Floor Statements

Madam President, I rise today to honor the memory of Oswaldo Paya, who would have celebrated his 71st birthday this week. His memory and his story have been an inspiration to dissidents across the world, and I would like to briefly retell it here today.

Oswaldo Paya was a dissident and a democracy activist in Cuba with unrelenting passion and dedication. He was someone who stood up against the Castro regime at very direct risk to his own life. He had incredible courage. He spoke up for human rights. He spoke up for free speech. He spoke up for democracy.

Eleven years ago, Oswaldo Paya was murdered. On July 22, 2012, Paya left his house with three other people to go visit friends. From the start of their journey, their car was followed. On the way, the Cuban police drove Paya's car off the road and killed him. The crash is widely believed to have been orchestrated by the Castro regime.

Paya had long been a thorn in the side of the Castros, even from a young age. He was the only person at his school who had refused to join the Communist Youth. As a teenager, he publicly opposed the communist crackdown on protesters in Czechoslovakia who were fighting for freedom, and he was punished with 3 years in prison.

Paya went on to found the Varela Project, which sought a referendum on Cuba's communist system. Their demands were simple: democratic government, religious liberty, freedom of expression, and the freedom to start businesses. Paya managed to get 11,000 signatures to petition the government to hold a referendum, and eventually 20,000 people supported the referendum. Twenty thousand people risked their lives by standing with Oswaldo Paya for freedom. But the Cuban Government refused to hold a referendum.

Paya's fight for freedom made him a target repeatedly of the Communist Party in Cuba. They harassed him, tried to intimidate him, and arrested him numerous times. And in 2012, they killed him.

Paya's friend and the driver of the car said that when he awoke after the crash, he was confronted at the hospital by a government operative, and the hospital was flooded with uniformed military personnel. Under extreme duress, drugged, and threatened with death by government officials, he signed a confession that directly contradicted what he knew to be true--that the communist regime had just murdered Oswaldo Paya.

I have met multiple times with Oswaldo Paya's daughter, Rosa Maria, who is an incredible, courageous, powerful leader in her own right, and we have discussed ways we can continue her father's fight for justice in Cuba. One of the things I have done is I have filed legislation to rename the street in front of the Cuban Embassy in Washington, DC, ``Oswaldo Paya Way.'' Renaming the street in front of the Cuban Embassy would send a powerful message to the communist regime.

During the Cold War, President Reagan followed this very same strategy. He renamed the street in front of the Soviet Embassy ``Sakharov Plaza'' after the famed human rights dissident in the Soviet Union. It was part of a broader strategy to call out the evil regime. My strategy is the same here.

Some people may think a street name is not that big a deal, but think about it for a moment. If you change the street name, it means anyone who wants to write to the Cuban Embassy will have to write Oswaldo Paya's name. If you need to go there, you will have to look up the address and see the same. Tyranny exists in darkness. Oppressive regimes are terrified by dissidents. Members of the Cuban Government who deal with the Embassy will have to acknowledge that Paya existed and that this hero who was wrongfully murdered was real. They will have to say his name. There is power in saying his name.

I want to tell you another story that illustrates just how powerful this renaming strategy can be. Several years ago, I introduced legislation to rename the street in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, ``Liu Xiaobo Plaza.'' Liu Xiaobo was a Noble Peace laureate and democracy activist in China who was wrongfully imprisoned there. My bill ended up passing the U.S. Senate 100 to nothing. Every Senator, Republican and Democrat, agreed with that bill. Sadly, even though it was a Democrat Senate at the time, the Republican House failed to take up the bill, so it didn't pass into law.

But here is an epilogue to that story. At the beginning of the Trump administration in 2017, I was having breakfast with Rex Tillerson, the new Secretary of State. We were at Foggy Bottom at the State Department. We were talking about China at one point, and he said he had just had a meeting with his counterpart, the Foreign Minister of China. He said the Foreign Minister came out and said the Chinese Communist Government has three top priorities in foreign policy, and Rex kind of shook his head.

He said: Ted, it is the damnedest thing. One of their top three priorities is to prevent your bill to rename the

street in front of their Embassy from passing.

I will tell you what I told Rex that morning. At the time, Liu Xiaobo had passed away. He had never collected the over $1 million that he was entitled to for winning the Noble Peace Prize. But his widow, Liu Xia, was still in China. China would not let her go.

I told Rex: You go back to China, and you tell them the following. If they release Liu Xia, if they let her go, I will stop pressing to pass this bill. But if they don't, I will continue pressing to pass it, and we will succeed. I have already passed it 100 to nothing in the U.S. Senate, and the next time, we are going to get it passed in the House as well and get it passed into law.

Just a few weeks later, communist China released Liu Xia. She was able to receive the prize money for the Noble Peace Prize and escape the oppression of communist China.

This story speaks volumes about the weakness of a tyrannical regime, just how vulnerable they are to sunshine, to truth, to transparency, to being called out.

Renaming the street in front of the Cuban Embassy after Oswaldo Paya would shine a light and would highlight the truth about the communist regime in Cuba. It would be a powerful tool in bringing down the machinery of oppression there.

We saw not long ago thousands of Cubans taking to the street, fighting for liberty. The Cuban people should know the American people stand with them against tyranny and against the communist oppression, the poverty, the misery, the death under which they live every day, and it would be a powerful tool to bringing down the machinery of oppression in Cuba in the nonviolent way that Oswaldo Paya so powerfully championed.

This Congress, I am very hopeful that my bill to rename the street in front of the Cuban Embassy ``Oswaldo Paya Way'' will be passed by both Chambers.

Oswaldo Paya fought for a free Cuba--Cuba libre--built on human decency, on human rights, where citizens are heard, not murdered by their government. Let's come together, Democrats and Republicans, to honor Oswaldo Paya. Let's come together and force the communist regime to say his name.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, when the COVID pandemic hit, small businesses were shut down; millions of Americans lost their jobs; schools were shut down; flights were canceled; and traveling ground to a halt. The sick and the elderly were forced to die in hospitals and nursing homes, tragically alone, without the comforting embrace of loved ones.

The corporate media told us there was no way that this virus could have escaped from a Chinese Government lab, and Big Tech companies banned and censored posts laying out the evidence that it had escaped from a Chinese lab, labeling that evidence a ``conspiracy theory.'' Masks were mandated everywhere.

And when the COVID vaccines came out, those were mandated too. Doctors, nurses, and our brave service men and women who chose not to get the vaccine were fired, discharged, sent home.

The corrupt corporate media's reaction to COVID devastated our economy and led directly to massive inflation, to weakening and even destroying faith in public health institutions, and resulted in learning loss that millions of American children may never recover from.

The pandemic is over. President Biden has even admitted that. The vast majority of America has moved on with their lives. But, sadly, the Biden

White House and too many Senate Democrats want to cling to power. During the pandemic, we saw abuses of power at every level of government but especially the Federal Government. Over the past 2 years, I have been proud to lead the fight in the Senate to stop these abuses by introducing targeted pieces of legislation that I have reintroduced in this new Congress.

Five of these bills would get rid of mandates. If passed into law, they would mean no more mask mandates, no vaccine mandates, no vaccine passports, no vaccine mandates for minors, and no vaccine mandates for kids to go back to school in Washington, DC.

Two other bills concern vital healthcare. The GIVE LIFE Act, or Doss's bill, is named after a teenager in Texas who was denied a kidney transplant because he hadn't been vaccinated against COVID. No American should be denied a lifesaving medical treatment such as an organ transplant because of their COVID vaccine status. That is wrong.

Unfortunately, we have seen this kind of discrimination over and over again. We saw it happen to a teenager in Texas. It also happened to a 31-year-old man in Boston who was denied a heart transplant, to a 38- year-old veteran who had already had COVID twice who was denied a kidney transplant in North Carolina, and a man in South Carolina who was also denied a kidney transplant because he wasn't vaccinated against COVID. Just in December, yet another teenager was denied a kidney transplant, this time in North Carolina, because she wasn't vaccinated against COVID. The GIVE LIFE Act would stop the Federal Government from enabling this discrimination when it comes to organ donation.

Another bill, the Ending Discrimination in COVID-19 Treatments Act, would mandate the Department of Health and Human Services to require that providers not engage in discriminatory practices when treating COVID. I filed this bill in response to reports that States across the country have used race and ethnicity as a factor in determining whether someone is eligible to receive COVID treatments, particularly monoclonal antibodies when they were first introduced. This bill now applies to all COVID funding and treatments, not just monoclonal antibodies.

This kind of discrimination and treatment has happened in the past year. In January 2022, a man in New York who had both COVID and pneumonia was denied monoclonal antibodies. He told CBS News:

The doctor just shut me down and said this is the criteria:

You're not of age, which is 65, and you're not a minority.

As part of its response, the New York Department of Health told CBS:

This guidance is based on CDC guidelines that show COVID

mortality rates are higher among certain demographic groups,

including senior citizens, immunocompromised individuals, and

nonwhite/Hispanic communities.

So what New York said is they were following CDC guidelines in determining how this COVID treatment would be distributed. As New York, itself, admitted, the CDC guidelines are encouraging racial discrimination in the distribution of healthcare, and that is immoral and wrong. My bill would stop this discrimination. Let's be very clear here. Race, religion, ethnicity should not be a factor--zero--in determining anyone's medical treatment. Doing so is unconstitutional; it is wrong; and it is abhorrent.

These are battles worth fighting.

For those of us who have been standing up against these abusive mandates, we recently won a big victory in December of last year on COVID vaccines in the military. I have fought hard to end President Biden's military vaccine mandate and last month, December, we succeeded. We passed into law a provision to end the mandate, finally, but, sadly, that provision was prospective. The Democrats in Congress would only agree to it going forward if it applied in the future, but provided zero relief to the thousands or even tens of thousands of service men and women who were terminated because they declined to get the vaccine.

To fix this, I have introduced legislation called the AMERICANS Act, which would allow those service men and women who were terminated to be reinstated if they want to go back into the military. And if they do, they could go back to their original rank and receive the benefits to which they were entitled and which they have earned.

If those servicemembers choose not to go back in the military, my bill would ensure that they receive an honorable discharge--not merely a general discharge, as too many of them have received--which will ensure that they can receive the benefits they earned by fighting to defend this country.

I am committed to fighting for every soldier, every sailor, every airman, every marine, every coastguardsman who was wrongfully terminated or wrongfully demoted because of the COVID vaccine mandate. And I give my word: I am going to keep fighting for them until they see justice.

That is why tonight, we are going to be at the State of the Union Address on the other side of the Capitol, and my guest tonight for the State of the Union is LT Levi Beaird, a naval surface warfare officer. Lieutenant Beaird is a Texas resident and a top-rated officer. In March of 2022, he faced a separation board because he made the personal decision to decline to get the COVID vaccine. But before the Biden administration could kick him out, a Federal judge entered an injunction preventing the Navy from terminating Lieutenant Beaird. However, the Navy is, right now, trying to recoup from him $75,000 that they already paid him in anticipation of Lieutenant Beaird's becoming a department head because he wasn't named a department head. Well, the reason he wasn't named a department head is because he made the personal decision not to get the COVID vaccine due to his own sincere religious objection.

I am proud to be welcoming Lieutenant Beaird to the State of the Union tonight. I hope that his being there will cause those in the media to tell his story because it really underscores how grotesquely unfair the Biden administration's policies have been and how they punish those American heroes. So Lieutenant Beaird will be in the audience tonight as Joe Biden, no doubt, will congratulate himself and try to avoid accountability for the problems his administration has caused.

When it comes to COVID, the pandemic we endured as a nation was an enormous challenge. The policies that were put in place across this country in response to the pandemic, many of them have caused enormous damage. I believe, as a nation, we will look back on these policies, in the years and decades to come, and wonder what collective insanity came over this country; what insanity led to the judgment that it is a good idea to shut down schools for tens of millions of children across this country for more than a year; that it is a good idea for young children, elementary school children, not to learn reading and writing and math. That policy has resulted in massive learning loss, and that learning loss has been all the greater among the economically disadvantaged, among Hispanic and African-American kids.

The result of these shutdowns is a generation of kids who have been harmed, perhaps, irreparably.

In our military, the results of firing thousands upon thousands of service men and women--and we don't know how many. I would note, I asked the Biden administration over and over again: How many of our heroes have you fired? The administration refuses to answer. It is, in the minimum, thousands; it may be in the tens of thousands. But I can tell you, I have spoken with Navy SEALS, heroes who spent their lives training and defending this Nation, and they are being fired--some of the youngest, healthiest people we have in our country are being fired because they didn't comply with an arbitrary decree.

And now, the President and the administration have admitted that decree should no longer be enforced, but the Navy Seals they fired last year or the year before are still out of the military. All the while, we have massive recruiting shortfalls, and America is in greater jeopardy.

Mr. President, you are new on this side of the aisle but not new to Congress. There was a time in this body when Republicans and Democrats could come together and reason together, where not everything we did was a shirts-and-skins partisan battle: Good morning. No, it is not.

In less vituperative times, these shouldn't be difficult questions. When I forced a vote on the Senate floor that

the DC Public Schools should not throw out of school every student who hasn't received the COVID vaccine--and, mind you, that is 20 percent of the students in DC Public Schools, and, in the African-American community, it is 40 percent of the African-American students in the DC Public Schools. I am sorry to say, but when we voted on that on the Senate floor, every single Democrat--all of them--voted to throw out of public schools 40 percent of the Black kids in DC. You are talking about a 13-, 14-, 15-year-old kid who Senate Democrats were willing to make a high-school dropout involuntarily because that child or that child's parents made the decision not to receive the vaccine.

In ordinary sane times, that should be a 100-to-nothing vote. You would think it was almost satirical that someone would stand up and say: We are debating whether or not to throw out of DC Public Schools 40 percent of the African-American children.

If you and I go home and talk to our citizens at home, to a person, they would think that was nuts, unless they happened to work in this building.

