June 24, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 116 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session

[Pages S3170-S3201]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2021--Motion to 
                                Proceed

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 483, 
S. 4049.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 483, S. 4049, to 
     authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2021 for military 
     activities of the Department of Defense, for military 
     construction, and for defense activities of the Department of 
     Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such 
     fiscal year, and for other purposes.


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk for 
the motion to proceed.

[[Page S3171]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     proceed to Calendar No. 483, S. 4049, a bill to authorize 
     appropriations for fiscal year 2021 for military activities 
     of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and 
     for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to 
     prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, 
     and for other purposes.
         Mitch McConnell, Marsha Blackburn, Joni Ernst, John 
           Boozman, Steve Daines, Cory Gardner, Pat Roberts, Mike 
           Rounds, Mike Crapo, Roger F. Wicker, Cindy Hyde-Smith, 
           Lamar Alexander, Shelley Moore Capito, Rob Portman, Roy 
           Blunt, John Barrasso, John Thune.

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call 
be waived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. SCOTT of South Carolina. Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the 
Senator from Georgia.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.


                            The JUSTICE Act

  Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, I stand in strong support of and 
solidarity with my colleague and good friend from South Carolina, Tim 
Scott.
  It was 5 years ago when a White man walked into a church in 
Charleston, SC. After going through 1 hour of Bible study--after they 
prayed for him and read the Bible to him--he pulled out a gun and shot 
the nine people in that Bible study.
  Not long after that, the Presiding Officer and I attended one of the 
funerals in Charleston, SC, and Tim was there. Any other city in 
America would not have dealt with it the way Charleston, SC, did. 
Charleston, SC, dealt with it with love, which is something we don't 
talk about very often, and Tim Scott was there. Because of his time in 
grade and because of that mayor and because of the Black leaders in 
that town and the time in grade they had had with each other, they 
moved forward and overcame that tragedy.
  Five years ago, Tim Scott put a bill on this floor, and we ended up 
then in exactly the same place we are now--doing absolutely nothing. 
How many more Black men and women will have to die in America before 
this body stops playing politics with race?
  It is very clear to me, in having worked hard on justice reform, that 
there are opportunities--with $75 billion going into the most 
economically challenged communities in our country--because of Tim 
Scott, President Trump, and all that we are doing. HBCUs--our 
historically Black colleges and universities--are stronger today 
because of President Trump than they ever have been.
  The time to act is now and to stop playing politics and pandering to 
the Democratic base, and let's get something done. This bill was never 
intended to be an end all. It was intended to be a platform for 
constructive debate, and here we are with only two Democratic Senators 
voting to even start the debate.
  I yield to Senator Tim Scott.
  Mr. SCOTT of South Carolina. I thank the Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. President, there is scripture in the Bible in the Book of 
Ezekiel, chapter 33, somewhere around verse 6. This scripture talks 
about a watchman on a wall, and his job is to simply say there is 
danger coming. It is a very important job. The watchman's job is to 
simply say there is danger coming.
  As Senator Perdue said, I had that conversation 5 years ago. I didn't 
find anyone on the other side who was willing to engage in that 
conversation then, and here we are 5 years later. There is danger 
coming. I want us to hear this clearly because, as we look out on the 
streets of America and we see more unrest and we see more challenging 
situations, realize that there is danger coming.
  The watchman's responsibility is to call out the danger, and as the 
bloodshed happens, the blood, according to Ezekiel, will not be on the 
hands of the watchman, but if he does not shout out, if he does not 
articulate that there is danger coming, then the blood will be on his 
hands.
  There is danger coming. We are in dangerous times. The source of this 
danger is not the failure of this bill on this floor at this time. No, 
this is merely a symptom of the danger that, I believe, is right in 
front of us. This is only a symptom of a much deeper issue--a systemic 
problem. Let me explain.
  I am a kid who grew up in poverty--in abject poverty in many ways. 
There is much worse poverty in America and, certainly, around the world 
than that in which I grew up. I am talking about the poverty of when 
you come home and hit the light switch, and there is no light. I am 
talking about the kind of poverty of having a phone attached to the 
wall, and when you picked it up, there was no sound. There are people 
who have lived in worse poverty than I, but that is poverty from my 
perspective, and I lived in that poverty.
  One of the challenging situations of poverty that manifests is 
hopelessness. I was that hopeless kid in America, mired in poverty, in 
a single-parent household, under the impression that the only way I 
could escape poverty would be through athletics or through 
entertainment. I was hopeless. From 7 years old to 14 years old, I 
drifted, and all drifting leads one in the wrong direction. I failed 
high school. I embarrassed my mom, who was working 16 hours a day, 
because I felt there was no hope in this country for a little Black boy 
like me--14 years old. I failed Spanish, English, world geography, and 
civics.
  Civics, as we all know, is as close as it gets to failing politics. I 
will say that, today, this body, as a whole, is failing civics, or is 
failing in politics.
  As the Lord would have it, I had an amazing mother who believed that 
it was her responsibility to pray me out of the hard situations I found 
myself in, and I had the good fortune of meeting a mentor after I got 
through summer school, who redirected me. I pulled myself together with 
the help of a powerful family, a praying grandmother, and a whole lot 
of faith. I caught up with my class, and I graduated on time. I earned 
a small football scholarship. I went to college and earned a degree in 
political science.
  Along the way, as a youngster, I joined the NAACP. I joined the Urban 
League. I joined many organizations in the community because I knew 
that part of my responsibility was to be socially engaged and to make a 
difference no matter how small that difference would be. The one 
organization I didn't even think about joining was the Republican 
Party. Why would I ever think about joining the Republican Party? While 
growing up, every African American and every Black person I knew of was 
wed to the Democratic Party because it was better to have a seat in the 
room than to be outside. That was the heritage I grew up in.
  Let me fast-forward to where we are today, and I will return to that.
  We lost--I lost--a vote today on a piece of legislation that would 
have led to the systemic change in the relationship between communities 
of color and the law enforcement community. We would have broken this 
concept in this Nation that somehow, some way, you have to either be 
for law enforcement or for communities of color. That is a false binary 
choice. It is just not true.
  This legislation spoke to the important issues that have brought us 
here today. We wouldn't be here, as Senator Perdue alluded to, if it 
were not for the death of yet another African-American man, George 
Floyd. His murder is why the country has given us the opportunity to 
lead, but my friends on the other side just said no, not no to the 
legislation. They just said no.
  Why am I saying that they didn't just say no to the legislation?
  It is that, along the way, I sat down with many of them and asked: 
What do you need?
  Senator Schumer sent a letter, telling, I believe it was, Senator 
McConnell that there were five things in the legislation that needed to 
be improved. I said: Let's give them the five amendments.
  I sat down with more Senators, and they said: Wait. It is not just 
five. There are 20. I asked: How about 20 amendments? And they walked 
out.
  You see, this process is not broken because of the legislation. This 
is a

[[Page S3172]]

broken process beyond that one piece of legislation.
  It is one of the reasons why communities of color--young Americans of 
all colors--are losing faith in the institutions of authority and power 
in this Nation, because we are playing small ball. We are playing for 
those in the insulated chambers. We are playing for Presidential 
politics. That is small ball. Playing the big boys' game is playing for 
the kids who can't represent themselves, and if you don't like what you 
see, change it.
  We offered them opportunities--at least 20, I offered--to change it, 
and their answer to me was, you can't offer us 20 amendments.
  I said: Why not?
  They said: Well, because Mitch McConnell won't give you 20 
amendments.
  I spoke to Mitch McConnell. He said: You can have 20 amendments.
  I told them that.
  We went to a press conference yesterday, and we said: An open 
process.
  They didn't want an open process. They want one thing. I am going to 
get to that.
  So I asked my friends--I said: What is it you don't like about where 
we are going?
  They said: Well, the data collection area. This is the problem. The 
data collection area is the problem.
  I said: Well, tell me the problem.
  Well, the problem is that we are not collecting data.
  I am like, well, wait a second. I could have sworn when I wrote the 
legislation, we were collecting data. So I flipped through the pages 
and realized we are collecting data for serious bodily injury and 
death.
  They said: Well, we want to collect data on all uses of force.
  I said: Put it in an amendment, and I will support it.
  That was just one bone of contention. I said: Well, tell me another 
one.
  They said: Our bone of contention is that we need you to ban no-knock 
warrants because of the Breonna Taylor situation.
  I said: Your bill does not ban no-knock warrants for the Breonna 
Taylor situation; your bill bans it for Federal agents. There was not a 
Secret Service agent showing up at Breonna Taylor's door; that was a 
local police department.
  So the fact that they are saying they want to ban no-knock warrants 
knowing they cannot ban no-knock warrants tells me that this is not 
about the underlying issue. It is bigger than that.
  I said: Well, I will give you an amendment, though, and we can have 
that fight on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
  As a matter of fact, I said: Tell me any issue you have with the 
legislation.
  Well, we went through deescalation training, the duty to intervene, 
best practices.
  I said: In the legislation. In the legislation. In the legislation.
  I thought--you know, I don't have any hair, so I didn't pull it out, 
but here is what I said next. I said: Well, let's talk about tactics, 
then.
  They said: Well, you don't ban choke holds.
  I was like, I could have sworn I banned choke holds in there 
somewhere, and then I read the bill. They don't ban choke holds at the 
local level, at the State level. Do you know why? There is this little 
thing called the Constitution. They can't ban choke holds. Eric 
Gardner's situation would not have been cured by their ban on choke 
holds because their ban on choke holds was for Federal agents. Our 
legislation instructed the Attorney General to ban choke holds for 
Federal agents.
  What else did we do? Well, we said we would reduce funding by 20 
percent. They reduced funding by 10 percent. So our penalty was twice 
the penalty of the other side, and this is supposed to be an issue.
  I am not sure we have found the issue. We haven't. It is not choke 
holds. It is not the duty to intervene. It is not data collection, 
because I said: On choke holds?
  They said: Senator--I sat there at their meeting with them--it is 
your definition of ``choke holds'' that is the problem.
  See, I assumed that when you think of choke holds, you think of a 
choke hold, but there is a distinction of the carotid airflow versus 
blood flow. They said ours covered only one, not the other.
  I said: OK. You can have an amendment. I will vote for it. We will 
change it.
  They said: We are not here to talk about that.
  I said: Wait a second. If we are not here to debate the issue on the 
motion to proceed so that we can fix not 50 percent of the bill, not 70 
percent of the bill, but literally slivers, slight changes on parts of 
the bill that would move this entire process forward, and you have the 
amendment to do so--I even said something that I didn't think I would 
say. I said: What about a managers' amendment? Let's just fix 
everything in one fell swoop.
  They said: No, thank you.
  So I find it disingenuous that people say: Well, why don't you just 
sit down with one Member and work it out?
  Well, if a managers' amendment won't do it, if the 5 amendments they 
wrote in a letter saying that they needed to have these things fixed 
won't do it, if 20 amendments won't do it, and you have an open process 
on the floor of the U.S. Senate that requires 60 votes to get off of 
the bill, then what, pray tell, is the problem?
  Well, I finally realized what the problem is. The actual problem is 
not what is being offered; it is who is offering it. It took me a long 
time to figure out the most obvious thing in the room. It is not the 
what. I have listened to the press conferences. I have read the 
newspapers. I am not sure that anyone who is actually reporting on the 
bill has actually read the bill, because the next time I see another 
story or editorial that says we don't do this, their bill does that, 
and you put the two together, and it is not just off, it is just dead 
wrong--I realized, finally, it is the who that is offering this.
  I have dealt with the problem of who before. As a Black man, I get 
the who being the problem. It is one of the reasons I went to Senator 
McConnell and said: I want to lead this conversation. I am the person 
in our conference who has experienced firsthand racial discrimination, 
racial profiling by law enforcement, and I am still a fan because I 
believe that most law enforcement officers are good. But I am the guy. 
I am your guy, Mitch, because this is my issue. This is an issue for 
every poor kid growing up in every poor neighborhood in this Nation who 
feels like, when I leave my home for a jog, I might not come back.
  This is a serious issue. This is an issue for every single kid who 
says: Is this my country? We have heard no.
  This is the issue that we should be solving, not the legislative 
issue. That is not the issue. The issue is, do we matter? We had an 
opportunity to say: You matter so much, we will stay on this floor for 
as long as it takes and as many amendments as it takes for us to get to 
the issue that says ``Yes, you matter.'' But we said no today. Fifty-
six people said yes--four short--four short of saying yes; yes to 
having enough information to direct training and resources in such a 
way that we could hold people accountable. We were four votes short of 
saying yes to having a powerful tool of pulling resources to compel 
behavior on choke holds, because I believe that if we had gotten on the 
bill, we would have passed this bill.
  But that is the problem, by the way. That is the who I am talking 
about. See, as a Black guy, I know how it feels to walk into a store 
and have the little clerk follow me around, even as a U.S. Senator. I 
get that. I have experienced that. I understand the traffic stops. I 
understand that when I am walking down the street and some young lady 
clutches her purse and my instinct is to get a little farther away 
because I don't want any issues with anybody. I understand that. But 
what I miss in this issue is that the stereotyping of Republicans is 
just as toxic as poison to the outcomes for the most vulnerable 
communities in this Nation. That is the issue
  When Speaker Pelosi says one of the most heinous things I can 
imagine--that the Republicans are actually trying to cover up murder, 
the murder of George Floyd, with our legislation--that is not politics. 
That is not a game to win. That is, you lose--you will sooner or later 
lose--but immediately, every kid around the Nation who heard that 
nonsense lost at that moment.
  You see, what has become evident to me is that she knows something 
that we all know. She knows she can say

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that because the Democrats have a monopoly on the Black vote. No matter 
the return on their loyalty--and I am telling you, the most loyal part 
of the Democratic construct is Black communities--no matter the loyalty 
of the people, the return they get will always continue to go down 
because in monopolies, you start devaluing your customer.
  You see, today we could have given at the very minimum 70 percent of 
what they say would be important for the people we say we serve, but 
instead of having a debate on that today and not getting 5 amendments 
but 20 amendments, a managers' amendment--instead of going forward and 
getting what you want now, they have decided to punt this ball until 
the election. Do you know why? Because they believe that the polls 
reflect a 15-point deficit on our side; therefore, they can get the 
bill they want in November. All they have to do is win the election, 
and then roll in January, and they get a chance to write the police 
reform bill without our support at all.
  Well, this is what they did in the House, right? No amendments in the 
House of Representatives on their bill. We are saying amendments on our 
side. Democrats are saying no amendments in the House, but you here in 
the U.S. Senate, because we are the world's greater deliberative body, 
you can have amendments--not in the House, not under Speaker Pelosi, 
but under Leader McConnell, you get at least 20 amendments. And I 
thought, what the heck, I will throw in the managers' amendment too. 
But that was not good enough because the irony of the story is not the 
bill; the irony of the story is that today and through the rest of June 
and all of July, what we are going to have here is, instead of gaining 
70 percent of what you wanted, or more, you are going to get zero. How 
is that for a return? How is that for loyalty? How does that work for 
the little kid at home in North Charleston where Walter Scott got shot? 
How does that work around the country when, instead of getting 70 
percent of what you wanted, today and tomorrow and next week you get 
zero, and you are going to wait until the election to get more? OK. 
Well, why wouldn't you take the 80 percent now, see if you can win the 
election, and add on the other 20 percent? You have got to be kidding 
me.
  Because the who matters, they cannot allow this party to be seen as a 
party that reaches out to all communities in this Nation. 
Unfortunately, without the kind of objectivity in the media that is 
necessary to share the message of what is actually happening, no one 
will ever know because if you don't read it in the paper, it must not 
have happened. If you don't see it on TV, on MSNBC or CNN, it must not 
be true. That is a problem.
  Let me just say this: I think we are willing to compete for every 
vote everywhere, all the time. That might not be true in every corridor 
of the Nation, but it is true of most corridors of the Nation. And this 
party has reinforced that truth, not by the words coming out of my 
mouth but by the actual legislation signed into law.
  Senator Perdue started talking about the important work that we did 
on opportunity zones--and I am going to wrap it up in 2 minutes here. 
It is lunchtime.
  In 2017 we passed tax reform. I included in the opportunity zones--
$75 billion--real money to the most distressed communities in this 
Nation. How did that happen? Well, President Trump and I had a serious 
disagreement on his comments after Charlottesville. He, being a person 
I was not looking forward to having a conversation with, invited me to 
the Oval Office. I sat down with him, and I said: What do you want to 
talk about?
  The President said: Tell me about your perspective on racial history.
  I was stunned because if you know President Trump like I know 
President Trump, his love language is not words of encouragement. It 
just ain't. I know ``ain't'' ain't a word, but it is not.
  He listened, and at the end of our conversation, he simply said: Tell 
me how to help those I have offended.
  I didn't know what to say, so I pulled out my back pocket and got 
opportunity zones. I didn't go there prepared for him to listen. That 
is not supposed to be funny, but it is. I mean, I didn't expect him to 
listen, but he did. He listened. He leaned in, and he said: Tell me how 
to help the folks I have offended.
  I said: Let's work on opportunity zones together.
  He said: Yes.
  I said: What?
  He said: Yes.
  He was concerned enough about the communities he had literally just 
offended. He was concerned enough to go to work on their behalf. And 
that is why we have opportunity zones.
  I was like, well, this might work again. So I went back to the 
President and said: You know, there is a lot of work that needs to be 
done around the HBCUs, historically Black colleges and universities. He 
said yes. He said yes. We said yes.
  Let me just tell you this: When we started saying yes, we controlled 
the White House, we controlled the Senate, and we controlled the House. 
So it wasn't because some Democrat came over here and said: In order to 
get our votes, you have to do this. That is not what happened. He said 
yes because the Republican Party said yes. We stood together with all 
three leaders of government under our control. We got opportunity zones 
done. We started a process of reinvesting in historically Black 
colleges and universities. And the head of the United Negro College 
Fund said at my last fly-in that this is a record level of funding 
ever--his words, not mine. I am not sure what ``ever'' is. Maybe that 
is longer than I have been alive. Literally more money for HBCUs than 
ever--brought to you by the Republican Party.
  I said: Well, that is working. Let's do it again.
  So we went to stem cell research, which--stem cell research for 
sickle cell anemia, which is a 100-percent--basically speaking, 99.5 
percent--African-American disease. He said yes.
  Lamar Alexander, the chairman of our Health, Education, Labor, and 
Pensions Committee--we were fighting over funding for HBCUs. We made it 
permanent--permanent funding for the HBCUs led by a Republican chairman 
of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, President 
Trump signs it, and we have delivered historic funding and permanent 
funding for HBCUs.
  Because I am running out of time, I am not going to go through the 
pre-pandemic numbers in minority communities for unemployment--
unemployment not only at a record low, but we had labor force 
participation rates increasing. Let me say that differently. Not only 
did we get more jobs for Black folks and Brown folks, but the number of 
folks in the community--we started having an increase in the number of 
folks working.
  This is called basic conservative politics. It works, creating 7 
million new jobs benefiting two-thirds of African Americans, Hispanics, 
and women, and with a full economy, all boats started rising. Don't 
believe me, check your accounts. That is what it looks like.
  COVID-19 hit us, and what did we do? We not only approved $2.3 
trillion and then another $500 or so billion dollars, and $450 billion 
that would be multiplied in the commercial facilities by probably 7 or 
8--a $6 trillion relief package. What did we do inside that package? We 
targeted small businesses to save small businesses, and, by the way, we 
added $1 billion for historically Black colleges and universities.
  Let me tell you what the biggest threat is. The biggest threat is 
that this Republican Party keeps showing up and delivering. I have 12 
more pages to go. It is like being at church with my closing. I have 12 
more pages of accomplishments to talk about. I am not going to talk 
about it. Don't look relieved. I am not going to talk about it. I am 
just here to state that if we are going to be serious about criminal 
justice reform--and we passed it with the House, Senate, and the White 
House in the hands of Republicans. We passed criminal justice reform to 
make up for the Democrat bill--the 1994 crime bill that locked up 
disproportionately African-American men. The Republican Party passed 
criminal justice reform with all three levers in our hands.
  I am frustrated. I am frustrated because it is not a competition for 
the best ideas. It is not a competition for how to improve the poorest 
performing schools in America in the public education system that is 
consistently in Black and Brown communities--that your ZIP Code 
determines the outcome

