Floor Statements

Mr. President, I am here this evening to commemorate the passing of a remarkable individual. I only met her once when I went over to speak at a gathering of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. But on March 16, at the age of 85, Her Honor Judge Gladys Kessler passed away.

She had been quite a trailblazer before she went on the court. She cofounded the Women's Legal Defense Fund, now known as the National Partnership for Women & Families, and she served as the president of the National Association of Women Judges.

In her career, she rendered a lot of very good decisions, but the most memorable one and the one that exemplified some of the characteristics I admired the most about her was the decision that she rendered exposing in detail a conspiracy by the tobacco industry to deceive the American public about the safety of tobacco.

The Big Tobacco scheme is one that we are, I think, pretty familiar with. You pay a lot of phony-baloney for-hire scientists to produce studies making false claims about your product, you hire a web of PR experts and front groups to spread doubt and critique the actual real science that you don't like, and you have paid intermediaries to relentlessly attack and try to smear your opponents.

In the face of this behavior, we had a remedy: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the RICO Act.

In 1999, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil RICO lawsuit against the major tobacco companies and their associated industry groups alleging that the companies, and I will quote the complaint here, ``engaged in and executed--and continue to engage in and execute--a massive 50-year scheme to defraud the public, including consumers of cigarettes, in violation of RICO.''

The case took 7 years, but in 2006, Judge Kessler wrote one of the most impressive opinions I have ever seen from a U.S. district court judge. It was 1,683 pages long. She went through the evidence that the U.S. Department of Justice had marshaled, and she organized it and laid it out in a way that was completely compelling, that completely crushed the defendant tobacco companies, to the point where, when it was on appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit very powerfully upheld it. It is one of the powers of a district judge that, with the authority to find the facts and marshal the evidence properly, you can make virtually bomb-proof opinions, and in 1,683 pages, Judge Gladys Kessler did just that. She found the defendant--here is her quote:

Defendants coordinated significant aspects of their public

relations, scientific, legal, and marketing activity in

furtherance of a shared objective--to . . . maximize industry

profits by preserving and expanding the market for cigarettes

through a scheme to deceive the public.

She added:

In short, [they] have marketed and sold their lethal

product with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded focus

on their financial success, and without regard for the human

tragedy or social costs that success exacted.

It was a testament--this opinion was--to judicial diligence, and it left a permanent, solid record for history of the campaign of fraud that the tobacco industry had run until that point.

Of course, in order for her to be able to render that decision, there had to be a plaintiff willing to bring the case. So kudos also to the U.S. Department of Justice back then for being willing to take on a defendant as powerful as the tobacco industry. We forget, now that smoking is so much less of a thing, how enormously powerful the tobacco industry was, how its network of suppliers gave it footholds in every State, how its enormous revenues allowed it to cut into this building and manipulate the politics of the U.S. Congress to the great detriment of the health of the American people.

It goes without saying that there is an obvious parallel between the conduct of the tobacco industry leading up to Judge Kessler's decision and the conduct of the fossil fuel industry.

In fact, experts point out that when Judge Kessler's decision shut down the fraud of the tobacco industry, some of the individuals and some of the organizations that had been involved in that fraud simply rebooted themselves as new experts in how to deny climate science.

I hope that we come to a point where today's Department of Justice has the diligence and the fortitude to go ahead with a similar action. But today, this is about Judge Kessler--a woman who saw something going very badly wrong and sat down and wrote a 1600-page decision to put it right. I think it is a pretty terrific example.

And I have a few bits of business, if I may, and then we will open the floor to the other speakers.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged, and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 123.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table

Mr. President, finally, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Tuesday, March 28; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, 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 resume consideration of calendar No. 25, S. 316 postcloture; further, that at 11:30 a.m., the Senate vote in relation to the Johnson amendment No. 11 and Ricketts amendment No. 30; that the Senate recess following the Ricketts vote until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus meetings; further, that at 2:30 p.m., the Senate vote in relation to the Cruz amendment No. 9 and Sullivan amendment No. 33, that at 5:15 p.m. the Senate vote in relation to the Scott of Florida amendment No. 13 and Hawley amendment No. 40; finally, that all previous provisions in relation to the amendment votes remain in effect, and with two minutes for debate, equally divided, prior to each vote.

