Panama Canal vessel traffic to 24 crossings per day. So vessels resorted to the Suez Canal or went around South Africa to avoid the delays of canal travel. And those longer routes came at a higher shipping cost, ultimately passed on to consumers in higher prices--more climateflation.

Climate change is even beating up the infrastructure that underpins our

supply chains. As a witness told us last year, ``Physical impacts have been widely observed for everything from extreme heat waves to flood events compromising roads, tarmacs, pipelines, and rail lines, with direct repair and delay costs being felt throughout the economy. Annual direct damage costs for road and rail impacts alone are estimated to be just under $20 billion a year by 2050.''

This past July, New York had to close the Third Avenue Bridge from the Bronx to Manhattan because 95-degree heat caused the steel to expand.

Severe flooding struck Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota in June and led to the collapse of a railroad bridge, the near failure of a dam, and the destruction of hundreds of homes.

A bridge in Lewiston, ME, recently closed because its pavement started to buckle in high temperatures. One expert told the New York Times that extreme heat and flooding are accelerating the deterioration of bridges, causing them to ``fall apart like tinkertoys.'' And this will get worse: Extreme temperatures could cause one in four steel bridges to collapse by 2050.

Americans aren't just paying the cost of fossil fuel emissions through climateflation; they are paying it through direct Big Oil price-gouging. The oil and gas market, so-called, is actually controlled by an international cartel. And when OPEC jacks those prices, Big Oil in the United States happily rides along, loading up the biggest corporate profits in history. That, too, drives inflation.

One last thing. Last year, I came to the Senate floor and talked about what was then the hottest June on record, followed by the hottest July on record, followed by the hottest August on record, and then the hottest September on record. Well, this July, the world experienced the hottest day in at least 100,000 years.

We have talked a lot about costs and costs matter. The point of this speech is the economic harms of climate change, but that heat kills.

Our hearing on public health warned how climate change acts as a ``threat multiplier with health impacts happening through a variety of mechanisms, including worsening temperature extremes.''

Shortly after that hearing, Phoenix, AZ, experienced 31 straight days of 110-plus-degree temperatures, shattering the previous record. This year, the Phoenix hot streak continued, with temperatures breaking 100 degrees from late May for more than 100 straight days.

In Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located, at least 150 people have died from heat, and hundreds more deaths are still under investigation.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that over 1,200 people are killed by extreme heat in the United States every year. Heat deaths in 2023 were the highest in 45 years.

In just 1 month--just 1 month, July 2023--the death count was near the annual average. One month nearly matched the annual average. An estimated 1,130 U.S. residents died of heat. And as work from Brown University and others have shown, that is likely an undercount.

In spite of all of this danger and its severe fiscal implications, some of my Republican colleagues complain that the Budget Committee is giving climate change too much attention. To them, it is not enough of a risk to our Federal budget, never mind that at least $10 trillion of our national debt stems from economic shocks--``exogenous'' they would call it in economics--economic shocks; specifically, the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID pandemic.

Well, climate change portends the biggest systemic shock of all. That is the lesson of all of these economic reports and studies, the lesson of the cover article from The Economist, and the lesson of our testimony in the Budget Committee hearings.

For homeowners in Florida, those dangers are already on their doorstep. They are suffering through sea level rise, extreme precipitation that floods homes and cars, intense hurricanes that batter families and communities, and the soaring insurance premiums that result, leading into the cascade from the insurance market to the mortgage market, to the property values market that Freddie Mac's chief economist warned about.

To all of this, what is Florida Republicans' answer? To try to silence conversation about the climate crisis, to forbid State employees from discussing climate change, even when it is an affordability crisis for their own constituents.

There is really no doubt the dangers are growing worse and more widespread. The economic shadow of those dangers is looming. Folks with fiduciary responsibilities told us in the Budget Committee: We have to address the dangers. Folks with business responsibilities told us in the Budget Committee how they have to adjust to these new dangers. And I have been telling you for a while now, and I hate to say ``I told you so,'' but it is here now, and dammit, I told you so.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Madam President, I have five requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be discharged from further consideration of S. 3764 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 7377, which was received from the House.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following Senate resolutions: S. Res. 810, Patriot Week, and S. Res. 811, Apalachee High School.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc.