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of your life because you are not going to have a good education because 
we will not touch teachers' unions and we will not touch education in 
the way that needs to be touched.
  Governor Scott did it before he was a Senator. That is one of the 
reasons why I went down there and campaigned for him, because he was 
serious about helping poor kids get up and move on.
  Let me just close with this. I don't know what it is going to take to 
wake up an entire nation about the importance of a duopoly and not a 
monopoly. Look at the results. Look at the results you are getting.
  By the way, when this bill is gone, and next week we are on the NDAA 
or something else, we will forget about this. We will move on. People 
will forget about it. And do you know what is going to happen? 
Something bad. And we will be right back here talking about what could 
have been done, what should have been done, why we must act. I am 
telling you, I had this conversation 5 years ago, and I am having this 
conversation right now. We could do something right now.
  You know, here is the truth. Detroit, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Los 
Angeles, Philadelphia, and all of these cities could have banned choke 
holds themselves. They could have increased the police reporting 
themselves. They could have more data information themselves. They 
could have deescalation training themselves. They could have duty to 
intervene themselves, Minneapolis as well. All of these communities 
have been run by Democrats for decades--decades.
  What is the ROI for the poorest people in this Nation? And I don't 
blame them. I blame an elite political class with billions of dollars 
to do whatever they want to do. And look at the results for the 
poorest, most vulnerable people in our Nation. I am willing to compete 
for their vote. Are you?
  (Applause, Senators rising.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I came to the floor to hear my colleague 
from South Carolina, with no notes and with an open heart and open 
ears, because I knew he would be very disappointed that the motion to 
proceed failed and that he would have strong feelings about that 
because of his earnest desire to do police reform. I don't question 
that desire or the desire of any of the cosponsors of this bill, just 
as I hope colleagues on the other side don't question the sincerity of 
Senators Booker and Harris and those who cosponsored their bill. But I 
came with no notes to listen to my colleague and then to offer a word 
of explanation.
  I am one of the 44 people who voted no. The Senator from South 
Carolina said that those who voted no on the motion to proceed didn't 
vote on the what; we voted no on the who. That is a stiff charge. That 
is a stiff charge.
  What I want to say is this. I voted no not on the what and not on the 
who, but I voted no on the how. We tried it the wrong way. Let's try it 
the right way. My colleague from South Carolina acts as if this 
discussion is over. It is only over for those who want it to be over. 
We tried it the wrong way. Let's try it the right way.
  What do I mean by that?
  I think everyone in the Chamber knows what I mean by this. This is an 
amazingly important topic that is exciting deep and legitimate concerns 
in the streets of every community in this country.
  There are two good-faith bills that have been introduced dealing with 
police reform. I see virtues in both. I favor the Democratic bill, but 
that does not mean that I don't see virtues in the Scott bill.
  I have only been in the Senate 7 years. I am not an expert on 
procedure, as some are who are standing in the Chamber right now, but 
my service tells me that there is a clear path to a bipartisan police 
reform bill that will do a good job and will speak to an America that 
wants to see leadership that is bipartisan.
  It is obvious. These bills are both in the province of a Judiciary 
Committee that is chaired by a Republican from South Carolina, Lindsey 
Graham, whose ranking member, Dianne Feinstein, has been on that 
committee for a very long time. Why are these bills not being taken up 
in a committee with a Republican majority and debated and marked up and 
reported to the floor in a bipartisan way?
  I serve on the Armed Services Committee. That is what we do every 
year with the NDAA. We introduce it, we let members have the ability to 
offer amendments that can be voted on by a simple majority vote in 
committee. We get to the end of a process and when no one has an 
amendment left, we then have a final bill, and then we vote it out 
overwhelmingly bipartisan. The NDAA came out of committee 2 weeks ago 
on a 26-to-2 vote. We will be taking it up on the floor.
  I am on the HELP Committee. I have a wonderful chair and ranking 
member in Senators Alexander and Murray, and we tackle tough issues 
with a committee that has some big personalities on it. I have a couple 
of them in the room with me now. There is great ideological diversity 
on that committee, but we take up tough issues, and we don't always 
solve them, but we usually do when we put our minds to it and report 
something to the floor and we do it in a bipartisan way. When it comes 
in a bipartisan way, there is a great chance that we get action here on 
the floor. That is the right way to do things. It respects the 
traditions of the body, because it is a majority that runs the 
committee, but it allows those who have devoted themselves to health 
issues or armed services issues or judiciary issues to offer their 
thoughts.
  When these bills were introduced, I assumed that a committee ably led 
by Senators Graham and Feinstein would put these bills together and 
have a markup and let people offer amendments with a 50-percent-vote 
threshold and then report out a bipartisan bill. Why would the 
Judiciary Committee not do it?
  I believe the leaders of the committee wanted to do it, but I believe 
they were told not to do it. They were told that we are not going to 
use the committee process on this. We are going to force this to a 
floor vote, a snap vote, and then, when it goes down, we will say: 
Democrats killed it. It is all over. Move on to the next issue.
  This is only over for anyone who wants it to be over.
  I think the vote today says: We are not going to do it ``my way or 
the highway.'' We ought to do it the right way--the way we do the NDAA, 
the way we did the FIRST STEP Act. The FIRST STEP Act, criminal justice 
reform, Democrats and Republicans working together, in committee and 
then negotiating with Jared Kushner and others at the White House--we 
did something good that all can take credit for.
  How about the CARES Act? There is a recent example of this. The CARES 
Act was an unusual one. We were under an emergency. We were socially 
distant from each other. We couldn't even be in the same room as we 
were negotiating it, and it was in multiple committees' jurisdiction. 
So it wasn't as if one committee was taking it up. But there was good-
faith, bipartisan negotiation on the different pieces of it.
  One day, Leader McConnell called us all back to Washington on a 
Sunday to vote--not on the bipartisan negotiated bill but on a partisan 
version. And, again, Democrats on this side of the aisle said: We are 
not ready to proceed. We are in the middle of bipartisan discussions. 
We are not ready to proceed to the partisan bill because we are in the 
middle of bipartisan discussions that will have the payoff for this 
country, and so we voted no--not on the what, not on the who. We voted 
no on the how.
  We are not ready to proceed to a partisan, ``my way or the highway'' 
bill when we are engaged in bipartisan discussions that can find a 
solution that is good for the country. Guess what happened. Three days 
later, after that ``no'' vote, we were here on the floor voting yes--
voting yes to a bipartisan bill that helped individuals and families, 
that created a grant program for small businesses, a loan program for 
large businesses, aid to State and local governments, aid to hospitals 
and nursing homes and healthcare providers. We voted no on the ``my way 
or the highway'' and said: Stay at the table with us. Let's have 
bipartisan discussions, and we can get to a yes.
  And even as Members of this body were being diagnosed with 
coronavirus or exposed to it, we stayed at the table until we could get 
the work done, and we did it for the good of the country.
  This discussion is not over unless people want it to be over.

[[Page S3175]]

  Senator King and I, on Monday, sent a letter to the two leaders and 
to the Judiciary Committee chair and ranking member, and we said: For 
God's sake, with a nation that is crying out for solutions that can 
show some unity, please do with this bill what we know will work and 
what has worked.
  Let the Judiciary Committee take it up promptly and let them work and 
report it to the floor, and we can do this bill before the August 
recess and do it in a way where, in committee and on the floor, 
everyone has a chance to participate and we can get a win for the 
American public that is critically important. It is my hope that we 
will still do that.
  The tenor of some of the conversations is as if this is now over, in 
the rear-view mirror, not to be returned to until after November. I 
don't accept that. I don't accept that. These bills are pending. We 
have a Judiciary Committee that can do this work.
  I went to the Judiciary Committee this morning to introduce a 
judicial nominee and asked members of the committee who were there: If 
these bills were taken up in this committee, could you find a 
bipartisan result? And the answer they gave to me was yes.
  I didn't vote no for the what. I didn't vote no for the who. I voted 
no for the how. I know how we can do this bill, and shame on us on a 
matter of such seriousness if we don't engage in a process whose 
seriousness matches the gravity of the moment
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. SASSE. The Senator from Maryland was first. I have 40 seconds to 
comment, but thank you.
  I respect the Senator from Virginia, but I would like to note for the 
Record, as somebody who spent a lot of time in the working group under 
Senator Scott's leadership, that Senator Kaine repeatedly said it was a 
``my way or the highway'' approach. I just think it is really important 
for the Record for us to admit that this is an open amendment process 
that has been proposed, and that some of the Democrats who came to some 
of the meetings to negotiate were frankly stunned when Mr. Scott went 
from 5 amendments to 20 amendments, to whatever number you want. That 
is the opposite of a ``my way or the highway'' approach. That language 
isn't true. An open amendment process where dozens have been offered is 
not a ``my way or the highway'' approach.
  Mr. KAINE. Would the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. SASSE. Yes.
  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, the Senator from Nebraska is a member of 
the Judiciary Committee, isn't that right?
  Mr. SASSE. One of the most dysfunctional committees in the Senate--I 
am.
  Mr. KAINE. When the Senator has markups in the Judiciary Committee on 
a bill like the FIRST STEP Act and someone, Democrat or Republican, 
proposes an amendment to mark, isn't it the standard to vote on the 
amendment and if the majority of the committee approves, then the 
amendment is added to the bill?
  Mr. SASSE. There are so many different procedures in the Judiciary 
Committee. You defined yourself as a rookie who has been here for 7 
years. I am a rookie to your rookie, and I am new on Judiciary. So 
there are a lot of ways. The way you are defining it is usually the 
model, but there is a whole bunch of stuff that happens. You asked for 
the question that falls into that, but perhaps there is another comment 
that you can make.
  Mr. KAINE. My experience on every committee I have been on is that we 
leave it to a markup in the committee with a simple majority, not 
allowing a simple majority amendment process in committee, but saying 
``no, we will give you some amendments on the floor with a 60-vote 
threshold'' is not the same thing. It doesn't respect an individual's 
ability to try to persuade the majority of my colleagues, Democrats and 
Republicans, that it is a good idea or not. That is why this bill was 
not sent to committee but just put on the floor. So I don't view that 
as fair, to respond.
  I get Senator Scott, and I appreciate him saying that we should have 
open amendments on the floor. But depriving people the ability to offer 
open amendments in a simple majority--can I convince the majority of my 
colleagues in the committee?--that is already stacking the deck, in my 
view.
  Mr. SASSE. I thank the Senator for his question. I told the Senator 
from Maryland I would get out of his way, and I thank him for the time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Loeffler). The Senator from Maryland is 
recognized.


                        Justice in Policing Act

  Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, over the weekend, I was reflecting on 
the times that our Nation finds itself in today. We are witnessing the 
rebirth of a new civil rights movement when it comes to reforming our 
police departments.
  Americans now know the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Freddie 
Gray, and so many others. The current protests we have seen throughout 
the Nation and throughout the world are a direct result of an 
incredible leap in technology, where individual citizens and officers 
themselves can record interactions between police officers and members 
of the community in real time.
  But these troubling interactions between the police and the citizens 
they are sworn to protect and serve that we saw on video is not new, 
but we now have the evidence. They just happened to be caught, creating 
stronger legal evidence of misconduct and abuse.
  Today, as our Nation experiences yet another civil rights movement, 
this time during a pandemic, I want to share with my colleagues some 
words of inspiration I often turn to in times of trouble.
  First, in the Constitution: ``We the people of the United States, in 
Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice. . . . '' That is 
the first mention in the Constitution.
  Let us think how we in the United States can help to establish 
justice, as we are exhorted to do in the Constitution, which we are 
sworn to uphold and defend.
  The second set of words I would like to share with you are from my 
colleague and dear friend, the late Elijah Cummings, who represented 
Baltimore in the Congress for many years. Representative Cummings gave 
the eulogy for Freddie Gray in 2015, who died after being arrested and 
taken into police custody. During Freddie Gray's church service, Elijah 
closed with a quote from the Old Testament Book of Amos:

       I want justice--oceans of it. I want fairness--rivers of 
     it. That is what I want. That is all I want.

  The third story I want to share with my colleagues is the inspiration 
I felt from reading Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s ``Letter from a 
Birmingham Jail,'' in April of 1963. Dr. King wrote:

       We know through painful experiences that freedom is never 
     voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by 
     the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct 
     action campaign that was ``well-timed,'' [in the view] of 
     those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of 
     segregation. For years now I have heard the words ``Wait!'' 
     It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing 
     familiarity. This ``Wait'' has almost always meant ``Never.''
       We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurors, 
     that ``justice too long delayed is justice denied.''
       We have waited for more than 340 years for our 
     constitutional and God given rights . . . Perhaps it is easy 
     for those who have never felt the stinging darts of 
     segregation to say, ``Wait.'' But when you have seen vicious 
     mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your 
     sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled 
     policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and 
     sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty 
     million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of 
     poverty in the midst of affluent society . . . when you have 
     to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: 
     ``Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?'' 
     . . . when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the 
     fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe 
     stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are 
     plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are 
     forever fighting a degenerating sense of ``nobodiness''--then 
     you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There 
     comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are 
     no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I 
     hope, sirs, you understand our legitimate and unavoidable 
     impatience.

  So this weekend, as I was thinking about our charge to establish 
justice in the Constitution and the pleas from Elijah Cummings and Dr. 
King, I contemplated where we are today. We are at a point in our 
Nation that we need to make transformational change when it comes to 
our police officers and their

[[Page S3176]]

fundamental relationships with our communities, in particular the 
African-American community and other communities of color. We can no 
longer wait. We must make bold changes now.
  I agree with Leader Schumer and Senators Booker and Harris, who are 
the authors of the Justice in Policing Act. My concern is that the 
legislation authored by Senator Scott, the JUSTICE Act, falls 
dangerously short for what we need for comprehensive, effective, and 
transformational police reform that our country and the American people 
are demanding.
  I, therefore, hope that Leader McConnell will negotiate with Leader 
Schumer so we can work on a bipartisan bill and establish a 
constructive starting point on policing reform. I listened to the 
debate with Senator Scott and Senator Kaine, and I have seen this 
before. When we bring a partisan bill to the floor where there is no 
prearranged opportunity to offer the types of amendments with simple 
majority votes so the rule of the Senate can prevail and when you start 
from a point that cannot lead to successful conclusion, you shouldn't 
start. You should go back to negotiate a truly bipartisan bill.
  We should use the model of the CARES Act legislation that was signed 
into law in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. That was a bipartisan 
bill that was brought to the floor. Let me just highlight a few of my 
concerns with the JUSTICE Act.
  This legislation does not contain any mechanisms to hold law 
enforcement officers accountable in court for their misconduct. For 
example, it makes no changes in the law when it comes to qualified 
immunity or criminal intent standards for law enforcement. Current 
legal standards have allowed law enforcement officers regularly to 
evade criminal liability for excessive use of force and have shielded 
officers from liability, even when they violate citizens' 
constitutional rights.
  The JUSTICE Act does not implement a public national misconduct 
registry necessary to ensure communities have information necessary to 
hold their law enforcement officers accountable. The JUSTICE Act fails 
to establish a collection of all use-of-force data, data related to 
religious and racial profiling, and it does nothing to end harmful 
policing practices like racial and religious profiling.
  By contrast, the Justice in Policing Act authored by Senators Booker 
and Harris does contain legislation I authored, the End Racial and 
Religious Profiling Act. Why do we need that? Studies have shown that 
Blacks are 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for selling drugs, 
despite the fact that Whites are more likely to sell drugs. Studies 
show that Blacks are 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for 
possessing drugs, despite using drugs at the same rate as Whites.
  This is just wrong, and Congress and even President Trump recognized 
this when we made some modest improvements to the FIRST STEP Act. That 
was a bipartisan bill and started as a bipartisan bill, and we were 
able to get it enacted. The End Racial and Religious Profiling Act is 
designed to enforce the constitutional rights to equal protections 
under law by eliminating racial- and religious-based discriminatory 
profiling at all levels of law enforcement by changing the policies and 
procedures.
  It allows police to focus their work more accurately, rather than 
wasting resources on blanket stereotypes. It requires enhanced data 
collection for the Department of Justice to track and monitor 
discriminatory profiling. It holds State and local enforcement agencies 
accountable by conditioning Federal funds on the adoption of policies 
and best practices to combat profiling by officers. It eliminates, once 
and for all, discriminatory profiling. It is in the Booker-Harris bill. 
It is not in the Scott bill.
  The underlying JUSTICE Act does not include any real national 
standards for law enforcement. By contrast, the Justice in Policing Act 
contains legislation I authored, the Law Enforcement Trust and 
Integrity Act, which takes a comprehensive approach on how local police 
organizations can adopt performance-based standards to ensure that 
instances of misconduct will be minimized through training and 
oversight. That legislation takes steps to mitigate police violence by 
designating resources for community development and the transformation 
of public safety practices
  In Baltimore, we have ongoing Federal partnerships with city law 
enforcement and the Federal Justice Department following the tragic 
death of Freddie Gray, Jr. This is an example of continued efforts to 
rebuild trust between communities and police and encourages the 
establishment of more effective police models.
  The legislation I described provides public safety innovation grants 
to help communities reimagine and develop concrete, just, and equitable 
public safety approaches. This is in the Booker-Harris bill. It is not 
in the Scott bill. The JUSTICE Act does not adequately address the 
issue of no-knock warrants in drug cases, nor does it adequately 
address the use of choke holds. Finally, the legislation does not 
address the issue of establishing a national use-of-force standard.
  By contrast, the Justice in Policing Act changes the use-of-force 
standards for officers so that deadly force be used only as a last 
resort, while requiring officers to employ deescalation techniques. Let 
me bring to my colleagues' attention a letter dated June 23, 2020, from 
the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
  In the letter, the Leadership Conferences writes to Congress:

       We write to express our strong opposition to S. 3985, the . 
     . . [JUSTICE Act]. The JUSTICE Act is an inadequate response 
     to the decades of pain, hardship, and devastation that Black 
     people have and continue to endure as a result of systemic 
     racism and lax policies that fail to hold police accountable 
     for misconduct.

  The letter goes on to say:

       Abusive policing practices, coupled with devastating state-
     sanctioned violence, have exacted systemic brutality and 
     fatality upon Black people since our nation's founding. 
     Police have shot and killed more than 1,000 people in the 
     United States over the past year, and Black people are 
     disproportionately more likely than white people to be killed 
     by police. The current protests in our cities are a response 
     not only to the unjust policing of Black people, but also 
     calls for action to public officials to enact bold, 
     comprehensive, and structural change.

  The letter concludes.

       . . . . Passing watered-down legislation that fails to 
     remedy the actual harms resulting in the loss of life is a 
     moral statement that is inconsistent with a genuine belief 
     that black lives matter. Anything less than full support for 
     comprehensive legislation that holds police accountable is 
     inexcusable.

  Let me close my remarks once again by sharing some words from Dr. 
King, from the March on Washington in 1963. In his famous speech at the 
foot of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC, 
Dr. King said:

       In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a 
     check. When the architects of our Republic wrote the 
     magnificent words of the Constitution and Declaration of 
     Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which 
     every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that 
     all men--yes, black men as well as white men--would be 
     guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the 
     pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has 
     defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of 
     color are concerned . . . But we refused to believe that the 
     bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there 
     are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of 
     this nation. So we've come to cash this check, a check that 
     will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the 
     security of justice.

  Dr. King continued by saying:

       We have also come to this hollowed spot to remind America 
     of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in 
     the luxury of cooling off or take the tranquilizing drug of 
     gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promise of 
     democracy . . . Now is the time to lift our nation from the 
     quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of 
     brotherhood . . . Now is the time to make justice a reality 
     for all God's children. It would be fatal for the nation to 
     overlook the urgency of the moment . . .

  The House of Representatives is scheduled to pass their version of 
the Justice in Policing Act on Thursday. Let us take up meaningful 
legislation in the Senate as the base bill negotiated between Democrats 
and Republicans. Let us rise to the occasion and make the Founders of 
this Nation proud.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. ERNST. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.