On the question of service men and women, we saw, in the preceding year, that President Biden called to congratulate a coastguardsman who showed incredible heroism rescuing people at a time of natural disaster. That coastguardsman, within the week, was notified that he was being terminated because he hadn't gotten the COVID vaccine. This shouldn't be divisive.

We want our soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines and coastguardsmen to be ready, to be trained, to be serving, and, if the administration agrees the mandate makes no sense today, why would we sit by and let thousands upon thousands of them remain fired, terminated, and denied the benefits they have earned?

So I call upon this body: Let's have a return to sanity. Let's fight for the men and women we are elected to represent. And I give you my word that I am going to continue to fight against these mandates that are wrong, that are unjust, that are harmful, and I hope and pray this body can come together and embrace sanity once again.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I rise today to speak about a gross miscarriage of justice--the imprisonment of Mark Swidan by the Government of China and the Chinese Communist Party.

Mark is from Luling, a small city in my home State of Texas. His mother, Ms. Katherine Swidan, still lives in Luling, while Mark eventually became a resident of Houston, my hometown. For over 10 years, Katherine has been waging a desperate battle to see her son again.

In 2012, Mark traveled to China on a business trip, which turned into a nightmare. On November 13, 2012, Mark was abducted by China's Public Security Bureau while he was taking his family back home. A witness to the abduction has said that Mark was detained because Chinese officials wanted to view the contents of his cell phone.

Mark was accused of being a part of a criminal conspiracy with 11 other individuals to manufacture and traffic drugs--charges that Mark has denied and which have been debunked over and over again.

Chinese authorities tried to coerce Mark into confessing. He refused, and he pleaded not guilty in a trial that occurred in November 2013. During the trial, the prosecution didn't produce any forensic evidence to back up their allegations, and no drugs were found on Mark or in his hotel room. Records in Mark's passport showed that he wasn't even in China during the time of the alleged offenses, and the 11 other individuals indicted in relation to this alleged drug conspiracy couldn't identify Mark. Nevertheless, outrageously, in 2019, a Chinese court sentenced Mark to death.

Mark remains unjustly detained today. He is suffering in a Chinese prison right now, as we speak. In prison, Mark has been kept in deplorable, abusive conditions. His jailers seek to break his will and break his faith. They have confiscated his Bible and his rosary. Mark's cell exposes him to extreme heat and extreme cold. He is deprived of sleep and subjected to physical abuse. He is in danger of high blood pressure, skin infections, and asthma. He has lost more than 100 pounds. His health is dire. Throughout all of this, Mark has been denied access to his family and access to American diplomats.

Mark has communicated with his mother, and his mother has told me and told the world that the Chinese communist government has failed to break Mark's faith, which remains strong.

I spoke with Mark's mother earlier this week. This is a mom whose heart is breaking. This is a mom who wants to see her son again. This is a mom who wants to hold and hug and care for the son she loves.

The treatment of Mark has been atrocious, so much so that even the United Nations has called on China to release him. The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention--a U.N. group of human rights experts who investigate cases of arbitrary detention around the world--found that Mark is being held in violation of customary international law and international norms, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The world can see that the Chinese Communist Party is trying to use hostages and hostage taking as a tool of statecraft. The Chinese Communist Party says they want to be taken seriously as a great power and a great nation, and they say they want to be respected on the global stage. But their treatment of Mark is not how great nations and great powers behave; their treatment of Mark is how third-world despots act.

I have drafted and this week introduced a resolution calling on the Chinese Government and the Chinese Communist Party to immediately release Mark. I am joined by my colleague from Texas, Senator Cornyn, and by Representative Cloud from Texas in the House, who has introduced the same resolution in the House of Representatives. This resolution not only calls for Mark's immediate release, it also condemns China for withholding from Mark access to his family and to proper medical care.

Furthermore, it calls on the Biden administration to prioritize efforts to secure Mark's release, both in their conversations with Chinese diplomats and in international forums. In a few days, Secretary of State Blinken will be in Beijing, and he will have an opportunity to finish the final chapter of this tragedy. I am calling on the Biden administration to use all of the tools at our disposal to secure Mark's release, and I am calling on the Government of China to finally release Mark.

This ordeal has to end. It has to end for Mark. It has to end for his mother. It has to end for his family. We must and will do more so that Mark can come home.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, reserving the right to object.

Let me start by expressing agreement with my friend from Virginia on two points he just raised: No. 1, his very good advice to the pages here and to any Senate staff that might be listening. The best thing to do probably is do not tweet. But if you must tweet--and I am guilty of that offense myself--remember that your tweets can and will be used against you; that the internet is forever. And as the father of daughters, I sometimes am terrified of what our children will say and to see it come back to haunt them years and decades later.

And the second thing my friend from Virginia said that I also agree with is he said, administrations from both parties have neglected the Americas. I think that is a serious problem. I am a strong believer in the Monroe Doctrine. I think the United States of America has a pivotal leadership responsibility in North America and in South America. And I think under both Republican and Democrat administrations, too often the executive branch has neglected the vital role of Central America, of South America, of our friends throughout the Americas. I think that problem has been exacerbated under the Biden administration because under the Biden administration, not only have they neglected the hemisphere, but what little attention they have given has had the effect of elevating the extreme left in Latin America--elevating socialists, elevating Marxists, elevating terrorists, and elevating enemies of America.

We see this tragically in the recent election in Colombia, where a strong friend and ally of America is now led by someone who had been a hard-left active terrorist, and I believe the Biden administration's actions, including delisting multiple terrorists from our official terrorism list, played a role in elevating an anti-American leftist in Colombia.

Well, how does that relate to this nomination? I rise to express very significant concerns with the nomination of Mr. Martinez Nucete.

For one thing, at the outset, Mr. Martinez Nucete is a man of the left--a man of the hard left. Now, the Senator from Virginia suggested that he may have sent an ill-advised tweet now and then, and that is true, but that is not the basis of my opposition.

He has been a hard partisan his entire life, and even further than that--and this is really quite remarkable--Mr. Martinez Nucete was actually a Socialist congressman in Venezuela. Under Hugo Chavez, he was a member or his party was a member of Socialist International, and he was a man of the hard left, the anti-American hard left.

Hugo Chavez was an unshakable enemy of America. Nicholas Maduro continues to be a brutal dictator, an illegitimate leader, and an enemy of America.

I believe President Biden nominating a fellow traveler, a Socialist congressman from Venezuela, for a major role dealing with Latin America is astonishingly ill-advised.

Secondly, Mr. Martinez Nucete has expressed an unusual--an odd-- hostility to and antipathy for people of faith. This is not something we have seen in many nominees, but his answers have been peculiar in this regard. It is particularly inappropriate for the job to which he has been nominated.

For example, here is what the World Bank says about their role:

The Bank recognizes--

This is speaking of faith-based organizations.

--their distinct strategic value given their unique

attributes, including the fact that more than 80 percent of

the world's population claims religious affiliations. [Faith-

based organizations] are found in every country and offer

opportunities for partnership and advocacy on a broad range

of key development issues.

It is not just the World Bank. Here is what USAID said:

Faith-based . . . organizations serve some of the most

vulnerable populations in the world. They are often the first

in and the last to leave, and [are] uniquely qualified to

identify and meet local needs.

Indeed, here is what a study actually funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, where Martinez Nucete would be representing the United States, said, the IADB:

All institutions surveyed partnered with community groups

and faith-based organizations to provide information.

Now, what are Mr. Martinez Nucete's views? Well, I asked him about them specifically when he came in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I asked him the extent to which he believed faith should be disentangled from development, because he had previously been quite vocal on his passions in that regard.

Here is his answer:

There should be no entanglement between government and

religion. That is a bedrock constitutional principle for us

in America. I don't think any particular culture or religion

is superior to others in terms of achieving socioeconomic

development.

Now, that answer was odd, and it was nonresponsive to the question I asked, so I asked more precisely for Mr. Martinez Nucete to describe the role that faith plays in economic development as a constraint and a contributing factor. And I remind you that these organizations repeatedly said faith-based organizations are integral to success in their mission.

Here is his answer:

Education and respect for human rights, promoting social

mobility in market economies, is the key to development, not

faith.

That is unusual. That degree of I think myopic hostility to faith and those with faith is odd in any nominee but particularly one who would be required to deal with faith-based organizations on a daily basis.

I raised these arguments in committee, and he was defeated in the committee. We had an even--a deadlocked vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee precisely because of his answers, and then after that, he came back and revised his answers. I would say his revised answers were terrific. Clearly, someone wrote them who apparently does not have a manifest hostility to people of faith. But there is no reason to believe that his first answers were not true and honest and a reflection of his views.

There was a time not too long ago where the U.S. Senate found bipartisan consensus on many issues, including a defense of religious liberty. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed this body; I believe the vote was 97 to 3. Numerous iconic, liberal Democrats voted for RFRA. President Bill Clinton signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law. Sadly, we are no longer in that era. Too many in the Democratic Party now have embraced a view that is hostile and antagonistic to people of faith, whether people of the Christian faith, people of the Jewish faith, or people of other faiths. I wish that were not the case.

Nevertheless, I believe it is inappropriate for the U.S. representative on a development board that is required to deal with faith-based organizations on a regular basis to be both an extreme man of the left who was a Socialist congressman under Hugo Chavez and an individual who has expressed repeated antipathy to people of faith. Accordingly, I object.

Mr. President, in the last few weeks, students in Uvalde and the rest of Texas started a new school year. Three and a half months ago, on May 24, 19 innocent children and 2 teachers were murdered by a deranged, evil gunman.

There are no words to describe a monster who enters a school and murders little children--19 children, 19 families in Uvalde who lost their little boys and their little girls, 2 teachers who are no longer here with us.

I was in Uvalde the day after the shooting. I sat down with local officials and law enforcement. I went to the prayer vigil that night where the entire Uvalde community came together, praying, weeping, and mourning the unbelievable loss of those 19 precious children and 2 teachers.

The Uvalde shooting was the deadliest school shooting in Texas history. Before that, I was in Santa Fe, where yet another evil madman killed eight students and two teachers. I was also at Sutherland Springs, the worst church shooting in U.S. history. I was in El Paso. I was in Midland-Odessa. I was in Dallas.

There have been too damn many mass shootings. With kids going back to school all across the country, we need to again revisit what we can do to keep them safe from mass shooters.

Many students, especially in Uvalde, are scared. Their parents are scared, and they have expressed concerns that the security measures at schools in Uvalde haven't improved enough to make them feel safe.

Today, I want to put forth two bills that would address this problem.

Inevitably, when a mass murder occurs, Democrats in this Chamber and the media implore Congress: Do something.

Well, in just a moment, the Senate can do something. The first bill I am going to ask this body to pass is the Secure Our Schools Act, which would spend unused COVID education funds on hiring police officers in schools and hiring school-based mental health professionals. This bill would be the most serious, the most significant, the most major investment in school security Congress has ever enacted. This bill would double the number of police officers on campus. So if, God forbid, the next deranged madman shows up trying to commit murder, before that madman gets into the school, into the classroom, he would encounter an armed police officer who could stop him outside the school before he commits murder.

This bill also funds $10 billion for 15,000 new mental health counselors in schools. So many of these deranged killers have a long and horrifying descent into mental illness before they commit their crimes. We see the pattern of the lone, alienated, angry, deranged, young man who seeks to commit the most unspeakable evil. If we had additional mental health resources on campuses, they would be in a position to spot the warning signs, to see the young man heading down that dangerous path, and to intervene and stop them.

Recently, the National Center for Education Statistics, which is part of the U.S. Department of Education, found that 88 percent of public schools did not ``strongly agree'' when asked whether they had the funding and the mental health professionals they needed in the schools. Eighty-eight percent said: We need more mental health professionals in schools and more funding to hire them.

My bill would address both of these problems by ensuring that we are doubling the number of police officers so there are armed police officers to protect our kids and keep them safe and so there are mental health counselors to spot a dangerous young man before he goes down the road of committing a horrific mass murder.

This bill is common sense, and in a sane political environment, it would be passed 100 to nothing.

My colleague Senator Barrasso wants to make some additional remarks on our bill. So I yield the floor to Senator Barrasso.

(Ms. ROSEN assumed the Chair.)

Madam President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 4845, which is at the desk; further, 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, what we just saw on this floor was stunning. I am genuinely at a loss for words.

This bill is common sense. There is not a constituent in Texas or Nevada or Connecticut who, if you asked: Would it be a good thing to have more police officers keeping our kids safe, wouldn't say: Of course it would. There is not a constituent of ours who, if you asked: Would it be a good thing to have more mental health counselors on campus to stop people from committing crimes, wouldn't say: Of course it would.

I was informed a few days ago that when I was going to seek unanimous consent, the Senator from Connecticut was going to object. Now, the Senator from Connecticut styles himself the leading advocate of gun control in the U.S. Senate.

I was asked by reporters: Why are the Democrats objecting to this?

I will tell you what I told reporters: I have no idea. They haven't said. They haven't told me why they object to it.

So I was genuinely looking forward to seeing the Senator from Connecticut's remarks. I was sitting here waiting to see, why do you oppose more police officers to keep our kids safe? Why do you oppose mental health counselors in schools?

I have been in the Senate 10 years. The Senator from Connecticut and I were elected at the same time. I have engaged in many debates on this floor, including with the Senator from Connecticut. The fact that he chose not to say a word about why he objects is stunning. I find myself genuinely flabbergasted.

I will say that one of reasons I think the Senator from Connecticut feels content not only not to argue but now to walk off the floor and not even listen to the debate he is ostensibly participating in, one of reasons he feels free to do so is, if you look up in the Senate Gallery--I can count them--there are precisely zero reporters in this Gallery. Not a single one of the corporate media will report on this, and I think the Senator from Connecticut feels absolutely certain, when he walks out, he will have reporters that will say: Tell me how terrible Donald Trump is.

He will lean in and say: Oh, Donald Trump is really terrible.

But not one of the reporters will ask: Hey, wait a second, why don't you want police officers keeping our kids safe?