I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Thursday, September 12; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that following the conclusion of morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the Provinzino nomination postcloture; further, that notwithstanding rule XXII, all time be considered expired at 11:30 a.m., and upon disposition of the Provinzino nomination, the Senate resume consideration of the Ritz nomination; further, that the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Ritz nomination at 1:45 p.m.; finally, that if any nominations

are confirmed during Thursday's session, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

I thank the Senator for his inquiry and can confirm that H.R. 7032 is not intended to modify the application of section 6103 of the tax code in any way. H.R. 7032 will help the Congressional Budget Office provide more timely cost estimates and economic analyses that are essential to our work.

Madam President, I am here for the 34th scheme speech on the right-wing billionaires' covert scheme to capture and control our Supreme Court.

And I am here to report real progress in our work to restore the integrity of the Court, and wrest it from special-interest control.

This Court, captured and corrupted by right-wing special interests, has imposed deeply unpopular and harmful policies on the American people. It needs reform. And--good news--commonsense reforms to take back the Supreme Court received a significant boost from the President and the Vice President this week.

The right-wing ``Fed Soc'' Justices have done unprecedented damage to America's democratic institutions and to our government's ability to protect ordinary Americans' health, safety, and well-being.

The right-wing Fed SOC Justices also took away women's right to an abortion, leaving millions of women unable to make basic decisions about their own reproductive health and endangering women experiencing troubled pregnancies.

They overturned longstanding and overwhelmingly popular gun safety laws leaving our communities exposed to the epidemic of gun violence.

They eviscerated the government's ability to fight climate change and to protect consumers from corporate profiteering, and they invented, out of thin air, the idea that former Presidents are absolutely immune from being held accountable for using their office to break the law, to commit crimes, even to commit treason.

On top of all of this, the Court has done its best to prevent the American people from fighting back through the democratic process. It has made it harder for ordinary people to vote, while making it easier for billionaires and deep-pocketed special interests to impose their will on the American people with unlimited amounts of dark money.

How did we get here? A decades-long scheme led by creepy billionaires and backed by a deluge of dark money captured the Court like some crooked 19th-century railroad commission. This Court-capture operation was not cheap. The latest estimate put it at more than $580 million, and that is a minimum. That money flowed in from creepy billionaires, laundered through rightwing front groups like the Federalist Society and Judicial Crisis Network, where the donors--the real donors--could hide their identities behind the front groups doing their dirty work.

This dark money funded full-scale campaigns to stack the Supreme Court with Justices who would deliver for the billionaires. The scheme's major victory came when Senate Republicans blocked Merrick Garland's confirmation to the Supreme Court. That set the stage for Donald Trump to fill that seat through a process outsourced almost entirely to the billionaires' operative Leonard Leo and his array of rightwing, dark money front groups.

Once these handpicked nominees landed on the Court, the dark money network tells them how to rule, supplying them with extremist legal arguments through so-called friend-of-the-court briefs designed to reach their desired results. The parallel between what the friend-of- the-court brief flotillas recommend and what the FedSoc Justices do is nearly perfect.

Leo and his cronies also orchestrated a secret gifts program for their amenable Justices, keeping them happy with lavish gifts of luxury vacations and other high-value freebies. Despite a clear Federal ethics law requiring Supreme Court Justices to disclose even small gifts, these Justices kept hidden years of free private jet travel, free yacht trips, free tickets to sporting events, and even, for one Justice, $260,000 of loan forgiveness for a luxury motor coach.

Justices have flouted the Federal law requiring recusal from cases where they have a conflict of interest. Justice Thomas sat on cases involving efforts to overturn the 2020 election despite his wife's involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Worst of all, the Court has refused to take any real steps to clean up this mess. After substantial public pressure, it first wrote a useless letter about ethics, and then it adopted a toothless ethics code with no mechanism for either investigation or determination or enforcement.