[[Page S3177]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered


                            The JUSTICE Act

  Ms. ERNST. Madam President, the murder of George Floyd captured the 
attention and the emotions of the entire world. In the weeks that have 
followed, folks around the world have been crying out for a change, an 
end to racial inequality and the beginning of a new era of justice, 
understanding, and healing. While sometimes uncomfortable, this 
conversation is much needed, and, in my opinion, it is long overdue. It 
should not have taken the loss of a life for us to begin to talk and 
listen and to learn.
  I grew up in a predominantly White community, but as a young woman, I 
was truly blessed to live, learn, and work in communities that were 
rich in diversity. It is difficult to understand the unfairness someone 
faces due to their skin color, but we can make time to listen. I did 
this last week when I sat down with our own Senate Chaplain, Barry 
Black.
  For those who do not know him, Chaplain Black is a remarkable and 
inspiring person. After serving over 27 years in the U.S. Navy, he now 
serves as a spiritual guide for Senators and opens our proceedings 
every day with a thoughtful prayer. One of my favorite things he told 
me was about a lesson his mother had taught him. She told him that God 
gave us two ears, two eyes, but only one mouth--and we should use them 
proportionately.
  I believe the United States is, by far, the greatest country in the 
world, but that does not mean that we don't have past and current 
issues that we need to address. Let's be frank, it was not a single, 
isolated event--the murder of Mr. Floyd--that incited the raw emotions 
that are still burning weeks later.
  In Iowa, Governor Kim Reynolds signed a historic police reform bill, 
which will add additional accountability for law enforcement. This will 
benefit both the community and the police. Here is what is remarkable 
about this new law: Partisanship wasn't a factor.
  Republican house majority leader Matt Windschitl and Democratic 
representative Ako Abdul-Samad, two of the extraordinary leaders that 
ushered this bill through the house and through our legislature, spoke 
with me this morning, and both of them said that, while they don't each 
view this as a perfect bill, it was more than cosmetic. It had real 
meaning and depth, and it was a first step.
  I agreed with them because any journey starts with a single step, a 
meaningful step. The bill passed the Iowa House by a vote--again, with 
these two extraordinary leaders--by a vote of 98-0, unanimous. It then 
went to the Iowa Senate, and it passed in the Iowa Senate 49-0. 
Partisanship wasn't a factor. The only thing that mattered was doing 
the right thing.
  Not a single dissenting vote was cast, and it even had the 
endorsement of the Iowa Police Officers Association. We are only going 
to improve as a nation if we come together and make everyone a part of 
the solution. We can do that. Iowa put politics aside, and they got it 
done. I wish we could see more of Iowa in this Chamber.
  We need both sides of the aisle to unite and to pass Senator Tim 
Scott's JUSTICE Act. The JUSTICE Act offers real solutions to police 
reform by increasing oversight, strengthening incident report 
requirements, and ensuring the correct use of body cameras. It includes 
an issue that I have been working to address: sexual misconduct within 
our law enforcement.
  The JUSTICE Act is simply a commonsense approach to effective police 
reform. The bill includes a number of bipartisan provisions, including 
the antilynching proposal put forward by Senators John Cornyn and 
Kamala Harris. It is heartbreaking that the bill to address these 
issues was blocked by Senate Democrats.
  The Senate exists so we can debate these issues in a civil manner and 
reach a consensus so they aren't resolved in the streets. We can't do 
that if the other side chooses to shut down meaningful debate or give 
in to radical ideas like defunding the police, which won't solve the 
problem of inequality or end violence.
  I ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle: Are you willing 
to come to the table? Are you willing to accept that amendment process? 
Are you willing to take the first step in our journey? Will you put 
politics aside and help us enact reforms to ensure the safety of our 
communities?
  Our Nation's journey toward becoming a more perfect union and 
securing the blessings of liberty for all Americans has taken a long 
and bumpy road, and we still have a lot farther to go. It starts with 
that one step. But at this moment, the country and the world are 
demanding we pick up the stride. Let's follow Iowa's lead. Let's come 
together and take meaningful action.
  To be clear, the passage of a single bill is not going to suddenly 
reverse centuries of injustice. Passing laws are a simple part. If we 
really want to change behavior, we need to commit ourselves to changing 
our hearts. The best way that we can personally commemorate the life of 
George Floyd and the many others before him who lost their lives or 
suffered injustice is to open our own hearts.
  Chaplain Black summed up the solution best when he quoted to me Mark 
12:31: ``Love your neighbor as yourself.'' It is both that simple and 
that challenging.
  So I am asking all of us in this body to be more like Iowa. Let's 
find a solution. Let's take that first step and begin our journey 
together.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BLUNT. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call 
be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I heard your comments earlier today--and I 
couldn't agree more--on the importance of us dealing with the issues 
that were on the floor today that we failed to deal with. I heard our 
good friend Senator Scott's response to the way his hard work was 
looked at and, frankly, ignored.
  When the Congress stops resembling an honest and open discussion of 
the issues, I think it gives us a lot to be concerned about. The 
solution should be the goal. When Members of Congress are more 
interested in a bill that they believe to be perfect rather than 
seriously engaging in a debate, it raises a lot of concerns about how 
we protect liberty and how we do our constitutional duty.
  I have been in the Congress for a while, as some of my friends are 
more than eager to point out, and I have never voted for a perfect 
bill--ever. I have introduced a couple of perfect bills, but I have 
never voted for a perfect bill. I have never voted for a bill that 
couldn't be improved.
  Our good friend Tim Scott said something the other day that struck me 
as a truism. He said: I think most Americans are tired of Republicans 
and Democrats talking about Republicans and Democrats. Most Americans, 
as Senator Scott's point was made, want us to solve problems. They want 
us to come up not with the best answer possible; they want us to come 
up with the best possible answer.
  What is the difference between the best answer possible and the best 
possible answer? The difference is figuring out when you have gotten 
done as much as you can get done and you decide that, in this process, 
you want to accept that and come back at a later time and see if you 
can do a little better.
  They don't want us to reject a promising solution just because 
someone from the other party said it first. They don't want us to 
reject a promising solution just because it doesn't solve everything.
  Nothing around here happens as fast as we would like it to. Debate, 
discussion, and compromise all take time. Remember, the Constitution 
was put together by people who didn't trust government. They didn't 
want to make it easy for government to do things, and they didn't.
  One of the great successes of all time was the success of making it 
hard for our government to do things. It is hard to explain in other 
countries where they have parliamentary systems where, if the leader 
doesn't get what the leader wants, the government collapses. That is 
not the way this government is designed at all. It is designed to take 
some time, but you have to be willing to take the time. It is designed

[[Page S3178]]

to reach compromise, but you have to be willing to reach compromise.
  We think our job should be to, again, come up with the best solution 
we can come up with and try to do the job that we are sent here to do, 
trying not to wait and say: Well, we are too close to an election. 
Apparently we are too close to an election all the time now. We never 
want to give away anything that could be a political issue because it 
is better--maybe in some minds--not to solve it than it is to solve it.
  Today's disappointing vote doesn't have to be final. The majority 
leader changed his vote at the very end. It was 56 to 44--3 Democrats 
and all of the Republicans wanting to move forward, but it takes 60 
votes here to move forward.
  By the way, it also takes 60 votes to get off the bill to have a 
vote. There was nothing to be lost by seeing if we couldn't make 
Senator Scott's bill better. In fact, I understand from his speech 
earlier that he agreed to 20 amendments that had the possibility to do 
that. That is what we are supposed to do. We are here to vote. We are 
here to make decisions. We are here to move forward or to decide we 
don't want to move forward. There are times when a decision is that 
this is not the right solution to this problem. That was not what we 
were dealing with today.
  Our colleagues in the House planned their own legislation. There was 
that moment of hope when the Speaker of the House said she looked 
forward to taking their product--their bill--to conference. Well, you 
only get to take a bill to conference if there is a conference, and you 
only get to take a bill to conference if we pass a bill and the House 
passes a bill.
  By the way, if they are exactly the same bill, there is no reason to 
go to conference. That bill goes to the President.
  We pass a bill, the House passes a bill, we go to conference, and 
then we come back. And 44 of our colleagues were unwilling to go 
through that process.
  On a bill like this, you get a lot of votes. You get the vote to go 
to the debate. You get the vote to go to the vote. You get the vote to 
pass the Senate bill. It has been, actually, a while since I heard 
somebody say what used to be said often: I am voting for this bill. I 
don't think it is where it should be yet, but I look forward to voting 
for a better process coming out of conference.
  You used to hear that all the time: I am voting for this bill so we 
can get to conference, and in conference I am going to do everything I 
can to work to make it better. That is how the process works.
  This ``take it or leave it,'' nobody shows up--our friends at the 
House show up one day to vote on a bill that God knows who decided what 
would be in that bill, and that is the bill we either accept or reject. 
What a foolish way to do business. What an unsatisfactory way to fail 
to debate the issues that people sent us here to decide.
  But, again, the House will pass a bill this week, and unless we 
reconsider this decision, that will be the end of it. That will be the 
end of it. The House has passed a bill. We are not going to take up the 
House bill. There is no Senate product to go to conference. That is the 
end of it.
  It is an issue that we need to find a solution to. It was an issue we 
needed to find a solution to after what happened in St. Louis in 2014. 
It is an issue we have needed to find a solution to. The dates seem to 
keep getting closer, to where this year three things happened in a 
row--maybe more than three--that shouldn't have happened, and things 
have happened since those three things that shouldn't have happened.
  We need to lead on this issue. We need to find a way to make a 
successful conclusion to the best we can do. The best we can do today 
doesn't mean that is the best we can ever do; it just means, when you 
have something that you are agreeing with--and this isn't even a bill 
where--Senator Scott's bill--I didn't hear Democrats say: I agree with 
80 percent of what is in the bill. They were more likely to say: 80 
percent of what I want to do is in the bill.
  Take 80 percent of what you want to do to conference and hope it 
comes back with 90 percent of what you want to do or 96 percent of what 
you want to do. But if you don't trust the process, the process cannot 
produce a result.
  People are tired of us failing to do our job. We need to vote. We 
need to have amendments. We need to have bills on the floor on issues 
like this that the American people are in the streets of America 
saying: Solve this problem.
  You can't solve this problem by turning your back on it. You can't 
solve this problem by saying: If I don't get this exactly the way I 
want it, I would rather not have anything. I will tell you what that 
gets you. That gets you nothing. In a democracy, that does not work. If 
you are getting your way all the time--at home, at church, at school, 
at work, in the Congress--there is something wrong with you. There is 
something wrong with you. Nobody gets their way all the time. 
Compromise is the essence of democracy, but you have to be willing to 
go to the place where compromise happens. On this bill, that would have 
been at conference, to see if we can't come closer to a bill that 
everybody believes is the best we can do.
  I think Senator Scott did a great job with his bill. I think Senator 
Scott thinks his bill could be better. But his bill is not the House 
bill, and the House bill is not going to be the final bill either
  What a mistake to walk away from the chance to solve a problem.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, we just finished up a vote on the Senate 
floor where we fell four votes short of opening debate on a bill to 
deal with police reform--four votes short. We were four votes short of 
opening debate to discuss it.
  Every single Republican voted for this--and a handful of Democrats. 
But the vast majority of Democrats actually said: No, we don't want to 
debate this bill. We will only debate the Pelosi bill when it comes out 
of the House.
  Well, that is absurd. That didn't happen, I can assure you, when 
Speaker Boehner was the leader of the House, that the Senate said ``I 
will tell you what, we are going to wait and see whatever Speaker 
Boehner sends over to Harry Reid'' and Harry Reid would say ``Oh, yes, 
please. We will take up whatever the Boehner bill is.'' That was never 
done, and they know that.
  This is such an odd, peculiar season in our country politically and a 
painful season in our country culturally and practically.
  Our hope was to have a real debate on a real bill. I was part of the 
team in writing this bill. This bill was a genuine push to reform how 
we do police work and to increase accountability and transparency 
across the country.
  The bill that we just needed four Democrats to join--just four 
Democrats to join--to be able to open it up for debate would have 
banned choke holds across the country.
  It would have required the reporting of all serious bodily injury or 
death in police custody from everywhere in the country, to start 
tracking all of this.
  It would have gathered information on no-knock warrants all around 
the country to start tracking this information to see if they are being 
abused.
  It would have put more body cameras on the street. This bill that we 
just needed four Democrats to join us on--just four--would have put 
$150 million more in body-worn cameras on the street. It wouldn't have 
just put those body cameras on the street; it would have also put in 
new requirements to make sure they stay on, which has been an issue.
  This bill that we just needed four Democrats to join us on, just so 
we could debate it and discuss it and amend it, would have had a whole 
new system tracking complaints and discipline actions. It would have 
pulled together records for law enforcement officers to make sure that 
they would have had those records--their commendations and their 
discipline--travel to the next department with them. So before an 
officer leaves one department and goes to the next, all the records are 
made available to the next department so that we don't have a bad apple 
moving from department to department.
  This bill that we just needed four Democrats to join on with us--any 
four--just so we could open it up and debate it and amend it would have 
changed the system on a duty to intervene, putting new obligations, new

[[Page S3179]]

training, and new requirements on an officer who is watching another 
officer do something they know is wrong to intervene in that process 
and to stop it.
  It would have a national commission to pull folks together to get the 
best ideas from around the country, to gather the best practices that 
have happened.
  There is also a new piece that is in this--it is not in the Pelosi 
bill; it is only in this bill--that deals with giving a false report if 
you are a police officer, because at times we will have a police 
officer where--when there is serious bodily injury or death, their 
written record doesn't match the reality of what really happened, and 
it is not just that they misremembered; they intentionally turned in a 
false report. This bill that we wanted to just debate today would have 
allowed us to be able to add additional penalties onto that, to make 
sure someone receives the due penalty if they try to lie on forms.
  This bill would have dealt with mental health.
  This bill would have dealt with deescalation training. This bill was 
designed to help get additional training.
  This bill has a section on it using the Museum of African American 
History to design a curriculum that we could put out to every 
department around the country on the history of race and law 
enforcement. It is modeled after what was done with the Holocaust 
Museum to deal with anti-Semitism. That is what this bill was designed 
to do. We just needed four Democrats to join us. Instead, they dug in, 
did press releases, and said: That bill is terrible. It is awful. It 
has no teeth in it. That bill is unsalvageable.
  I would ask any American listening to me and anyone in this room: Is 
there one of those ideas you don't like?
  Then the conversation was, well, we are not going to have an open 
enough process.
  Senator Scott, who is our point negotiator in this, sat down with 
Democratic leadership and said: How about 20 amendments on this bill? 
If you want to bring something up to amend it, change, it, great.
  They said no. Their desire is only Speaker Pelosi's bill or nothing. 
I think that is exceptionally sad.
  We have been through this journey so many times where we will see a 
Black man be killed, we will all watch the footage, the whole country 
rises up, and Congress starts debating, and then it stops. It stops 
because of silly stuff like this where people dig in and say: If you 
don't do it entirely our way, then we are not going to do it at all. It 
is not about solving the problem; it is just about prolonging a problem 
so you can make it a political issue when families out there want this 
solved.
  All of those things I listed are all out there.
  There are two things I have heard. We are not going to take up your 
bill. We are not going to debate it. We are not going to discuss it. We 
are going to block it from coming to the floor--which is what happened 
today. The two issues I heard are, you know what, I really want us to 
go to committee. I want a committee to look at this, take some time, go 
through this.
  That is a fascinating argument, and I wish it was true. Two weeks 
ago, the discussion was ``We need to get on this as quickly as 
possible''--until we actually put out a legitimate bill, and then my 
Democratic colleagues said, ``Well, there is a problem with how you are 
putting it out. We are going to debate it on the floor. I would rather 
debate it in committee and then have the floor bring it but not debate 
it on the floor. I don't want to debate it out here. Let's debate it 
over there.''
  No one is buying that argument. No one is buying that. If you can put 
20 amendments on this, that is what would happen in a committee. Let's 
bring it. Let's talk about it. Everyone sees what that is. Shuffling 
bills off to committee is about delaying and stalling and ``Let's delay 
this,'' because they know we won't get it this week, and they will 
delay it, and then it will be after the Fourth of July. When we come 
back from the Fourth of July, we have the coronavirus bills, as they 
know, and we have the appropriations bills, as they know. So it is 
like, OK, so it will not happen there. So then there is the August gap, 
and then it will move to September. What they are trying to do is get 
it closer and closer to the election and then make it a big election 
issue, saying: Those crazy Republicans will not resolve this. Get it 
close to the election and make it an election issue.
  Hello--why don't we just solve this instead of dragging the country 
through something we all know key ways to be able to solve?
  Two issues we know of--one is a purely political issue: stall, delay, 
try to get this closer to the election, and then divide the country. 
The second one deals with an issue on whether police officers should 
face not only criminal liability, they should face civil liability as 
well.
  You hear this get kicked around all the time with all different kinds 
of terms. Speaker Pelosi's bill says: Not only put that police officer 
in prison, which they deserve--if they murder someone, commit a crime, 
a police officer is as liable for the law as everyone else is, and if 
they are not, they should be, and we should fix that. Speaker Pelosi's 
bill says: Not only put them in prison but also civilly take their home 
and their car and their pension away from their family. Make sure we 
leave them destitute and their family destitute, as well as put them in 
prison. That is what their bill is all about.
  It is the reason why so many police officers are so frustrated and 
furious with the bill they adamantly want to put on the floor, because 
they are saying that if they did something wrong, they should face the 
consequences for it, but don't punish their family.
  Speaker Pelosi's bill says: No, the police officers should be in 
prison, and their families should have their home taken away from them 
and their police pension taken away from them and everything else.
  Do you know what we have talked about? We talked about a police 
officer facing criminal penalties, as they do now, as they should. If 
there is a civil case, why don't we bring it against the department 
that didn't train their officer, that didn't supervise that officer? 
Instead of attacking an officer's family, why don't we hold people 
accountable to actually supervise people better and push the city and 
the department to do the right thing: to train and to equip people. If 
someone is a problem, don't leave them out there on the street with 18 
discipline records; take them off the street. If you don't, the whole 
city is going to be held to account for it. That is trying to end this. 
That is trying to push toward more supervision, not just trying to be 
punitive.
  Those are the two differences that I can pick up: political and 
civil. Otherwise, a lot of what I mentioned that is in our bill is in 
their bill as well.
  Tim Scott made a very simple statement: Why don't we put this on the 
floor? Why don't we actually debate the differences that we have? Why 
don't we have a vote, and then why don't we finish this?
  Leader McConnell dedicated this week and next week to this bill on 
police reform to give 2 weeks to do all kinds of amendments, all kinds 
of debate, but instead, the conversation was ``No, don't want to do 
that; it is Speaker Pelosi's bill or nothing'' or ``Let's just slow the 
whole thing down and send it to committee and delay, delay, delay 
this.''
  Why don't we deal with this right now? There are 2 weeks that have 
been set aside to do it. There is plenty of time for amendments. Why 
not do that instead of just blocking the bill?
  I don't know a lot of folks who say to me: I really don't want there 
to be more body cameras on the street. I don't want any more oversight 
on law enforcement when they turn in a false report or when they turn 
off their body camera.
  I don't run into a lot of people who say: I want to just go ahead and 
leave the system the way it is.
  We really don't know what is happening in a police department when 
there is bodily injury and harm.
  I meet a lot of people who say: Those things make sense to me. Why 
don't we do it?
  Unfortunately, that is my same question today standing on the floor 
of the Senate: Why don't we do it?
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from 
Oklahoma, Senator Lankford, for his dedication to this issue and his 
very substantive output.

[[Page S3180]]

  I was privileged to serve on the minigroup that put a lot of work 
into this under Senator Scott's very able leadership. I am thankful for 
the way Senator Lankford always approaches issues, not disparaging 
motives but always looking at ways to improve and make this world a 
better place because that is what this is about.
  I have been listening to a lot of the arguments, a lot of the 
discussion, and I am saying to myself: If somebody watching this from 
afar--from Oklahoma or from West Virginia or from Vermont--I am 
thinking to myself, what is all this talk about 60 votes and cloture 
and all this? They are not focused on that. All they know is that we 
failed--this failed.
  This was an opportunity that we should have grasped. We had a chance 
to discuss the need for police reform and to look at the very serious 
issues of racial inequalities. I am exceedingly disappointed. I thought 
yesterday--no, actually Monday, I thought, good, we are going to get on 
this bill. We are going to have a healthy debate and amendments. We are 
going to be in front of the American people, giving our different 
opinions. We are going to vote up or down, and we are actually going to 
have a product here that is actually going to help. But it derailed. It 
derailed badly. I am very disappointed by that, as I think everybody in 
this country should be.
  Those who are protesting, those who are deeply hurt by what they have 
seen--they don't care about cloture and 60 votes and who gets the 
political point and who is going to be able to drag this to the 
election. They care about getting something done on a deeply emotional 
issue.
  We know that every American is entitled to equal protection under the 
law. We also know there are a lot of good police officers in this 
country--many, the vast majority. It is clear, though, that we have a 
real need to improve our law enforcement so that every American can 
have the confidence that officers are there to serve them equally.
  We should provide better resources to train police on not just 
deescalation but use of force and intervention, all of the issues that 
we saw come forward in the horrifying death of George Floyd.
  We should provide more body cameras. We wouldn't have known about 
George Floyd had there not been a camera. I don't believe there was a 
camera on the officer; it was a bystander's camera. But cameras can be 
so incredibly useful to protect the rights of the people who are 
confronted and to protect the rights of the police. So we need to make 
sure that those are not only provided and there for our law enforcement 
but that they are turned on. As we saw in Louisville, they were not 
turned on.
  We should make sure that bad police officers can't get passed from 
department to department and that their disciplinary actions and 
employment records are there, kept either locally or--the Pelosi bill 
says kept at the State; the President says kept at the Federal--anyway, 
in any event, kept for the transparency we need.
  We should eliminate the use of choke holds by officers unless the 
officer is in a situation where he can't get out of it, but quite 
frankly, I am for banning them in any circumstance.
  Those statements are really not very controversial, and most 
Americans really agree with them. How do we know that? Both the bill 
introduced by Senator Scott and cosponsored by 47 Republican Senators 
and the bill introduced by Senator Booker and supported by many 
Democrats included these provisions in each one of their bills.
  We have a nonpartisan Congressional Research Service that we rely on 
for nonpartisan advice. The quotes from their report in comparing both 
bills: Both bills seek to establish best practices for law enforcement 
officers and train officers in areas on the use of force and racial 
bias. Both bills would seek to increase the use of body cameras worn by 
State and local law enforcement--both bills. Both bills would contain 
provisions designed to enhance transparency concerning records of 
misconduct by law enforcement officers--both bills. Both bills include 
provisions designed to limit the use of choke holds by Federal, State, 
and local law enforcement--although the two statutes do differ in the 
breadth and approach. What happens when we differ with the House? We go 
to conference, and we work out our differences. But we are not having 
that chance today.
  Given these areas of common ground, it should have been easy for us 
to come together and to pass that motion to begin the debate on the 
Senate floor. That is what we are supposed to do.
  There are a few major differences in the bill, and this is where I 
think the American people would have really tuned in to the debate. We 
know that there is a difference on qualified immunity. Let's have a 
debate. Let's have a debate.
  Had we moved forward, I think we could have ended up with a 
bipartisan bill that could pass both the House and the Senate and 
signed into law. As we are now, do you know what we have, as Senator 
Scott said in the speech he gave about an hour ago? Nothing. We have 
nothing. We have people on the streets of every town in America begging 
us to do something positive to help the situation, and today, 
crickets--nothing--because we couldn't get cooperation.