None of them will. The Democrats are protected by a dishonest army of propagandists in the corporate media.

CNN will not have a panel sitting around discussing why is it that the

Democrats simply do not care to defend their positions.

Let me tell you, when there is a mass murdering and the Democrats stand up and give speeches and they point at Republicans and say: Blood is on your hands, it is great political rhetoric. It is dishonest, but, boy, it gins up their donors. It gets people to go and write checks to Democrats and fund their campaigns.

What we just saw reveals that Democrats have one objective when a mass murder happens, and that is to take away the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. That is always, always, always their solution. Never mind that it doesn't work. Never mind that it doesn't stop violent crime. Never mind that if you look at the jurisdictions across the country with the strictest gun control laws, almost every single one of them consistently has among the highest crime rates and murder rates.

Earlier this year, the Senator from Connecticut authored his big gun control package, rammed it through this body--a package which will do nothing, zero, to stop mass murders. We will see another mass murder. I pray that we don't, but evil exists in the world, and if another lunatic attacks a school, and there is not a police officer at the front door to stop him, remember right now. Remember this moment when the Democrats said: No, we will not protect our kids.

Madam President, the Senator from Connecticut just gave us the sum total of his wisdom as he walks off the floor again, which is, he says this isn't real.

The Presiding Officer is well aware of how the Senate operates. When a Senator arises for a unanimous consent request, one of two things happens: A Senator objects, or the bill passes.

I have stood on this floor and passed unanimous consent requests because our colleagues chose not to object.

One of the more notable instances was following multiple instances in the House of House Democrats making anti-Semitic comments. The House tried to pass a resolution condemning anti-Semitism. Sadly, the radical left in the Democratic caucus objected, and the House Democrats couldn't pass a resolution condemning anti-Semitism.

I joined with our colleague Senator Kaine from Virginia, a Democrat. We authored a resolution, the Cruz-Kaine resolution--a bipartisan resolution that was a clear and unequivocal condemnation of anti- Semitism. It condemned BDS as anti-Semitism. It condemned explicitly the anti-Semitic comments made by those House Democrats at the outset of the dispute.

When Senator Kaine and I came to the Senate floor, we did not know if a Senator would object. There were numerous Senators in this body who did not join the resolution and could easily have walked out on the floor and objected. We stood up and asked unanimous consent, and much to our very pleasant surprise, the opposing party chose not to object, and the resolution passed. It passed 100 to nothing.

When the Senator from Connecticut says this isn't real, the only reason this bill has not passed the U.S. Senate is because the Senator from Connecticut stood up and uttered two magic words: I object. Had he done something really simple--just shut up, just shut his mouth, just sat there--we would be standing in a position where both of these bills would have passed into law.

What does it say about the Democrats' view of the American people that they don't engage in debate, they don't engage in discussion, they don't defend their positions? They, instead, arrogantly say no and have full confidence that their compliant cheerleaders in the media will never even tell anyone about it.

I don't know how you defend the position he just took. I was genuinely looking forward to hearing some form of an argument.

I can tell you, when I forced a vote on the Cruz-Barrasso bill on this floor and the Democrats voted, party line, no, we don't want more police officers in school; no, we don't want more mental health counselors in school; no, we don't want additional funding for school safety, to the best of my knowledge, no reporter asked a single Democrat: Why are you leaving our kids vulnerable? Why aren't you acting to protect children in school? Because, you know what, there is no money on the left for actually stopping these crimes. The money is for disarming law-abiding citizens. It is a narrow-minded, political focus.

We could have just passed the most significant school safety legislation ever passed by the Federal Government. Why didn't we? Because the Democrats objected. That objection is wrong, it is irresponsible, and it shows a willingness to play political games while demonstrating contempt for our constituents.

Today, the U.S. Senate failed the American people. Today, the U.S. Senate failed the schoolchildren of America. And I pray that the consequences are not truly horrific. I pray that this body will show up and do its damn job: Debate real issues and pass real legislation that will actually stop crime rather than the empty political gestures of the left.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I call up my amendment No. 5263 and ask that it be reported by number.

Madam President, there are a lot of bad things in this bill, but few are worse than the proposal by Democrats in this bill to double the size of the IRS and create 87,000 new IRS agents. I guarantee you citizens in every one of our States, if you ask them what do they want, they don't want 87,000 new IRS agents.

And they are not being created to audit billionaires or giant corporations; they are being created to audit you. The House Ways and Means Committee, the minority has put out an estimate that, under this bill, there will be 1.2 million new audits per year, with over 700,000 of those new audits falling on taxpayers making $75,000 or less.

I believe, personally, we should abolish the IRS, but, at a minimum, we shouldn't make the IRS larger than the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI, and the Border Patrol all combined. That is what the Democrats are proposing here. It is a terrible idea.

If you don't want 87,000 new IRS agents, vote yes.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I call up my amendment No. 5265 and ask that it be reported by number.

Madam President, this bill represents the most significant assault on U.S. energy production the Senate has ever considered.

It is designed to bankrupt every coal miner in America, to dramatically increase gas prices consumers are paying, and to permanently harm U.S. oil and gas production.

There is, however, one group Senate Democrats do not oppose having more oil, and that is the Chinese communists.

In the past year, President Biden has sold over 2 million barrels of oil to the Chinese communist Government from America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That oil was paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

My bill would block the President from selling our oil to the Chinese communists.

I would note also that it was sold to a Chinese company owned by the communist government in which a significant stake was owned by a private equity firm owned in significant part by the President's own son, Hunter Biden.

If the Democrats don't want to see millions of barrels of U.S. oil sold to the Chinese communists, they should support my amendment.

Madam President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional

Budget Act and relevant budget resolutions, I move to waive, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I have a motion at the desk.

Mr. President, with the support of every Senate Democrat in this Chamber, schools across this country shut down over the past 2 years. Tens of millions of children were harmed.

Today, Senate Democrats will have a choice whether or not they will harm thousands of schoolkids in Washington, DC, and, in particular, whether they will harm African-American children in Washington, DC.

In DC, the rate of vaccination for students 12 to 15 is 85 percent. For African-American students, the rate drops to 60 percent. The DC public schools have announced that any student who is not vaccinated is not allowed to come to school.

If Democrats vote no on this motion to commit, they will be voting to tell thousands of African-American students in DC: You are not allowed to come to school. Your education doesn't matter.

The right choice, to use a mantra used by Democrats often, is ``your body, your choice,'' and we should not be denying children education because DC Democrats want to force them to get a COVID vaccine against their wishes or their parents' wishes.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I have a motion at the desk.

Mr. President, one of the worst aspects of the Biden administration has been the deep politicization of the Department of Justice and the FBI.

We saw that with the National Association of School Boards sending a letter to the White House and to the Attorney General asking that the Biden administration target parents as domestic terrorists and use the PATRIOT Act to go after them for going to school boards and complaining about policies that are unfair to parents, including the teaching of critical race theory, including in the case of Loudoun County, a 14- year-old girl who was sexually assaulted in a bathroom, and the school covered it up.

Within 4 days of receiving that letter, the Attorney General wrote a memo directing the FBI to target parents.

Just this last week, the Director of the FBI testified at the Judiciary Committee that they had been interviewing multiple parents-- moms and dads--and the House has categorized it as upward of 20 moms and dads.

This amendment says: Don't target parents as domestic terrorists--

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I rise today to discuss the acute dangers to American national security that have formed and are deepening across the Western Hemisphere.

These dangers have coalesced because of the comprehensive and catastrophic policies pursued by President Biden and his administration. Already, nine governments across South America, Central America, and the Caribbean are controlled by socialists. All of these governments, with only one exception, are also overtly and ideologically anti-American. They are committed to undermining American security and to endangering Americans.

This weekend, on Sunday, Colombia will become the 10th government in the region controlled by the hard left when the country's new President, Gustavo Petro, will take office. I am deeply worried that once he does, Colombia will also join the ranks of anti-American forces in Latin America.

Petro is the first openly Marxist to be elected President of Colombia. He was brought to power by Colombia's leftist fringe, including guerrillas and terrorist groups.

Colombians had rightly and for decades resisted Marxism and rejected the hard left. The first reason for this is that Marxists have long been violent guerrillas who have wreaked havoc in Colombia. The second reason is that Colombians are well aware of what has happened in other Latin American countries that have elected or have seen leftists seize power. Cuba and Venezuela, for example, have endured socialist and communist regimes that have tortured, killed, silenced dissidents, have denied freedom and driven countless people into exile, forcing many to flee or be murdered.

People are rightly asking: What happened? The answer, unfortunately, is as straightforward as it is worrying. Joe Biden and his policies happened. The Biden administration seems ideologically committed to systematically alienating our allies and empowering our enemies. In this goal--and perhaps only this goal--they have been wildly successful.

Since Joe Biden has been in office, we have seen forces for evil in Iran, in Afghanistan, in Russia, in China, in Venezuela, and in Cuba gain strength while our friends and allies in Israel, Ukraine, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have felt abandoned and alone. And this pattern has been repeated in the Western Hemisphere.

In Mexico, we are seeing deepening civil unrest and the erosion of civil society. The breakdown of the rule of law across our southern border--a crisis directly caused by Joe Biden's policies and political decisions--poses acute national security challenges and dangers to the United States.

Mexican President Lopez Obrador seems intent on making these trends worse, and when I questioned a Biden State Department official on Obrador's targeting of American companies and the nationalization of energy in Mexico, he wouldn't even admit that those were bad things. And if he is not willing to admit to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the leftist President of Mexico's targeting of American companies and the nationalization of energy in Mexico are bad things, then we can be certain the Biden administration is also unwilling to convey that to Mexico.

When we saw Cubans flood the streets last summer, yelling ``Libertad'' and waving American flags, the Biden administration couldn't even bring itself to come out with a strong support and statement for the people marching in the streets of Cuba. In statement after statement, as protesters swept into the streets, administration officials failed to unequivocally support the protesters and critically failed to condemn the brutal thugs that the communist regime was sending to assault, brutalize, and silence the speech of Cuban citizens seeking freedom.

When it came to Colombia, the Biden administration went out of its way to undermine and to alienate the pro-American government of Colombian President Duque. President Biden denied Duque a call for the first 5 months of the administration, providing morale and momentum for Duque's domestic enemies. Biden did finally call Duque at the end of June that year--after his helicopter came under attack by anti- government terrorists.

And what was the reward Biden had for the terrorists?

Well, just a few months later, Biden removed the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, from the list of terrorist organizations. He also dismantled terrorism sanctions on individual FARC members. FARC is an organization of Marxist-Leninist narcoterrorists who, for decades, have killed, kidnapped, and extorted Colombians and seized and murdered American citizens.

FARC continues to pose an acute threat to Colombian security and to American interests in the region, but the Biden administration has treated it like other terrorist groups, with weakness and appeasement and worse. Just last week, House Republicans announced that the administration may well be distributing assistance to former FARC terrorists. So the inevitable occurred; the Colombian far left

gained momentum, and Petro was elected.

This is what happens--this is what always happens--when America abandons our friends. Colombia has been an indispensable ally to the United States. Our relationship stems back 200 years. We have deep economic and security ties. We provide Colombia with almost a half a billion dollars in aid every single year--a testament to the breadth and depth of our ties.

Petro says he will work hand in hand with Nicolas Maduro's oppressive regime in Venezuela. He is looking to work with the National Liberation Army, a terrorist organization in Colombia. He will embrace the FARC. He says he wants to stop oil production and to roll back cooperation with the United States on stopping drug trafficking. In fact, Petro seems deeply committed to weakening and undermining the United States- Colombian relationship.

I hope and pray that he doesn't weaken it. I hope and pray that his rhetoric and language in the past is not carried forward in policies when his administration begins. I want to see Colombia remain a close U.S. ally. I don't want to see Colombia follow the example of other socialist governments in the Western Hemisphere. We know where that leads.

Both Cuba and Venezuela used to be prosperous countries until leftists came to power. Venezuela, in 1950, was the fourth wealthiest country on the face of the Earth. The United States was first. Switzerland was second. New Zealand was third. Venezuela was No. 4. Then socialist dictators came to power, including Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, and they destroyed much of that mighty nation. The quality of life deteriorated so much in Venezuela that people are literally eating out of trash cans in alleyways as they flee the country by the millions.

In Cuba, when Fulgencio Batista staged a coup and became a brutal dictator in the 1950s, my father was a teenager in Cuba, and he fought against Batista's cruel regime. My father was imprisoned and tortured. He was beaten in a Cuban jail. He had his nose broken. He had his teeth broken out of his mouth. My father fled Cuba in 1957. He came to America--he came to Texas--seeking freedom. He had $100 in his underwear. He didn't speak English. He washed dishes while making 50 cents an hour.

In 1959, Castro and the communist revolution succeeded there. Shortly thereafter, my father returned to Cuba only to be horrified at the evil and oppression that Castro had brought--at the murder, at the torture, at the suffering, at the poverty. My aunt, my Tia Sonia--his kid sister--was still in Cuba. My Tia Sonia fought in the counterrevolution against Castro, and my Tia Sonia was imprisoned and tortured by Castro's thugs.

This is the future that may well be awaiting Latin American countries that embrace socialism. This is the pattern we have seen over and over and over again. Petro was elected, but if he follows the pattern of other leftist dictators, it may prove to be the last free election in Colombia.

So how has the Biden administration handled Petro's rise to power, which their own weakness and their own appeasement facilitated? With yet more weakness and appeasement.

Both Joe Biden and Secretary of State Blinken effusively congratulated Petro: How great, an anti-American Marxist and a close ally of ours in Latin America.

They said they looked forward to working with him on shared interests. I hope those shared interests don't include undermining the United States of America.

There is value in clarity. There is value in telling the truth about what socialism does to a country from the bully pulpit of the United States.

If the Biden administration won't support American allies, if they will actively undermine American allies like they did the pro-American government of President Duque's, and if the President won't check our adversaries and stand up to our enemies, then Congress must.