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order, following the remarks of Senators Cassidy, Rubio, Sullivan, and Brown.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I am delighted to follow Leader Schumer, for whom this has been such an important issue. I am confident that we will gather our caucus together to be as effective as we can.

Today is International Women's Day, but this year it is shadowed by the freedom that women have lost in America to make their own choices and to shape their own lives. A radical Supreme Court captured by deep- pocketed special interests has shredded this constitutional right. It is a whole separate story how that happened, how big dark money interests went into back rooms at the Federalist Society, handpicked Supreme Court Justices, put them on the Court, spent millions and millions of dollars orchestrating all of that and putting TV ads on behind them--all run through phony front groups--and now instruct them what to do through a whole bunch of other phony front groups, also dark money funded, that go in as amici curiae and present these arguments in orchestrated flotillas to the Court--a separate issue but a very unfortunate situation behind this horrible decision.

What I want to talk about is how hurtful and harmful this is when things go wrong. Everybody hopes and prays that their pregnancy will be successful and there will be a healthy birth. But it is not uncommon in a pregnancy for things to go wrong. And when things go wrong, these extreme abortion restrictions put the doctors and the patient into impossible and wrong situations.

We hear about doctors who have postponed care until a patient's health or pregnancy complication had deteriorated so much that their life was in actual immediate danger.

You could have predicted it. You could have taken the prudent course, but the shadow of these criminal penalties--this assault on women's freedom--has made doctors postpone that decision, and it does, in fact, put patients' lives at risk.

There are committees that have been set up to determine whether a doctor making a decision about a woman's care should be allowed to proceed. You have to go through the hospital committee because of the risk of liability. Sometimes these things happen fast and sometimes people feel very privately about them. And the idea that this has to go to a committee is both a cause for delay and a huge lack of privacy for the women and the family involved.

So in Texas, oncologists have said they wait for pregnant women with cancer to get sicker before they treat them. Imagine being on the receiving end of that.

Some doctors have reported that they are unable to get other professionals to come and assist them with procedures because the other professionals are frightened of liability. And that, too, fouls up the ability of the patient to get care--even the forensic nurses who care for sexual assault victims.

So you are battered and you are raped, and the police respond and the EMTs respond, and they take you to the emergency room. There are forensic nurses who provide specified care for sexual assault victims. They do the rape kit. They know how to deal with patients who are still very traumatized. And they usually also provide morning after contraception, right?

The woman has been raped. Why would you not do that?

Now, they are anxious about doing that for fear that it will be considered an abortion drug.

That woman who has been through that experience deserves far better than to have politics intrude into her care on that terrible night. It is not just me saying this. An emergency physician in Houston who was the chair of the board of the American College of Emergency Physicians said:

We're no longer basing our judgment on the clinical needs

of the woman, we're basing it on what we understand the legal

situation to be.

The President of the American Medical Association says:

This is happening every day, all the time in these

[freedom-burdened] states.

He says that ``some others have said that these are incredibly rare situations.'' He says: No, that is not true. ``This is happening every day, all the time in these states.''

I had a grim meeting with a group of OB-GYN doctors who practice in Rhode Island who are hearing from colleagues in States that have been burdened by this freedom being removed from women in those States, that their professional colleagues, fellow doctors, are beside themselves at the way this has interfered in their practice, particularly at those most dangerous time, when a pregnancy is in trouble and the woman needs the full attention of the doctor and the care that is determined based on her medical needs, not on something that some Republican legislature hobbled together.

So it is really important for us to get together and pass the Women's Health Protection Act. I want to thank all those who have shown so much leadership getting us to this day.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I was delayed in joining my colleagues here to talk about this so-called anti-woke capitalism, or anti-ESG scheme, that has been propagated.

I think the important thing to begin with is to understand what is happening out there, why this has happened. The Republicans would like us to believe that some bizarre, viral epidemic of wokeism has spread into America's great financial companies, into the investment advisers, into the banks, into all kinds of fiduciaries, and that that needs to be somehow excised. That is not what has happened. That is preposterous, magical thinking.

What has happened is that the long forecasted dangers of climate change that scientists have been telling us about for years have now gotten so real and are so immediate that they have hit the due diligence horizon for big banks, big investment companies, corporate boards, and other fiduciaries. When you owe somebody else a fiduciary duty, like your shareholders or your investors or your customers at a bank, then you have to tell them the truth, and you have to tell them the truth about risks. The risks associated with climate change--the risks caused by the fossil fuel industry's relentless emissions--are now so real and so immediate that they can't be denied by big institutions that have no real interest in climate change but are absolutely obliged to tell the truth as fiduciaries.