  It would have made significant progress. I heard Senator Scott say--
and I didn't realize this until I heard him say it on the Senate 
floor--20 amendments and a managers' amendment he offered in 
conversations with the other side, and again, no--nothing. We don't 
want that.
  We don't have the best record on showing the American people that we 
can work together and get things done, but, boy, we could have shown 
them that today. We could have shown them that the rest of the week as 
we debate those issues. I can guarantee you, on some of the sticky 
issues, we would have had great agreement. Maybe we all wouldn't have 
agreed on it, but some of each from each part of our party and each 
part of the country would have agreed on those issues and formulated 
better, smarter, more efficient legislation. We could have demonstrated 
that we are united in support of the civil rights of all Americans and 
in support of the men and women in law enforcement. Instead, 
partisanship was allowed to carry the day.
  It should be clear, because I think it should be to the American 
people, that this motion--the other side says, ``We don't have a seat 
at the table''--would have provided the world stage for their seat at 
the table to debate this issue.
  We need 60 votes to continue, and here I am talking about the 
technicalities of how to get it done. But there would have been an 
enormous amendment process that probably would have been quite lengthy 
and very beneficial.
  I am very disappointed. I am disappointed to tell the American people 
that we are listening to you, but, you know, maybe it is not in our own 
political benefit to cooperate to move forward, so let's just draw it 
out, as Senator Lankford said.
  I think it is important to point out in the process, if we had an 
amendment debate, if we had a debate on the Senate floor, if we 
cultivated and came up with a final product, it is still within the 60-
vote margin for the other side to say: No. Can't do it. It is not 
enough. Can't go there.
  OK. At least we tried. Now we have nothing.
  As we move forward--I was on several radio interviews today, and a 
lot of people want to know what is next. I don't know what is next. We 
have to do better than this. We have to do better, with what we see 
happening in our country and listening to the cries.
  When I heard Senator Scott's speech, when he talked of the 
communities that are most vulnerable, that have the most difficulties 
in all of the struggles of their lives, we owe it to them to have this 
debate on the floor of the greatest deliberative body, the Senate.
  We could have demonstrated a lot today, and it didn't work. It was 
denied by 44 Senators. And here we are having to go back to our 
constituents, go back to those folks who are very vulnerable, and say: 
It didn't matter enough to try to fix it. It didn't matter enough that 
we gave each other 20 amendments. It didn't matter enough that we were 
going to have the debate on the Senate floor. It didn't matter enough 
to have our experts come in and tell us what the best is. It didn't 
matter.
  I hope maybe, as time goes by, it will matter because this issue is 
not going away, and our passion to solve it as a collective body 
shouldn't go away. I am

[[Page S3181]]

committed to seeing that it doesn't go away.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, this afternoon, we heard a lot of rhetoric. 
I would like to now deal with some reality. As so often happens, the 
reality is different from the rhetoric.
  Since I last spoke on the Senate floor in the wake of George Floyd's 
murder, the American people's calls for justice and accountability have 
not diminished. Fortunately, they have grown stronger, and rightfully 
so. Even since then, our Nation has had to confront yet another 
needless killing of an African-American man, when an Atlanta police 
officer shot Rayshard Brooks twice in the back when he was fleeing from 
officers.

  Now, I know from my own experience in law enforcement that nobody can 
dispute that police officers have incredibly challenging jobs. No one 
will dispute that they are faced with difficult, split-second decisions 
that impact life and death, but that difficulty does not excuse the 
fact that something is deeply wrong in our country. It does not excuse 
the fact that people of color have disproportionately suffered from 
police misconduct. People of color disproportionately are profiled by 
police, are stopped by police, are arrested by police, and are victims 
of excessive force at the hands of police.
  Confronted with the killing of George Floyd, millions of Americans 
are demanding we do better as a nation. They recognize that 
longstanding societal prejudices and biases and have created a law 
enforcement culture and broader criminal justice system that 
perpetuates these prejudices and biases. They demand that we roll up 
our sleeves and do the hard work of ensuring that those charged with 
preserving the rule of law are also subject to it, that no person is 
above the law.
  For millions of Americans, the time to act is now, but I think the 
Senate is acting as though it is not up to the task. On Thursday, the 
House is expected to pass comprehensive legislation to reform policing, 
and it is going to do that with Republicans and Democrats voting for 
it. The Senate has only advanced a patchwork of half-measures that 
would do little more than to place a handful of bandaids on deep, 
generations-old wounds.
  As someone who knows him, I don't doubt at all that the legislation 
drafted by Senator Scott is a good-faith attempt at finding consensus 
within the Republican Conference on how to reform policing, but by any 
reasonable measure, the bill the Republicans have put forward actually 
fails to reform policing. On many of the most pressing issues, such as 
addressing true racial inequalities or disparities or discrimination, 
the Republican bill defers either by doing nothing at all or by leaving 
it to a future commission to study.
  The Republican bill purports to create a new grant program to fund 
and mandate the use of body-worn cameras, which have been instrumental 
in holding both the police and suspects accountable. Maybe everybody 
failed to notice, but Congress already created that program 5 years 
ago, and our Committee on Appropriations, in a bipartisan fashion, has 
been funding it every year since, all 5 years. This is not something 
new.
  The Republican bill would create grant incentives to encourage police 
departments to change behaviors. The legislation introduced by Senators 
Booker and Harris would actually change those behaviors. They don't 
say: Here. Please do it. They say: Here. You have to do it. They do it 
by banning choke holds, and they ban no-knock warrants.
  Unlike the Booker-Harris bill, the Republican bill would not address 
qualified immunity, which allows officers to evade accountability even 
when a court finds they have violated constitutional rights. Can you 
imagine anybody else in this country, when violating someone's 
constitutional rights, standing up and saying: ``But I am in a 
protected group. You can't do anything about it. Bye, bye now. See 
ya''?
  The Republican bill does nothing to address racial profiling. It does 
nothing to ensure that deadly force is used only as a last resort--not 
as a first resort and especially not against somebody who, while 
running away, gets shot in the back and is given the death penalty. It 
also does nothing to ensure there will be Federal oversight when a 
local law enforcement agency demonstrates a pattern of violating their 
citizens' civil liberties.
  It is well-known that the Trump administration has effectively 
abandoned pattern or practice investigations and consent decrees, which 
are proven instruments for positive change within some of our troubled 
departments. That is why the Booker-Harris bill strengthens these 
investigations at both the Federal and State levels.
  At every turn, where the Republican bill provides a talking point, 
the Booker-Harris bill provides real accountability and real 
transparency. Sadly and, I think, disturbingly, the fact that the 
majority leader will not even allow the Senate to debate the Booker-
Harris bill reveals that he is interested in neither.
  For a moment last week, it appeared that some Republicans were 
serious about finding bipartisan compromise. During a Judiciary 
Committee hearing on policing reform, Chairman Graham said he would 
like the committee to work together to find solutions, ``to sit down'' 
and see if we could ``reconcile [the policing reform] packages and come 
up with something in common.'' A number of Republican colleagues on the 
Judiciary Committee even expressed an openness in reevaluating 
qualified immunity to ensure that there would be a sense of 
accountability within police departments.
  I agree that these are difficult issues, but certainly, based on my 
experience under both Republican and Democratic majorities, I know the 
Judiciary Committee is capable of handling them. I know because we have 
done it before on tough issues. Let me give you an example.
  Seven years ago, a bipartisan group of Senators--Republicans and 
Democrats across the political spectrum--put together a thoughtful, 
bipartisan bill to reform our immigration system, but the bill wasn't 
put here on the Senate floor with a ``take it or leave it.'' As 
chairman of the Senate Judiciary, I held three hearings on the bill and 
then held 5 days of markups, some going late into the night. We 
considered 212 amendments, 141 of which were adopted, including 50 
amendments offered by Republicans and voted on by both Democrats and 
Republicans. Our process was fair, thorough, and deliberate. What 
happened when it came to the Senate floor? There were 68 Senators from 
both parties across the political spectrum who supported the 
legislation and voted for it.

  Now, if we could replicate that process for policing reform today--go 
through committee, have the debate, bring up the amendments, have the 
hearings, vote on something, and bring it here to the floor with that 
kind of strong support--I would suspect even more Senators, Democrats 
and Republicans alike, would support it.
  Senator McConnell is skipping all of that. He is not allowing the 
Judiciary Committee to do its work. He is not attempting to build 
bipartisan compromise. He is, instead, forcing the Senate to take up a 
wholly inadequate partisan bill or to do nothing at all. ``Here, vote 
for this deeply flawed bill or you get nothing.'' That is not being the 
conscience of the Nation. That is not why I and many others came to the 
Senate. That is not how the Senate gets things done, and every Senator, 
Republican and Democrat alike, knows that.
  So I would suggest to the leader, if he is serious about tackling 
racial injustice and policing reform, that there is a blueprint to 
follow. This is not it. I urge the majority leader to reverse course. 
If he is unwilling to bring meaningful legislation to the floor to 
address these issues today, well then, allow the Judiciary Committee to 
put in the hard work that is necessary to build bipartisan consensus. I 
am sure it could be done within a couple of weeks of actual hearings 
and votes in our committee.
  Instead, the leader is insisting on a process that is designed to 
fail. In doing so, the Senate fails. The Senate fails George Floyd, and 
it fails Breonna Taylor, and it fails countless others who have been 
victims of brutality or discrimination by a flawed justice system. In 
doing so, the Senate also fails the American people.
  I hope this is not the path we take. I voted not to go forward with a 
flawed process, hoping we might have a real bipartisan process. I 
believe the Senate

[[Page S3182]]

should be the conscience of the Nation. Let's be so in this. Let's go 
to committee, and let's have Republicans and Democrats vote for or 
against amendments and bring a bill to the floor.
  Stop these ``take it or leave it'' steps by the Republican leader. 
Let's have a bill that both Republicans and Democrats have worked on, 
and then bring it up. Let's vote up or down on amendments. Let's give 
the American people something they can be proud of and something, 
finally, the Senate can be proud of.
  I do not see another Senator who seeks recognition, so I suggest the 
absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                            Pride Month 2020

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, our Founders did not give us a perfect 
nation. Even they knew that. When Thomas Jefferson, himself a 
slaveowner, reflected on the existence of slavery in a nation which 
claimed to believe that all men are created equal, he wrote: ``I 
tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his 
justice cannot sleep forever.''
  Jefferson was not alone as a slaveowner. George Washington--the 
namesake of this great city and another great State, the father of our 
Nation--and his wife owned 300 slaves. Just minutes before he died, he 
asked his wife to bring the two copies of his last will for him to look 
at for one last time and to decide.
  He handed one of the copies of the wills to his wife and said: Burn 
this one, and keep the other. What he burned would have released all of 
his slaves at the moment of his death. The one he signed said that they 
would continue to be his wife's slaves for as long as she lived. He was 
the father of our Nation. We might not have had an independent nation 
without his skill and leadership; yet he was not a perfect man by any 
means.
  The true measure of a nation's greatness is not simply the words 
written by an earlier generation; it is the work of every generation to 
make those words not just ideals but facts. We see that work all around 
us today.
  For weeks, Americans have joined together in an incredible display of 
constitutional petition of this government, of this Nation, for change. 
In cities large and small and in virtually every State, they are 
protesting systemic racism and police violence against people of color.
  These protests have spread around the world. Videotapes and DNA 
evidence have done more to assault the foundation of justice in America 
than anything in our history.
  In the midst of a pandemic caused by a new virus, a multi-ethnic, 
multigenerational alliance seems to have found a collective will to 
confront one of humanity's oldest viruses--the virus of racism.
  It was a different protest 51 years ago this month that began one of 
the newest chapters of America's long struggle for equal rights. That 
protest is the reason that June is celebrated as Pride Month.
  It started in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the 
Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. Today, 
the name ``Stonewall'' stands as a milestone on America's journey 
toward equal justice, alongside such revered names as ``Selma'' and 
``Seneca Falls.'' In 1969, however, the Stonewall Inn was a ramshackle 
refuge for outcasts--a home away from home for some of the poorest, 
most powerless members within one of America's most marginalized 
communities. Its patrons included drag queens and lesbians, transgender 
and gender nonconforming people, homeless LGBTQ youth who lived in 
nearby Christopher Street Park after being abandoned by their own 
families.
  Police raids and arrests were regular events at the Stonewall Inn, as 
they were at most gay bars in America at that time, but something 
changed during that raid in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969. 
Something in this great universe shifted. That night, when the police 
became violent, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn fought back.
  The Stonewall uprising was a 6-day protest against police 
mistreatment, and while the protests were contained almost entirely 
within Greenwich Village, they changed the world.
  On the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, the first Gay 
Pride parade was held in New York and Los Angeles and in the city of 
Chicago. Within 2 years of that uprising, there were gay rights 
organizations in every major city in the United States and Canada, 
Australia and Western Europe.
  The month of June is now recognized throughout much of the world as 
Pride Month--a celebration of diversity, acceptance, and inclusion.
  Last year, on the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, the grand marshal 
leading Chicago's Pride Parade was our city's first openly gay mayor, 
Lori Lightfoot--an incredible leader.
  This year, most Pride parades and festivals in the United States and 
around the globe were canceled or transformed into virtual celebrations 
because of COVID-19, but those virtual gatherings still had much to 
celebrate.
  We have witnessed profound progress in the half-century since 
Stonewall. Public attitudes about gay and trans rights have increased 
greatly. Marriage equality is now the law of the land. Openly gay men 
and women serve as corporate and civic leaders, as mayors, Governors, 
Members of Congress, and an openly gay, married man just ran a serious 
campaign for President. Gay men and lesbians serve openly in America's 
Armed Forces. While this administration has regrettably reinstated a 
ban on transgender persons serving openly in the military, trans men, 
women, and children are becoming more visible members in much of the 
rest of our society.
  This June also brings a major new cause for celebration. In a 
landmark 6-to-3 ruling, the Supreme Court of the United States has 
ruled that employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation 
and gender identity is prohibited under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 
This is an amazing story in history, where an ultra-conservative 
Congressman from Virginia in 1964 thought that he would torpedo the 
civil rights bill by adding the word ``sex'' into those bases for 
discrimination, thus inviting protection for women. He was sure that 
would be the end of the conversation. His amendment was adopted and of 
course led to a lot of debate on gender equality and ending gender 
discrimination. Little did he know--or many others--that it would lead 
to this historic Supreme Court ruling when it came to sexual 
orientation. This is history happening before our eyes, and thank 
goodness--thank goodness--we are alive to see it.
  But work of equal justice under the law is never finished. We were 
reminded of that 2 weeks ago when the Trump administration released a 
discriminatory rule that attempts to eliminate explicit healthcare 
protections for LGBTQ Americans. We are reminded that the work of 
equality is not finished each time we learn of another victim of 
alarming violence--violence against Black transgender women, including 
the deaths of 25-year-old Riah Milton in Ohio and 27-year-old Dominique 
``Rem'mie'' Fells in Philadelphia.
  On May 29, 4 days after George Floyd's murder, more than 100 of the 
Nation's most prominent LGBTQ civil rights groups released a letter 
condemning racial violence. Their letter said that violence against 
transgender and gender nonconforming people of color happens ``with 
such regularity, it is no exaggeration to describe it as a[n] epidemic 
of violence.'' The groups went on to say: ``We understand what it means 
to rise up and push back against a culture that tells us we are less 
than them, that our lives don't matter. . . . Today, we join together 
again to say Black Lives Matter and commit ourselves to the actions 
those words require.''
  Among the organizations signing the pledge are the Human Rights 
Campaign, Equality Illinois, and the AIDS Foundation of Chicago.
  Nearly all Americans recognize Dr. King's ``I Have a Dream'' speech 
at the 1963 March on Washington. It was a great moment in America's 
long struggle for equal rights. But how many of us know that the 
organizational genius behind that great gathering was a gay Black man--
Bayard Rustin?
  How many of us know the names of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia 
Rivera--

[[Page S3183]]

activists and transgender women of color, members of one of the most 
marginalized and victimized groups in America. They were also leaders 
of the Stonewall uprising. They both continued to fight for gay and 
trans rights all of their lives--until Marsha's death in 1992 and 
Sylvia's death a decade later.
  Years after Stonewall, Marsha P. Johnson recalled:

       History isn't something you look back and say it was 
     inevitable. [History happens] because people make decisions 
     that are sometimes very impulsive and of the moment, but 
     these moments are cumulative realities.

  James Baldwin, a brilliant writer and thinker, a gay Black man, 
warned us that ``nothing can be changed until it is faced.''
  Stonewall was a tipping point. The protests today against the deaths 
of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud 
Arbery, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, and so many other 
Black men and women and children are, in fact, a tipping point.
  Let's not look away from this historic moment of change. Let this 
Senate join on the right side of history. Let's not let a procedural 
setback on the floor of the Senate stop us from finding some common 
ground to move forward. Let's acknowledge the rightness of this month's 
Supreme Court decision and pass the Equality Act to make it plain that 
discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is 
illegal and will not be tolerated, not just at your place of employment 
but all across America in every walk of life. Let's act to end state-
sanctioned violence and oppression against our Black and Brown brothers 
and sisters. Let's do our part, in our time, to make the noble promises 
of our Founders real for all Americans


                                  DACA

  Mr. President, last week, in another landmark decision, the Supreme 
Court rejected President Trump's effort to repeal deportation 
protections for Dreamers and young immigrants who came to the United 
States as children.
  In an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts--an opinion which I have 
here--the Court held that the President's decision to rescind the 
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program was ``arbitrary and 
capricious.''
  It was 10 years ago--10 years--that I joined Republican Senator Dick 
Lugar of Indiana on a bipartisan basis to call on President Obama to 
use his legal authority to protect Dreamers from deportation. President 
Obama responded by creating DACA, which provides temporary--2 years at 
a time--protection from deportation to Dreamers if they register with 
the government, pay a substantial fee, and pass a criminal background 
check.
  More than 800,000 Dreamers came forward to sign up for DACA. It 
unleashed the full potential of these young men and women, who are 
contributing to America as teachers and nurses and soldiers and small 
business owners. More than 200,000 DACA recipients are now 
characterized by our government as ``essential critical infrastructure 
workers.'' I didn't make that up; it was a definition of President 
Trump's own Department of Homeland Security. Two hundred thousand of 
the 800,000 DACA recipients are essential critical infrastructure 
workers. Among these essential workers are 41,700 DACA recipients in 
healthcare--doctors, intensive care nurses, paramedics, respiratory 
therapists.
  But on September 5, 2017, President Trump repealed DACA. Hundreds of 
thousands of Dreamers faced losing their work permits and being 
deported to countries they barely remember. Thankfully, the Supreme 
Court has now rejected that effort.
  Unfortunately, the President, through his tweets, has responded by 
attacking the Court and threatening the DACA protectees again. But 
Chief Justice Roberts made it clear it is not going to be easy for the 
President to carry out his threat. The Chief Justice wrote that in 
order to repeal DACA, the administration must consider ``accommodating 
particular reliance interests.'' Here is what it means: In order to 
repeal DACA, the administration must consider the interests of those 
who have come to rely on the program. This includes not just DACA 
recipients but their American citizen children, the schools where DACA 
recipients study and teach, and the employers who invested time and 
money in training them.
  Today, I am calling on President Trump to do the right thing for our 
Nation and not make another effort to repeal DACA. Instead, the 
President should direct the Department of Homeland Security to reopen 
DACA. Since 2017, when the President announced the end of DACA, the 
program has been closed to new applicants. As a result, there are tens 
of thousands of Dreamers who have never been able to apply for their 
opportunity under DACA.
  Now Congress also has a responsibility. Last week, President Trump 
tweeted, ``I have wanted to take care of DACA recipients better than 
the Do Nothing Democrats, but for two years they refused to 
negotiate.'' Here is the reality: President Trump has rejected numerous 
bipartisan offers to protect the Dreamers.
  One example: On February 15, 2018, the Senate considered a bipartisan 
amendment offered by Republican Senator Mike Rounds and Independent 
Senator Angus King, which included a path to citizenship for Dreamers. 
A bipartisan majority of Senators supported the amendment, but it fell 
short of the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate because of the Trump 
administration's opposition. On that same day, the Senate voted on the 
President's immigration proposal, and that amendment failed by a 
bipartisan majority of 39 to 60. In other words, we came close to 60 in 
a bipartisan effort to answer the President's challenge. His response 
legislation received 39 votes for and 60 against in the Senate.
  On June 4, 2019, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6, the 
Dream and Promise Act--legislation that would give Dreamers a path to 
citizenship--with a strong bipartisan vote. The Dream and Promise Act 
has now been pending in the Senate, on the desk of Senator McConnell, 
for more than 1 year.
  On Monday, I sent a letter signed by all 47 Democratic Senators 
calling on Senator McConnell to immediately schedule a vote on the 
Dream and Promise Act. The President has challenged us: Do something 
legislatively. Do something, Congress.
  Senator McConnell, it is within your power for us to do something and 
to do it quickly.
  Over the years, I have come to the floor of the Senate many times to 
tell the simple stories of these Dreamers. These stories show what is 
at stake when we consider the fate of DACA
  Today I want to tell you about Diana Jimenez. She is the 123rd 
Dreamer whose story I have told on the Senate floor. She came to the 
United States from Mexico at the age of 6 and grew up in Laredo, TX. 
She wrote to me, and here is what she said about her childhood:

       Growing up in the United States was both great and 
     challenging. I loved the people, the culture, the language. 
     At times it was also hard. Assimilating and learning English, 
     a totally new language for me, came with its setbacks. Still, 
     my neighbors, my teachers and the community around me were 
     very welcoming. I'll never forget that.