Last month, I introduced legislation that would reimpose terrorism sanctions on the FARC and on FARC-related terrorists. Those sanctions should never have been removed, and doing so highlighted the lack of respect and support for our friends and allies in Colombia. Mere months before the Colombian election, Joe Biden's delisting of the FARC contributed to the election of an anti-American Marxist. My bill is a commonsense first step to restoring America's policy toward Colombia. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted on my bill, and, sadly, every Senate Democrat voted no.

However, much of the damage has already been done, and this weekend, Petro will take office. American policy, I believe, must be recalibrated to acknowledge that reality. Again, I hope and pray that Petro does not lead his country into the camp of anti-American socialists who have become ascendent during the Biden administration, but we would be reckless and maybe even delusional not to take him at his word because that is what he has said he intends to do.

So I will shortly be introducing another bill--the CAUTION Act--the Colombia Assistance Used Transparently by Institutionalizing Oversight Now.

This bill will comprehensively condition all of our aid to Colombia based on what path Petro will choose. If he cuts back defense coordination with the United States, my bill will ensure that he gets no more money for security coordination. If he cuts back cooperation on drug trafficking, my bill will ensure he gets no more money for counternarcotics. If he refuses to help dampen illegal immigration, my bill will ensure he gets no more money for development assistance.

I am not interested in giving anti-American leftists American tax dollars as aid. I believe our foreign policy should use carrots and sticks in order to incentivize other countries to behave in a way that benefits American interests and strengthens our friendships and in a way that discourages countries from seeking to harm and undermine the United States of America.

This is an inflection point, and America must be clear: We don't support Marxists in Latin America. Any leftist leader who chooses socialism will be held accountable by the United States and, at a minimum, will no longer be funded by the U.S. taxpayers to undermine our great Nation.

I hope this bill earns bipartisan support because standing up for the interests of America and standing up to save the United States- Colombian friendship and alliance is a national interest that transcends partisan lines. If President Biden won't stand up for America, then I hope and pray that the Congress will.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, in a moment, I am going to propound a unanimous consent request. Before I do, I want to make some brief remarks. Right now, we have an administration that is killing oil pipelines, slow-walking natural gas licensing, illegally halting lease sales, and writing rules that Congress never gave the executive branch the authority to write.

This is how President Biden regulates our energy industry. In the morning, he complains that gas prices are too high, and he chastises oil and gas companies to produce more. Then he takes a nap, wakes up, and says the very existence of oil and gas companies offends him, and it is our duty to put them out of business. It is absurd.

But today I want to focus on the Biden administration's reckless release of our emergency crude oil stockpile, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The President's energy policy has been a failure so much so that today the United States produces 1\1/2\ million fewer barrels a day of oil than it did in November 2019.

That is why oil and gas prices are high. It is no mystery, and it is not principally because of the war in Ukraine, as much as Joe Biden and the Democrats want to blame it on that.

At the same time that President Biden has tried to strangle U.S. energy production, he has simultaneously groveled to Saudi Arabia and to Venezuela, asking them to increase their production. And he has attacked small business gas stations around the country and told them: Just lower your prices. Then he has taken the unprecedented step of releasing an arbitrary amount of our emergency crude oil stockpile in order to try to lower gas prices before the midterm elections.

The Biden administration has even sold at least 2 million barrels of oil to the Chinese Communist Party's state-owned oil and gas company, Sinopec. One million barrels in April of this year, another million barrels in July sold to communist China. China, at this very moment, has created the world's largest stockpile of crude oil, which according to Bloomberg totals 926 million barrels.

In comparison, under Joe Biden, our own reserves have fallen to 492 million

barrels of oil. That is the lowest level since December of 1985, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Of course, no mention of China and the administration would be complete without noting that Hunter Biden's private equity firm, BHR, has a major stake in Sinopec.

But there is something we can do. I am calling on this body to pass the No Emergency Crude Oil For Foreign Adversaries Act, which is cosponsored by 11 of my colleagues.

This bill takes the commonsense step of prohibiting the Secretary of Energy from selling our emergency crude oil stockpile--there to protect the national security of the United States--to communist China and also to other foreign adversaries, including Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

It would also require a full accounting of where our crude oil has been sent for refining since the Biden administration began releasing the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve last November.

It is important to note we have no issue with exports in general. In fact, we want to continue to help our European allies remove themselves from their reliance on Russian oil.

A recent study found that since 2015, U.S. oil exports increased oil and natural gas development in the United States, reduced global oil prices by $1.93 per barrel over a 6-year period, added $161 billion to our GDP, and added nearly 50,000 jobs here in America.

But under no circumstances should we be giving our emergency stockpile to our enemies, particularly at a time when they are benefiting from stockpiling cheap Russian oil and gas. This poses a direct threat to American national security, and the Biden administration shows zero interest in stopping it. That is why Congress needs to act.

This should be a simple and easy bipartisan measure to say we are not going to sell our Strategic Petroleum Reserve to communist China to use it against America.

Therefore, Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be discharged from further consideration of S. 4515, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

I do not. Reserving the right to object.

Debates on the Senate floor sometimes can be clarifying. Over the course of the day, my office and I engaged in good-faith negotiations with a number of Democratic Senators. We engaged in extensive negotiation with Senator Manchin, the chair of the relevant committee. Senator Manchin proposed minor alterations to this bill and agreed to support it if we made those alterations. I agreed to accept Senator Manchin's alterations, and we then had what was going to be a bipartisan bill.

Senator Cantwell, likewise, we negotiated with her office today and had reached what we thought was an agreement.

And then at the last moment, the Senator from Connecticut raised this objection. And I think what he is asking this body to pass really clarifies where the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party is, which is the Green New Deal Democrats want to destroy American energy jobs. They want to destroy the American oil and gas industry. They want to destroy our own production, and, bizarrely, they simultaneously want to benefit energy jobs of our enemies.

There is some irony that the Senator from Connecticut is leading this objection because it was earlier this year when the Senator from Connecticut led the effort in this body to block sanctions on Russia and Vladimir Putin on the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline, sanctions that I had authored and passed into law, not once but twice; sanctions that had stopped that pipeline; sanctions that had prevented Putin from invading Ukraine; sanctions that hurt Russia and hurt Putin until Joe Biden became President and decided to waive the sanctions on Russia and Putin to capitulate to Russia and Putin.

When Biden did so, when Biden waived those sanctions, the Government of Ukraine, President Zelenskyy, said: If you waive these sanctions, Russia will invade Ukraine. The Government of Poland said: If you waive these sanctions, Russia will invade Ukraine.

And in January of this year, I forced a vote on imposing the sanctions. At the time, the Government of Ukraine begged us--there were tanks on the border of Ukraine, the invasion hadn't

happened--and the government of Ukraine begged us: Please pass these sanctions.

Now, every Democrat in this body had voted for my sanctions not once but twice. They had supported it when the President's name was Donald J. Trump.

But then they had a Democrat in the White House, and a Democrat, Joe Biden, who, on the day of the vote, came to Capitol Hill--it is the only time I know of that he has done this--to personally lobby Democrats to vote against sanctions on Russia, against sanctions on Putin, to vote to green-light a natural gas pipeline for Putin and Russia.

And the Senator from Connecticut led the fight on the Senate floor, urging his Democratic colleagues: Flip your votes. Give an enormous present to Russia and Putin, and sacrifice Ukraine in the process.

I stood on this floor and said: If you do this--the 44 Democrats who cast the vote--we will see Russian tanks in the streets of Kyiv.

I wish that prediction had proven wrong, but it did not.

What the Senator from Connecticut just came back with is: We should prohibit all energy exports from America.

And, in fact, I will read from the bill he called up. It is:

The President . . . may restrict exports of . . . coal,

petroleum products, natural gas, or petrochemical feedstocks.

Shut down all exports.

So I want you to understand the difference between my bill and the bill the Senator from Connecticut is asking us to pass.

My bill says: Don't sell our oil to our enemies. Communist China is our enemy. Russia is our enemy. Iran is our enemy. North Korea is our enemy. Let's not sell our oil to our enemies.

This is a reasonable, commonsense proposition. I am confident any one of us at home with our constituents, if you asked your constituents, ``Should the President of the United States be selling oil that the American taxpayer has paid for, that is kept as a strategic reserve to keep America safe, should we be selling it to communist China,'' the overwhelming majority of your constituents and mine, whether Democrat or Republican, would say: Absolutely not. That is idiotic.

My bill says: Don't sell our oil to our enemies.

The Senator from Connecticut has responded with: Don't sell our oil to anybody. Don't sell our natural gas to anybody. Don't sell it to our friends.

Now, let's be clear. There have been a lot of Democrats in this Chamber who, once the war in Ukraine started, stood up and said the key to defeating Putin is exporting our liquid natural gas to Europe so they can get off of dependency on Russian oil and gas.

I can't count how many Democrat speeches I have heard saying what is absolutely true: We want our friends and allies purchasing energy produced here in America and not purchasing energy from our enemy.

And what the Senator from Connecticut has just said is that we should abandon our friends in Europe. We should abandon our friends that want our energy. We should tell them: You know what. You are better off buying oil from Russia. You are better off buying oil from Iran. You are better off buying oil from Venezuela, which I guess makes sense because Joe Biden's State Department was asking Venezuela, led by an illegitimate Nicolas Maduro, an enemy of America--the Biden administration is asking our enemies to produce more oil.

So the effect of the Senator from Connecticut's proposition would be to hurt jobs in America, hurt energy prices in America. By the way, it would drive up gasoline prices. If the extremes in the Democratic Party have their way, we won't just see $5-, $6-, $7-a-gallon gasoline, we are going to see $10-a-gallon gasoline. That is where they want to go.

And, by the way, the Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, said publicly: This is the cost of transition. We have got to make gasoline expensive.

In politics, that is called saying the quiet part out loud--that for too many of the extreme Democrats, they want working men and women to pay 100 bucks, 150 bucks at the gas pump. Why? Because they don't like that some moms choose to drive minivans. They don't like that some Americans choose to drive a pickup truck or an SUV, and they want to force you to sell your Suburban and buy a Prius. And their strategy is: We are going to make it so expensive, so miserable that you can't afford your bills until you comply with what they want.

It is cynical, and it is misguided, but it does at least make transparent that the little stickers on the gas pump with Joe Biden pointing at the price saying ``I did this''--that is what they intend.

We should not be selling oil to communist China. Everyone in this body knows this. But that doesn't mean it is a good idea to abandon our friends and send our friends and allies to become customers of Vladimir Putin. That is spectacularly ill conceived.

And, therefore, I decline to accept the modification.

Madam President, you know, John Adams famously said: ``Facts are stubborn things.'' So let's clarify a couple of facts.

No. 1, the bill that the Senator from Connecticut was pushing is a bill that is entitled the BAN Oil Exports Act. In

his remarks a moment ago, he suggested it was about China. This bill is not about China. This bill is about banning oil exports, natural gas exports, coal exports--energy exports across the board to anybody.

By the way, the bill is authored by Senator Markey. It is cosponsored by Senators Wyden, Merkley, Sanders, and Warren. The Senator from Connecticut is not a cosponsor of the bill.

This is an extreme bill.

As I pointed out in my remarks, what the Senator from Connecticut was asking is: Let's refuse to sell oil or natural gas to our friends, and let's make our friends buy them from Russia instead.

In response to that, he said precisely nothing, nada. He said: ExxonMobil is bad. He said: Don't sell to China.

My bill says: Don't sell to China.

His bill says: Don't sell to anybody.

And as for his revisionist history on Nord Stream 2, he is right that the pipeline was over 90 percent completed by the time the Senate and the House took up my sanctions legislation, and the Russian disinformation that was put out was: It is over 90 percent completed; so there is no way to stop it.

Putin stopped building Nord Stream 2 the day that President Trump signed my sanctions legislation into law. Literally, that day they halted construction. A 90-percent complete pipeline is zero percent complete. It is a hunk of metal on the bottom of the ocean. The pipeline lay dormant--it was dead--for over a year.

He complains that I didn't hold Donald Trump's nominations? I didn't need to. The sanctions worked. We had stopped the pipeline.

Then Joe Biden became President. He immediately began signaling weakness to Russia. He began foreshadowing what he actually did in May, which is to waive the sanctions.

Joe Biden was sworn into office on January 20, 2021. Putin recommenced building Nord Stream 2 on January 24, 2021, 4 days after Joe Biden put his hands on the Bible.

I find it very curious that Democrats, No. 1, ignored the pleas from our allies and stood with Russia and Putin to help Putin build a pipeline to generate billions for his war machine but at the same time are willing to stand up and say: We like Russian oil and gas jobs, but we don't like American oil and gas jobs.

We should not be selling oil or natural gas to our enemies. This is an obvious proposition. It ought to be bipartisan. It was bipartisan until this last-minute objection.

But the fact that we shouldn't sell to our enemies doesn't mean we shouldn't supply energy to our friends. Our friends are desperately asking for it, and sending them to buy from Russia is spectacularly foolish.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the pending business on the floor.

The Presiding Officer and I both arrived in the Senate at the same time 10 years ago. When you and I had barely been here a few days, the country was shocked with a tragic shooting, the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, CT, when a deranged monster came in and murdered little children--elementary school children. Everyone across the country was horrified; and over the past decade, we have seen that pattern repeat itself over and over again.

Tragically, my home State of Texas has seen more than our fair share of horrific crime, of mass murder, most recently in Uvalde. I was there in Uvalde the day after the shooting where a deranged monster murdered 19 little children and 2 teachers.

Before that, I was in Santa Fe where yet another deranged monster murdered schoolchildren.

I was in Sutherland Springs, the worst church shooting in U.S. history. I stood in that sanctuary the day after the shooting, a beautiful, small country church. The pews had been flung aside in the chaos. There was shattered glass. There was a cell phone with a shattered screen covered in blood.

