Floor Statements

Madam President, I want to start by thanking my friend from the great State of New Hampshire for signing on to a letter I just want to briefly describe and send the letter to the desk.

I send a letter to the desk which has been signed by seven Members of this body, and we expect several more to be added over the next day, if not this evening.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is pretty simple. I was thinking that my mom is one of the few people who probably watches C-SPAN a lot when her son is on the floor. We have so many instances where we have 90 or so Members standing on the floor, looking at a door to the left or the right or the rear, wondering where that last Senator is who is holding the vote open.

So, Mom, when I am on the floor and looking that way, it is because we have a Member who may be coming to vote or maybe not.

What we have here is a situation where any one Member is able to hold the vote open. Out of respect for that Member--technically, the vote could be called after the time is called, but it is not out of respect for our Members.

So what I have simply done is circulate with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and say: How about this as a proposition: If you are the last Member to vote and your vote will not change the outcome, then instruct the desk and the Presiding Officer to simply call the vote.

We had nearly 80 Members already agree that is a reasonable proposition, and every one of those Members has an opportunity on an exception basis to say: No, this vote is important to me; you have to hold it open.

They could be caught in traffic. They could be coming from the airport--any number of valid reasons.

There was a vote on this this afternoon, and the reason I missed that vote was I am a ranking member of a subcommittee, and the witnesses were just about to testify. I could have held the vote open or I could have been rude to the witnesses and left when they prepared the testimony. I felt like it was more important to hear their testimony. That vote, by the way, passed by a huge margin. That is an example where I am perfectly happy to show respect to my colleagues, not hold the vote open, and move on.

Tonight, we are going to have several votes stacked up, and invariably, we may have someone come in--I don't think it is malicious, but they are unintentionally holding up the proceedings of this body. I think if we simply have them, their scheduler, their chief of staff, or anyone in their office simply say ``The boss has to vote on this bill,'' then they could call the cloakroom, and the vote could be held open, which is a tradition here.

I want to thank Senator Shaheen, the Presiding Officer. I want to thank the 77 people who have signed on to this letter just to show that we want to do the work of the people, we want to do it in a timely manner, and we want

to show the utmost respect to the Members and to the staff who are also held up for sometimes no good reason.

So this is a good step forward. It is a baby step. It is not a sea change. But I think we can change the behavior of the Senate by being mindful of how our actions can affect the proceedings on the floor and every one of our calendars.

So, again, Madam President, I send that letter to the desk. I have shared a copy of the letter with both cloakrooms. I will be sending a letter to Senator Schumer, who I understand will gladly accept it.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have the letter printed in the Record.

Thank you, Madam President. I look forward to seeing it work in action.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I did not intend to speak today. I came down here and listened to the speeches of some of my colleagues for 2 hours this morning and asked for an opportunity to get on the list of what are nearly 50 Senators who are going to speak today. But I heard loud and clear some of the comments. I just wanted to go back and revisit them and talk about maybe

the path forward after this vote occurs today and, I hope, fails to change the filibuster rule.

I think Senator Tester was the one who said he knew of a voter who waited 8 to 10 hours to vote. That is unacceptable. We need to change that.

I would also say that probably over that 8 to 10 hours, they run a long line--far beyond any restrictions they had for electioneering--so they could have food and water.

Some people could have heard that speech and thought that someone was starving or thirsting to death for 8 or 10 hours, but we all know that most States have laws that allow anyone to provide food or water to others 50 feet away from the election sites.

I know if you have ever been in elections, you have been there too. I have been there handing out my push card, 50 feet out, handing people water. That happens every day. The American people need to know that. And if there are States that have restrictions, that is something I hope I have a moment to talk about as we move forward.

We also heard Senator Klobuchar say that, 160 times, the rules have changed. The fact of the matter is, they have never changed for the legislative calendar, which is what we are talking about, without regular order. It happened seven times, and it happened because the majority of Members, Democrats and Republicans, thought that we should modernize the rules. But we did it through regular order. It has never been done before.

In fact, in two notable examples where the nuclear option was used was once by then-Majority Leader Harry Reid and followed up by then- Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. If that is not the best indicator of what will happen to this body, nothing is.

Remember when Senator Reid said: We are just going to carve out a little bit of the Executive Calendar to make it easier for district judges to get confirmed. That is all we are going to do.

Why on Earth does anybody believe that that carve-out wasn't going to result in the ultimate nuclear option for the Executive Calendar? That is why you have Justice Gorsuch, Justice Kavanaugh, and Justice Barrett. That is why you have it. This is the political physics here. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

And if you vote to nuke the legislative filibuster, you might as well build a wall straight down this body because anytime Democrats or Republicans hit the trifecta and we have the White House and we have the Senate and we have the House, the minority's voice will count for nothing. And, even worse, the voices of the vocal minority at either end of the political spectrum will have a disproportionate impact on what we vote on and pass out of this body.

If you think it is hard getting the voting rights bills passed today, just think how hard it is going to be for you to stand down your most extreme base--we have got our own--on things that are not good for this country that the vast majority of the American people will not support. We will go to an every 2-year or 4-year cycle of huge swings for the first time ever in this Nation's history.

I hope that last week most of you had the opportunity--I was in the Chamber, but if you weren't, I would ask you to go back and listen to Senator Sinema's speech. Some people would have just spiked the football on our side of the aisle saying: It looks like she will preserve the filibuster. We can move on.

What I heard was a Member calling on us to bridge the gap and make progress. That is what I heard. And on voting rights, I think we can. I think the American people need to know that if this fails today, it is not the end of the discussion of progress we need to make.

My staff said: We don't want you to put this board up because we are afraid that will tip your hand on things you are having discussions on.

I have had a number of discussions with Members on the other side of the aisle. We have legitimate problems that we need to fix. We need to make it harder to cheat and easier to vote. We need to reform the Electoral Count Act. With all due respect to the majority leader, I think that he said it is unacceptable and insufficient and even offensive, because he said: ``Scorekeeping matters little if the game is rigged.'' ``If the game is rigged''--that sounds like what President Trump was saying just about 18 months ago. Now, we have both sides of the aisle talking about how ``the game is rigged.''

What we are doing is creating more discontent, and we are actually suppressing people's interest in voting because they think their vote won't count. That is what is being said in this Chamber today. That is what we have to stop. There are a number of things that we can do.