So that fiduciary threshold--that due diligence horizon--has been crossed, and the fossil fuel industry, which is used to bullying to get its way, is now pushing this completely fake, anti-ESG effort in order to try to undo what the free market and what real life in facts and fiduciary obligations are causing other industries to deal with.

The one telltale clue here is that, when they are done talking about woke capitalism and when they are done talking about anti-ESG stuff, when you actually look at what the objection is--what the specific thing is that they are pushing back against--in the ESG, it is always the ``E.'' It is never the ``S.'' It is never the ``G.'' It is not social stuff. It is not governance stuff. It is environmental stuff. Within that ``E,'' for environmental stuff, it is ``E'' for emissions. That is always the gravamen of the complaint.

So that tells you a lot about who is behind this, and who is pitching it tells you a lot about who is behind this because you have got fossil fuel-funded organizations, like the Republican Attorneys General Association that is cranking up and turning out Republican attorneys general to push this theory. You have got the Republican State treasurers, often funded by the fossil fuel industry, and a group called the State Financial Officers Foundation, which has glommed the State treasurers together to try to push on this. You have got State boards, like the Texas Railroad Commission--again, heavily, heavily, heavily involved with the fossil fuel industry--that are pushing all of this.

When you look at what it is, you can see that its target is always fossil fuel emissions, and you can see that its proponents are always fossil fuel funded. That tells you why we are where we are.

The rule that the fossil fuel industry pushed through during the Trump administration--an administration which did essentially everything the fossil fuel industry wanted it to do--would have restricted the ability of investment professionals to deliver the products that customers actually wanted and prevented them from looking at environmental risks, social issues, or governance. Again, this is really about the environmental piece. The Biden rule just undoes that.

Nobody has to do ESG stuff, as that is dictated by customer demand, but if you want to and if your customers are demanding that and if you want to protect them from climate risk, well, there you go. You have to do it.

Another clue about the mischief here is who some of the propagators of this theory have been. One is the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is a notorious climate denial group. It has received millions of dollars from the Koch brothers' political enterprise, from Koch foundations, and has plenty of fossil fuel ties. There is the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is another group that is a front group for the oil and gas industry. I have already mentioned RAGA, which is heavily fossil fuel funded. It helped produce Scott Pruitt, whom you may remember from EPA disgrace. They had such control over RAGA that they were able to get him, as the attorney general, to write a letter with the identical text from a fossil fuel company, send it in to the EPA under his own letterhead, under his own signature as attorney general, even though the entire text was written by a fossil fuel company.

So that is the kind of relationship it has with RAGA, which, by the way, also helped turn people out for the January 6 insurrection. It is a really, really high-quality operation there.

The last group that I will mention is the Marble Freedom Trust. The Marble Freedom Trust is the 501(c)(4) pop-up operation that magically appeared in Utah to be the recipient of a $1.6 billion slush fund, gifted to it by a far-right billionaire. That put it into the hands of a guy named Leonard Leo, whom I have talked about here on the floor before, who is the orchestrator of the scheme to capture the Supreme Court and put it into special interests' hands. His reward for his success in that project was this $1.6 billion slush fund that he now controls, and he controls it through that Utah 501(c)(4) pop-up called the Marble Freedom Trust.

The guy who delivered that money into the Marble Freedom Trust was also famous for his support for the Heartland Institute, which is really just an epic climate denial crowd, to the point where one of their more notorious acts was to put up a billboard equating climate scientists to the Unabomber. That is the quality of the debate about climate change that the Heartland Institute brought, and the billionaire who has teed up the Marble Freedom Trust was a prime backer of all of that and, indeed, had his CFO go on the board of the Heartland Institute to try to keep the thing afloat so that it could be moderately well managed and continue to do its great work of billboards that compared the climate scientists to the Unabomber.

So that is where we are. These guys are deep into this anti-ESG push. The dark money operation that I talk about on the floor all the time is behind this ESG thing just the way it is behind the capture of the Court and just the way it is behind the whole climate denial operation that has stymied progress on climate in this building.