The Supreme Court now stands alone in all of government free from any factfinding about ethical misconduct. As a result, the Court's legitimacy in the eyes of the American people is now at an alltime low and falling.

Well, against all that mess, earlier this week, something big happened. On Monday, President Biden and Vice President Harris endorsed two commonsense proposals to help restore the Court's legitimacy. Happily, I have bills that perfectly align with both.

First, the Supreme Court needs a binding, enforceable code of conduct. The Supreme Court should not violate one of the most basic principles of the law: ``Nemo iudex in causa sua''--``No one should be a judge in their own cause.'' Yes, that is a principle so old and so venerated that it is in Latin, and they violate it nonstop.

The Justices of the Supreme Court should have ethics rules at least as strict as the other branches of government, with a real process for finding out what happened and holding miscreants accountable. Overwhelmingly, Americans agree.

Last week, Justice Kagan suggested that a panel of experienced lower court judges could review ethics complaints, compile a report, and then make recommendations to the Supreme Court. That is exactly what my Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act would do.

By the way, that is also what most all State supreme courts do. They all face the same problem of being the top supreme court in their sovereign entity, and they all face ethics review by other judges or panels. This is a solvable problem.

My bill would also impose stricter disclosure of gifts Justices receive, enhance existing recusal laws, and require the flotillas of phony front groups who lobby the Court through friend-of-the-court briefs to disclose their actual funders and connections.

My bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last summer, with the warm and welcome support of the Presiding Officer, and is now awaiting a vote on the Senate floor. Democrats stand ready and willing to deliver on President Biden's and Vice President Harris's goal of bringing real transparency and accountability to the Supreme Court.

President Biden and Vice President Harris also announced their support for 18-year term limits for Supreme Court Justices, with new appointments to the Court occurring every 2 years. That would counter the Republican Supreme Court Justices' penchant for strategically timed retirements that tip the Court into Republican hands.

Term limits are a commonsense proposal with long bipartisan support. Supreme Court Justices, including Chief Justice Roberts, have expressed support for term limits. Even some of our Republican colleagues have endorsed the idea. A Fox NEWS poll earlier this month showed that this idea had support from more than 75 percent of Americans.

Fortunately, Democrats stand ready to deliver on this idea too. My Supreme Court Biennial Appointments and Term Limits Act, which the distinguished Presiding Officer is a cosponsor of, would make the Court more representative of the American people and lower the political stakes of Supreme Court nominations.

Under our bill, the President would appoint a new Justice every 2 years. Justices would serve full time on the Court for 18 years, after which they would acquire a form of senior status--something familiar to anybody who knows Federal courts, where, in district courts and circuit courts of appeal, judges go on senior status regularly.

These Justices on senior status would remain on the Court to hear the original jurisdiction cases that are required by the Constitution for the Supreme Court to entertain. The nine most recently appointed Justices would hear what the Constitution calls appellate jurisdiction cases, which the Constitution expressly gives Congress the power to regulate.

So Congress can pass this long-overdue reform while preserving judicial independence and without a constitutional amendment.

President Biden noted that he has overseen more Supreme Court nominations as Senator, Vice President, and President than anyone living today. Vice President Harris, a former member of the Senate Judiciary Committee herself, has echoed the President's calls for reform. Both the President and the Vice President have immense respect for our Supreme Court and for a strong and independent judiciary. They have demonstrated it through their lifetimes. That is exactly why we should listen to them when they tell us that the time has come for reform at the Supreme Court.

This has been a long and often lonely fight in the Senate. The big- money, rightwing apparatus has tried over and over to shut me up. I think I may have a record for hostile Wall Street Journal editorials, and may I tell the Wall Street Journal editorial board: Thank you. That is a badge of honor.

Realization of what is needed to save the Court from itself has spread--first through the Halls of Congress, then into the national consciousness, and now to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That is good reason for hope.

So bravo, Mr. President and Madam Vice President.

Now it is up to us in Congress to deliver and repair and redeem this captured Court.

To be continued.

I yield the floor.