I voted against all of the objections of my seven Republican colleagues on January 6. I stand by proud. I was proud to certify that election. But since 2001, the Electoral Count Act has been weaponized. You had 14 House Members object in 2021. You had 31 House Members and a Senate Member object in 2005. You had 7 House Members object in 2017. And we had 138 House Members and 7 Senate Members object in this last election. It has clearly become weaponized. We clearly have to make it clear that the Vice President is in a ministerial position, and there should be a higher bar for lodging an objection.

There are other things that we can do. The certifying agencies across the States should say: You can't change the rules after the election is held.

That is what we should be talking about. We should be talking about making it easier to vote.

I don't know why New York rejected, by a 58-to-42 margin, same-day registration last year, but they did. The voters went to the polls. And I am reminded of you saying the legislature overturned it. So now, it is the legislature in New York that is going to overturn 58 percent against same-day registration and 54 percent against no-excuse absentee ballot?

I have got no-excuse absentee ballots in North Carolina. I think we should encourage more States to do the same.

So where does this need to head? After tensions cool and after what I hope is a failed vote to change the rules--and, incidentally, the day that Republicans change the rule for the legislative filibuster is the day I resign from the Senate. And I believe that I have a number of Members on my side of the aisle that would never do it. So you don't have to worry about the argument, ``If you don't change it now, they will change it when they hit the trifecta.'' It is not going to happen.

Senator Kaine, I think I was naive. When I signed that letter--after President Trump called for nuking the filibuster 34 times--I said: Get me on the letter to preserve the filibuster.

I went home, and I was attacked. I have had the protesters. I have had the censure proposals in county GOPs and State GOPs. And I stand by it and I will stand by it as long as I am here. But I have to say I feel a little bit disappointed and a little bit betrayed by the fact that the 32 Members who signed it on the Democratic side, all but one now say, Well, things have changed. They haven't changed. And we can't let this filibuster change. We need to work on making it easier to vote. We need to work on making it harder to cheat.

There are reasonable solutions that I think most sides of the aisle can agree to. And the American people need to know that there are people like me and other Members that are going to fight for that after this vote hopefully goes down today.

Let's not build a wall between our Chamber. Let's continue the relationships that we have. I had five conversations with Members on the other side of the aisle this morning, talking about legislation we are working on, a visit to North Carolina to spend some time together outside of the political cauldron that we are in here now, helping somebody out with a vote in Judiciary for a judicial nominee that you otherwise may be inclined to vote against. But let me tell you what. If you want to destroy that opportunity moving forward, vote to nuke the filibuster; vote to have any rational basis for working with Members when one of us hits the trifecta.

But I do hope, after this vote fails today, that Members will answer the call to fix what is wrong with our system, fix the Electoral Count Act, make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.

Mr. President, I rise today to express my opposition to the majority leader's plan to change the Senate rules. It will open the door wide for the filibuster to be eliminated for all legislation moving forward.

The bottom line is very simple: The ideologues in the Senate want to turn what the Founding Fathers called the ``cooling saucer of democracy'' into the rubberstamp of dictatorship. They want to because they can't get their way. They want to wash away 200 years of history. They want to turn this country into a banana republic, where if you can't get your way, you change the rules. It would be a doomsday for democracy.

These are strong words, and these are wise words, but they are not my words. They are direct quotes from Senator Schumer back in 2005, when he was a staunch opponent of weakening the filibuster. That is because during that time, the then-junior Senator from New York and his Democratic colleagues were making unprecedented use of the filibuster to derail President George W. Bush's judicial nominees.

The majority leader at one point profoundly admitted that ``[y]es, we are blocking judges by filibuster. That is part of the hallowed process around here of the Founding Fathers saying the Senate is the cooling saucer.''

But things have certainly changed two decades later.

President Biden, the majority leader, and their Democratic allies were intent on ending the filibuster the second the Democrats won the Senate last January.

The majority leader's latest attempt is to force a carve-out of the filibuster for what he claims will be just for one piece of legislation. But he knows where it leads: the full elimination of the filibuster and sooner rather than later.

I thought my friend the senior Senator from West Virginia put it perfectly last week. He said:

The problem with carve-outs is that you end up eating the

whole bird.

There is no such thing as a carve-out when it comes to the filibuster. We all know it. I will talk a little bit about that later.

But for more than a century, the filibuster has served as a safeguard for our Republic. It has prevented one party from ramming through an ideological agenda when that party controls both the White House and Congress.

Without the filibuster, both the far left and the far right would have free rein to ram through extreme ideological agendas. Divisive partisan proposals could become law with only a simple majority. And with both parties regularly trading control of Congress, laws can just as easily be overturned and replaced, promoting the kind of chaotic, confusing policymaking we see in some European Parliaments.

By requiring 60 votes to end debate in the Senate, the filibuster promotes stability. It necessitates bipartisan compromise to pass legislation. That is something we need more of, not less.

I saw it firsthand when I was a proud participant in the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill. That is the way this Chamber needs to work.

That is why when President Trump demanded, I think some 30 times, that the Republicans should eliminate the filibuster in 2017, 61 Senators joined together in a letter making it clear that we would not let it happen. Thirty-two were Democrats, and 29 were Republicans. I was one of them.

And even though I received my fair share of pushback from my side of the aisle back in North Carolina, I was proud to sign that letter in 2017, and I would be proud to sign that letter today.

Unfortunately, this modest display of political courage has not been reciprocated by many of my friends on the other side of the aisle. Twenty-seven of the Senators who signed that letter are still in the Senate. Twenty-six of them are now supporting the full elimination of the filibuster. What changed? Nothing except the party in power.

Democrats staunchly defended and used the filibuster when Donald Trump was President at an unprecedented level, but Democrats are suddenly against the filibuster now that Joe Biden is President. Many of my Democratic colleagues are practicing situational principles: putting their own party's short-term interests ahead of what they know are the best long-term interests for the Senate and the Nation. It doesn't get more politically cynical than that.

President Biden served in the Senate for 36 years. He was known as a strong defender of the institution, including the filibuster. In this very Chamber, 21 years ago, Senator Biden declared that defending the filibuster was about defending ``compromise and moderation.'' And he noted that his speech was one of the most important he would ever give. But now he favors destroying compromise, moderation, and the institution he had long cherished, all for the sake of political expediency for the next 12 months, until Republicans take back the House and most likely the Senate.