A few billion dollars here and there in politics turns out to deliver a lot, and the fossil fuel industry desperately wants to stop people who have fiduciary obligations from telling the truth about climate risks to their clients--to the people whom they have that fiduciary risk to--and this is the pitch to do that so that there is a legal hook to stop people from meeting their fiduciary obligations by disclosing real-life, actual climate risk now that it is so clear and so immediate that it is now obliged to be disclosed for due diligence.

Let us vote no on H.J. Res. 30, and let's do more than that. Let's call this out as a phony op. This is a scheme, run by the fossil fuel industry, to try to solve the problem it has--that its emissions problems are now so real that fiduciaries have to address it. That is the problem. A fake operation funded by billions of dollars of dark money through all of these slimy corporations and entities that doesn't disclose who their real donors are and through all of these political operatives that get their funding from the fossil fuel industry--that is not something we want to encourage in this country. We have had enough of the public not being listened to. In this case, actual customers, actual clients, are not being listened to because of this pressure.

Let's call this out. Let's put an end to it. This is not healthy. There is something rotten in Denmark.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, here I am again with my trusty, battered chart by my side, this time here to talk about the looming costs and economic risks of climate upheaval.

Almost exactly 5 years ago, I sent around a binder about this thick to all

of my Senate colleagues in which I compiled some of the most compelling warnings about the looming climate economic crisis. I have just recently updated it and shared it with all of the Budget Committee members. It is now more like this thick, as the warnings just keep piling up.

These warnings come from central bankers, economists, asset managers, insurance companies, investment banks, credit rating agencies, and leading management consultants--folks with a lot of credibility when it comes to economics, finance, corporate risk, and their effects on government spending and revenues--folks who often have a fiduciary obligation to get this right.

The Budget Committee has started to dig into these warnings. We have just held the first two of a series of hearings on climate impacts to our Federal budget. Our second hearing, held earlier today, explored warnings of crashes in coastal property values amid rising seas and more powerful storms.

One of our witnesses was Kate Michaud, the town manager of Warren,

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

I ask that the scheduled vote be allowed to occur immediately.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I am back today now for the 20th time to shed a little light on the dark money scheme to capture and control our Supreme Court.

Part of what allows that scheme to flourish is the ethics-free zone around the Supreme Court. It is quite unique. So let's look at it.

The last time I gave this speech, No. 19, I walked through the various problems with how the Supreme Court handles allegations of misconduct by the Justices.

The short answer is that it doesn't.

The U.S. Supreme Court is the only court in the country not covered by an ethics code. And worse than that, it is the only part of the Federal Government that has no process for ethics investigation and enforcement--none.

Now, any meaningful ethics regime contains three things: first, a process for receiving complaints; second, a process for investigating those complaints once they are received; and, third, a process for reporting the result and holding powerful people accountable should those complaints turn out to be merited.

The House and the Senate, for instance, we have our Ethics Committees. The executive branch has inspector generals and the attorney general. The Federal courts, except the Supreme Court, have their own investigative procedures. It is just the Supreme Court that has none. The closest you get is probably a motion to recuse.

Let's start with the difficulty of raising ethics complaints with the Supreme Court. People who are concerned about ethics violations over at the Court have to get pretty creative because the Court has no place to submit

an ethics complaint. If you like, there is no inbox.

We saw this play out when Judge Kavanaugh became Justice Kavanaugh. Multiple ethics complaints were pending against Judge Kavanaugh. The lower courts, like the DC Circuit that he was sitting on, do have a process for receiving complaints and for investigating them; and pursuant to that process, a special panel was appointed to review the complaints against Judge Kavanaugh.

But as soon as Judge Kavanaugh squeaked onto the Supreme Court as Justice Kavanaugh--poof--the lower courts lost jurisdiction over him, and the complaints had to be dismissed mid-investigation.

Now, the complaints could have been refiled up at the Supreme Court, but there was no place to file them.

We saw the problem again when a man named Robert Schenck sent Chief Justice Roberts a letter explaining how he learned, after a donor's private dinner with Justice Alito and his wife, how the Supreme Court was going to rule in the Hobby Lobby decision.

Apparently, a letter directly to the Chief Justice isn't a proper way to lodge a complaint because Schenck never heard back from the Court.

Months later, Schenck then went to the New York Times, which was following up on an earlier POLITICO story about Schenck's covert lobbying campaign to have wealthy rightwing donors invite some of the Justices to meals, to their vacation homes, or to private clubs.