  When Diana was 13, her mother was admitted to the hospital. Because 
her mother didn't speak English, Diana had to serve as a translator. 
This experience inspired her to become a nurse.
  Diana attended Texas A&M. She was on the dean's list and offered a 
scholarship for academic accomplishments, but she had to turn it down 
because she is undocumented. She went on to earn her degree in nursing 
and history, along with a minor in economics.
  Thanks to DACA, she now works as an operating room nurse on the 
cardiovascular/cardiothoracic specialty team in a hospital in Austin, 
TX. She is married. She has a baby girl.
  Here is what Diane says about DACA:

       DACA means opportunity to me. I am glad I live in a country 
     that gives me the chance to better myself if I want to. There 
     are doors and opportunities for the taking all around me, and 
     DACA is the key to my success.

  Now Diana is on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic in a State 
that is seeing a dramatic increase in infection. She is worried about 
infecting her little girl. Here is what she says about her experience:

       I have come in contact with patients infected with COVID 
     multiple times, and I will continue to do so as long as I am 
     doing my work. . . . [E]ven though this pandemic has affected 
     both my personal and professional life, I will continue to do 
     my job as a nurse.

  I want to thank Diana Jimenez for her service. She is, in fact, a 
health

[[Page S3184]]

hero. She is a DACA health hero. She is putting herself and her family 
at risk to save American lives. Can we ask for anything more? She 
shouldn't have to worry about whether a decision by this administration 
will lead to her deportation.
  As long as I am a Senator, I am going to continue to come to the 
floor to tell the stories of people just like Diana Jimenez. It would 
be an American tragedy to deport this brave and talented nurse who is 
saving lives in the midst of this pandemic.
  We must ensure that Diana and hundreds of thousands of others in our 
essential workforce are not stopped from working when the need for 
their service has never been greater, and we must give them the chance 
that they deserve to become American citizens.
  Would America be better if Diana Jimenez was returned to Mexico, if 
this nurse left the operating room at that hospital, if she decided 
that she could no longer stay in the United States and was forced, 
deported to leave in the midst of this pandemic? Of course not. Every 
American knows that--Democrat, Republican, or Independent.
  Why don't we stand together and remind the President that there are 
values worth fighting for, and one of them is to make sure that this 
land of opportunity also has room for the immigrants who bring so much 
to our shores.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cotton). The Senator from Tennessee.


                       BUSINESS BEFORE THE SENATE

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I agree with the Senator from Illinois 
that there ought to be a legislative solution to the DACA children. In 
fact, we had one in 2013. We worked on it in a bipartisan way--solved a 
large number of immigration issues, trying to have a legal immigration 
system. We sent it to the House, and the House didn't consider it. I am 
ready to continue to do that.
  I disagree with one thing that happened today, though, about bringing 
bills to the floor. He talked about the importance of bringing the DACA 
legislation to the floor. That is important once we have an agreement 
either in the committee or among us informally.
  The second bill that is very important to bring to the floor is the 
National Defense Authorization Act, which has been enacted for more 
than 50 years and to which members of the Armed Services Committee have 
a chance to offer amendments.
  But Senator McConnell is the majority leader, and because he is, he 
has one right, really, which is to decide what to bring to the floor. 
He pushed aside the National Defense Authorization Act, which is 
important, and said: In these times, I think the important thing for me 
to do is to bring to the floor legislation on police reform and racial 
justice and allow the Senate to have an open amendment process. He did 
that in what would be the logical way. Since he is the majority leader, 
he offered a majority bill sponsored by Senator Tim Scott and 
cosponsored by a number of us on the Republican side.
  The vote we had a little earlier today was, shall we proceed to the 
issue of racial justice and police reform, starting with the Scott 
bill, with an open amendment process?
  Now what does that mean? That means that any Democrat could offer the 
House bill, or any Democrat could offer any other amendment. Now we 
have gotten into a bad habit around here, which I know the Senator from 
Illinois doesn't like either, which is if he offers an amendment and I 
object to his amendment, and then, if I offer an amendment, he says: 
Well, you objected to mine; I will object to yours. And so we don't 
have any amendments. But we should be able to bring an important bill 
to the floor, whether it is DACA or national defense or whether it is, 
criminal justice, and say that it is open for amendment, and let's have 
amendments.
  I think that has happened so little over the last several years that 
people have forgotten how to do it. If you don't like the amendment, 
someone can move to table it. That takes 51 votes, and sometimes it is 
60 votes. If we get to the end of the process and the minority side 
doesn't like the bill the way it is, they can keep it from going off 
the floor by refusing to give 60 votes. So it was very disappointing 
when the majority leader has taken a limited number of weeks and said: 
OK, I will give a week and a half to racial justice and police reform, 
starting with a majority bill and offering to the entire Senate a 
chance to amend it. For the other side to say: No, we will not even let 
you go to the bill, I think is very disappointing. Senator Scott is 
disappointed, and many of us are, and I don't believe it distinguishes 
the Senate when that occurs.


                          Pandemic Preparation

  Mr. President, I came to the floor today to talk briefly about a 
hearing we held yesterday in the HELP Committee on the next pandemic: 
What do we need to do to prepare for the next pandemic?
  That caused at least one Senator to say: What are we doing talking 
about the next pandemic when we are in the middle of a big one right 
now and we have a lot of work to do?
  We do have a lot of work to do, but I want to answer that question.
  The reason we have to talk about the next pandemic is that we have 
short memories. Memories fade. We go on to the next issue, and we don't 
do everything we needed to do.
  We have had public health emergencies before. Some Senators were here 
when anthrax drove Senators from their offices. There was SARS and the 
2009 flu pandemic. There was Ebola. There was MRSA. Four Presidents--
Bush, Obama, Trump, and Clinton--all reacted to those in the way you 
would think. They issued reports, and they made proposals. We passed 
nine laws and many new regulations. We tried to do some things to be 
ready for the next public health emergency. We built buildings to 
manufacture vaccines. We created a new structure for managing public 
health emergency. We changed the way the national stockpile is managed. 
We did a number of things.
  One of our witnesses yesterday was Senator Bill Frist, who was the 
majority leader during the mid-2000s. He said he made 20 speeches on or 
about 2005 when he said the only question about the next pandemic is 
not whether it is coming but when it will come. He listed six things 
that needed to be done back then. Well, the reason we had the hearing 
yesterday was that we didn't get all of those things done.
  Now, some people might say: Well, weren't we prepared for this 
pandemic? And most experts felt that we were pretty well prepared. I 
read yesterday in the hearing a front-page story from the New York 
Times on March 1 of this year about COVID-19. Let me just go back. 
March 1 was 6 weeks after we knew about the disease. At the time, we 
had about 100 cases in the United States and only 2 deaths. There were 
many cases around the world. But at that time, the New York Times 
reported that experts said it is ``far from certain'' that this disease 
would spread to all parts of the country, especially at the same time, 
and experts believed that the United States was as well prepared as any 
country to deal with this pandemic. That was on March 1. Two and one-
half weeks later, we began to shut down the whole country by order of 
the Government.
  So we were prepared, but we were surprised, too, and we 
underestimated this virus and how aggressive it is and how contagious 
it is and the fact that it can travel silently without symptoms.
  So Dr. Frist was one of the witnesses yesterday. Mike Leavitt, a 
former Secretary of Health and Human Services, former Governor of Utah, 
was another. Julie Gerberding, who was former head of the Centers for 
Disease Control, was yet another. She is now at Merck. Dr. Khaldun, who 
is the chief medical officer of the State of Michigan was there.
  We talked about the next pandemic. Why talk about it now? Because of 
the things that Dr. Frist mentioned 20 years ago and the things that 
really need to get done, we didn't get that all done in between 
pandemics. Why? We have short memories. Four or five months ago we were 
in the middle of an impeachment of the President. That sounds like 
ancient Roman history today.
  Our minds go on to the next crisis if we don't get things done. So 
the time to look at the next pandemic is while we are in the middle of 
this one and say: What are we lacking? What could we do better? And 
let's fix it while the iron is hot, while our eye is on it.

[[Page S3185]]

  For example, one of the things that they suggested that we do--all of 
the witnesses--is that we have a dedicated source of funding for 
stockpiles and for research.
  Do you think that is easy to do? I don't think it will be easy to get 
done. It took us years to pass the outdoor recreation bill, the Great 
American Outdoors Act, because of those kinds of funding issues. We are 
more likely to create a dedicated stream of funding for preparedness 
for the next pandemic if we do it in the middle of this pandemic, when 
we have our eye on the ball.
  Another recommendation is that we should have an office in the 
National Security Council to provide coordination between epidemics and 
during the next one. That is not easy to do, either. When is the best 
time to do it? Now, during this pandemic, when we have our eye on the 
ball.
  Another proposal that came up very often is that we ought to build 
manufacturing plants for vaccines that we don't use between pandemics 
and that we ought to spend the money to keep them ``open and warm,'' in 
the words of Mike Leavitt, so that they are ready when suddenly a 
pandemic comes
  Remember, this one hit us fast. There were not many cases on March 1 
and shutting down the government by the end of March. We need those 
manufacturing plants and that is something we haven't gotten done in 
the way we should have gotten done--some of it. When is the next best 
time to do it? Now, while we have our eye on the ball.
  Strengthening our State and local public health systems--Governor 
Leavitt said that over the last 40 years, we have consistently 
underfunded our State and local health systems. They are the leaders in 
our effort to deal with this or any pandemic, including the next one. 
When is the next time to get over this bad habit of underfunding our 
State and local public health systems? Right now, when we see that we 
need it and we see what deficiencies we might have.
  Now on stockpiles, in between some of these earlier pandemics, we 
changed the management of the stockpile, spent some money to ensure 
protective equipment was in there and the things we need. It turned out 
not to be sufficient. Why? The problem was that between pandemics, we 
took our eyes off the ball and budgets got tight and States and 
hospitals began to save money by getting rid of the things in their 
local stockpiles. So for all of those reasons, the things that we need 
to do need to be done now.
  I put out a white paper a few weeks ago inviting comment from experts 
around the country on what we need to do now to prepare for the next 
pandemic. Item No. 1 was tests, treatments, and vaccines. How do we 
accelerate research and development? We are doing a good job now. 
Hopefully, we will learn from that for the next pandemic.
  On disease surveillance, there is a lot of criticism of the Centers 
for Disease Control's inability to gather all the data it needs to 
track emerging diseases in the way that it should. Now is the time to 
deal with that.
  Stockpiles, distributions, and surges in hospitals. We had to shut 
down hospitals' elective surgeries, creating enormous costs all across 
the country. We had to come up with $175 billion just over the last 3 
months to try to help hospitals recover that. Can we not do a different 
job of preparing for the surge of patients that will come with a 
pandemic? Maybe the best time to do that is while we are in the midst 
of a pandemic.
  On public health capabilities, I mentioned strengthening the local 
public health system. Then, who is on the flagpole? Is there a better 
way to have a Supreme Allied Commander with all the various agencies 
that we have today.
  Those plus the need for dedicated funding are difficult issues. The 
answer to the question, ``Why in the world are we having a hearing on 
the next pandemic when we are in the middle of this one?'' is because 
for the last 20 years, between pandemics, we hadn't gotten the job done 
on some of the things that needed to be done that Dr. Frist mentioned 
when he was majority leader in 20 speeches, 20 years ago. So if we 
can't do it between pandemics, let's do it during a pandemic. That is 
what our hearing was about.
  It was a good hearing--terrific witnesses, good suggestions. At the 
end, I asked all four witnesses to please summarize the three things 
that each one thought should be done this year if they could. As it 
turns out, they are all hard to do, and, second, most of them would not 
only help with the next pandemic, but they will help with the current 
one that we are in.
  That was our fourth hearing this month by the HELP Committee. We have 
had a hearing on going back to college safely. We had one on going back 
to school safely. Those two hearings made clear to me the need for us 
to consider if we have another piece of COVID legislation in July, that 
it needs to include sufficient funds to make sure our 100,000 schools 
and 6,000 colleges can open safely in the fall. The way to open the 
economy is to go back to school and back to college and back to 
childcare. That will get us back to work. Two-thirds of the married 
families in this country have parents, both of whom work outside the 
home. Children aren't learning when they are let out of school in March 
and don't go back to school in 6 months or maybe even in 8 or 10 
months, if they don't go back in the fall. So there is some health 
risk, but if we do our job here to provide sufficient funds in July to 
make sure our 100,000 schools and 6,000 colleges can open safely, that 
will be the surest avenue toward normalcy in the year 2020 before we 
have a vaccine.
  We also had a hearing last week on telehealth. We have had 10 years 
of experience crammed into 3 months. We have gone from very little 
telehealth medical services delivered remotely to, in some cases, 40 
percent or 50 percent of the doctor-patient visits being done remotely. 
Many people think that will level off at 15 to 20 percent. That would 
probably be the biggest change in delivery of medical services in our 
Nation's history. I can't think of a bigger one. Hundreds of millions 
of visits will be done remotely instead of in-person.
  I recommended that at least the two major changes that we have made 
temporarily in telehealth be made permanent. Yesterday was what to do 
about the next pandemic.
  Next Tuesday will be our fifth hearing this month, and it will 
include Dr. Fauci, Dr. Redfield, Dr. Hahn, and Admiral Giroir, who will 
give us an update on going back to school and college and work.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have my opening statement 
from yesterday's hearing printed in the Record
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                           Opening Statement


       COVID-19: Lessons Learned to Prepare for the Next Pandemic

                            [June 23, 2020]

       Less than four months ago, on March 1--when the coronavirus 
     had caused a little more than 3,000 deaths worldwide and 2 
     deaths in the United States--The New York Times reported: 
     ``With its top-notch scientists, modern hospitals and 
     sprawling public health infrastructure, most experts agree, 
     the United States is among the countries best prepared to 
     prevent or manage such an epidemic.''
       Even the experts underestimated the ease of transmission 
     and the ability of this novel coronavirus to spread without 
     symptoms.
       Those qualities have made the virus--in the words of 
     infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, ``my worst 
     nightmare.''
       ``In the period of four months, it has devastated the 
     world,'' Dr. Fauci said recently in remarks at a virtual 
     convention.
       This committee is holding this hearing today because, even 
     with an event as significant as COVID-19, memories fade and 
     attention moves quickly to the next crisis.
       While the nation is in the midst of responding to COVID-19, 
     the United States Congress should take stock now of what 
     parts of the local, state, and federal response worked, what 
     could work better and how, and be prepared to pass 
     legislation this year to better prepare for the next 
     pandemic, which will surely come.
       On June 9, I released a white paper outlining 5 
     recommendations for Congress to prepare Americans for the 
     next pandemic:
       1. Tests, Treatments, and Vaccines--Accelerate Research and 
     Development
       2. Disease Surveillance--Expand Ability to Detect, 
     Identify, Model, and Track Emerging Infectious Diseases
       3. Stockpiles, Distribution, and Surges--Rebuild and 
     Maintain Federal and State

[[Page S3186]]

     Stockpiles and Improve Medical Supply Surge Capacity and 
     Distribution
       4. Public Health Capabilities--Improve State and Local 
     Capacity to Respond
       5. Who Is on the Flagpole?--Improve Coordination of Federal 
     Agencies During a Public Health Emergency
       I have invited comments, responses, and any additional 
     recommendations for the Senate Committee on Health, 
     Education, Labor and Pensions to consider. This feedback will 
     be shared with my colleagues, both Democrat and Republican.
       This is not a new subject for any of the witnesses we have 
     today.
       Fifteen years ago, then Majority Leader of the Senate, Bill 
     Frist, said in a speech at the National Press Club that a 
     viral pandemic was no longer a question of if, but a question 
     of when. He recommended what he calls a ``6 point public 
     health prescription to minimize the blow--communication, 
     surveillance, antivirals, vaccines, research, stockpile/surge 
     capacity.''
       Sen. Frist is one of our witnesses today. I am including 
     two of his speeches in the hearing record.
       Our next witness, Dr. Joneigh S. Khaldun (jo-NAY kal-DOON) 
     serves as the Chief Medical Executive and Chief Deputy 
     Director for Health at the Michigan Department of Health and 
     Human Services, where she has worked with other state and 
     federal agencies to coordinate Michigan's response to COVID-
     19.
       Another witness is Dr. Julie Gerberding, who served as the 
     Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 
     under President George W. Bush, and helped lead preparedness 
     efforts and the response to SARS, West Nile Virus, H5Nl avian 
     influenza, and the rise of multi-drug resistant bacteria like 
     MRSA.
       Another witness is Governor Michael Leavitt, who served as 
     Governor of Utah and as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human 
     Services and Administrator of the Environmental Protection 
     Agency under President George W. Bush.
       Following the emergence of HSN1 avian flu, Governor Leavitt 
     increasingly focused his efforts on pandemic preparedness. As 
     Secretary in 2007, he said this: ``Everything we do before a 
     pandemic will seem alarmist. Everything we do after a 
     pandemic will seem inadequate. This is the dilemma we face, 
     but it should not stop us from doing what we can to 
     prepare.''
       Congress has passed legislation to prepare for pandemics 
     before: During the past 20 years, four Presidents and several 
     Congresses enacted nine significant laws to help local, 
     state, and federal governments, as well as hospitals and 
     health care providers, to prepare for a public health 
     emergency, including a pandemic.
       Congress provided over $18 billion to states and hospital 
     preparedness systems over the last 15 years to help them 
     prepare as well.
       In writing those laws, Congress considered many reports 
     from presidential administrations, Offices of Inspectors 
     General, the Government Accountability Office, and outside 
     experts.
       The reports contained warnings that the U.S. needed to 
     address the following issues: better methods to quickly 
     develop tests, treatments, and vaccines and scale up 
     manufacturing capacity: better systems to quickly identify 
     emerging infectious diseases; more training for the health 
     care and public health workforces; better distribution of 
     medical supplies; and better systems to share information 
     within and among states, and between states and the federal 
     government.
       Many reports also warned that while states play the lead 
     role in a public health response, many states did not have 
     enough trained doctors, nurses and health care professionals; 
     had inadequate stockpiles; and struggled with funding 
     challenges. In some instances, overreliance on inflexible 
     federal funding contributed to these problems.
       Looking at lessons learned from the COVID-19 crisis thus 
     far, many of the challenges Congress has worked to address 
     during the last 20 years still remain.
       Additionally, COVID-19 has exposed some gaps that had not 
     been previously identified. These include unanticipated 
     shortages of testing supplies and sedative drugs, which are 
     necessary to use ventilators for COVID-19 patients.
       Memories fade and attention moves quickly to the next 
     crisis. That makes it imperative that Congress act on needed 
     changes this year in order to better prepare for the next 
     pandemic.
       I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today and I 
     also appreciate the feedback we are receiving on the white 
     paper. I have set a deadline for June 26 on that feedback so 
     the committee has time to draft and pass legislation this 
     year.

  Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.


                            The JUSTICE Act

  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to speak about the 
bill that we voted on earlier today and the debate that has ensued 
prior to that vote and I am sure afterwards.
  This is a moral moment for the country. I believe most would agree 
with that. The question is, How will our Nation respond at this moral 
moment?
  The brutal murder of George Floyd by a police officer ``shames us 
before the world.'' I am quoting an NAACP official who said it for all 
of us. His murder did shame us before the world, so did the murder of 
Rayshard Brooks and Breonna Taylor, and we can go on from there, with 
so many names that we haven't heard before, and many that we will hear 
over and over.
  A lot of us feel that shame. Countless millions of Americans feel 
that shame. They feel that sadness and they feel that anger all these 
weeks since that terrible moment that we all witnessed, and so many 
other moments before and after that. As they feel that shame and 
express anger and frustration, and as they protest and proclaim, as 
they march and mobilize, as they use their voice and cast their votes, 
they demand change, but not simply change in and of itself, a certain 
kind of change--the kind of change we see rarely in Washington these 
days and, frankly, rarely over the course of American history, but I 
think we might be in one of those moments now.
  They demand transformative change. They demand, and appropriately so, 
systemic change to a criminal justice system that is infused with 
racism. Their righteous demand for change is, in fact, a petition for 
justice.
  In the 1950s and 1960s, Martin Luther King said it well, among many 
things he said well, about where we were then and, unfortunately, where 
we are now. His words still ring true. He said: ``Injustice anywhere is 
a threat to justice everywhere.'' It is still true today in the context 
of this debate.
  But you can go back even further than what Dr. King said. You can go 
back hundreds of years. St. Augustine said it well, about justice. He 
said: ``Without justice, what are kingdoms but great bands of 
robbers?''
  Kingdoms as bands of robbers. There has been a lot of robbery over 
many, many years--even generations--when it comes to Black Americans. 
For hundreds of years, Black Americans have been robbed of the equal 
protection of the law.
  The U.S. Supreme Court has emblazoned on the front portico of that 
building, just yards from here, ``Equal Justice Under Law.'' So many 
Black Americans have been robbed of equal justice under law. They have 
been robbed of opportunity--the opportunity to advance in a country 
that would not hold the color of their skin against them. They have 
been robbed of that. They have been robbed of their dignity over and 
over, in grave ways and in other ways that people never saw--all the 
indignities, all the insults, and all the mistreatment. Not to mention, 
worse than that, Black Americans have been robbed of the chance to 
truly pursue the American dream.
  They have been robbed of peace of mind, something that those of us 
who are White should think about a lot more. I should think about more, 
as a White male, of the peace of mind that a parent has. A father or a 
mother should have the peace of mind in America when their son or 
daughter--but often it is their son--leaves the house in the morning: 
Will he be mistreated walking through a neighborhood by an official of 
our government law enforcement or otherwise? Will he be pulled over and 
have his rights violated because of the color of his skin? Black 
Americans have been robbed of that peace of mind, in addition to so 
many other kinds of robbery that have impacted their lives.

  So what do we do? Do we simply march and protest and express outrage? 
All of that is important. All of that is vital. In fact, all of that is 
one of the reasons we are even here talking about it on the Senate 
floor--people in both parties talking about it. In my home State of 
Pennsylvania, there are very few counties--just a handful of counties--
that have not had one or two or many more protests in a State with 67 
counties.
  Part of what we have to do as legislators, as Members of this 
legislative body called the U.S. Senate, is to, in fact, legislate. Let 
me start with the bill that was introduced about 2 weeks ago, the 
Justice in Policing Act, S. 3912.
  If I had to describe the bill in one word, it would be 
accountability. I think there is a big difference between that bill, 
the Justice in Policing Act, and the bill offered by the majority. 
Accountability is vital. It is essential. We cannot move forward and 
say that we have done something substantial to bring about justice and 
to advance the

[[Page S3187]]

cause of justice unless there is accountability. The bill also has very 
strong transparency provisions, as well as a long menu of actions we 
can take to improve police practices in a meaningful way. Let me start 
with accountability.
  When we talk about accountability, we are talking about 
constitutional violations--preventing those violations and holding 
those accountable that engage in constitutional violations. We could, 
for example, revise 18 U.S. Code, section 242. It is, right now, as a 
matter of law, a violation of law for any law enforcement officer to 
willfully deprive a person of any right protected by the Constitution. 
But it is almost impossible for prosecutors to prove willfulness, and 
the Department of Justice doesn't prosecute very many cases in a Nation 
of 18,000 law enforcement agencies.
  This bill would revise the intent standard, known by the Latin ``mens 
rea''--the intent standard--to knowingly or with reckless disregard. So 
the change of that standard under law would make it more likely that 
successful prosecutions can be brought when constitutional rights are 
violated in a criminal manner.
  The second constitutional violation provision speaks to civil 
liability. Reforming our civil liability laws are often referred to by 
a particular doctrine, qualified immunity. In cases where a citizen is 
a victim of police misconduct, this is a constitutional violation when 
it happens. Currently, a police officer who violates an American's 
constitutional rights is often protected by a liability shield we know 
as qualified immunity. This doctrine has been questioned by many. There 
are at least two Supreme Court Justices, who don't usually agree on 
much, that questioned it. Members of the U.S. Senate in both parties 
here have questioned this doctrine. Basically, the doctrine holds that 
police cannot be liable unless the conduct violates ``clearly 
established'' standards or a standard set forth in prior cases, and 
most courts dismiss such cases. The bill would reform that doctrine of 
qualified immunity to ensure that Americans can recover damages in a 
case where their constitutional rights are violated by the actions of 
law enforcement.
  There are two provisions that speak to accountability. There is a 
third, as well, and I will not go through all of them. Accountability 
also means strengthening pattern-or-practice investigations by granting 
subpoena power to the Civil Rights Division at the Department of 
Justice, and also providing grants and funding to State attorneys 
general to conduct these pattern-or-practice investigations at the 
State level. The focus here, again, is on constitutional violations 
that are systemic in a local jurisdiction or systemic in a State 
agency.
  What results from these kinds of investigations often are consent 
decrees. These consent decrees by courts are, of course, supposed to be 
judicially enforced. These decrees can often ensure that a police 
department implements reforms. Here is one of the problems. The Trump 
administration has virtually abandoned this practice of bringing these 
pattern-or-practice investigations. The Obama administration opened 25 
such cases. But even under the Obama administration, there was a 
constraint because of the lack of subpoena power. That should be 
changed.
  I will just mention two more provisions. It is a long list, but I 
will just mention two more. The Justice in Policing Act bans choke 
holds and bans carotid holds. And No. 5, it bans no-knock warrants in 
Federal drug cases.
  Now, what about the bill offered by the Republicans, the majority 
here in the Senate? The Republican bill does not, in my judgment, 
respond to this moral moment. It does not substantially advance the 
cause of justice because it is devoid of provisions that would impose 
accountability--real accountability--on law enforcement, and especially 
on a particular law enforcement officer who is sworn to protect 
Americans. He is not sworn to violate their constitutional rights. So 
when a law enforcement officer engages in that conduct, there must be 
accountability. The bill does not speak to that in a fashion that I 
think would bring about change.
  The bill also doesn't even explicitly ban choke holds and carotid 
holds, meaning a choke hold that cuts off your air flow, which we know 
can kill someone, and also the carotid hold, which cuts off your blood 
flow. We know that both can be dangerous. Both can be, in fact, lethal. 
The bill doesn't ban them. That is the only reason, potentially, we are 
even here debating this, because the American people--God only knows, 
tens of millions--watched a police officer choke the life out of a 
human being, George Floyd. Without that video, I am not sure we would 
be here debating this bill or any bill. But the idea that this practice 
is not banned under this bill makes the bill woefully deficient, and I 
think that is an understatement.

  The bill fails to ban no-knock warrants, even in the context--
frankly, a limited context--of Federal drug cases. It doesn't do that. 
That kind of a ban might have saved the life of Breonna Taylor, for 
example. The Republican bill doesn't prohibit racial profiling, and it 
provides no change--no substantial change--in the militarization of 
police forces.
  In the end, we are here not just to debate and to focus on bills and 
policy in language, but we are here to talk about justice. There is a 
great hymn I heard in church over many years. It is rooted in the 
Scriptures. One of the refrains or one of the parts of the refrain of 
that hymn is this: ``We are called to act with justice.'' Those are the 
exact words of that hymn. The first couple of lines of the hymn are: 
``Come! Live in the light!'' And then it goes on to say: ``We are 
called to act with justice.''
  If we are going to act with justice here by way of legislation, we 
should listen not just to the Scriptures or to Dr. King or to St. 
Augustine. We should also listen to a more recent Dr. King. He just 
happens to be the former Education Secretary, Dr. John B. King. He just 
testified a couple of weeks ago in our Health, Education, Labor, and 
Pensions Committee, the committee that Senator Alexander was talking 
about.
  Former Secretary of Education King said the following regarding 
students returning to school this year, and I think it bears directly 
not just on these justice issues but also on the broader agenda that we 
should push forward to advance the interests of Black Americans and 
communities of color.
  Dr. King, in this testimony just recently, said the following.

       When our students return to school buildings, they will 
     need additional supports as they grapple with the continued 
     reality of racism in America and the legacy of over 400 years 
     of anti-Blackness. The murders of George Floyd--

  And then he lists some others--

       [Those murders] have once again sent the message to Black 
     students that their lives are devalued.

  He goes on in his testimony to talk about the moment we are in--the 
moment I have called the moral moment, as have others.
  Dr. John King said:

       [We face a moment where] our nation's students of color and 
     their families also find themselves enduring a pandemic that 
     disproportionately impacts their health and safety, mired in 
     an economic crisis that disproportionately affects their 
     financial well-being, and living in a country that too often 
     still struggles to recognize their humanity.

  As Dr. Martin Luther King and Dr. John King, the former Secretary of 
Education, and others have told us, we have to make sure this is a 
moment we can act with justice, as the hymn tells us.
  All of us, no matter where we are from and no matter what party we 
are in--all of us--are called to act with justice. So let us not fail 
to act with justice in this moral moment. Let us embrace this moment. 
Pass the Justice in Policing Act or something very close to that, and 
bring the warm light of justice to millions of Americans, especially 
Black Americans.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana


                            Border Security

  Mr. YOUNG. Mr. President, there has been a lot of talk on this floor 
about border security in recent years. It is amazing how much of what 
is said resembles what was said a quarter century ago. I am equally 
amazed by how the politics of border security have changed over that 
time period.
  Earlier this week--it has been widely publicized--President Trump 
visited

[[Page S3188]]

Yuma, AZ, to highlight the continued need for border security. Now, as 
someone who has actually had firsthand experience with border security, 
I thought I would say a few words as well.
  As a U.S. marine in the 1990s, I spent months in a desolate, 
forbidding stretch of desert--my apologies to Arizonans--that was a 
stone's throw away from Yuma, AZ, the same place where these Border 
Patrol agents stand. Now, my marines and I were part of an unmanned 
aerial vehicle unit. We worked with Border Patrol agents, like these 
gentleman, and we were charged with patrolling the border in the Yuma 
Sector. They were on the ground. We flew drone missions to help them 
collect intelligence. It is a dangerous area with heavy narcotics and 
human trafficking.
  While there, I saw the need for greater border security. Now, 
uniquely, among the military services--and I know our Presiding Officer 
had a distinguished career in the U.S. Army--the Marines are charged, 
by statute, with tackling whatever mission, however daunting, the 
President requests of us. In fact, in 1834, Congress passed a statute 
right on point, indicating, under the law, that the Marines would 
``conduct such other duties as the President or Department of Defense 
may direct''--pretty broad. It is pretty broad language. When in doubt, 
send in the Marines, I guess.
  Well, our unit's mission--not glamourous, but important then and 
important now--was to help make the border more secure. It is a 
critical mission, which remained a priority under Presidents Clinton 
and Bush.
  Later, a physical barrier was placed in the Yuma Sector. It was years 
after I left Active Duty. Trafficking decreased over roughly a decade's 
time period by 95 percent after that physical barrier was erected. It 
shouldn't be controversial. It is not ideological. This is just 
factual. We know walls work when properly and intelligently placed.
  Now, historically, there has been a bipartisan consensus around the 
idea that we not only put boots on the ground to protect the border but 
we also must invest in technology to secure our border, including 
physical barriers where they are required. The President was absolutely 
right years ago when he brought up this issue. He was right this week 
in Yuma, AZ. He is right today, and he will be right tomorrow as he 
continues to emphasize this issue. We must address this situation that 
is taking place along our southern border. We mustn't lose our resolve.
  There are illegal crossings and smugglers who are trafficking drugs 
and people that have created a horrific humanitarian crisis and an 
ongoing national security threat. Don't take it from me. According to 
the United Nations Missing Migrants Project, more than 2,400 migrants 
have died near the United States-Mexico border since 2014--2,400 
migrants over a fairly short time period. This includes 497 deaths last 
year. That is a 26-percent increase from the year prior. This is a true 
humanitarian crisis today. It is also a national security threat.
  In addition to migrants fleeing Central America, it is possible that 
foreign terrorist organizations could penetrate this porous border. So 
border security and the safety of Americans has long been and should 
remain a priority of all Republicans and Democrats, especially those 
who serve here at the Federal level.
  President Trump is not the first President--underscore ``not the 
first President''--to understand this or to emphasize this issue. When 
I was serving in Arizona as a marine, President Clinton was our 
Nation's Commander in Chief. During a 1993 press conference, President 
Bill Clinton touted increasing the number of Border Patrol agents and 
working to supply them with the best possible equipment and technology. 
He repeated this message on multiple occasions. Then, during his 1995 
State of the Union address, President Clinton said: ``Our 
administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by 
hiring a record number of new border guards.'' President Clinton 
understood this, and he wasn't the last Democrat to prioritize border 
security.
  President Obama, too, understood its importance. You see, we forget 
this. It is amazing how quickly we forget. Under the Obama 
administration, a surge of additional Border Patrol agents and 
resources were provided to secure the southwest border and to prevent 
illegal crossings. In fact, this may be uncomfortable for some, but 
President Obama was often called the ``deporter in chief'' during his 
Presidency, with roughly 3 million people deported under the Obama 
administration. Again, border security should not be a partisan issue.
  Historically, both sides of the aisle have agreed that the 
humanitarian and security issues at our southern border must be 
addressed, so it is time for Democrats to partner with Senate 
Republicans and President Trump to secure the border and to put 
Americans first.
  If we resolve to work together on a sensible solution to this 
crisis--and I resolve to--the result will be safer border towns, more 
jobs for American workers, fewer strains on limited government 
resources, and a deterrent to foreign nationals coming to America 
illegally and putting themselves and others at great risk.
  So the Senate cannot lose its nerve when it comes to the rule of law 
in addressing border security. This is one area where we cannot just 
send in the Marines. We own this. This body owns this. Every U.S. 
Senator owns this issue, so we, the U.S. Senate, must work 
collectively. We must come together on this and work with our President 
to keep America safe and secure.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Blackburn). The Senator from North 
Dakota.


                    Remembering Sister Thomas Welder

  Mr. CRAMER. Madam President, I come to the floor today with, frankly, 
a heavy heart and a fair bit of trepidation. My goal over the next few 
minutes is to pay tribute to somebody who is so special, so remarkable, 
so beloved, so important to my home State of North Dakota that I feel 
inadequate, frankly. But here I am to pay tribute to Sister Thomas 
Welder, who died and went to be with the Lord on Monday morning of this 
week at the age of 80.
  Sister Thomas was for 31 years the president of the University of 
Mary and in the last several served as president emerita--very active. 
She was a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Annunciation Monastery 
at Bismarck. She was a dear personal friend--and not just to me but to 
everyone. When I say ``everyone,'' I mean everyone who mattered. I am 
unprepared, frankly, to begin to really address all that she is and was 
and does and means to people.
  Madam President, first of all, I would like to ask unanimous consent 
to print in the Record her obituary, as well as the news release 
announcing her passing from the University of Mary
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                          Sister Thomas Welder

                     [April 27, 1940-June 22, 2020]

       Sister Thomas Welder, 80, a member of the Benedictine 
     Sisters of Annunciation Monastery, Bismarck, and president of 
     the University of Mary for 31 years, passed into eternal life 
     June 22, 2020, at the monastery, following a recent diagnosis 
     of kidney cancer.
       Mass of Christian burial is scheduled for Monday, June 29, 
     at 10:00 a.m. in Our Lady of the Annunciation Chapel (OLA) at 
     the Benedictine Center for Servant Leadership at the 
     University of Mary. Visitation will be held at OLA from 9 
     a.m. to 10 a.m. before the funeral. Due to Covid-19 
     restrictions, the funeral is limited to Welder's family and 
     close friends. The funeral can be viewed online through 
     livestream at: www.umary.edu/SisterThomas. A public vigil 
     service with Evening Prayer will be held Sunday, June 28, at 
     7 p.m. in Our Lady of the Annunciation Chapel, with 
     visitation prior from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday's visitation 
     and vigil service will also be livestreamed.
       Sister Thomas (baptismal name Diane Marie) was born in 
     Linton, N.D. on April 27, 1940, to Mary Ann (Kuhn) and 
     Sebastian Welder. She was the oldest of three children. When 
     she was two, the family moved to Bismarck.
       A graduate of St. Mary's High School, she joined 
     Annunciation Monastery after a year of college in Minnesota. 
     Attracted by the community and prayer life of the sisters, 
     she felt God's call to become one of them. As a novice, she 
     was given the name of Sister Thomas. She made her monastic 
     profession on July 11, 1961. Sister Thomas cherished 
     Benedictine monastic life which she lived faithfully for 59 
     years.
       She graduated from the College of St. Scholastica, Duluth 
     with a bachelor's degree in music and earned a master's 
     degree in music from Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.
       A dedicated servant leader, she gave her life to the 
     University of Mary for 57 years.