As I noted earlier, the majority leader also shares a partisan double standard with the President. In a ``Dear Colleague'' letter just earlier this month, he wrote that ``Senate Democrats must urge the public in a variety of different ways to impress upon their Senators the importance of acting and reforming the Senate rules, if that becomes a prerequisite for action to save our democracy.''

The Senate rule change he refers to is carving out the filibuster in order to pass one of the far left's priorities; that is, the voting bill that many of my Members or colleagues have talked about today.

But in 2018, the then-Senate minority leader struck a different tone. He said:

The legislative filibuster . . . is the most important

distinction between the Senate and the House. Without the 60-

vote threshold for legislation, the Senate becomes a

majoritarian institution like the House . . . no Senator

would like to see that happen.

What is the difference between today and only a few short years ago? Again, it is the party that is in power.

This same pattern of situational principles also applies to the majority whip. He went on national television when Donald Trump was President to warn that eliminating the filibuster ``would be the end of the Senate as it was originally devised.''

That is Senator Durbin.

But less than 4 years later, after Democrats won control of the White House and the Senate, the majority whip has a much different take. He recently declared that ``the filibuster is making a mockery of the American democracy.'' He made that statement after he and his fellow Democrats used the filibuster a recordbreaking 328 times between 2019 and 2020, when President Trump was in office. That level hypocrisy is audacious, even by Washington, DC, standards.

And I know Democrats have been pushing back on this claim, claiming they are not trying to end the filibuster. They assure us that this is a one-time deal that will only apply to this one bill.

I would refer them to Newton's third law of physics: ``For every action, there is an equal and opposite action.'' It most definitely applies to Senate rules as well.

In 2013, Senate Democrats invoked the nuclear option to end the 60- vote cloture requirement on judicial and Executive nominees other than the Supreme Court. All Republicans, and even a handful of Democrats, including the senior Senator from West Virginia, pleaded with the Democrats not to do it.

Minority Leader McConnell warned Democrats at the time that ``you'll regret this, and you might regret it even sooner than you think.'' But they did it anyway. And, indeed, there was that reaction.

Four years later, Republicans controlled the Senate, and we used the nuclear option to finish what our Democratic colleagues started on the executive calendar. We ended the 60-vote requirement for Supreme Court nominees.

There is a clear precedent on what happens when we change the Senate rules on a partisan basis for political expediency. It produces long- term consequences that I believe both sides will ultimately regret.

Democrats invoked the nuclear option to get more district judges, but by doing so, they paved the path for Justice Gorsuch, Justice Kavanaugh, and Justice Barrett, who now sit on the Supreme Court today.

What do we think now if the Democrats nuke the filibuster for just one bill? The Senate rule change that the majority leader is pushing is really a proxy vote for ending the legislative filibuster altogether and turning the Senate into the House, full stop.

So I ask my Democratic colleagues to consider this: When President Trump called for ending the filibuster, a large majority of Republican Senators stood up to preserve bipartisanship and to protect and respect this institution. Now, the roles are reversed. President Biden and the majority leader are demanding that you give them your vote to weaken the filibuster so it can ultimately be ended.

To my Democratic colleagues who signed on to the very same letter I did in difficult circumstances, I ask you: Will you stand up for the principles that you stood for just a few years ago and respect and defend this institution?

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize Betty Emerson, who is retiring as the congressional liaison for North Carolina's Disability Determination Services. Ms. Emerson has served the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services for over 32 years, and her service to North Carolina is greatly appreciated.

Ms. Emerson began her career at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services as a unit office assistant. She then served as a backup to the medical and congressional liaison, and finally, as the congressional liaison for the North Carolina Disability Determination Services. She has consistently gone above and beyond the call of duty to assist North Carolina's citizens.

During her 12 years as congressional liaison, Ms. Emerson developed incredibly strong relationships across the State. Her career exemplified the highest standard of excellence, and I am incredibly grateful for the exceptional service she consistently provided to the staff in my North Carolina offices on behalf of our citizens.

I wish Ms. Emerson all the best for happiness and good health in the years ahead.

Mr. President, over the last year, America's economy has faltered and the American people are struggling. Families have been confronted with rising inflation, which is essentially a tax on their paycheck every time they go to the grocery store, every time they fill up the gas tank, and every time they go out and buy clothing or essentials for their family. America's small businesses, after suffering from the COVID shutdowns last year, are facing supply chain issues and labor shortages.

It is no surprise that the majority of Americans believe our economy is in poor health and they fear things are getting worse.

And the Democrats' answer to the growing economic anxiety?

Double down on Big Government policies.

President Biden and Democratic leaders are pursuing a $2 trillion tax-and-spending spree that offers Americans more debt, more government, more taxes, and more inflation. They think that government is the answer to all our problems. This $2 trillion bill is an attempt to fundamentally transform from an opportunity-driven society built on the American dream to a dependency-driven society powered by the Federal Government.

The Biden administration put a lot of work into trying to market their plan--their tax-and-spending spree. They claim it will bring down costs and help the middle class.

But what are their top priorities?

Tax cuts for their wealthy donors in New York and California and other blue States that have State and local taxes, giving them a deduction on those taxes imposed by State legislatures and Democratic Governors. They want to raise the SALT tax from $10,000 to $72,000, a move that mainly benefits wealthy Americans.

Ninety-seven percent of the tax cuts would go to Americans making more than $100,000 a year. Millionaires would get a $23,000 tax cut. And, as Democrats' rich donors get richer, middle-class families get poorer.

Although Democrats are touting their childcare cost entitlement program, the devil really is in the details. While a single parent stands to receive thousands of dollars in childcare payments, married parents at the same income level would receive no assistance at all.

Once the regulations in the bill are factored in, the cost of unsubsidized childcare will skyrocket. Millions of middle-class families won't get subsidies because they make more than $67,000 a year, and they will be on the hook for the rising costs of healthcare that their proposal will create. According to one analysis, parents making more than $67,000 a year can see their childcare costs skyrocket by more than $13,000 in the first year of the program.

How many middle-class families can afford that?

Democrats also want to meddle with our Nation's economy under the guise of promising that they just want to combat climate change.