And I saw the pool of blood where an 18-month-old child was systematically murdered by that psychopath. I was in El Paso; I was in Midland-Odessa; I was in Dallas. Over and over again, we have seen the face of evil. We have seen horrific crimes. And let me be the first to say there are too damn many of these. And we need to stop them.

Unfortunately, I have also seen what inevitably follows these horrific crimes, which is a political debate that breaks out within seconds of the crime occurring.

There are two principal approaches one can take to try to prevent crimes like this. One is to target the bad guys, to focus on criminals, to focus on felons, to focus on fugitives, to focus on those trying to illegally buy guns, to put them in jail, to lock them up, to get them off the street so that they cannot terrorize and murder innocent people. That is the approach that actually works. That is the approach that is actually successful. That is the approach that is most likely to prevent subsequent mass murders.

There is a second approach, which is an approach that is disarming law-abiding citizens. Inevitably, Democratic members of this Chamber, minutes after an attack, move towards wanting to disarm law-abiding citizens. That approach is, I believe, No. 1, unconstitutional; but, No. 2, it doesn't work. It is ineffective.

Put simply, taking guns away from law-abiding citizens--disarming you or disarming me--is not going to stop a mass murder. And we know this. If you look across the country consistently, the jurisdictions with the strictest gun control laws over and over again have among the highest crime rates and among the highest murder rates.

When you disarm law-abiding citizens, what happens is the people who follow the law disarm. That is almost by definition if they are law- abiding citizens. But the criminals don't follow the laws.

And if you disarm all the victims, the result is it is easier for the criminals to commit their acts of mayhem.

Let me point out a statistic that many Americans don't know. It is a statistic that comes from the Barack Obama White House, so it is hardly a rightwing source. According to the Barack Obama White House, every year in America, firearms are used defensively to stop a crime between 500,000 and 1 million times each and every year.

What does that mean? That means that if Democratic proposals to disarm law-abiding citizens succeed, the result will be even more crimes. The result will be those 500,000 to a million crimes that are right now stopped every year won't be stopped.

That means more assaults. That means more sexual assaults. That means more murders. That means single moms riding home on the train, if they are not able to have a revolver in their purse to defend themselves from marauding criminals, then they are left defenseless.

In debates over how to approach violent crime, that 500,000 to a million people each year who are using a firearm to stop a crime, they get left out of a lot of these discussions. But they would be victims if Democratic Senators succeed in taking away their right to keep and bear arms.

When the Presiding Officer and I were brand new here in the wake of Newtown, CT, there was a Democrat majority in this body at the time. Harry Reid was the majority leader. Barack Obama had just been reelected President. And you will recall well Senate Democrats were exultant. Senator Schumer was on TV saying we were in the sweet spot to finally pass far-reaching gun control.

And I will tell you the colleagues on my side of the aisle were discouraged and demoralized, and many thought there was nothing we could do to stop the agenda that was being pushed forward.

Well, I can tell you, I didn't believe it then, and I don't believe it now. And so I sat down and drafted legislation designed to actually do what every person in this Chamber, I believe, really wants to do, which is stop violent crime, stop these murders, stop the next lunatic who would shoot up a school or shoot up a church or shoot up a mall or shoot up a grocery store.

The legislation I drafted was called Grassley-Cruz. I teamed up with my colleague, the senior Senator from Iowa, Chuck Grassley. Grassley- Cruz focused on several things. First of all,

it focused on strengthening the background check system. It required the Department of Justice to conduct an audit of every Federal agency to make sure that any felony convictions are reported to the background check system.

It provided funding and incentives for States to report felony convictions to the background check system. Interestingly, many States have a lousy record of reporting felonies to the background check database. Ironically, many of those are blue States led by Democrats who talk about gun control, and yet the State governments and local governments often fail to report felony convictions to the database.

Grassley-Cruz provided strong incentives to get those felony convictions in the database. Secondly, Grassley-Cruz provided funding for prosecutors to prosecute those who commit violent crimes with firearms and put them in jail.

Third, Grassley-Cruz provided funding for the Department of Justice to create a gun crime task force to prosecute felons and fugitives who try to illegally buy guns.

Many people don't know this, but it is actually quite shocking. The Department of Justice has a consistent pattern of refusing to prosecute felons and fugitives who illegally try to buy guns.

In the year 2010, roughly 48,000 felons and fugitives tried to illegally purchase firearms. Of those 48,000, the Obama Justice Department prosecuted 44 of them--not even 50--44 out of 48,000. I think that is completely unacceptable.

So Grassley-Cruz provided funding and directed the Department of Justice: Prosecute them and put them in jail. And on top of that, Grassley-Cruz created grants for schools to enhance school safety, to enhance security, to make our schools and make our kids safer.

So what happened? Well, Grassley-Cruz, we voted on it here on the floor of the Senate. And Grassley-Cruz received a majority vote on the Senate floor, 52 Senators voted in favor of Grassley-Cruz, including nine Democrats. Remember, this was a Democrat Senate. Democrats had a sizable majority, and yet nine Democrats--we got the most bipartisan support of any of the comprehensive legislation that was considered on the floor.

So why didn't Grassley-Cruz pass into law? We got a majority vote in the Senate. Well, the answer is simple: Grassley-Cruz didn't pass because Senate Democrats filibustered it. They demanded 60 votes; and so even though it got a majority, it didn't get 60, and it didn't pass.

I am going to share something that is deeply frustrating.

There is a powerful argument that had Grassley-Cruz passed, had Senate Democrats not filibustered it, that multiple of these mass shootings in Texas could have been prevented.

Let's start with Sutherland Springs. Sutherland Springs should never have happened. The shooter was doubly ineligible to buy a firearm. He had a felony conviction. He had a domestic conviction. So under Federal law, existing Federal law, it was illegal for him to buy a gun.

So how did he get his gun?

Well, the Air Force, in the Obama administration, failed to report his felony conviction to the background check database. It wasn't in there.

So the shooter went to buy a gun. He filled out the background check form, and he lied. He lied on the form. The form asked: Do you have a felony conviction? He said: No.

The form asked: Do you have a domestic violence conviction? He said: No.

They ran the check, and it came up clean because the Obama Air Force never reported the felony and so it wasn't in the database and so it came up clean.

He bought that gun, and he used it to murder those innocent people in that beautiful sanctuary.

If Grassley-Cruz had passed, presumably, the mandated Department of Justice audit of every Federal Agency would have caught that felony conviction. The whole purpose of the audit was to make sure we catch every felony conviction that is out there, which would have meant his conviction would have been in the database, but that is where the second part of Grassley-Cruz matters because when he went in and lied on that form, he committed two more felonies. When he checked ``I don't have a felony conviction,'' that is the felony. Lying on that form is a felony. It is a crime.

When he checked ``I don't have a domestic violence conviction,'' that is the felony. And Grassley-Cruz would have directed the Department of Justice: Prosecute him, and put him in jail. And that monster would have been locked in a 6-by-8 concrete cell instead of murdering innocent people in the wonderful community of Sutherland Springs.

You also look at Santa Fe and Uvalde, and there is a possibility that both of those crimes could have been prevented by Grassley-Cruz.

Part of Grassley-Cruz was funding to enhance school security--grants to go to schools. One of the things that is frustrating about these school shootings is they follow predictable patterns.

In Parkland, FL, the shooter jumped over a fence and came inside. In Santa Fe, the shooter went in an unlocked side entrance.

Afterward--you know, the Santa Fe High School is less than an hour from my house. I was at home that morning, the morning of the shooting. I was on that campus about an hour after the shooting occurred. It was horrific. It was tragic. I grieved and cried with the parents who lost their children that day.

I remember sitting down afterward at a roundtable with the parents from Santa Fe and parents from other mass shootings that occurred and talking about what are the solutions we can do. How can we prevent this?

One of the solutions we discussed was best practices. How do you make a school safer? One of those best practices is limiting the number of entrances to a school--ideally, bringing it down to one single main entrance, the front entrance.

Now, that doesn't mean, as some on the Twittersphere have said, that you have no fire exits. Of course, you have fire exits. It means you do what we do in many other places--in Federal buildings, in banks, in courthouses. It is a standard security step to have one major entrance to a building if that building is at risk of violence, and that one main entrance is then much, much safer if you have armed police officers at that entrance.

When you go into a bank, there is a reason you see an armed officer at the entrance. When you go into a courthouse, there is a reason you see an armed officer at the entrance. When you go into the U.S. Capitol, there is a reason you see an armed officer at the entrance. Our kids are at least as valuable.

If the Santa Fe High School or the Robb Elementary School had been able to get a school funding grant to enhance security, those crimes could have been prevented because, I will tell you, when I was in Uvalde the day after the shooting, what was so infuriating is that monster got in the exact same way--through an open back door. Just like in Santa Fe, he got in through an open back door; he got into the classroom; and he began murdering children long before he encountered anyone from law enforcement.

If, instead, that door had been locked, if he had been forced to come around to the front main entrance, if at the front main entrance there were armed police officers, they could have shot that monster dead outside, and 19 children and 2 teachers would still be alive.

So, like millions across this country, I am angry. I am angry that these horrific crimes keep happening.

But I am also angry that this august Chamber plays political games. The bill that is before this body is being heralded in the press as a bipartisan bill because it has got every Democrat and some Republicans.

I think the chances that this bill will do anything meaningful to actually prevent the next mass murder are very low. That is not what this bill is designed to do.

This bill is designed, among other things, to satiate the urge to do something. After every one of these, the call comes out: Do something. I agree. Do something. But do something that works. Do something that will stop these crimes. This bill ain't that.

But it does have provisions that are troubling. It does have provisions that

satisfy the Democratic political priority to go after the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms of law-abiding citizens.

Most troubling in this bill is the funding of so-called red flag laws. Now, these so-called red flag laws have been implemented in multiple States, and they enable the State to take away the right to keep and bear arms from law-abiding citizens.

They render you vulnerable; that if you have a disgruntled coworker, if you have an angry ex-boyfriend, an angry ex-girlfriend, they can go and give the State the power to strip you of the right to keep and bear arms--not if you are a criminal, not if you have committed crimes, not if you have been adjudicated to be a danger to yourself or others. All of those are existing law. Red flag laws lower the threshold and make it easier to take away your right to defend yourself.

And in too many of these States, these provisions have little to no protections of due process.

If the Senate passes this bill, Federal dollars will be used to encourage more States to enact laws like this. That means Federal tax dollars will be used to implement programs that will strip away Americans' constitutional rights.

And mark my words, people will lose their lives over this; that we will see red flag laws that are abused and citizens who are disarmed-- and, tragically, we are going to see a citizen who is disarmed who is subsequently murdered.

Look, the right to keep and bear arms--it is not about hunting. It is not about skeet shooting. Those can be a lot of fun to do, but that is not why it is in the Constitution. The Bill of Rights does not have an amendment devoted to recreational shooting.

The reason the Second Amendment is in the Bill of Rights is because you and I and every American have a God-given right to defend our life. There is no right more fundamental than the right to defend your own life and the right to defend your family. If a criminal comes into your house at night seeking to do harm to your children, you and I have a right, I believe that derives from God Almighty, to defend our kids, and whether any individual Member of this Chamber agrees with that right or not doesn't really matter because it is right there in the Bill of Rights. So the Constitution protects it whether you agree with it or not.

And the reason I say these red flag laws, we are going to see people lose their lives over it, is because often when people go and buy a firearm, it is because they are afraid. It is because maybe they have got an angry ex-boyfriend, an angry ex-girlfriend. Maybe they have got a neighbor whom they are scared of. Maybe they have got someone threatening them. And we are going to see these laws abused to disarm someone who is subsequently made the victim of a violent crime.

And none of the politicians in this Chamber who vote for this bill will take any responsibility for the people's lives that will be lost because of it.

You might say: Well, look, that is all fine and good, but if you don't like this bill, what should we do?

Well, it so happens I have an answer to that. This week, I filed legislation, along with Senator John Barrasso from Wyoming. The Cruz- Barrasso legislation builds on what already received a majority vote in this Chamber, the Grassley-Cruz legislation of a decade ago.

Let me tell you what Cruz-Barrasso does. It focuses on actually stopping this problem. So Cruz-Barrasso funds the Department of Justice to prosecute violent criminals who use firearms.

Mr. President, you are from the Commonwealth of Virginia, a wonderful State. As you know well, some of the most important work stopping violent crime and gun crime was pioneered in the Commonwealth of Virginia. During the Bill Clinton Presidency, an initiative was started called Project Exile in the Western District of Virginia. The U.S. attorney there laid out a policy that if anyone commits a crime with a firearm who is illegally possessing that firearm, meaning likely they are a felon in possession, that the Feds were going to prosecute them, put them in jail, and they are going to face mandatory minimum crimes.

And the U.S. attorney passed out to local prosecutors laminated cards saying: Here are all the Federal prohibitions on gun possession. They put up ads. They put up billboards in Richmond, VA. Richmond tragically had an incredibly high murder rate. They put up billboards: Carry a gun, do hard time.

And Project Exile worked phenomenally. The murder rate in Richmond, VA, plummeted, and we began hearing stories of criminals--criminals who would come to knock off a liquor store, criminals who would come to do a home burglary, who would leave their gun at home. They would say: Do you know what? Look, if I break into this house and I have got a gun with me, I am doing hard time in Federal prison. I think I will just go there without a gun. It worked.

What does Cruz-Barrasso do? It takes Project Exile national. It provides funding for U.S. attorneys to prosecute. If you commit a crime and you have got a gun, you are off the streets.

You want to stop these crimes? That is the step that will stop these crimes.

What else does Cruz-Barrasso do? It creates a gun crime task force at the Department of Justice to prosecute the felons and fugitives year after year after year who try to illegally buy a gun and whom DOJ won't prosecute right now.

If Cruz-Barrasso passes, the next Sutherland Springs can be stopped.

You know, there are some Democrat officials who say: We don't have time to prosecute people who try to illegally buy guns. I repeatedly heard testimony from Democratic witnesses on the Judiciary Committee saying that.