It took the press, the fourth estate, to fill in the investigatory gap about that $30 million wining and dining campaign.

More recently, a former coworker of the Chief Justice's spouse alleged ethics problems with the Chief Justice's failure to disclose financial connections between his spouse and parties and law firms appearing before the Court. With no mechanism to ask the Supreme Court to review whether this arrangement presented a conflict, the former coworker sent his complaint around to congressional offices in hopes that someone might take it seriously somewhere.

Again, the complaint made it to the fourth estate; and, again, without an inbox at the Court or a process, it took journalists to give the inquiries an airing.

Set aside the merits of these complaints, the point is: They never got in the door for the Court's consideration. The Court's refusal to receive ethics complaints is unique to the Supreme Court, and I submit it is not serving the institution well. So even if there were an inbox for an ethics complaint, the Court still has no process to investigate it.

Turn back to Mr. Schenck. After the New York Times reported on his allegation, there was understandable public uproar.

Chairman Hank Johnson and I wrote to the Court as Courts subcommittee chairs to ask whether it was investigating the allegations. After months of silence, amid growing public clamor, the Court did something it almost never does: It acknowledged the accusations.

Mr. President, I have a two-page letter from the Court's legal counsel, which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

In that letter, the Court said the equivalent of: Justice Alito says he didn't leak the decision, and that is good enough for us. No mention in the letter of the lobbying campaign or of private wining and dining and no description of anything resembling an actual investigation.

I have been the attorney general of my State, a position that has criminal jurisdiction across the entire State. Only three attorneys general in the country have that; Rhode Island is one of them. I have been the United States attorney for my State and led Federal investigations. I know a little bit about investigations.

It is ``investigation 101'' to take statements from witnesses. That is how you make a record, and that is how you deter lying: by tying people to a statement so they can be held accountable if it turns out that the statement is false. No sign in the letter that that was done.

Same again with Justice Thomas regarding his refusal to recuse himself from cases implicating his wife's efforts at overturning the 2020 election.

Back in January 2022, Justice Thomas participated as the lone dissenter in a decision that allowed the House January 6 Select Committee access to records from the Trump White House. And a couple of months later, it turned out that Justice Thomas's wife had texted with White House officials repeatedly about overturning the 2020 election. So she was clearly covered by that investigative effort by the January 6 Commission.

He did not recuse; and, indirectly, it was suggested that Justice Thomas knew nothing at all about his wife's activity, so he didn't need to recuse.

OK. But that is a fact question. What did Justice Thomas know about his wife's activities at the time of the case? Easy to ask him. Easy to take a statement from him. But no sign that that was done. So, of course, no statement and no consequences.

Later, after the reporting about Justice Thomas's wife's activities came out in the public press and he failed to recuse himself in another case, the issue was no longer just a fact question about what Justice Thomas knew, he was now on notice about his wife's conduct, and he still did not recuse.

Why not? Again, no justification, no investigation, no conclusion. The Court has repeatedly failed to investigate or even acknowledge this glaring problem, which brings us to the third element of an effective ethics regime: accountability and transparency--a report at the end.

An investigation ought to be designed to get to the truth and to report its findings so that people can be held accountable for wrongdoing and the public can have confidence in the outcome.

That is a statement so obvious I find it hard to believe I actually have to say it here about the Court.

The one investigation we have seen the Supreme Court undertake was done in response to the Alito draft opinion leak. As an investigation, it was pitiful and marred with conflicts.

My surmise--my surmise--is that in the heat of the Court's ire about the leak, the assumption was made that some clerk or staffer was responsible. Chief Justice Roberts directed the Marshal of the Court to investigate. He called the leak a ``singular and egregious breach of trust that is an affront to the Court and the community of public servants who work here.''

Well, for more than 8 months, the public waited to find out whether the Marshal's investigation would live up to the Chief Justice's words.

In the end, the Court's handling of the Dobbs investigation was a case study in how not to conduct a fair and transparent investigation. The problems were numerous, not least that the Marshal of the Court isn't normally responsible for leading investigations. But the problem that really emerged was that some of the prime suspects for the leak were her bosses, and the investigation held the Justices to a different standard than everyone else at the Court. Everyone else at the Court had to sit down for formal interviews, had to turn over their private communications, had to sign affidavits under oath, but when it came to the Justices, it was different. They were subject to something that the Court called an iterative process. I have no idea what an iterative process is. I can tell you what it isn't. It isn't an investigative process. The Justices even asked questions of their own--some statement.