The Democrats are proposing a new electric vehicle tax credit, which would subsidize high-cost electric vehicles for affluent Americans who can already afford them. To make matters worse, Democrats are offering a second tax credit only if you purchase an electric vehicle constructed by their Big Labor union allies. That's right, a car built in a non-union shop doesn't get the tax subsidy; a car built in a union shop does.

Look, I support clean energy, and I have got a record of supporting it here in the Senate and back in my time at the House of Representatives in North Carolina, but I don't support having the Federal Government unfairly pick winners and losers in the private markets.

Democrats also hope to create a Civilian Climate Corps to give young liberal activists paid jobs--jobs paid by the American taxpayer. That is an outrageous concept, considering that we already have a record number of jobs that private employers can't fill. The government is going to create jobs to compete with these businesses that are desperately looking for labor.

But this isn't about jobs. It is about the socialist wing of the Democratic Party having their own army of government-funded social justice warriors. It is no surprise that the Civilian Climate Corps is championed by the radical and anti-Semitic Sunrise Movement. Their activists have protested climate policy in the past by blocking traffic during rush hour and chaining themselves to boats. They also frequently go to homes of elected officials--including me, just back in August--to trespass on property and to

harass and intimidate us into supporting their extreme socialist demands. These activists would be at the top of the list to get taxpayer-funded jobs in the Civilian Climate Corps. And by their own admission, progressives see it expanding well beyond the scope of climate change to anything the left considers social justice.

These are just some of the provisions in the Democrats' Big Government spending spree.

The next logical question is, how do they intend to pay for it?

They will do it by raising taxes, shaking down the middle class, and adding more to our debt.

They have proposed doubling the size of the IRS. The IRS already has 83- to 85,000 people. They are proposing hiring another 80,000 people, doubling the size of the IRS. Democrats want to expand the size of the IRS in order to monitor bank accounts of hard-working Americans in the hopes of squeezing more money out of them.

While millionaires and billionaires have tax lawyers and accountants to handle an IRS inquiry, hard-working, middle-class Americans don't. And there is nothing more chilling than getting a call from the IRS or a letter saying that you are about to be audited or ``We just have a few questions for you.'' They are going to have to take on the IRS themselves when they get accused of not paying enough.

My friend, the Senator from West Virginia, has spoken out against the plan to double the size and scope of the IRS, and I agree with him. He has also warned Democrats on the dangers of creating massive new spending programs at the same time that Social Security and Medicare are on the verge of bankruptcy.

Focus group-approved slogans and new promises the government can't keep might be good politics for Democrats, but it is horrible policy for Americans. Americans can't afford more inflation, more taxes, more childcare costs, and more government. The Democrats' tax-and-spending spree won't Build Back Better; it will only make life harder for Americans already struggling to get by.

Mr. President, American families are hurting, and there is no relief in sight. We are facing skyrocketing inflation, and families are feeling it every time they go to the grocery store.

We are facing a supply chain crisis that threatens to deny families the food and goods that they need. We are facing a surging energy crisis that is literally burning holes in the wallets of hard-working Americans.

Just this week, I drove up from Charlotte and I was amazed at how much more it took me to refuel my truck about halfway up from Charlotte to DC.

This has gotten so bad that some families are really beginning to rethink their travel plans as we approach the holidays. We are facing a labor shortage crisis, with small businesses and farms across the country struggling to fill jobs. Even as they raise the potential salaries, the people are simply not coming.

President Biden and his allies in Congress have chosen some interesting ways to respond to these crises. In some cases, they have just ignored them. They have been making excuses for others, and they have been making a case that everything will be fine if we just have more government, more spending, and more taxes.

That is why, for months, President Biden and congressional Democrats have put all their time and energy into crafting a completely partisan $3.5 trillion tax-and-spending spree. They are spending on leftwing priorities that will result in more debt, more inflation, more dependency government, and more government intrusion into the lives of all Americans.

Equally concerning is how the Democrats want to pay for some of their out-of-control spending. They plan to take $400 billion from taxpayers by monitoring and auditing their bank accounts.

Democrats want to turn your bank or your credit union--that small bank around the corner in some rural community across America--into a branch of the IRS, making them monitor and report your financial activity and directly report to it the IRS.

To make matters worse, the Democrats want to hire 80,000 new IRS agents so they can go through your personal financial information--what you spend your money on and what income you take in. And using that information, the IRS will then try to squeeze out any additional money that they can from you.

The Democrats originally proposed making the threshold of the IRS reporting at a $600 transaction. Americans who heard about the scheme were outraged.

Most Americans aren't too fond of the IRS. I dare say, if you were to do a poll of the 10 most favorite government agencies, the IRS wouldn't make the list. And they certainly don't trust the IRS with having more power and more of your personal financial information.

My office alone has received over 15,000 emails opposing this overreach. I imagine many of my Democratic colleagues have heard from their constituents as well, so it is not surprising they went back to the drawing board. Since the $600 transaction wasn't selling, they came up with a new proposal, and it was a total of $10,000 in transactions that would trigger an IRS reporting requirement.

But you can't be fooled by this sleight of hand. It will subject nearly every American with a job to the same IRS scheme. Consider that the average American makes a little bit more than $60,000 in annual expenditures, yet Democrats have the audacity to claim that this plan is really just targeted to the wealthy.

I don't know many hairdressers and plumbers and painters or Uber drivers who are billionaires, but I do know that they make over $10,000 a year and they will be subject to the same scheme because of the way they make their income.

Now, these hard-working Americans, who have done nothing wrong, could have their personal information sent directly to the IRS.

And let's be clear, this additional information won't even provide the IRS with direct evidence of tax noncompliance. Instead, it would give the IRS--and keep in mind, 80,000 more IRS employees; roughly twice, doubling the number of people working in the IRS--to go on a taxpayer-funded fishing investigation designed to rummage through individual Americans' finances in the hope of finding noncompliance.

We don't let police enter someone's house without a warrant in the hopes they can find something illegal, and we certainly should not provide this kind of power to the IRS.

And what will happen when a hard-working hairdresser or plumber or carpenter, who is already struggling to make ends meet, gets a letter from the IRS alleging that they owe more taxes?

They don't have an army of tax lawyers and accountants like billionaires do. They will have to try and take on the IRS themselves, and that is a losing proposition.