Let me tell you something right now. If a murderer or a felon is trying to illegally buy a gun, I don't think that is a paperwork offense; I think they should be prosecuted and put in jail.

What else does Cruz-Barrasso do? It provides major funding to make our schools safer. It provides much more funding than the Democrats' bill. All told, there is $36 billion in this bill.

It provides funding to double the number of police officers in schools across America--to double them. If you want to keep kids safe, the single best step you can do is have police officers on campus so that our children have the same protection that Members of Congress do; so that our children have the same protection that courthouses do; so that our children have the same protection that banks do.

Cruz-Barrasso will double the number of police officers in schools across America--not only that, let's talk mental health. We all know there is a problem. These deranged shooters over and over again follow similar patterns of being isolated, angry loners with a long pattern of struggling with mental health, often making multiple threats before they carry out a horrific crime.

Cruz-Barrasso provides $10 billion in funding for mental health counselors in schools across the country to help identify troubled youth and to stop them before they commit a crime like this.

(Mr. OSSOFF assumed the Chair.)

Now, earlier today, there had been discussion that Majority Leader Schumer would schedule a vote on Cruz-Barrasso. Right now, it appears that may not happen. We are going to vote one way or another, and if I have to exercise the procedural avenues available to me as a Senator to force that vote, I am more than happy to do so. But let me tell you actually why we are not seeing the vote so far--because my amendment is drafted as a substitute. In other words, it would replace the pending bill on the floor, and an awful lot of Senators don't want to have to vote on that.

Now, I challenge any Senator in this Chamber to try to make the case that this Democrat bill on the floor would be even half as effective in stopping violent crime, in stopping mass shootings, in stopping criminals from murdering children in schools, as my legislation would be. The Democrat bill has a fraction of the funding for police officers. It has a fraction of the funding for mental health. The Democrat bill doesn't provide that violent felons who use guns should be prosecuted. The Democrat bill doesn't provide that people who illegally try to buy firearms, who are felons and fugitives, should be prosecuted. The Democrat bill is not focused on criminals. It is not focused on bad guys. It is focused on the Democrat priority of disarming law-abiding citizens. That is a political priority that too many Senate Democrats value more than keeping kids safe.

So if we don't see a straight-up vote on my amendment, it is because too

many Senators in this Chamber don't want to vote on a head-to-head choice between actually keeping kids safe versus achieving the political agenda of the left of disarming law-abiding citizens. That is wrong. It is cynical.

I have to say that in these debates--listen, this is a topic that is emotional. It is a topic that is personal. It is a topic where inevitably the rhetoric gets overheated. It gets overheated on both sides.

Some years ago, I found myself, curiously enough, in a Twitter debate with Alyssa Milano, the actress from Hollywood, the leftwing activist, over the question of guns. We began going back and forth over gun control and the Second Amendment, and at some point, she said something to the effect of, you wouldn't dare sit down and have this conversation with me in person. I said: Of course I would. I invited her to come to my office, and she did. She came to my office, and what proceeded is we had a 90-minute discussion and debate about violent crime, about gun control, and about the Second Amendment. We live-streamed it, so anyone who wants to see it can go and watch a 90-minute discussion. I will say, I commend Ms. Milano. I think the two of us managed to have a much more civil conversation on this than most of the interlocutors on this topic.

One of the things I said to her at the start of that discussion was, I said: Listen, if we start from the premise--if we sit in this room and look at each other and we both assume the other is evil, the other is lying, the other seeks to do harm, we are not going to have a very productive conversation. If each of us thinks of the other ``You want children to die; you want people to be murdered,'' you know what, that is not going to lead to a very productive conversation.

I suggested to her--I said: Why don't we start from the proposition that you and I both would like to see innocent people protected and safe; that you and I both, like anyone sane and rational, are utterly horrified at the depraved monsters who murder innocent people and especially those who murder children?

There is a special circle of Hell for the people who hurt kids.

If we start from the premise that even though we are of different political parties and even though we may believe different things politically, we both want to see human life preserved, then maybe we can have a productive discussion about what steps can be taken to be most effective in saving human life.

We agreed that we both want to prevent future murders, that we both want to protect our kids and your kids and kids across America. Then we can have a real discussion that is factual, that is empirical, that is based on evidence, that is based on data, as to what policies are actually effective in stopping violent crime.

There was a time when this august Chamber had discussions like that, had debates.

I would note, this particular bill--there have been no committee hearings on it. There has been no meaningful debate. This is an exercise of partisan power and political objectives.

So we are not engaged in a meaningful discussion of what policies are actually effective in stopping crime, preventing mass murder, and protecting children. If we were, I would challenge any Democrat in the Chamber to stand up and explain how on Earth this Democrat bill could be even half as effective in preventing school shootings as the Cruz- Barrasso bill. By any measure, the legislation that I am fighting for is stronger, it will put more violent gun criminals in jail, and it will double the number of police officers in schools across America. It will make our children safer.

If we were willing to have a discussion about substance, about the merits, that should be a pretty easy discussion, but, sadly, too many in this body immediately play politics and also give in to the overheated rhetoric on this issue.

Those who advocate gun control inevitably say: If you support the Second Amendment, blood is on your hands.

Well, let me tell you something: If you oppose the Second Amendment and you disarm people who become victims of violent crime, blood is on your hands.

Rather than either of us saying language like that, it seems to me we should come together and say: How do we stop the bad guys? What works? What is effective? What can we do together to make sure to maximize the chances that we prevent another Uvalde, another Santa Fe, another Sutherland Springs, another El Paso, another Midland-Odessa, another Dallas?

The stakes are too serious for political games.

The Presiding Officer wasn't serving in this body 10 years ago when we voted on Grassley-Cruz, but at the time, nine Democrats voted for it. It received the most bipartisan support of any of the comprehensive legislation before this body. It got a majority vote in the Harry Reid Democrat Senate, where the Democrats had a substantial majority.

I would urge you, Mr. President, and every other Democrat to demonstrate the same principle and the same courage that those nine Democrats did a decade ago.

Let's vote for legislation that will actually solve the problem, that will actually stop violent criminals, and that will actually keep our kids safe. Let's resist the political urge to try to attack and undermine the Second Amendment, to try to disarm law-abiding citizens.

I can tell you, as long as I am serving in this body, I will fight with every breath I can to defend the constitutional right to keep and bear arms of every American. It is in the Bill of Rights. It is a foundational right.

We can do both. We can stop criminals and protect the Second Amendment. This bill on the floor, the Democrat bill, does not. So I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass Cruz-Barrasso and abandon the Democrat legislation that doesn't stop violent crime but does infringe on the Second Amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this body has a choice before it: Do we pass legislation that will be ineffective in stopping violent crime, that has very little prospect of preventing the next mass shooting, that will do very little to make schools safer but, at the same time, will undermine the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens? That is the Democrat bill that is currently on the floor.

Or do we, instead, move to pass real legislation that will stop violent crime, that will put gun criminals in jail, that will prosecute felons and fugitives who try to illegally buy guns, and that will provide serious funding for school safety?

The Cruz-Barrasso legislation provides funding to double the number of police officers in schools across America so our kids can be kept safe--$36 billion total in funding, repurposed from unspent Democrat emergency funds. This bill also provides $10 billion in funding for mental health counselors in schools to stop troubled teens before they go down a horrible road.

The Democrat bill has much smaller funding for cops and schools, much smaller funding for mental health, but much more infringement of the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.

So it is a choice all of us have: Do we want to stop these crimes, or do we want to play politics?

And I would note, Mr. President, that the proponents of this bill at the outset swore up and down: There will be amendments. We will have amendments on this bill.

Well, right now, the majority leader wants no amendments. And how do we know that? Because the majority leader has filled the amendment tree, has blocked amendments.

This morning, the majority leader was saying that he would allow a vote on Cruz-Barrasso, a straight-up vote. But, for whatever reason, that has changed; and so, right now, amendments are blocked. But, fortunately, it is the right of any Senator to move to table that blocking amendment, and that is what I will do momentarily. And the reason I am moving to table this blocking amendment is to take up Cruz- Barrasso.

And so this vote is a straight-up vote: Do you support serious law enforcement? Do you support prosecuting violent criminals who use guns in their crimes? Do you support prosecuting and sending to jail felons and fugitives and those with serious mental illness who try to illegally buy firearms? And do you support getting serious about

protecting our schools? Do you support doubling the number of cops in our schools so that our kids are safe? Do you support funding mental health counselors so our kids are safe?

This is an opportunity for every Senator to decide if they support doing something that actually fixes the problem or if they put a higher priority on partisan politics. On the merits, this vote should be 100 to 0. We will see what the vote is in reality.

Motion to Table

Mr. President, accordingly, I move to table amendment No. 5100, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I rise today to lay out exactly why I intend to vote for the aid package to provide our Ukrainian allies with the weapons and support they need to fight Vladimir Putin's invasion.

First, it is important to understand why--thanks in large part to President Joe Biden--we are in this dangerous situation to begin with. What is maddening about Russia's invasion of Ukraine is that it was utterly preventable. This did not have to happen, and it was caused by two specific mistakes by Biden and his administration. The first mistake was Biden's catastrophic surrender and withdrawal in Afghanistan. The second mistake was Biden's weakness and appeasement on display and his capitulation to Putin on the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline.

Putin didn't just wake up yesterday and decide he wanted to invade Ukraine. In 2014, Putin previously invaded Ukraine, but he stopped short of invading the entirety of the country. Why is that? The reason is simple: Russia's principal source of revenue is oil and gas, which is transported via pipelines that go directly through Ukraine. Putin knew that when the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline was complete, he could invade Ukraine and not have to worry about potentially destroying Ukrainian energy infrastructure because he would have in place an alternative pipeline to get his gas to market.

Last spring, President Biden formally waived the sanctions that Congress had put in place on Nord Stream 2, sanctions that I authored, bipartisan sanctions that passed this body twice and that President Trump signed into law twice. Last summer, President Biden surrendered to Putin, lifted the sanctions, allowed Putin to build the pipeline, and announced a deal with Germany to allow the pipeline to be completed. When he announced that deal, that capitulation, the governments of both Ukraine and Poland put out a joint statement saying: Mr. President, if you do this, Vladimir Putin will invade Ukraine.

In August, Biden surrendered in Afghanistan. In September, Nord Stream 2 was physically completed, and then Putin began building up his forces on Ukraine's border. Even then, our Ukrainian allies pleaded with us: Sanction Nord Stream 2 now so that Putin will know he can't turn it on later. The President, the Prime Minister, Parliament, and civil society of Ukraine all said so again and again and again.

I authored a new set of sanctions mandating immediate sanctions, which the Ukrainian Government formally called on the Senate to take it up and pass it. The Biden administration fought tooth and nail against those sanctions in January. I remember standing right here and saying: Mr. President, if you do this, we will see Russian tanks rolling toward the streets of Kyiv.

Sadly, 44 Democrats voted with President Biden against sanctions on Russia, against sanctions on Putin; and the appeasement from the White House and 44 Democrats led, within days, to the invasion of Ukraine.

That being said now, the difficult question is what should we do now that this war is unfolding and, specifically, whether it is in America's vital national security interests for Ukraine to

fight and defeat Putin's invasion. My conclusion is that, yes, it is.

There is no doubt, $40 billion is a large number; and although much of that spending is important--in fact, some of it is acutely needed in the military conflict--I would have preferred a significantly smaller and more focused bill. But our Ukrainian allies right now are winning significant victories with the weapons and training that we provided them already, and it is in our national interest for them to keep doing so. They will not be able to fight Putin and have any chance of prevailing if we cut off military assistance.

So why is this in America's national security interest? The answer lies in some questions that my fellow Americans are rightly asking. They are asking: What would Russia's invasion of Ukraine mean for our problems here at home, including, for example, food and energy? They are asking: Is the cost of this bill really necessary? They are also asking: Isn't China our biggest long-term enemy?

These are all entirely legitimate questions. They are important to ask. They are the same questions I asked myself before deciding how to vote on this bill. Another question Americans are rightly asking is: Why aren't we doing anything about our problems here at home?

I emphatically agree that President Biden and congressional Democrats have failed on the issues here at home that Texans and Americans rightly care about and we should fix. Right now, we have a raging border crisis that President Biden won't do a damn thing about. We have skyrocketing inflation. We have gas prices at record highs. We have a baby formula shortage that has left parents all over the country scrambling to try to feed their babies. These are real problems that the Democrats caused and now refuse to even try to fix; and in multiple instances, such as the gas prices, these are problems that Democrats have deliberately made worse, inflicting pain on millions of Americans.

All of that can be true at home, and it doesn't mean the world has suddenly become safe and that our enemies do not mean us harm. At the same time that we need to secure our border and address the domestic crises, we also need to stand up and confront the very real threat posed by Russia and by China. We can't let the fact that Biden and the Democrats have created massive domestic and economic failures cause us to ignore threats to U.S. national security posed directly by Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

On the question ``Why is what Russia does in Ukraine relevant for our national security,'' I want to answer this by making four points.

No. 1, what Putin is trying to do is to reassemble the Soviet Union and, beyond the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire from even earlier. If Putin succeeds in doing so, it would be disastrous for global stability and for American security.

The Cold War between America and the Soviet Union was incredibly costly and incredibly dangerous. We don't want to see Russia become the Soviet Union once again. When the Soviet Union was big and strong and mighty with a much bigger military, the lives of Americans and the lives of our allies were in much greater jeopardy.

It is overwhelmingly in America's interest to prevent Putin from reassembling the Soviet Union, because we do not want our enemies to become stronger and use that strength against us.

No. 2, Putin is trying to seize control of energy. If he is successful, it will be felt by Americans filling up their cars with gas or trying to heat their homes in the winter. We have already seen what Putin has done with Nord Stream 2, and he is not going to stop there. We don't want to see a world where Putin controls energy.