The premise seems to be that even here, the Justices can never be investigated. This was going to be a top-tier investigation as long as it looked like it was going to be clerks and staff, but once it looked like it might be Justices involved in the leak, suddenly the wheels fell off.

I have never seen an investigation where the investigator called in a third party to provide public assurance that they did a good job, like a little sidecar running next to the investigation: Yeah, they are doing a good job. In this case--worse--it was a third party with conflicts of interest, with relationships with obvious suspects and with contracts with the Court.

So if you compare all of that with how misconduct investigations are handled everywhere else in the Federal Government, you see some pretty big discrepancies. In the executive branch, Congress has established inspectors general who are surrounded by professional staff experienced in internal investigations. IGs know how to conduct

real interviews and record witness statements. Congress has its own internal procedures and investigators for ethics complaints. We have our Ethics Committee. The House has its Ethics Committee. Congress set up procedures for ethics investigations in the lower courts. They exist. Judges are investigated, and people can know where you submit your complaint and how that complaint gets investigated.

The Supreme Court is unique across the entire Federal Government in being impenetrable to investigation, from no ethics inbox, to no process for reviewing a complaint, to no credible report at the end of the day. The highest Court in the land should not be held to the lowest standards in government.

So last week, Congressman Hank Johnson and I, joined by Senator Blumenthal and Congressmen Nadler, Quigley, and Cicilline, reintroduced our Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act. Our bill would finally require the Supreme Court to have not just a code of conduct but a real process to enforce that code and other Federal ethics laws.

Our bill would also update judicial ethics laws, ending the ability of judges to ignore conflicts of interest and their recusal obligations; requiring Justices of the Supreme Court to disclose gifts and travel, as other Federal officials do; and exposing the real interests appearing at the Court behind amici curiae who lobby the Court under fake names.

Apparently, there has been a halfhearted effort at the Court to begin to deal with this. The Washington Post reported last week that the Justices discussed for years a binding code of ethics to no result, and the effort seems to have fallen apart. So that leaves Congress in the position that if they won't fix it, we will.

There are many problems plaguing our Supreme Court. Far-right, dark- money interests spent years stacking the Court with their handpicked Justices, who in turn have delivered for those interests at every available opportunity. We need to undo the damage wrought by the Court that dark money built and by those who built it, but we can start--we can start--by bringing basic standards of integrity to the Supreme Court, standards all other judges follow and standards that govern all high-ranking Federal officials across all three branches of Government--officials who are paid by taxpayers to serve the best interests of the American people.

To be continued.

I yield the floor.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am delighted to join my senior Senator to honor our common friend, Vincent Vespia, who was lately the chief of the South Kingstown, RI, police department.

He passed away on January 24, 2023, surrounded by his wife Judith-Ann and their cherished daughters Robin and Renee.

As Jack said, Vinnie Vespia grew up in Providence, and he served 2 years in the Army before returning home to Rhode Island and a career of service in the Rhode Island State Police.

Chief Vespia was a legend in our outstanding Rhode Island law enforcement community--famously fearless in his pursuit of justice.

During his 22-year career in the State police, Chief Vespia was at the center of the State's ongoing fight against organized crime, back in that day when the mob was a force in Rhode Island and the Rhode Island State Police was its counterforce.

His courageous police work led to the downfall of some of the State's most violent mobsters, including crime boss Raymond Patriarca and the notorious Gerald and Harold Tillinghast.

Along with his grit and toughness, Chief Vespia had style. In the book that Jack referenced, ``The Prince of Providence,'' Mike Stanton wrote that:

One night Vespia came crashing through the second-floor

window of Willie Marfeo's crap game on Federal Hill from the

bucket of a cherry picker, waving a machine gun at two dozen

stunned dice players.

Not everybody does that.

After his successful career with the State Police, Chief Vespia went on to take the helm of the South Kingstown Police Department, where he spent the next three and a half decades.

Chief Vespia was the longest serving leader of that department and will be fondly remembered for his pursuit of justice, for his unimpeachable sense of right and wrong, for his persistent good humor, and, of course, for the love and respect of that community that he leaves behind.