The IRS reporting plan is not about catching tax cheats and making sure billionaires are paying their taxes. It is about shaking down middle-class Americans to pay for the Democrats' tax-and-spending spree, plain and simple, burning them with more bureaucracy and giving them yet another thing they have to worry about, in addition to rising inflation, energy prices, and supply chain shortages.

I was talking with one of my staff this week about my own personal situation and what I think happens every day in this country. You have somebody who is struggling to pay their bills. I had a family member many years ago who came to me and said they needed--if I would give them a loan so that they could make ends meet. They worked in construction and they had a project coming due, but they had a cash- flow problem. So I made them a loan, like so many people do for their friends and family members. Well, depending upon the size of that gesture, it could suddenly be a reportable transaction to the IRS.

What is an IRS compliance agent going to do?

They are going to call you up and say: Well, you didn't report that as income.

And then the person is going to say: Well, it was a loan.

And then the IRS agent is going to say: Well, where was the document?

And so: It was with a brother or an uncle or a cousin. We shook hands, and I promised to pay him back.

Those are the kinds of things that are going to happen if this IRS tax transaction reporting goes into place. That is why I recently joined with Senator Tim Scott and dozens of my Republican colleagues to introduce legislation that will prevent the Biden administration and the IRS from implementing their surveillance plan. It is wrong. It is an overreach, and it is not going to work.

But the easiest solution is for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to simply drop this misguided IRS reporting scheme.

Tax-and-spend policies have already made life harder for middle-class Americans. Americans are struggling from the impact of COVID, from the impact of inflation, from energy shortages, and so many uncertainties that we have experienced over the past couple of years. The last thing they need is to have the IRS, with an army of tens of thousands IRS agents, prying into their bank accounts and causing more confusion, more frustration, and more heartache at the worst possible time.

Mr. President, this weekend, thousands of law enforcement officers and their families came to our Nation's Capital to celebrate Police Weekend. And while Americans were paying tribute to our men and women in blue here in DC, North Carolina, once again, received the tragic news of a brave officer lost in the line of duty.

Officer Ryan Hayworth was only 23 years old. He had a bright and promising future ahead of him. He tragically lost his life on Sunday night, just 3 months after joining the Knightdale Police Department.

He and his training officer were investigating a single-vehicle incident on Interstate 540 when a drunk driver crashed into their parked SUV, taking Officer Hayworth's life.

Cody Hagler--his training officer--was seriously injured and remains hospitalized; but, thankfully, he is expected to recover.

This senseless tragedy is another reminder of the constant dangers our brave men and women in law enforcement face every single day. A routine call to respond to an accident resulted in a young officer losing his life in the line of duty.

Although he was only 23 years old, Officer Hayworth already had a distinguished record of service. He served in the U.S. Army, and then in the National Guard. And then he answered the call once again by becoming a police officer.

It is not surprising to anyone who knows the Hayworth family, though. Officer Hayworth's father was a longtime chief of the Zebulon Police Department, and his brother is a firefighter.

A member of his family church told a local news outlet:

He wanted to be a police officer like his dad. They're

good, God-fearing people. They care about the community and

it's sad something this tragic happened the way it did.

Knightdale Police Chief Lawrence Capps has noted the high standards Officer Hayworth met and exceeded as a new member of the force.

Police Chief Capps said:

When we hire police officers, we are looking for

individuals that embody the best of this profession--all that

is good, all that is wholesome, all that is pure, all that is

righteous, and Ryan embodied those things.

It is no surprise to see the outpouring of support to honor Officer Hayworth. People from across the State have stopped by the Knightdale Police Department to place flowers at a memorial created by his colleagues. Other local police departments are now assisting the Knightdale Police Department in their patrols during this difficult time.

I am grateful that the vast majority of North Carolinians truly appreciate the service and the sacrifice of law enforcement. They recognize the men and women serving are good people who put their uniforms on every day and take extraordinary risks to protect others.

Officer Hayworth is an officer who took those risks to protect others, and he made the ultimate sacrifice in doing so. I know the community of Knightdale will never forget his service and sacrifice. And I know that all North Carolinians join me in keeping Officer Hayworth's loving family and his many friends and colleagues in our prayers.

May God bless Officer Ryan Hayworth and all of our Nation's brave law enforcement officers.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield back.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following interns in my office be granted floor privileges until 1 p.m. on June 25, 2021: Jacob Neer, Lindsey Cox, Nancy Beajeu-Dufour, Raymond Villalobos, and Kaylan Privette.

Madam President, welcome back, and thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about the bill that we will have before us in about an hour and a half.

I have to stand here and rise in opposition to the For the People Act. I think you could appropriately title it the ``Fool the People Act.'' We are going to be voting on it later today, but it would dramatically alter election laws across our country.

I have been in the Senate for 6\1/2\ years, and this ranks up there as one of the worst bills that I have seen come before this body. I know my friends on the other side of aisle like to talk about it as being essential for protecting democracy, but in the face of text that could be patently unconstitutional and taking away the rights of States to administer their elections, I find it hard to believe that it is anything but a motivated attempt to federalize the Nation's election system.

The For the People Act would achieve it through a number of, I think, overreaches. I am only going to talk about a few.

For one, voter ID. The For the People Act would essentially render null voter ID laws across this country. Instead of an ID, which most of us have, and virtually, I think, every citizen should have, you would simply just sign an affidavit to say you are who you say you are. I heard the Georgia law, for example, brought up as providing egregious limits or obstacles to proving who you say you are.

In a hearing a month or so ago, we had an official from Georgia in a Judiciary Committee, and I said: Could you explain to me what the challenge is? So if somebody gets an absentee ballot like you do in North Carolina--we have no-excuse absentee balloting. We have had it for years. I supported it. I voted that way several times. We had people say that it was just an egregious imposition to note a 10 or 12 character driver's license or government ID number on the affidavit. That is all it is. You don't have to send a copy of it. You just simply have to write a number down.

So if you have an ink pen--I guess you could argue if you don't have a writing instrument, then maybe that is an overreach or an imposition on a voter. I don't think it is. And even in the Georgia law that has been castigated by some of my friends on the other side of aisle, they even provide for people who want to vote, who may not have a government-issued ID, other documents that can be used in their place.