No. 3, the United States made a formal commitment to help Ukrainians defend themselves. Why is that? Well, after Ukraine successfully declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States signed an agreement called the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. Under the terms of the agreement, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for explicit assurances that the United States would protect Ukraine's territorial sovereignty. Ukraine had the third largest nuclear arsenal on the face of the planet, and they voluntarily, willingly, gave it up. And we made a promise in exchange for that.

And No. 4, if we don't provide Ukrainians with weapons and they don't defeat Putin, Putin will be emboldened and may well eventually invade a NATO country that the United States has a treaty obligation to defend. That would be an incredibly serious escalation that nobody wants to see.

Some have further asked, ``Why should America keep these commitments?'' Why should we keep our commitment in the Budapest Memorandum? Why should we keep our treaty commitments to the NATO countries? And the answer is, because one of the ways we protect American national security is, when we make an agreement with a country, when we make a formal agreement, a treaty, we honor our commitments.

We want countries to know that America stands by our friends and that we stand by our word and that our treaties mean something.

If countries learned that under weak and feckless Presidents our formal binding documents aren't worth the paper they are written on, it undermines the ability of any President of the United States to negotiate agreements with our friends and allies to keep Americans safe.

Another question I have heard is, why so much money? Sure, it is important to help Ukraine win, but why should we spend so much? Again, I would have preferred for this to be a smaller bill. But, in fact, enormous amounts of money are both justified and necessary. Of this $40 billion, there is $9 billion for replenishing our own stockpiles, American stockpiles which have been badly depleted in recent months as we sought to help our Ukrainian allies.

We are already beginning to see the risks and effects of depleted stockpiles. Just a few weeks ago, Taiwan's Ministry of Defense announced there would be dramatic delays in the delivery of some weapons, including howitzers and Stingers. Making sure we have the weapons we need to defend ourselves is incontrovertibly a good thing, and $9 billion of this $40 billion, I do not know a Senator in this body who could reasonably object to replenishing our own military stores and weaponry to keep America safe with America's military.

There is also $10 billion in this bill for Ukrainian weapons and training, and altogether, $24 billion in military funds in this bill. Ukrainian weapons and training--the very things they have been using to defend themselves and that if we don't replenish, will cause them to collapse.

The Ukrainian military right now is using tens of thousands of artillery rounds and ammunition every couple of days. Already last month, there was a growing concern that Ukrainian forces engaged in heavy ground combat against Russian units would quickly go through that amount of ammunition.

They have largely burned through the stockpiles of Russian-style ammunition they are familiar with and used in the opening weeks of the war. And last month, U.S. officials assessed that 40,000 rounds of artillery were only expected to last a few days. New efforts to resupply our Ukrainian allies are critical.

There is also about $5 billion for food in this bill. Ukraine is rightly known as the bread basket of Europe. It is the sixth top exporter of wheat in the world, and there is a growing risk of global famine because of the disruption Russia's invasion is causing in Ukraine.

Devoting money now to stop countless people from starving to death in famine is a wise and prudent investment for American national interests.

Then there is $9 billion in economic support funds for the Ukrainian government. Will a certain portion of that money be wasted? Absolutely. Will there be corruption? Almost certainly. If it were up to me, I would cut that amount from this bill. Might some of it end up funding a yacht for an oligarch? Very possibly. But unfortunately, this is what happens when Democrats have control of Congress and write the bill.

When you have a bill authored by a Democratic White House and a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House, the result is you get waste and corruption and pork and fat and bloat in a bill.

So the question facing each of us Republicans is whether you are willing to cut off the missiles and cut off the bullets that we are sending to Ukraine and allow Putin to win simply because there is a portion of this bill that is waste and corruption that the Democrats have insisted on.

The reality is that a Putin victory in Ukraine will be much, much more expensive for American taxpayers in the long run than this bill. And let me underscore that point. If Putin wins, the consequences for America and American taxpayers will be hundreds of billions of dollars.

From a purely fiscally conservative view, ensuring that the Ukrainians have enough military equipment to defend themselves and to give Putin punishing defeats is overwhelmingly in our interest. And let me underscore as well: It is the Ukrainians doing the fighting. I do not want to see U.S. servicemen and women in harm's way. There is a reason I have vocally opposed a no-fly zone in Ukraine, because that would unreasonably increase the chances of an American pilot in an American jet engaging in combat with a Russian pilot in a Russian jet, and that escalation is not justified.

But ensuring the Ukrainians have the weapons to defend themselves is very much in our own national security interest.

And now I want to talk about a question that many Americans have not necessarily been asking but that is of staggering importance to our national security. And that is, ``What does the war in Ukraine have to do with China?'' The answer is, ``An enormous amount.''

Last summer, we watched the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan unfold. We watched the surrender to the Taliban from Joe Biden. We watched the incompetence of this administration in abandoning Americans and leaving them behind, abandoning Bagram airfield before we evacuated.

When that happened, all across the globe, America's enemies looked to Washington and took a measure of the man in the oval office, and, tragically, they concluded that President Biden was weak and feckless and ineffective. And a weak American President is dangerous.

When the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan happened, I said publicly that the chances of Putin invading Ukraine just rose tenfold. I also said, at the same time, the chances of China invading Taiwan just rose tenfold.

We have now seen the first of these two things happen, because Putin understood the disastrous surrender and withdrawal in Afghanistan to mean that President Biden was weak, and weakness is provocative.

If Putin wins in Ukraine, it will confirm to Xi in Communist China that he can confidently invade Taiwan and that America will be too weak and feckless to stand with our allies.

But if Ukraine defeats Putin with the help of American weapons and military aid, Xi will see aggression as a recipe for failure and that the United States has the strength of will to stand by its allies to ensure that they have what they need to defend themselves.

China is--mark my words--the most dangerous geopolitical adversary of the United States for the next 100 years. China has the military might of the Soviet Union with a much, much stronger economy and an economic engine.

China also carries out policies of murder and torture and genocide and slavery and lies and deception. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be catastrophic for American national security. Right now, today, over 90 percent of the world's most advanced semiconductor chips come from Taiwan. If China were to conquer Taiwan, it would give the Chinese Communist Party a stranglehold on the global supply of semiconductors.

After that, if Xi wanted to turn off the supply of semiconductors to Americans, he could do so instantly. It is simply irresponsible to allow that to happen, and it is impossible to overstate the catastrophe that would impose on Americans.

Overnight, it would be impossible to acquire or repair pretty much everything we rely on in modern life: Cars, planes, medical devices like pacemakers, clean water, refrigerators, all rely on semiconductors--of course, so do vehicles, boats, tanks, missiles that we rely upon for our national defense.

And even if China didn't turn off the supply of those chips, they would be able to control what went into them, including potentially planting spyware and espionage directly and immediately threatening American security.

And it goes without saying, the Chinese Communist Party would also immediately control the price of semiconductors and what they go into, which would drive up the cost of pretty much everything to Americans.

If you think $40 billion is a lot of money, just wait and see the disaster if the Chinese communists lock up semiconductors on the world stage and use them to extract monopoly profits from Americans while simultaneously spying on us using those same semiconductors.

Just as we don't want to see a world in which Putin controls energy, we should not want to see a world in which Xi controls semiconductors.

I began this speech by talking about the consequences of failing to stop Nord Stream 2. I very much wish that these consequences had not come to pass, but the terrible reality is that President Biden failed in Afghanistan and failed again with Nord Stream 2, which played the decisive role in shaping the current crisis.

The reason we should help the Ukrainians defeat Putin by giving them weapons is the same reason we need to keep our thumb on China. And it is not what some of my colleagues on the Republican side have said: It is not to defend democracy across the globe; it is not to defend international norms. That sort of empty nonsense is the sort of things John Kerry says.

The reason we should support our Ukrainian allies who are fighting and killing Russian soldiers is because it protects American national security, it keeps America safer, and it prevents our enemies from getting stronger, from threatening the safety and security of Americans, and from driving up the costs, the economic damage to Americans, by hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars.

America needs to be strong--strong enough to stand up to Putin, strong enough to stand up to communist China, strong enough to defend the greatest Nation in the history of the world.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Just a moment ago, the Senator from Ohio made reference to the alleged existence of the so-called Putin wing of the Republican Party.

I would like to ask the Senator from Ohio, Is it accurate that the Senator from Ohio and 43 of his Democratic colleagues in January of this year voted against sanctioning Nord Stream 2, sanctioning Russia, sanctioning Putin, despite the fact that Ukraine begged the Senate to pass those sanctions and Putin invaded Ukraine just days after 44 Democrats sided with Russia and Putin?

Madam President, I call up my motion to instruct conferees, which is at the desk.

Madam President, China and Iran are two of the most dangerous enemies of the United States. China is our most significant geopolitical foe for the next 100 years. Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism.

The Biden administration, unfortunately, has been dealing with both from a position of weakness. Specifically, the Biden administration has refused to enforce oil sanctions against Iran, allowing Iran to sell more than a million barrels a day of oil primarily to China.

At the same time, the Biden administration is negotiating to lift terrorism sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Central Bank of Iran. The IRGC is responsible for murdering over 600 service men and women. The IRGC, right now, is actively trying to murder the former Secretary of State of the United States and the former National Security Advisor.

If you support terrorism sanctions on the IRGC, you should vote yes, and if you want to lift those sanctions, you should vote no.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I rise today ahead of the Senate's vote on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to be a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. There are few responsibilities the Senate has that are more important than confirming judges and, in particular, confirming Justices on the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Supreme Court is charged with the responsibility of defending and upholding the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It is charged with the responsibility of upholding the rule of law and protecting your rights and my rights.

Judge Jackson is someone that I have known personally for 30 years. She and I went to law school together. We were both on the law review together. Judge Jackson is someone who, on a personal level--she is smart; she is talented; she is charming. I have always liked Judge Jackson. But the responsibility given to the Senate is not to make an assessment on a personal level, but rather to assess a nominee's record and the kind of job they would do for the position to which they have been appointed.

Now, many Democrats in this Chamber and their cheerleaders in the corporate media insist that we cannot examine Judge Jackson's record. They insist, in fact, that any scrutiny of her record, any difficult questions directed her way, and, certainly, any opposition to her nomination must, must, must be rooted in racism or sexism. Sadly, this is a common talking point for Democrats. Whenever anyone disagrees with them on substance, you must be a racist. If you are not a socialist, you are a racist. That is their standard go-to.

And in this instance, all should acknowledge and should celebrate the historic milestone that would be having the first African-American woman serve as a Justice on the Supreme Court. Given our Nation's troubled history on race, that is a major important milestone. I would note, though, that the Democrats celebrating that fact--patting themselves on the back--there is more than a little irony in their celebrating that fact because the reason that we have not, to date, had an African-American woman on the Supreme Court--a major reason--is that the Democrats who are so proud of themselves filibustered a qualified African-American woman nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Her name was Janice Rogers Brown. She was a justice on the California Supreme Court, and 20 years ago, President George W. Bush, a Republican, nominated her to the DC Circuit. And Senate Democrats realized that a qualified African-American woman on the DC Circuit was a real threat to go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Janice Rogers Brown is a conservative and a constitutionalist, and for Democrats, that was unacceptable. So Democrats filibustered Janice Rogers Brown. Chuck Schumer filibustered Janice Rogers Brown. Joe Biden filibustered Janice Rogers Brown. Dick Durbin filibustered Janice Rogers Brown. Pat Leahy filibustered Janice Rogers Brown. Dianne Feinstein filibustered Janice Rogers Brown.

So now, all the Democrats who are celebrating putting the first African-American woman on the Supreme Court have themselves to thank for that because it could have happened 20 years ago.

But in Senate Democrats' way of viewing things, if a Black woman or a Black man or a Hispanic woman or a Hispanic man dared to disagree with leftist orthodoxy, they do not count. Indeed, it was not just Janice Rogers Brown. Democrats also filibustered Miguel Estrada to the DC Circuit. Miguel Estrada, an advocate with superb credentials, was criticized, as the staff for Senator Ted Kennedy wrote at the time in internal memos that they could filibuster ``because he is Hispanic.''

Mr. President, this was before your time and my time in this body.

Here is what Ted Kennedy's staff told them:

Identify [Miguel Estrada] as especially dangerous . . .

because he is Latino.

That is racism--which the Democrats put in writing. If you are Black, if you are Hispanic, we will target you, we will filibuster you, we will block you, and that is what they did. For that matter, that is what Democrats have done for three decades now to Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the greatest Justices to ever serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. And yet, in Democrats' minds, he is not a Black man because he dares disagree with their leftist ideology. It is wrong; it is racist; it is cynical; and it is offensive.

What we should be doing--what every Senator should be doing--is examining Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's record, her actual record. If you look at her substantive record, it is far out of the mainstream. It is an extreme record. If you look at her record, I believe it demonstrates that Judge Jackson, if she is confirmed, will be the single most liberal Supreme Court Justice ever to serve on the Supreme Court. I believe she will be to the left of Justice Sotomayor; she will be to the left of Justice Kagan; and she will be way, way, way to the left of Justice Stephen Breyer, the Justice she would be replacing.

What does that mean as a practical matter, left and right? Why do the American people care about the Supreme Court? They care because they care about their rights. As a practical matter, what it means--I believe the odds are nearly 100 percent that Judge Jackson would vote to overturn the case of Heller v. District of Columbia.

What is that case? It is the landmark case that upholds the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, a fundamental protection for all of us. That case was decided 5 to 4. Judge Jackson, I believe, is a vote to overturn that case to take away our Second Amendment rights, and that means every Senator who votes to confirm her is voting to take away the Second Amendment rights of Americans.

Judge Jackson, I believe the odds are nearly 100 percent that she would vote to overturn the Citizens United case. What is Citizens United? It is a landmark case that protects our right to free speech, our right to speak in the political process to support candidates, to oppose candidates, to express our views, and participate in democracy. Citizens United was 5 to 4, one vote away from being taken away.

By the way, in the Citizens United case, the Obama Justice Department argued that the Federal Government has the power to ban books. The case was 5 to 4. There were four Justices willing to go there. Judge Jackson, I believe, would support the assertions of government power to silence you, to silence me, to silence the men and women we represent.