[[Page S3189]]

     She led from her heart and touched the lives of many. She was 
     president from 1978 to 2009. Under her remarkable leadership, 
     the school attained university status in 1986; tripled in 
     size from 925 students to 3,000; added the university's first 
     doctorate, grew on-site and online adult learning programs to 
     16 locations across the state, region and nation, and moved 
     to NCAA Division II athletics.
       Sister Thomas was present to students, faculty and staff. 
     She attended student recitals and concerts, cheered at 
     athletic events and participated in many university 
     gatherings. She called students by name and her genuine 
     caring attitude left a deep impression on them. She enjoyed 
     getting to know friends of the university whose financial 
     assistance made growth possible. After her retirement as 
     president, she was named President Emerita and served in the 
     university's Mission Advancement Office.
       One of the most widely known and highly respected women in 
     North Dakota, Sister Thomas loved visiting with people of all 
     ages and walks of life. People gave her energy. She would 
     focus her entire attention toward listening to the person 
     right in front of her. Her enthusiastic spirit, sense of 
     humor, and gentle nature made others comfortable in her 
     presence. It was a joy to be with Sister Thomas.
       Sister Thomas modeled many Benedictine values, such as 
     hospitality, respect, prayer and service, with ease and 
     grace. Benedictine values were dear to her heart. She 
     committed herself to instilling these values throughout the 
     monastery's sponsored institutions, the communities of CHI 
     St. Alexius Health and the University of Mary.
       She served on many state and national boards including CHI 
     St. Alexius Health and MDU Resources Group, Inc. She received 
     numerous honors during her lifetime including North Dakota's 
     highest honor, the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award.
       Music was one of her passions. She directed the Sisters' 
     Choir for 46 years and gave credit to the choir for the 
     beautiful liturgical music.
       Sister Thomas was grateful for many blessings in her life. 
     She was particularly thankful to two kidney donors who gave 
     her the gift of life through two kidney transplants. She 
     often prayed for and stayed connected to these special 
     people.
       A beloved woman of faith, wisdom, and humility, Sister 
     Thomas gave all of herself to so many for so long. She will 
     be deeply missed.
       She is survived by a sister, Judy (Steve) Jankus, Navarre, 
     Fla.; a sister-in-law, Marcia Welder, Apple Valley, Minn.; an 
     aunt, Sister Alene Kuhn, SSND, Mankato, Minn.; 6 nieces and 
     nephews, 11 grand nieces and nephews, one great grandniece, 
     and the Sisters of Annunciation Monastery.
       She was preceded in death by her parents and her brother, 
     George.
       Memorials may be made to Annunciation Monastery or the 
     University of Mary.
                                  ____


             [Posted by University of Mary, June 22, 2020]

   Iconic Servant Leader, Educator and University President Emerita, 
                     Sister Thomas Welder Has Died

       Bismarck, ND.--Former University of Mary President Sister 
     Thomas Welder, OSB, has passed away at her Annunciation 
     Monastery home early this morning, June 22, south of 
     Bismarck, ND, following a recent diagnosis of kidney cancer.
       Revered locally, regionally and nationally as a true 
     servant-leader for living the Gospel of Jesus, the 80-year 
     old Welder cared for the Christ-like development of all 
     University of Mary students and the well-being of all 
     faculty, staff, and her beloved Sisters of Annunciation 
     Monastery.
       ``Sister Thomas lived her life for others,'' said Sister 
     Nicole Kunze, Prioress of Annunciation Monastery. ``She was 
     always giving to others, whether it was a smile, an 
     encouraging word or a promise of prayer. She often said that 
     the greatest gift you could give a person was the gift of 
     your time, and she did that without fail. Sister Thomas 
     modeled so many of our Benedictine values with ease and 
     grace. She truly received all as Christ. She was intent on 
     maintaining a vibrant connection between the sisters of the 
     monastery and our sponsored institutions.''
       The Sisters sponsor the University of Mary, where the 
     public will be able to gather and memorialize her life and 
     lay her to rest. The celebration of Welder's life will take 
     place over two days.
       The public is welcome to join the following memorial 
     ceremonies and funeral online through livestream at 
     www.youtube.com/universityofmary/live. A public visitation is 
     planned from 1 p.m. until 7 p.m. on Sunday, June 28 in Our 
     Lady of the Annunciation Chapel (OLA), located in the 
     Benedictine Center for Servant Leadership building on campus. 
     A vigil service with Evening Prayer will follow at 7:00 p.m. 
     Before her funeral at 10:00 a.m. in OLA on Monday, June 29, a 
     second public visitation will be held prior from 9 a.m. until 
     10 a.m. The funeral is open to Welder's family and close 
     friends.
       Welder will then be immediately buried after Mass in the 
     nearby Monastery Cemetery located on the west bluff next to 
     the Benedictine Center for Servant Leadership, overlooking 
     the Missouri River.
       ``Sister Thomas Welder was a rare person,'' said University 
     of Mary President Monsignor James Shea. ``Under her 
     leadership and vision, the University of Mary was confirmed 
     in its purpose to form leaders in the service of truth in 
     renewed and ever-growing ways, and Sister Thomas's leadership 
     touched thousands of students' lives as the university grew 
     and expanded over her presidency. But perhaps even more than 
     this, Sister Thomas was known for her attentiveness, her 
     humility, her heart for service, and her love for her 
     vocation as a Benedictine Sister of Annunciation Monastery. 
     It was these qualities, too, which touched innumerable lives 
     over the course of her life.''
       In 2019, Bismarck's CBS affiliate, KXMB TV, honored Welder 
     for Women's History Month. During that interview, when 
     reporter and anchor Lauren Kalberer asked Welder what she 
     thinks about being regarded as one of the most 
     influential women of our time, ``It gives me pause. First 
     of all, what do we mean by influence? And, what kind of a 
     difference can we make, because, as I think of leadership, 
     I think about it much more in terms of influence, than I 
     do of power or control,'' responded Welder.
       During that same TV interview, Shea commented, ``Sister 
     Thomas Welder--more than leading by words, leads by her 
     example and by the way she treats people.''
       Welder influenced millions of people during her lifetime, 
     and more profoundly, so many students during her time as the 
     longest serving female university president in American 
     history from 1978 to 2009. Her joyful laugh, witty humor, 
     profound wisdom, and genuine love and respect for others were 
     hallmarks of her character as she lived the Benedictine 
     values. Her knack for remembering names, particularly the 
     thousands of students, alumni and faculty, is one of her most 
     gifted qualities that will be forever treasured.
       ``With an incredible ability to remember names and faces of 
     almost everyone she met, Sister Thomas was always focused on 
     the person directly in front of her,'' added Kunze. ``Her 
     attention to the details of daily lives and family members of 
     those she met would be recalled in future encounters. 
     Students, faculty, staff, and guests of the Monastery would 
     marvel when she asked about people and situations in their 
     lives that had been discussed months, even years, earlier. 
     She had a ready laugh and gentle nature that made others 
     comfortable in her presence.''
       Welder, a Bismarck native, attended the College of St. 
     Benedict, graduated from the College of St. Scholastica, 
     Duluth, and earned a master's degree in music from 
     Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She is a 
     member of the Benedictine Sisters of the Annunciation 
     Monastery.
       Welder began her career as a teacher at the university in 
     1963, when it was named Mary College. As president, Welder 
     helped the school gain university status, experienced steady 
     growth, added numerous undergraduate and on-site graduate 
     degree programs throughout North Dakota, helped make Mary one 
     of the premier institutions for the preparation of leaders, 
     and fostered leadership development in students and 
     colleagues. The Norsk Hstfest Association inducted 
     Welder into the Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame, she 
     received the Lifetime of Caring Award from the United Way, 
     and on May 4, 2004, she earned the state's highest honor from 
     Governor John Hoeven--the Theodore Roosevelt Roughrider 
     Award--presented to individuals who have received national 
     recognition, reflecting credit and honor upon North Dakota 
     and its citizens:
       ``. . . Sister Thomas promotes competence in communication, 
     a commitment to values and service to community. Her strong 
     belief of growing into leadership through service stands as a 
     model for North Dakota and the nation,'' reads an excerpt 
     from the plaque beneath her portrait that hangs in the North 
     Dakota Hall of Fame in the lower level of the State Capitol 
     Building.
       During the later years of her presidency, Welder endured 
     chronic kidney complications that led to a transplant in 
     2001. In 2005, she learned that due to a virus she would need 
     a second kidney transplant, but had to regularly undergo 
     dialysis until a successful second kidney transplant could be 
     done in 2011.
       At the start of Shea's current presidency in 2009 and after 
     her 31-year tenure as the fourth University of Mary 
     president, Welder continued to be involved with University of 
     Mary as president emerita--remaining active with public 
     speaking events, committees and fundraising in the department 
     of Mission Advancement.
       In lieu of flowers, if you wish to honor the memory of 
     Sister Thomas Welder, her love for University of Mary's 
     students, lifelong mission of servant leadership, and genuine 
     care for others, memorial donations are being accepted to 
     Annunciation Monastery or for the university's Sister Thomas 
     Welder Scholarship Fund at www.umary.edu/SisterThomas. They 
     can also be mailed to the Office of Mission Advancement in 
     care of the Sister Thomas Welder Scholarship Fund at 7500 
     University Drive, Bismarck, ND, 58504
  Mr. CRAMER. I am going to read some of the facts of her life from her 
obituary and do my best to fill in some personal thoughts while I do 
that. I am not going to read the entire thing.
  It starts out: ``Sister Thomas Welder, 80, a member of the 
Benedictine Sisters of Annunciation Monastery, Bismarck, and president 
of the University of Mary for 31 years, passed into eternal life June 
22, 2020, at the monastery, following a recent diagnosis of kidney 
cancer.

[[Page S3190]]

  ``A graduate of St. Mary's High School, she joined Annunciation 
Monastery after a year of college in Minnesota. Attracted by the 
community and prayer life of the sisters, she felt God's call to become 
one of them. As a novice, she was given the name of Sister Thomas. She 
made her monastic profession on July 11, 1961. Sister Thomas cherished 
Benedictine monastic life which she lived faithfully for 59 years.''
  I recall a speech--or an interview--once at an event. In fact, I 
think it was during her retirement. She was asked about monastic life. 
She was asked: What is it that grounds you? Where is it you get your 
inspiration?
  She said: ``My wellspring are the Sisters of Annunciation 
Monastery.''
  Skipping down a little bit, her obituary reads: ``A dedicated servant 
leader''--and we will speak to that in a little bit--``she gave her 
life to the University of Mary for 57 years. She led from her heart and 
touched the lives of many. She was president from 1978 to 2009.''
  I had the great honor of serving as the master of ceremonies at her 
30th anniversary as president.
  ``Under her remarkable leadership, the school attained university 
status in 1986; tripled in size . . . ; added the university's first 
doctorate, grew on-site and online adult learning programs to 16 
locations across the state, region'' and the country, and moved the 
school from NAIA to NCAA Division II athletics.
  This is an important line: ``Sister Thomas was present to students, 
faculty and staff.'' I will elaborate on that a bit as well.
  ``She attended student recitals and concerts, cheered at athletic 
events and participated in many university gatherings. She called 
students by name and her genuine caring attitude left a deep impression 
on them. She enjoyed getting to know friends of the university whose 
financial assistance made growth possible.''
  I went on many fundraising calls with her.
  ``After her retirement as president, she was named President Emerita 
and served in the university's Mission Advancement Office.''
  I had the great honor of working with her and then working for her 
after she hired me and then working with her again as a member of the 
board of trustees and sharing and serving on many boards and committees 
at the university.
  Her obituary goes on to say: ``One of the most widely known and 
highly respected women in North Dakota, Sister Thomas loved visiting 
with people of all ages and walks of life. People gave her energy. She 
would focus her entire attention toward listening to the person right 
in front of her.''
  Boy, do we need that lesson here, Sister Thomas. We need you to teach 
us.
  Let me say that again: ``She would focus her entire attention toward 
listening to the person right in front of her.''
  In fact, in a TED talk she did for TEDx on TV about, I think, 3 years 
ago or so--she was speaking to a lot of young people, of course, at 
this TED talk and was talking about connectivity, and she was speaking 
to the issue of monastic life and community and the stability that 
comes from being grounded in a community, while also talking about--not 
criticizing, mind you; she was rarely critical--but speaking of the 
challenges of the digital era. She said this: ``The challenge is to be 
fully present to those around us. The challenge is to be fully present 
to those around us, to engage face to face with one's child, with a 
colleague, with a neighbor. . . . '' and she went on to say ``even that 
person who may not be in our circle of friends.''
  See, she didn't just speak to this value of being present; she was 
present. She was the epitome of always being present. In fact, her 
humility caused her to always deflect attention away from herself and 
to the person in front of her.
  Earlier I mentioned that in the obituary it mentions she called the 
students by name, and this is perhaps the best example of what I mean 
when I say she was always present: The University of Mary had about 
3,000 students a year by the time she retired. She knew them all by 
name, and when she would greet students, faculty, friends, neighbors, 
supporters of the university, she always called you by name--but not 
just you; she asked about your spouse by name, your children by name. 
We all thought that was some special spiritual gift--a big brain with 
an incredible memory that just automatically recalls people's names. 
Yeah, she was really smart. She had a good memory, to be sure. But she 
didn't call us by name because she had a great memory; she called us by 
name because it was important to her because she knew it was important 
to us. It was a conviction, a commitment that she had to being present 
all the time. It was a remarkable thing--a remarkable thing.
  Sister Thomas modeled many Benedictine values at the University of 
Mary. We learned them all, all the time. The six that they highlight 
there are the Benedictine values of hospitality, respect for persons, 
prayer, moderation, service--really important, as she called them, 
gospel values. But she didn't just call them gospel values. She didn't 
just teach them, although she does a lot.
  By the way, the internet and YouTube are full of her speeches on 
Benedictine values and other values and leadership, especially servant 
leadership.
  ``She committed herself to instilling these values throughout the 
monastery's sponsored institutions,'' which included, of course, the 
University of Mary and CHI St. Alexius Health.
  ``She served on many state and national boards including CHI St. 
Alexius Health and MDU Resources Group,'' a Fortune 400 corporation.
  ``She received numerous honors during her lifetime including North 
Dakota's highest honor, the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award.''
  She earned them all. She earned them all. In fact, whenever she was 
complimented--which was often, as you might imagine, when you know as 
many people as she knows and have accomplished as much as she 
accomplished--she always, as I said earlier, deflected her 
accomplishments and gave someone else credit.
  She said this in an interview once when confronted with her many 
accomplishments: ``I have always been blessed with the sense that I can 
do only what I do with the guidance and the help of the Spirit.'' Think 
of that. All that she accomplished--she takes no credit but credits the 
fact that she was blessed with the sense that at least she was aware 
that the Spirit was the one that was guiding her.

  Her obituary also states: ``Sister Thomas was grateful for many 
blessings in her life. She was particularly thankful to two kidney 
donors who gave her the gift of life through two kidney transplants. 
She often prayed for and stayed connected''--connected--``to these 
special people.''
  In that TEDx speech that I talked about from about 3 years ago, she 
was talking about connectivity, as I said. She was challenging them. 
She said: ``A disconnect from our cellphone or iPad makes possible a 
reconnect with those around us.''
  ``A disconnect from our cellphone or iPad makes possible a reconnect 
with those around us.''
  I could share lots of personal stories. I am tempted to, but I don't 
think that would be the tribute she would want.
  She and I made a lot of calls together. We went on a lot of road 
trips together. We spoke at a lot of the same events. I was always 
grateful when I could go first. It was impossible to follow her--an 
incredible speaker.
  One time we were at an event--I think I was the emcee, actually--a 
local event in Bismarck. She gave one of her phenomenal speeches. They 
all are. They all were. In the audience, unbeknownst to me, was the 
president of the National Automobile Dealers Association. He came up to 
me afterwards, and he said: ``Do you realize that every year we pay 
about $50,000 for a speaker at our national annual meeting, and we have 
never had one this good?''
  I said: ``Well, I could get her to do it for less.''
  He said: ``It is unbelievable. I have never been this inspired in my 
life.''
  I would just challenge everybody who has a minute and wants to be 
inspired to just do a quick Google search of Sister Thomas Welder, and 
you will find a video that will inspire you.
  Every person I know who ever met her is better because they did, 
everybody I know whom she encountered. I once brought John Wooden, the 
great

[[Page S3191]]

wizard of Westwood, the winningest coach in NCAA history, to the 
University of Mary to give a speech on servant leadership. It was a 
remarkable time. I sat there, and as I watched Coach Wooden--he was 96 
years old at the time--come up to the stage after Sister Thomas 
introduced him, I stood between them and I thought, wow, I am between 
saints, two of the best servant leaders, who both taught and lived that 
incredible value.
  As I said, my heart is heavy. It is hard not to be sad. Yet Sister 
Thomas and I, of all of the things we talked about over the many years 
that I worked with her and for her, talked mostly about matters of 
faith.
  I am not Catholic. I do have a degree from the University of Mary. I 
am on their board of trustees. I love the place. I love the Sisters of 
Annunciation Monastery and Sister Thomas especially because she 
embodies all that is good about them. But we always talked about 
matters of faith.
  I will never forget one trip to Fargo. I will never forget, in fact, 
where we were--sitting in my car, waiting to go in to call on somebody 
about a gift to the school. And we talked about Heaven. She said: ``I 
think we're going to be surprised at who we will see there.'' And I 
thought, yeah, you are probably right.
  She gets the blessing of being there first now and seeing who all is 
there, but there will be a lot of people there who know her, and they 
are looking forward to welcoming her and thanking her for the 
incredible gift she was in their life. I look forward to the day when I 
can go and be welcomed by her. I am grateful for her life.
  I love you, Sister Thomas.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                            The JUSTICE Act

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I hope today's events in the Senate will 
not soon be forgotten by the American people. Over the last few months, 
it is an understatement to say that our country has experienced 
unprecedented physical, financial, and social turbulence. From the 
pandemic, to the economic challenges that came on its heels, to the 
widespread protests against racial injustice--the needs of our country 
should have transcended politics. Unfortunately, that does not seem to 
be the case today.
  We had been on a pretty good run, Republicans and Democrats, and put 
aside our differences to pass bold and transformative legislation to 
support our Nation's fight against COVID-19, as well as ease the 
ensuing financial fallout. I had hoped that trend would continue as we 
work together to address the injustices that still persist in our 
society, beginning with police reforms.
  As we all know by now, thanks to our friend Senator Tim Scott and 
others who worked with him, we introduced the JUSTICE Act to enact real 
and lasting reform so we can begin to restore the broken trust between 
minority communities and our law enforcement agencies. This package of 
bills addresses some of the most pressing changes that Americans have 
been calling for--ending choke holds, better training for our police 
officers, accountability for body cameras, more diverse police forces, 
and the list goes on and on.
  We know it wasn't the only bill that has been introduced in this 
Senate. Our Democratic colleagues introduced a bill of their own, which 
would address many of the same issues. While there are some important 
differences between the two, what to me is more important is that there 
was a lot in common, a lot of overlap between those two bills. That 
should have, in a normal time, when people were logical and reasonable, 
put us on a strong footing to begin debating the ultimate product, 
which is what our Democratic colleagues actually asked us to do.
  A couple of weeks ago, the Democratic leader came to the floor and 
urged the majority leader to bring a police reform bill to the floor to 
be debated and voted on before July Fourth. When Senator McConnell did 
exactly that, what did they do? As soon as they were told they would 
actually have a chance to vote on a police reform bill, they changed 
their tune--a 180-degree change.
  It kind of reminds me a little bit of last year's debacle over the 
Green New Deal. After this resolution was introduced, a number of 
Senate Democrats rushed to endorse it, but when given the opportunity 
to vote on the resolution they were praising, what happened? Not a 
single one of those individuals on the other side of the aisle voted 
for it--not one. What kind of games are they playing here? Senator 
Markey, who introduced that resolution in the Senate, even accused the 
majority leader, who scheduled a vote on a bill he was the lead sponsor 
for--he called it sabotage
  History seems to be repeating itself and not--not--in a good way. Our 
friends across the aisle, who have been asking to debate and vote on a 
police reform bill, this morning had that opportunity, but once again, 
they pulled a 180.
  Let me be clear on what we were voting on this morning. This was not 
a vote to finally pass the JUSTICE Act as is, without any changes or 
amendments; this was simply a vote to begin debating the bill. You 
can't finish a bill, you can't actually vote on legislation if you are 
unwilling to start. And that is exactly what happened this morning.
  Knowing that Republicans and Democrats did have some differences, 
even though there is a lot in common, Leader McConnell provided for the 
opportunity to have that debate right here on the Senate floor. We 
could have had that debate in front of the American people. I think it 
might have helped, No. 1, as Senator Scott likes to say, send a signal 
that we actually are listening, we hear you, we see you, and we are 
responding to you--no backroom negotiations like apparently what our 
Democratic colleagues want; rather, an open and honest debate right 
here in full view of the American people.
  Our Democratic colleagues refused to participate in the process and 
have blocked us from even considering police reform legislation. This 
``my way or the highway'' legislative strategy we have come to expect 
from our colleagues is absolutely shameful, and it is 
counterproductive.
  I remember talking to Rodney Floyd--George Floyd's brother--shortly 
before his funeral, and he said: Senator, we are from Texas. What we 
want for George is Texas-sized justice.
  I said: Rodney, I am going to do my very best to deliver.
  Unfortunately, even though there were many of our Democratic 
colleagues who decried the cruel and tragic death of George Floyd, when 
it came time to step up and actually do something about it, they 
absolutely refused.
  Let me just go over quickly what the bill would have done as 
proposed. Subject to amendments and votes, there would have been 
multiple opportunities to stop the bill if it wasn't heading in the 
direction they liked.
  First of all, this would have made lynching a Federal crime. That 
provision in the bill was actually authored by Senators Harris and 
Booker, but believe it or not, they filibustered and blocked their own 
bill.
  The JUSTICE Act would have ended the choke holds and prevented this 
dangerous and outdated tactic from being used in police departments 
across the country, but what did our Democratic colleagues do? They 
blocked it.
  This legislation would have helped local police departments improve 
minority hiring so that the departments would look more like the 
communities they served. Our Democratic colleagues blocked that too.
  This bill would have strengthened the use and accountability for body 
cameras, improved access to deescalation and duty to intervene 
training, and established two commissions to give us a better 
understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed in the long 
run. What did our Democratic colleagues do? They blocked each and every 
one of these things without even taking the time to debate.
  Frankly, it is insulting to the memory of people like Mr. Floyd and 
others for whom so much empathy and sympathy and concern was expressed 
that when the time comes to actually do something, they come to this 
empty-handed.
  For weeks, we have watched people of all races and cultures and 
backgrounds