We talked about hundreds of bills that have been filed by Republican legislators without a single Democratic vote that are like the Georgia bill that I just described, which I think is arguably a fair bill. But most of these bills are things that Democrats and Republicans should be able to agree on. You should cleanse your voter rolls. You should make sure that people who have died and people who could be registered in one or more States are cleared from the voter rolls just to prevent fraud and abuse, not necessarily perpetrated by any one party but just because the data could be out of date.

And, you know, back on voter ID, I find it remarkable that we have a measure before us that we are going to be voting on today, a simple ID requirement that 80 percent of Americans just this week in a poll said they think is reasonable. Now, you have to also understand that we make accommodations. If you don't have an ID in North Carolina, we moved heaven and Earth to make sure--you need a government-issued ID, I believe, to be able to move through society, to get a hotel room, and to get on an airplane. I had to provide--I had surgery a couple of months ago. I had to present an ID to get admitted into the hospital. I think we are disenfranchising people from the rest of society by not at least making sure that they can identify who they are. There is no argument. You can't get on a plane without an ID. You can't travel internationally without an ID. You can't get healthcare without an ID. But for some reason, to do something, to exercise our right and our privilege to vote, we think that we don't need an ID.

I also worry about a provision in this bill that would allow nationwide ballot harvesting. There are only a couple of States that allow ballot harvesting. What does that mean? You have a worker coming up, going door to door, and encouraging somebody to vote. It may be somebody who doesn't want to vote. But now, you are up there to capture their ballots and bring bunches of ballots to the polls.

Ballot harvesting is legal in some States--I know California. It is not legal in our State. In fact, there was a

Republican candidate who ultimately withdrew himself after winning a race after there were a couple hundreds ballots that were supposedly harvested. I don't think he knew about it, but there was a campaign operative that did it, and it cost him an election.

I will tell you one thing that I really do believe, that if the Founding Fathers were here in this Chamber today, they would really be scratching their heads, and it is the idea of taxpayer-funded elections. Make no mistake about it, Federal, State, and local dollars are used to make sure that we have election machines, that we have poll workers, that we have access. We can always improve access to the polls, but in this bill, they are saying, and people in North Carolina--if you were paying attention last year, my race was, all in with me and my opponent, $296 million. There were a lot of ads on TV.

I had my friends call me up, screaming at the TV when they were mean to me. And I am sure I had my opponent, who is a friend of mine, say the same thing. But now, what we are going to do, if we were to pass this bill, is say: Tom Tillis supporters are going to have to have money spent and directed to his opponent to try and beat him, and vice versa--millions and millions of dollars.

And in States like North Carolina--not only North Carolina taxpayers but taxpayers from across this country--will see their taxpayer dollars come to North Carolina to influence an outcome in a campaign that could be a thousand miles away. That is, I think--taking taxpayer dollars and then spending them on something that they are personally opposed to or offended by is something that I don't think the Founding Fathers would have ever envisioned as being appropriate for this great Nation.

So, ladies and gentlemen, today at about 5:30--I think a little after--the For the People--or as I said, the ``Fool the People''--Act is going to be before us, and it is going to fail. We know it. Senator Schumer knows it.

So why are we doing it? Are we doing it for messaging points? Or are there some far-left liberals that just want the vote on the floor, knowing full well it is not going to pass? Have we actually tried to do any work to figure out what role the Federal Government should play in actually improving election outcomes that ultimately need to be administered by the State? No, that hasn't happened.

So today, we are going to come on the floor. This measure is not going to move forward. And somebody may be fooling--I don't know--far- left groups just to say we tried. But they didn't try because if they tried, they would have reached across the other aisle and tried to figure out something that made sense that could pass with 60 votes.

The For the People Act is far afield from what our Founding Fathers envisioned. Can we improve our election processes across this country? Yes, but I would prefer to have the 50 laboratories of democracy figure out how to improve it and have other States implement it, perhaps even other States in the northeast that have far fewer voting days than we do in North Carolina. They could learn from that.

Maybe we should create standards and incentives for that sort of stuff, but not a Federal takeover of the state of the elections in this country. And for that reason, I will be opposing the For the People Act.

Thank you.

President, I rise today to pay tribute to Michael A. Sprayberry, who is retiring as director of the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management, NCEM, and the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, NCORR. Mr. Sprayberry has served North Carolina for over 42 years and has exemplified the highest standard of leadership, effectiveness, and professionalism, and I thank him for his valued service to our State.

Mr. Sprayberry was born in Atlanta, GA and moved to North Carolina in high school. He went on to serve our Nation in the U.S. Marine Corps and in the North Carolina National Guard for 11 years. In 1979, Mike received his bachelor of science in business administration from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He continued his education and received his master of arts degree in history.

Mike's entire career has been in service to his country and the Sate. During his years of service with the National Guard, he was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal with three bronze oak leaf clusters and the North Carolina National Guard Distinguished Service Medal. He received the Order of the Long Leaf Pine in 1998 and was inducted into the North Carolina National Guard's Officer Candidate School Hall of Fame in August of 2011.

In 2005, Director Sprayberry began his career in emergency management as the deputy director and logistics chief. He served in this capacity until 2013, when he was appointed to serve as director under Governor Pat McCrory.

Mr. Sprayberry is the longest serving emergency management director in North Carolina's history. During his tenure, he successfully oversaw the State's response to 19 State declared disasters and 11 federally declared disasters. He has led North Carolina through hurricanes, earthquakes, winter storms, and a pandemic.

Mr. Sprayberry is nationally respected and has served as president of the National Emergency Management Association and is a member of the FEMA National Advisory Council.

Mr. President, thanks to Mike's leadership, North Carolina is better prepared to deal with both natural and man-made disasters. Please join me in thanking Director Mike Sprayberry, his wife, and his daughters for his career in public service and wishing him a joyful retirement.

Madam President. I rise today in recognition of the 100th anniversary of the State Annual Singing Convention in Benson, North Carolina.

The Sing will be celebrating its centennial June 25 to 27, 2021 in the Benson Singing Grove with some of the biggest names in southern gospel music. Local choirs, gospel groups, and recording artists from near and far will be sharing their talents and memories of the Sing throughout the years.