When it comes to religious liberty, I believe Judge Jackson will vote consistently over and over again against the religious liberty of Americans, against our right to live according to our faith, according to our conscience. One of the most precious rights, the very first right protected in the first clause of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights--that is what our Framers thought about it--is that without the right to seek out and worship the Lord God Almighty with all of your heart, mind, and soul, no other rights matter. I believe she will consistently vote to undermine that right and, in particular, one of the applications of that right, the context of school choice.

School choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. If you care about civil rights, if you care about advancement and opportunity for young kids, for young African-American kids, for young Hispanic kids, there is nothing, nothing, nothing that matters more than school choice. And yet, the Supreme Court, in the case of Zelman v. Simmons- Harris, upheld Ohio school choice program by one vote, 5 to 4. I believe Judge Jackson would vote to overturn Zelman v. Simmons-Harris and vote to strike down school choice programs across the country.

You know, one of the problems with politics today is Members of this body like to avoid accountability for what they are doing. But everyone in this body is on notice that this is a Justice who will vote to take away our free speech rights, vote to take away our religious liberty rights, vote to take away our Second Amendment. And that means every Senator that votes for her cannot avoid responsibility for those lawless outcomes.

When it comes to abortion, Judge Jackson's record is extreme. I believe she would vote to strike down every single restriction across the country on abortion. I believe she would vote to strike down prohibitions on Federal partial-birth abortion, a truly horrific practice opposed by the vast majority of Americans. The Supreme Court upheld the Federal ban on partial-birth abortion by a vote of 5 to 4-- one vote away. Judge Jackson, based on her record of being a radical advocate for abortion, will consistently vote to strike down reasonable restrictions.

All of those are extreme positions. But if you want to understand just how extreme, there was one portion of the confirmation hearing that I thought spoke volumes: when Senator Marcia Blackburn asked Judge Jackson, ``What is a woman?''

``What is a woman'' didn't used to be a trick question. One hundred fifteen men and women have served on the Supreme Court, and all 115 of them would have no difficulty whatsoever answering the question, ``What is a woman''--not so Judge Jackson. Judge Jackson's response: I can't define a woman.

``I am not a biologist'' was her defense.

Now, does that really mean that Judge Jackson doesn't know what a woman is? Of course not. What it does show is her sensibility that she is completely in line with the radical left that wants to redefine what a woman is and erase it from the dictionary. You know, yesterday, a reporter stopped me. A reporter from a left-leaning publication said he was asking every Senate Republican on the Judiciary Committee the following question: What is a woman?

You could tell from the expression on his face he thought this was a great ``gotcha'' question.

I looked at him and said: An adult female human.

He looked at me astonished, and he said: Did you look it up? He said, That is actually the dictionary definition.

I said, No. I just speak English. If you would like another definition, how about this one: A Homo sapien with two X chromosomes. For all of recorded history, people have known what a woman is, but Judge Jackson is such a fellow traveler with the radical left that she cannot acknowledge common sense.

There is a reason the radical left groups in this country pressured the Biden White House to nominate Judge Jackson because she was the most extreme of the nominees being considered. There is a reason they pledged billions of dollars to support her confirmation because she is the most extreme of the nominees being considered.

Let me give an example of just how extreme. In the written questions, I submitted a question to Judge Jackson that says:

The theory that humans possess inherent or inalienable

rights is reflected in the Declaration of Independence, which

states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are

created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with

certain unalienable rights, that among these are life,

liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Do you hold a position on whether individuals possess natural rights, yes or no?

Judge Jackson answered--this is in writing:

I do not hold a position on whether individuals possess

natural rights.

That is a radical broad statement. Our country was founded on the quote I just read from the Declaration of Independence, with those words that Thomas Jefferson penned.

We declared our independence from Great Britain. We declared that we were our own Nation. We started a revolutionary war. We drafted a Constitution based on the proposition ``We hold these truths to be self-evident.'' They are not evident to Judge Jackson.

She doesn't hold a position that ``all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.'' Judge Jackson says she has no position on whether you have a right to life. She has no position over whether you have a right to liberty. She has no position on whether you have a right to the pursuit of happiness.

If you are a modern leftist, if you are a socialist who wants the government to control every aspect of your life, every aspect of your freedom, then a judge who has no view on whether we have natural rights is exactly the kind of judge you want.

By the way, to understand how radical her opinion is, you can look at the Make the Road decision. This is a decision in her court, in the district court, that was challenging the Trump Department of Homeland Security deporting people illegally in this country.

The statute under which the Secretary was removing illegal aliens explicitly gave the Secretary discretion

and said that discretion is unreviewable in Federal courts. It was a clear and explicit authorization and a removal of the authority of Federal courts to second-guess the policy determinations. That didn't stop Judge Jackson at all. She ignored the plain text of the statute. She issued a nationwide injunction to stop the Federal Government from removing illegal aliens. Her decision was so extreme that, on appeal, it was reversed by the Federal Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit unanimously. This is a left-leaning court, with a majority of Democrat appointments, and unanimously, the DC Circuit reversed her because she ignored the plain language of the statute.

But there is no area that is more extreme than Judge Jackson's record on crime. This was the central focus of the confirmation hearing, and her record is far, far, far out of step with the mainstream.

When it comes to crime generally, nationally, the average for Federal judges sentencing criminals is 45.1 months. That is the average sentence nationally. Judge Jackson's average is 29.9 months--33.8 percent less than the national average. If you are a criminal, you want to be in Judge Jackson's court because you are going to get a sentence more than a third less than you will get in the average district court. That is far out of the mainstream.

As you know, there was considerable focus not just on her leniency on criminals, her leniency on violent criminals, her leniency on sexual predators, her leniency on drug dealers, but there was a particular focus on her very disturbing record as it concerns child pornography.

When it comes to child sex offenders, it is a truly grotesque problem we face in this country. I spent a number of years in law enforcement. As the solicitor general of Texas, I worked on many criminal cases. There were no cases that were more disturbing to me personally than the cases where people abused kids, where they hurt kids, the evil, sick predators who carry out unspeakable acts on little children.

I have to say, when I first heard that there was a concern about her record on child pornography, I thought, come on now, that can't possibly be the case. Who is soft on child pornography? That didn't sound plausible. Then I examined her actual record. I examined cases. She had roughly a dozen child pornography cases as a district judge. In every single case where she had discretion, 100 percent of the time where she had discretion, she sentenced the defendant way, way, way below the Federal sentencing guidelines and way, way, way below what the prosecutors recommended, the very liberal DC prosecutors.

Now, when this issue was first raised, the Democrats responded: Well, Federal judges across the country sentence defendants below the sentencing guidelines, especially concerning child pornography. And that claim, insofar as it goes, is true. But her record is not simply sentencing below the guidelines; it is sentencing way, way, way below prosecutors.

Then we examined, how does she sentence in child pornography cases compared to other Federal judges? Let's compare apples to apples. When it comes to possession of child pornography, the national average for all Federal judges is 68 months, a little over 5 years. It is a serious crime with a serious prison sentence. Judge Jackson's average is 29.2 months. Now, note, the national average sentences child porn offenders to a longer sentence than your typical crime. Judge Jackson sentences child porn defendants to a shorter sentence than your typical crime. When it concerns possession of child pornography, it is a 57-percent difference.

But it is even more disturbing in a separate category, and that is distribution of child pornography. Distribution of child pornography, the national average is 135 months--11 years--a long time for a horrific crime. Judge Jackson's average sentence was 71.9 months. That is a full 47 percent less than the national average.

But it is even more egregious than that when you understand that with distribution of child pornography, Congress has passed into law a minimum sentence of 60 months. So Federal judges have no discretion to sentence below 60 months. That is the bare minimum. When you look at that, you realize that judges across the country--and we are not talking just Republican judges; we are talking Democrat judges: Bill Clinton judges, Barack Obama judges, Joe Biden judges--they sentence, on average, 75 months longer than the minimum. Judge Jackson sentences on average 11.9 months longer. It is a consistent and disturbing pattern.

Now, why does she do this? Well, when you sit down and read the transcripts of her sentencing hearings, which I have done, it is disturbing stuff. When you read the transcripts, she is very explicit that she has clear policy concerns.

Under the sentencing guidelines, there is a stricter sentence for child pornography involving very young children. She refuses to apply that. There is a sentencing enhancement for child pornography involving sadomasochistic abuse of children, children being tortured. She refuses to apply that.

If you look at what she has said, she said to the prosecutors--this is a quote from Judge Jackson at a sentencing hearing in United States v. Cane--she said, ``[You are] obviously aware''--she is talking to the prosecutors--``[You are] obviously aware of my policy disagreement. I just think it's very, very hard to deal with number of images as a significant aggravator.''

Now, what does this mean? There are two other aggravators for child pornography. One is use of a computer, and the other is number of images. In case after case, she refuses to apply them.

On use of a computer, she says: Well, at the time the guidelines were passed, this crime was primarily carried out through the mail. Now, everybody does it through a computer, so I am not going to use an enhancement for a computer.

Now, I don't agree with her on that, but I understand that point. That point is not out of the mainstream. But there is another aggravator, an aggravator up to five levels for the number of images, and over and over again, she says she won't apply the number of images.

I asked at her hearing. I said: So you are saying that somebody who has videos of a thousand children being sexually abused and somebody who has an image of one child being abused--that those are the same crimes, that you shouldn't punish the one offender more than the other?

She refused to answer that question.

That is extreme. It is radical, and that is not the law. Her disagreement--I would note, I believe I have 25 minutes, and Senator Thune extended--had a UC to change the time.

When it comes to Judge Jackson's record, it is far out of the mainstream. This is a judge who, as a Justice--the odds are 100 percent, I believe, she will vote to strike down the death penalty nationwide, and she will rule repeatedly to release violent criminals, to release murderers, to release sex offenders. This is a pattern that is highly, highly disturbing.

Our Democratic colleagues like to say they don't support abolishing the police. When you nominate and confirm judges who let criminals out of jail, you have the responsibility for the consequences of your actions.

Judge Jackson's record is extreme, and I urge my colleagues to vote against her confirmation.

Mr. President, today is Texas Independence Day. One hundred eighty-six years ago today, Texans declared our independence from Mexico, and we fired a shot for liberty that was heard around the world.

As I have done a number of years in the past, I am going to read the letter from the Alamo that Lieutenant Colonel William Barret Travis wrote calling for help. It is a letter that energized Texans across our great State and that energized lovers of liberty everywhere.

I read this letter the very first time that I ever stood and spoke on the Senate floor, and these are the words that inspire us even 186 years after they were written.

Colonel Travis writes:

To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World--

Fellow Citizens & compatriots--I am besieged, by a thousand

or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna--I have sustained a

continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not

lost a man--The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion,

otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the

fort is taken--I have answered the demand with a cannon shot,

& our flag still waves proudly from the walls--I shall never

surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of

Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American

character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch--

The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country--Victory or Death.

William Barret Travis, Lt.Col.comdt.

PS: The Lord is on our side--When the enemy appeared in

sight we had not three bushels of corn--We have since found

in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels and got into the walls 20

or 30 head of Beeves.

Travis.

The brave men and women at the Alamo would go on to give their lives for liberty, including Travis, Jim Bowie, and Davy Crockett.

Shortly thereafter, the Texans were victorious at the Battle of San Jacinto. With a cry in the air of ``Remember the Alamo,'' the heroes who gave their lives for liberty inspired a successful revolution, and the Republic of Texas was formed.

Sam Houston, one of the founding fathers of the Lone Star State, was also born on this very day 229 years ago.

Sam Houston was a great American. He was born in Virginia and spent many years in Tennessee, where he served in the U.S. House of Representatives and then became the Governor of Tennessee. In Texas, he was the George Washington of Texas. He served as the commander in chief for the Texas Army and led the Texas Army to victory in our revolution. When Texas became independent, Houston served in the Texas House of Representatives and then as President of the Republic of Texas. When Texas joined the United States, he served in the U.S. Senate and then, finally, as the Governor of Texas.

He was a tireless, talented leader and a great statesman who believed in freedom. His words, ``Govern wisely and as little as possible,'' are still true today, and the Lone Star State still endeavors to follow that principle.

The Republic of Texas was an independent nation from 1836 to 1845-- for 9 years. Then Texas joined the United States of America.

Indeed, there is one fact I discovered a couple of years ago. Heidi and I are members of the First Baptist Church in Houston. We discovered that the First Baptist Church was actually started by American missionaries in a foreign country. Texas was an independent nation, and American missionaries came to the Republic of Texas and founded the First Baptist Church, which, today, thrives in my hometown of Houston.

Texans are proud Americans, but we are also proud of the history--the diverse, brave, extraordinary history--of those Texans all those years later. William Travis, Sam Houston, Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, and all of the people they led risked everything to make freedom a reality for generations of Texans.

I am reminded of a story that was told to me by a former Senator from Texas, my friend Phil Gramm.

Phil Gramm, in the early 1980s, was a Member of the House of Representatives. He was a Democrat. He was a conservative Democrat. Ronald Reagan was President, and Phil Gramm, as a conservative Democrat in the House, introduced the Reagan tax cuts, and he fought for the Reagan tax cuts. Phil described a meeting with other conservative Democrats in Texas back when we had conservative Democrats in Texas--a meeting wherein he was urging his fellow Democrats to support the Reagan tax cuts. Phil drew an analogy to the Alamo on that fateful day when Colonel Travis drew a line in the sand with a sword and called on each of the men there to step across that line and commit to defending the Alamo.

One of those other conservative Democrats said to him at the time: Phil, everybody who stepped across that line died.

Phil, in not missing a beat, chuckled and said: Yes. Yes, they did. And do you know what? Everybody who didn't step across that line died, too, and nobody remembers their names.

Today, I celebrate heroes--heroes who fought to make freedom a reality for generations of Texans. Today, we celebrate, and we honor their sacrifices.

To every Texan, I wish you a very happy Texas Independence Day.

I yield the floor.