Hearing Vinnie Vespia tell stories of his law enforcement career with a twinkle in his eye is an indelible memory for me, and he was a mentor to me, as well as to the young officers who he brought up in law enforcement.

When Chief Vespia retired in 2016, it was widely accepted that he was one of the greatest to ever have worn our uniform.

I thank him and his family for supporting him in his devoted service. I, like many, will miss him dearly. Rhode Island was lucky to have this man, and we are safer because of him and many officers he mentored and trained who carry on the Vincent Vespia legacy to this day.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate requires each committee to adopt rules to govern the procedure of the committee and to publish those rules in the Congressional Record not later than March 1 of the first year of each Congress. Today, the Committee on the Budget adopted committee rules of procedure.

Consistent with Standing Rule XXVI, I ask unanimous consent to have a copy of the rules of procedure of the Committee on the Budget printed in the Congressional Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate Colonel Hugh T. Clements, Jr., on his retirement from the Providence Police Department and on his new role at the Department of Justice running the COPS program. A 38-year veteran of the police force, Colonel Clements joined the police force right out of college. He worked his way to the top job and did so with integrity and devotion to the job and the city he loves. Two things stand out about Hugh: One, he made the transition from leading the FOP to leading the department, a feat that provides a measure of his skills and fairness; two, in the department's dark days, he remained true to his oath, even though that likely ended any chance for him at promotion. When the skies ultimately brightened, his choice to stay true was rewarded; but at the time, it was not sure that day would ever come. It is easy to do the right thing when you are rewarded for it; when it comes with a price, that is the true test--one he passed. I have always admired and enjoyed working with Hugh. One of his many gifts is to always be in touch with and understand his officers and the challenges they face as they serve our capital city, with a similar understanding with the broader community. Leading any sizable department can be difficult, but Colonel Clements' long tenure in the role of chief under several mayoral administrations is a testament to his abilities--to the affection, loyalty and respect he has earned and to his thoughtful and effective community-centered approach.

Chief Clements has received many accolades for his outstanding service. He is a three-time recipient of the Chiefs Award. He has been recognized

for his work by the FBI, ATF, and the Rhode Island Attorney General. And now, the Attorney General of the United States has placed his trust in him. I thank Colonel Clements for his steadfast commitment to the people of our capital city and to the officers of the Providence Police Department as he leaves city service. I wish him, his wife Donna, and their family, all the best--and I look forward to continuing to work with him here in Washington to protect the public safety.

Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate Commissioner Steven Pare on his retirement as commissioner of public safety for the City of Providence. During Commissioner Pare's tenure, he worked tirelessly to strengthen the Providence public safety response team and create a system that delivered for all who work, visit, and live in our capital city.

As commissioner, he oversaw both police and fire operations in Providence. A dedicated public servant, Commissioner Pare served on the Rhode Island State Police for 26 years and then became superintendent commanding that distinguished organization. He enjoyed a successful interval in the private sector before duty called again, and he returned to take the helm in Providence. I have had the pleasure of working with Steve throughout his years on the State police and in Providence. Before him, his father was a legendary State police officer, with a sterling reputation for integrity that Steve has carried proudly forward.

Commissioner Pare has been a trusted and effective leader throughout his career in law enforcement. I wish him, his wife, Jill, and his family all the best.

Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate Commander Thomas Verdi on his retirement from the Providence Police Department. Deputy Chief Verdi joined the force 35 years ago after graduating from the University of Rhode Island, fulfilling his lifelong dream of becoming a police officer. I had the pleasure of meeting Tom when he was a young officer, we did an overnight ``ride-along'' together, and I have worked with him over the years from my time as U.S. Attorney and Attorney General until his retirement.

His commitment to the job and love for Providence helped him rise up the ranks into leadership roles. He was the first Providence police officer to serve on the State parole board; he ran Providence's training program and led the department administratively. A cop's cop, Tom was a renowned undercover officer, he received the U.S. Attorney's Award for his work in the multi-agency Latin Kings gang investigation, and ultimately received the National Police Association's Top Cops award for his narcotics investigation prowess.

As he retires, I come to the floor to recognize how Commander Verdi has served with distinction and honored the residents of Providence. He comes from a Rhode Island family of great accomplishment, and I thank Tom for his distinguished service and wish him, his wife Kimberly, and his family all the best in the chapter of his life that lies ahead.