Prior to 1921, choirs would assemble on fifth Sundays in early summer to sing in Benson. Whether in an open field or under a brush arbor, large crowds would come to hear these glorious choirs. Mr. Simon Honeycutt, a regular attendee, conceived of the idea for a singing convention and reached out to four other men--Mr. T.C. Miller, Mr. J.B. Raynor, Mr. J.V. Barefoot, and Mr. J.H. Rose--to help organize the event. The first State Annual Singing Convention was held in a tobacco warehouse in 1921. A silver cup was awarded to the best all-around group, along with prizes for the best quartette and duet. Impartial judges had to be found from a great distance away, and picnic baskets filled a table 110 feet in length as 200 people came to enjoy the wonderful singing.

After a fire destroyed the tobacco warehouse in 1922, a new location for the Sing was found in an oak-shaded grove at the center of town. This land was donated by Miss Catherine Benson, a member of the family for which the town is named. In its early years, a temporary stage was constructed and lumber stacked on pine blocks served as seating, These materials were borrowed from a local sawmill and returned at the conclusion of the Sing. permanent stage in the center of the grove was dedicated in 1950, thanks to town merchants and patrons of the Singing Convention. Folding chairs have now replaced the early lumber-on-block seating. The Singing Grove would fill to capacity long before the singing started as people reunited with old friends and relatives, caught up on the latest news, and forgot about their worries as their souls were lifted through song. For those not able to attend in person, local radio stations allowed listeners to tune in and for a time, the State Annual Singing Convention was broadcast to a national audience.

As the joy-filled weekend wound to an end, singers and spectators alike anxiously awaited judges tallying scores and winners being announced in several different categories. The people have changed, but the Sing remains because of a steadfast commitment to what it represents. As an early leader once wrote, ``The multitude of voices blend in `God be with you till we meet again' to reassure the world that there will always be a song of love in the hearts of God's people everywhere. That is the faith of the State Annual Singing Convention.''

It is my honor to commemorate this notable centennial. The State Annual Singing onvention has nurtured countless souls through song and is a testament to the faith of those who carry on its legacy. I extend my congratulations and best wishes for the next 100 years.

Mr. President, there are inventors in Colorado and Hawaii and across this Nation whom we don't even know about because the fact is, we have missed the opportunity to engage more people and have more diverse inventors.

We have to look at this from several different perspectives. Let's look at it from a national security perspective.

I have chaired the Intellectual Property Subcommittee for the last two Congresses. We heard endless reports of how China is churning out patents and more and more patents, breaking records every day. This commonsense amendment does nothing more than allow people to submit information that we can use to get a better beat on communities that we need to get into to create more intellectual property, to create more patents, and to get more people engaged in the patents and intellectual property system. With this bill, I believe we will make great strides.

I hope everybody will vote for this amendment.

Thank you.

Vote on Amendment No. 1517

Madam President, this week is National Police Week, and I rise today in honor of the service and sacrifice of law enforcement across this country.

In North Carolina, we lost 10 law enforcement officers in 2020, and we tragically lost 6, so far, in 2021. Some of these officers were victims of COVID, others were involved in car accidents, and some made the ultimate sacrifice being killed in the line of duty.

Recent tragedies in Cabarrus, Gaston, Henderson, and Watauga Counties in my State of North Carolina have been met with an outpouring of gratitude, appreciation, and love from the residents for the communities they help keep safe.

Last September, we lost Deputy Ryan Hendrix of the Henderson County Sheriff's Office after he was shot and killed responding to a break-in. Officer Hendrix was only 35 years old. He had two young children and was set to be married to his fiance the following month.

Last December, Tyler Herndon of the Mount Holly Police Department was tragically killed in the line of duty just days before his 26th birthday.

In December, Officer Jason Shuping of the Concord Police Department was shot and killed while responding to an attempted carjacking. Officer Shuping was only 25 years old. He left behind his wife Haylee, a high school sweetheart whom he had been in love with for years and married for 2. Last week, I had the honor--the sad honor--of joining Cabarrus County to commemorate Law Enforcement Day and to honor Officer Shuping's service.

Most recently, on April 28, North Carolina tragically lost two more law enforcement officers: Sergeant Chris Ward and K-9 Deputy Logan Fox of the Watauga County Sheriff's Office. They were conducting a welfare check that turned into a deadly, hours-long standoff. Sergeant Ward was only 36 years old. He was an 8-year law enforcement veteran. He leaves behind a wife, who was also his high school sweetheart, and two daughters. Deputy Fox was only 25 years old. He was a 2-year veteran of the Watauga Sheriff's Office, and he was a partner with a K-9 named ``Raven.'' He was engaged and soon to be married.

The people of North Carolina came together to pay their final respects to these brave officers just a little over a week ago. During the procession from Winston-Salem back to Boone, many stood on the side of the road to salute the officers and proudly wave American flags.

I told the audience and the police officers present last week in Concord that you need to know that the majority of Americans still greatly appreciate your service to law enforcement. They recognize the vast majority of men and women serving in law enforcement are good people who put their uniforms on every day, willing to sacrifice their own lives to protect us.

Being a law enforcement officer is not an easy job, and it is certainly not safe. We saw that on Capitol Hill on January 6. But being an officer is becoming harder and harder as they handle more stress, more pressure, and more responsibilities than ever before. If their jobs weren't hard enough already, there are some people, including people on Capitol Hill, who are actively demonizing all of law enforcement, arguing that they are unworthy of taxpayer funding and the people's respect.

It is no wonder why many law enforcement officers across the Nation-- officers across the Nation--have low morale. We are seeing the real- world consequences: a decrease in applications to go in academies, early exits, and more retirements. It has gotten to dangerous levels in several cities across the country.

The demonization of law enforcement will have lasting consequences, and it will ultimately make all of us less safe. This is why Congress must do everything we can to support law enforcement and to stop efforts to demean and demonize them. The best way to do that is to recognize law enforcement for their remarkable service and the dangers they face to protect us.

That is why I recently reintroduced the Protect and Serve Act. This legislation would make it a Federal crime to intentionally assault a law enforcement officer. It ensures prosecutors have every tool available to punish those who attack and target them. In 2018, the Protect and Serve Act passed the House by a vote of 382 to 35, and it had the support of every current Member of the House Democratic leadership.

If President Biden is serious about unity, I can think of no better bill for him to support. This week, I will be reintroducing another important piece of legislation, the Probation Officer Protection Act. This bill would give probation officers the arrest authority they need to fully enforce the law and protect public safety. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will cosponsor this bill and work with me to send it to the President's desk, along with the Protect and Serve Act.

I know every Member of Congress has seen the heroism of law enforcement firsthand. I did too. We all saw it on January 6, when Capitol Police and DC Police risked their lives to ensure our safety. We ultimately lost two Capitol Police officers, and we lost another since then. More than 440 of our Capitol Police and DC Police were injured in the events of January 6.

I hope the respect and appreciation we show to law enforcement this week can be sustained year-round. Let us commit ourselves to doing all we can to support the men and women in blue who protect and serve us every single day.

Madam President, I want to thank my colleagues from North Dakota, Ohio, Wyoming, and Iowa, who have spoken before me, and my colleague from Kansas, after me.

I think Senator Portman ended his statement by saying that we have heard the rhetoric, but we haven't seen the actions. Well, in North Carolina, our State motto, in Latin, is ``Esse quam videri.'' It means: To be, rather than to seem.

I think our State motto does a good job of summarizing the first 100 days of the Biden administration. As a Presidential candidate, Joe Biden made it seem that he would govern as a moderate, pragmatic deal maker, and he set the bar high in his inaugural address. He said:

My whole soul is in this: bringing America together,

uniting our people, [and] uniting our nation. I ask every

American to join me in this cause.

I was actually inspired by that statement, and I am one of the Americans who was willing to work for him on that cause. In fact, I was 1 of the 10 Republicans who had the first official meeting with the President to see if we could come to common ground on the COVID relief package, after having successfully passed five bipartisan COVID relief packages in the last Congress.

Unfortunately, the President's actions have not corresponded with his promises to date. Instead of leading on his instincts to bring America together, President Biden has followed his advisers' recommendations to go it alone. He has pushed a highly partisan, ideologically driven agenda.

And you don't need to take my word for it. New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently declared that President Biden has exceeded the expectations of progressives.

Indeed, there has been a lot in Biden's agenda for the left to like. It is an agenda designed to pass with no need for moderation and not a single Republican vote--no consensus whatsoever--proposing tax hikes on American families and businesses at a time that they are trying to rebound from the pandemic.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the middle of a national emergency. We are in the middle of a pandemic. We have spent and appropriated billions of dollars to healthcare, to businesses to recover. And now, long before the national emergency has been declared done, we are talking about taking those same dollars away.

Offering mixed messaging and failed policies that have caused a humanitarian and security crisis at the southern border is another issue. When I went down to the border about a month ago, the Press Secretary said: It is not a crisis; it is a situation. Now, a month later, the Press Secretary and the administration say it is a crisis, but now it is a catastrophe.

I saw a dead body floating in the Rio Grande River. Other people died. We heard the report of a 9-year-old. That doesn't even count the number of people who died along the way.

It also doesn't count the 300 or 400 people who are called the ``got- aways''--not the thousands who are coming in and going to the border agents but the hundreds every night who are crossing. They are bad actors. Many of them are gang members or they are smuggling drugs or are human traffickers, who are evading arrest. It is creating a dangerous situation. It is a catastrophe. The President hasn't spoken on it. To my knowledge, the Vice President has never gone down there to get a bird's eye view.

The President has embraced the Green New Deal policies, like canceling the Keystone Pipeline. That one stroke of a pen ended thousands of labor union jobs, good-paying jobs. But even more heartbreaking are the communities that would have benefited from all of that commerce occurring in some of the most rural areas and most economically challenged areas in our country.

They rammed through an entirely partisan $2 trillion spending package. They called it COVID relief. But only about 9 percent of it actually had anything to do with continuing to recover from the damage that COVID has caused this country.

I am sure the President will talk about it tonight, a $2.3 trillion-- air quotes--infrastructure bill that isn't actually an infrastructure bill. In fact, they have been a little bit more intellectually honest. Now they are calling it human infrastructure.

I think most Americans, when you think about infrastructure, you think about roads, you think about bridges, you think about broadband. You don't think about human infrastructure. But that is what is being pitched today, and it is being pitched on a partisan basis, without even attempting to get a single Republican vote.

Americans did not elect President Biden to enact any of these partisan policies. They trusted him to come in and make deals--to settle for something less than 100 percent but something that was going to be embraced by more of the American people versus half, which is about where the President is today.

And he has pursued this for 100 days. I hope he changes his mind, but here is one reason why I am not optimistic. His most audacious action, in my opinion, is placating the far left and entertaining the idea of nuking the Senate legislative filibuster. In this very Chamber, 21 years ago, then-Senator Biden declared that defending the filibuster was about defending compromise and moderation. The promises he made on the campaign trail, the promise he made on the day of his inauguration--he noted that his speech was one of the most important he would ever give as a Senator, defending the filibuster. It is a shame that President Biden isn't demonstrating the same political courage that Senator Biden did two decades earlier--the kind of courage that we are seeing today demonstrated by Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema. Instead, the President has entertained the far left's push to eliminate the filibuster and destroy this institution, to end bipartisanship and compromise--they really are no longer a necessity--so that any piece of fringe legislation can pass with a simple majority.

The President, a 30-plus year defender of the filibuster, should know better than anyone. He knows that the left is demanding a Faustian bargain--trading 2 years for the far left to have free reign in exchange for permanent destabilization of our Republic, emboldening future demagogues on both ends of the spectrum.

Our country doesn't need more partisan pandering or political brinksmanship from this administration or from either party. That is why I stood against nuking the filibuster about 3 years ago, and I will as long as I am a U.S. Senator.

There are plenty of Republicans like me who are willing to work with President Biden and even put some of our supporters out of their comfort zone for the good of this Nation.

In fact, when I was sworn in, I said I would work to find common ground in areas where we may agree, and I would vigorously oppose policies where we do not. Unfortunately, to this point, I have only had the opportunity to do the latter.

The willingness to negotiate has only been a one-way street on the part of Republicans. I went to the White House to try to find common ground on another bipartisan COVID package, but it is ultimately up to the President whether he leads on bipartisanship instincts or follows his advisers who are pushing him to keep governing from the left.

Quite frankly, it doesn't matter what the President says about bipartisanship and uniting the country; it is what he does. And, tonight, I hope we will see it for the good of our great Nation.