[[Page S3192]]

marching and demanding action. They want to see greater transparency 
and accountability. They want better training and education for our 
police officers. They want to know that at the end of the day, the 
color of your skin will not determine the nature and outcome of an 
interaction with a police officer. I agree with each of those points, 
and until this morning, I believed every Member of the Senate did as 
well. But the actions we have seen this morning blocking this 
legislation, stopping us from even debating the bill, offering 
amendments, trying to make it better--I guess I was giving our 
colleagues credit, which they clearly do not deserve.
  The problems that led to the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, 
and other Black Americans have not gone away, but our Democratic 
colleagues have proven they are more interested in politics than 
solutions.
  Let the record reflect that this morning, the Senate had the 
opportunity to take the first step toward passing reforms that would 
begin to heal the divisions and distrust between law enforcement and 
the communities they served, and our Democratic colleagues 
unequivocally and shamelessly stood in the way.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming


                         Judicial Confirmations

  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today to discuss 
Republicans' historic record on confirming judges and why it matters to 
our country. It is because the rulings of these judges affect all 
Americans.
  The Republican-led Senate has seated President Trump's highly 
qualified judicial nominees at lightning speed. These judges respect 
and uphold the rule of law. This week, the Senate marks a major 
milestone by confirming the 200th--200th--Trump judicial nominee.
  The appeals court nominations and confirmations are especially 
critical. These are the circuit courts, and they rank right below the 
Supreme Court. Their decisions have a major impact on our Nation. With 
the confirmation of Cory Wilson to the Fifth Circuit, we have now 
filled all 53 appeals court vacancies that existed in the United 
States. There is not a single vacancy at that court level in America.
  We have changed the makeup of powerful appeals courts like the 
Second, the Third, the Ninth, and the Eleventh circuits. Seven of the 
12 U.S. circuit courts are now at a point where they have a majority of 
Republican-appointed judges.
  The 200 judges we have seated represent a sea change--a generational 
change in the Federal bench. I remind you that these are lifetime 
appointments, so they will decide cases for decades.
  Let me assure people who are tuning in today: These judges will apply 
the law as written. They will not legislate from the bench. We have had 
enough of that. Republicans are stemming this liberal judicial tide 
that we have lived with in the past. We are delivering on our promise 
to promote an independent judiciary.
  This concept is key to upholding our Constitution's separation of 
powers and our system of checks and balances. Simply put, it is the 
glue holding our democracy together.
  The Constitution limits the power of the judiciary. Only Congress 
makes law, not the courts. That is not the way some courts like to 
operate. The courts interpret the law as a separate, coequal, and 
independent branch of government. That is what the Constitution tells 
us. And the judges' job is to follow the law, period. Yet, for decades, 
Democrats have hijacked the courts. They have sought to make their 
preferred policies through something known as judicial activism.
  Activist judges have used the bench to make liberal laws or interpret 
laws in a very liberal way. Rather than decide cases impartially, 
liberal judges have a habit of favoring the left. The result has been a 
slew of radical reforms. These include promoting onerous overregulation 
that hurt farmers and blocking the President's efforts to secure the 
border.
  Republicans are replacing these liberal activist judges with Trump-
appointed constitutional conservatives. These judges are ruling right 
now all across the Nation. If you ask ``How are they making a 
difference?'' they are doing it by protecting our constitutional 
rights, by safeguarding our individual freedoms, and by checking 
unbridled government power.
  These judges are blocking Federal overreach. They are preventing 
Washington bureaucrats from inventing endless rules. They are upholding 
pro-life precedent and recognizing the right to school choice. They are 
defending the Second Amendment, securing the border, and protecting our 
First Amendment rights, including free speech and religious liberty.
  Above all, Republican-appointed judges are applying the law as 
written; they are not making law from the bench. This has Democrats 
worried. You have seen it. You heard the comments on the floor and 
around the Nation. Democrats are worried they are losing control of the 
courts.
  Senator Schumer, the minority leader, is so worried, in fact, that he 
even threatened harm to Supreme Court Justices who don't rule his way. 
He recently stood outside the Supreme Court, and he yelled at the court 
building and the Justices inside. He mentioned Justices by name and 
said: ``You have released a whirlwind, and you will pay the price!'' 
``You will pay the price!'' This is how the left tends to operate: 
intimidation. Do what we say, give us control, and then the 
intimidation will stop.
  They are threatening the independence of the judiciary in other ways 
as well. Democrats have announced their plans to pack the Supreme 
Court. They have announced they will pack the Court with Justices 
friendlier to their causes.
  The standard we all know for the Supreme Court is nine Justices. In 
fact, it has been nine Justices since 1869--for over 150 years. Yet 
they want to change this longstanding precedent by actually increasing 
the number of Supreme Court Justices, taking it from 9 to 11. Some are 
proposing going to 13 if a Democrat is elected President and they have 
control of the Senate.
  Let us be clear: Court-packing amounts to deck-stacking by the far 
left.
  Democrats want to regain power, tip the scales of justice, and 
deliver their leftwing agenda any way they can. If Democrats win the 
election, as they have threatened, they will pack and stack the Court 
with impunity.
  The stakes in this upcoming election could not be higher. The next 
President will appoint maybe more than 60 circuit court judges and 
possibly another Supreme Court Justice.
  This is about ensuring justice. It is about ensuring fairness. It is 
about ensuring freedom for all Americans. Republicans, through today 
confirming our 200th judge to the courts, are stemming this liberal 
judicial tide. We have delivered generational change on the bench. We 
must continue confirming well-qualified judges who will secure our 
freedoms and our future.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                                S. 4049

  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, on Tuesday night, Senator Reed and I had 
the honor of filing S. 4049, the 60th annual National Defense 
Authorization Act. Think about that--60 years. This is something we are 
always pretty confident we will eventually get passed. To me, it is the 
most significant bill of the year, and we have been doing it now 
successfully for 60 years. It is what we consider every year, and we 
know it is going to pass because it has always passed, but it is also 
about taking care of our troops and defending our country.
  There is a document no one reads anymore. It is called the 
Constitution. It talks about what our primary responsibility is, which 
is to defend America. We are in a much more dangerous position today 
than we have ever been before, so I think it is fitting that we are 
doing this ahead of the Fourth of July, our Nation's birthday. We 
wouldn't have our freedoms without our men and women in uniform from 
the past and present, and that is

[[Page S3193]]

who we are dedicating this to. They are the beneficiaries of what we 
are doing as we are the beneficiaries of what they are doing.
  It is why we can all come together and finish this bill by next 
Thursday, I would still like to say, even though there is opposition to 
this. I say that because it would be the last day before the recess 
that is coming up, the Fourth of July, and I think it would be good if 
we could do it that way. There is a reason for that, but we are also 
realistic, and we are not sure we are going to be able to do it, but we 
are going to make every effort to do it.
  One thing about working with my partner over here, Senator Reed, is 
that we have always operated in a very cooperative manner, and we have 
supported each other. He answers to his Democratic friends, and we 
bring them together because of the relationship that we have on this 
committee. So I think there is always a possibility we can get this 
done
  Both Senator Reed and I would like to use an open amendment process. 
This is a process that would allow for all of our Members to come in 
and do what they have to do and do what they want to do with regard to 
things they want to have in the bill. We were not able to do that over 
the last couple of years because we had objections.
  One thing about the Senate is that everything operates on the basis 
of unanimous consent, so if we have someone who objects, we are unable 
to do it. Hopefully, that will not happen again this year, and we will 
be able to use the open amendment process.
  In having said that, it is not going to be nearly as significant this 
year because what we did in this year's bill is to have actually made 
an appeal way back in February to our Democrats and Republicans, not 
just to those on the Armed Services Committee but to those in the 
entire Senate. This last February, we said: Start getting your 
amendments ready. Don't wait until the last minute. Get them out there 
so we can talk about them and prepare them for ultimate votes. So 
people actually started. They were warned at that time that we didn't 
want to wait until the last minute to do this. This is the first time 
we have been able to successfully do this.
  Of all of the items that are in this bill--this bill that I consider 
to be the most significant of the year--40 percent of the input came 
from our Members of the Senate, and 40 percent of it came from the 
administration and the Pentagon, so that all of those things have 
already been treated once. Now, I have been around here long enough to 
remember when that 40 percent wasn't 40 percent--it was about 6 
percent. We didn't get the input of the Members like we do today. We 
just operated differently at that time. This is the third year that I 
have been involved in this when we have been able to get a higher 
percentage of input from the Members. I think that is something that is 
working well, and it has already given the Members time to participate.
  I will put this a different way. The bill includes nearly 600 
requests for amendments from the members of the Armed Services 
Committee and almost 200 requests from Senators who are not on the 
committee. They are the ones who have put this bill together. With the 
Members' input already in there, I am confident that we have a solid 
bill that reflects the needs we have and that it will not be as 
necessary to have more amendments since that is what we have already 
done.
  If we want to finish this bill by the end of next week, we will need 
to reach a unanimous consent agreement before this Friday. I understand 
there may be an objection to this that could happen, or there could be 
a change of mind. It is still my hope that this will take place. There 
is a reason for that, too, in that the House will be working on its 
bill right after we come back from the recess. We are just running out 
of time, so we need to get this started.
  We are putting in the managers' package a bipartisan set of 
amendments that we can all agree on. I ask all of our Members to get 
those in by this coming Friday. Even with that, it is going to be 
necessary for the staff to work all the way through the weekend to put 
it in position. We know we want to complete the first managers' 
package, so the amendments will have to be filed. Keep in mind that 
Senator Reed and I have that as a deadline for getting those amendments 
in.
  In recent years, we have been able to consider many amendments on the 
floor. As I said earlier, I hope we will be able to do that again, and 
it may or may not happen. If a Member has an amendment and wants to 
debate it on the floor, we also need to know that the Member desires to 
have a debate so that we can work that in.
  Lastly, as Members are working through their amendments, please be 
thoughtful that we shouldn't get bogged down with a lot of amendments 
that have nothing to do with national defense. This is the NDAA, the 
National Defense Authorization Act. We should be talking about 
military. Yet one of the things that is characteristic about this is 
that, for as many years as I have been here and since this is the one 
bill that is going to be a must-pass bill and a must-pass bill this 
year, the people who were not able to get their bills in or amendments 
in on other bills wait until this comes along and try to do this with 
amendments. I am discouraging that from happening, and I hope that it 
doesn't happen. What is most important here is that we take care of our 
men and women in uniform. That is what it is all about. They are all 
volunteers, and they are deserving of our support.
  Again, my message to Members is to get their amendments filed as soon 
as possible. As I noted, this is the 60th annual NDAA. For the last 59 
years, Congress has always passed an NDAA on a bipartisan basis. That 
is a big deal, and it is not a legacy we take lightly. I have been 
privileged to participate in this process as a member of the big four. 
I will tell you how that works.
  We do our bill, and the House does its bill. We go to conference, but 
we are still not able to get together, so they take the big four, which 
constitutes the ranking Democrat and Republican in the House and the 
ranking Democrat and Republican in the Senate, and the four of us sit 
down and get it done. We have done that several times in the past. It 
is the stopgap. It is the one last thing that we have to do if we are 
not able to do it any other way.
  Every year, we are told there are things we can't accomplish. Every 
year, we are told there is no way we can find common ground. All of 
this happens, but, always, we do it, and our grand, bipartisan 
tradition continues just, as it will this year. The reason is simple: 
Failure and, worse, failure on the backs of our servicemembers is just 
not an option.
  While we are doing this, what I will remind everyone is that our 
military was hurt pretty badly under the previous administration. I 
always admired President Obama. He had a different agenda, and 
consequently we had some problems. I would say this: In the last 5 
years of his 8-year administration--that would be from 2010 to 2015--
our defense spending dropped by 25 percent. That has never happened 
before, and we have been working to rebuild since then. We are not 
quite there yet, but we have made great headway. It is easy to cut our 
military, to reduce readiness, to slow down production, and all of 
that, but it is harder, not to mention slower and more costly, to 
rebuild it. That is what we are in the middle of right now.
  So that is what this is all about. It is a significant bill, and it 
is something we work on all year long. Then it comes time for it to 
come to the floor, which is where we are now.
  I have to say this: I can't think of anyone I would rather have as a 
partner than Senator Reed. Senator Reed and I have worked together for 
many years, and we have a way of getting along with each other and of 
coming to conclusions and the right decisions. It has been an honor for 
me over the years to have worked, as we are this year, with Senator 
Reed. We are going to get a good bill done
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Madam President, I rise to join my colleague and chairman, 
Senator Inhofe, to discuss the fiscal year 2021 national defense 
authorization bill.
  I begin by thanking Senator Inhofe for his leadership in ensuring 
that we had a bill to consider this year. This was an extraordinary 
year. Social distancing just began as the Armed Services Committee was 
finishing our hearings and getting ready to go into

[[Page S3194]]

the markup for the national defense authorization bill. Despite the 
uncertainty, the unusual challenges--the logistical challenges 
particularly--Senator Inhofe ensured that the bill was written and that 
the markup was held on schedule. He should be commended for this 
accomplishment. It is a tribute to his leadership, to his wisdom, to 
his common sense, and to his common decency.
  So thank you for that, Mr. Chairman.
  I also want to take a moment to thank the staff. Both the chairman 
and I operate under the same rubric: They do the work, and we get the 
credit. It works for us--their work for us. They do a superb job. They 
found ways to draft the legislation. Yet they, too, were disrupted. 
Their work spaces were separated, and many had to work from home. So 
this has been an extraordinary achievement, and it is a tribute to 
their commitment, to their professionalism, to their skill, and to 
their collaborative, bipartisan effort. I thank them for that.
  As the Senator, the chairman, has said and emphasized several times 
``bipartisanship.'' This has been the hallmark of this legislation for 
many, many years. We recall colleagues, going back to John Warner and 
Sam Nunn and others, who had the attitude that ``we have to work 
together.'' Again, let me give the chairman credit for preserving that 
attitude, for insisting upon that attitude, and for really getting, I 
think, the best out of the committee because of his example and of his 
setting a tone.
  We have differences in the bill, but we are strongly behind this 
effort. One of the things that I think we have been able to do is to 
figure out what might be a point of difference and that, if it comes to 
down to it, we take a vote, and we move on, and we get the bill done. 
That is what we did this time. We look forward to being on the floor 
and to doing the same thing--taking amendment proposals from our 
colleagues and trying to deal with them. If we can include them in the 
bill unanimously, that will be great. If we need a vote, I hope we can 
have debate and get a vote.
  We all understand that the bill provides the Defense Department with 
the resources it needs, particularly to ensure that the men and women 
who defend us have the resources they need not only to fight the fight 
but, when they return, to have a quality of life with their families 
themselves that is in keeping with their sacrifice and their service. 
This bill does that. It also funds at the caps set under the recently 
enacted Budget Control Act of about 2 years ago, so we are providing 
the much needed stability the Department needs. It will include many 
items that benefit the families and military members, and I will go 
into those details later in our discussion.
  Now, 2 weeks ago, the committee took up the bill in the markup. 
Again, under the leadership of the chairman, we had a very good day of 
discussion and debate, and the bill was adopted by the committee with a 
strong bipartisan vote of 25 to 2. This legislation is coming to the 
floor with overwhelming bipartisan support, and as the chairman 
indicated, one reason is that he solicited the input of all of the 
members. We and our staff tried very vigorously to incorporate those 
proposals and ideas of all members, and at the end of the day, it was a 
strong, overwhelming vote.
  But even though we did consider, as the chairman said, hundreds of 
different proposals by members of the committee and Members of the 
Senate, there are still issues that will come before us. That is why, 
on the floor, I hope we will have, as the chairman indicated, an open 
debate, that we will consider amendments--hopefully do so under 
reasonable time constraints so that we can get a lot done--and then, at 
the end of a vigorous debate, be able to vote for a bill that will 
advance the welfare of the men and women who serve and advance the 
common defense, which is our constitutional responsibility.
  Again, I thank Senator Inhofe and look forward to the consideration 
of this bill.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, let me just make one other comment.
  Senator Reed talked about the staff and what the staff has done. When 
I talk to people back in Oklahoma about how hard a lot of these people 
work, they think of people in government as not caring to really spend 
the time and make the effort.
  I mentioned a minute ago that our staff is going to be working all 
this next weekend, and they have been working every weekend, that I can 
remember, to get this thing done.
  There are two people in particular--John Bonsell and Liz King. Liz 
King is the top adviser and manages things for Senator Reed, and John 
Bonsell has done the same thing for me. He actually was my MLA many 
years ago. When you see how hard they work and their long hours--early 
in the morning until late at night and then on weekends--I just really 
want to say, not just of those two individuals but of the people they 
have working for them, that I have never seen a harder working group. 
Their job, I guess--I say to my friend Senator Reed--is to make us look 
good, but they are the ones who do the work.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll
  Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cramer). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                    Remembering Sister Thomas Welder

  Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor an influential and 
beloved North Dakotan, Sister Thomas Welder.
  I know the Presiding Officer knew her very well and just a little bit 
ago spoke about her here on the Senate floor, and that is so 
appropriate. She was such a wonderful person, and we both are so very 
fortunate to have known her and to have had time with her, to have 
learned much from her. She is truly somebody who I think epitomizes the 
term ``servant leader.''
  Sister Thomas Welder was somebody who for me was a friend and a 
mentor in so many different ways, it is hard to recount, and also for 
my wife Mikey. Sister Thomas Welder dedicated her life to the 
University of Mary and the students, and my wife Mikey is on the board 
of trustees at the University of Mary, so Mikey and Sister Thomas 
worked together for many, many years and share an unbelievable bond as 
well. I am not even sure how long Mikey and I have known Sister Thomas; 
it has been many years. We have seen her in so many different 
capacities and so many different ways, but without fail, she was an 
inspiration--an inspiration for both of us and frankly an inspiration 
for anybody who ever met her. She truly was one of the most 
exceptional, amazing, wonderful people I have ever met. She was 
certainly a person of incredible faith, and she lived her faith, and 
she provided that to others, certainly in her words but in her deeds 
and in her spirituality, in the way that she handled herself, in her 
spirit and compassion, and it affected everyone she met. Everyone she 
met felt that radiant glow and reflected it back because it was so 
powerful within her.
  She was a member of the Benedict Sisters of Annunciation Monastery 
and faithfully lived the monastic life for 59 years.
  From 1978 to 2009, she served as the president of the University of 
Mary and was, as I say, beloved by students and faculty. Under her 
leadership, the university did amazing things.
  I think for a time the Presiding Officer worked there at the 
University of Mary during her tenure as president of the school. She 
grew the enrollment--I think tripled the enrollment.
  She was a gifted leader, an inspiring leader. She led by example. I 
think one of the most amazing things about her--a story you hear about 
over and over again; people marvel about it. When she originally came 
back after her schooling at the University of Mary, she taught music, 
but she eventually became president of the university. Even after she 
was president of the university and Monsignor Shea became president of 
the university, she stayed and continued to work with the university 
and the students.
  One of the amazing stories that people would talk about and marvel at 
is how she would go on campus and she would meet all the students. So 
she got to know them all, thousands of students. She knew all the 
faculty and administrators and that kind of thing because they were 
there all the time. But

[[Page S3195]]

she would get to know all the students, and without fail, she would 
remember those students' names. She went around the campus, and it 
wasn't just ``Hi, how are you?'' She knew the students. She knew their 
names. She knew who they were. People would marvel not only that she 
was able to do that, but she never seemed to forget a name. You have to 
remember, there are thousands of students, and they are there for a 
while, and they move on and more come in.
  It is one thing to know the faculty and administrators and those 
kinds of things and people who are there year in and year out, but 
think about the flow of students coming through, and to know them and 
know them by name--I think it is not only a testament to her but a 
testament to the University of Mary, where they really make those young 
people feel special and feel that they are an individual who is 
somebody, who has worth. They are not just another student at the 
school; they are somebody special. She made them feel special because 
she knew them, she took time to talk to them. She always had time to 
talk to them. She had a lot of important things to do, but she always 
took time to talk to them and make them feel appreciated.
  When we think about sending our son or our daughter off to school, 
that is certainly something we would want, is when they go to that 
school, there is somebody there who says: You are an individual. You 
are unique. You are special. You are not just a number, but you are 
here, and I appreciate you, and I am here for you.
  That is what she did for those students--not just when she was 
president but even after she retired as president. That is what she did 
because that is who she was.
  That is just one story, but that is part of her special gift--her 
special gift--and she gave it to everybody. She gave it to everybody. 
She gave that gift of her time, attention, compassion, and spirituality 
to everyone. I don't know that I ever saw her in any setting where that 
wasn't exactly what she was doing. That is why I say she did epitomize 
that concept of servant leadership.
  As Governor, I was privileged and honored to award Sister Thomas the 
Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award. That is our highest recognition 
in North Dakota. That is the highest award we give. As part of it, we 
then hang the individual's portrait in our State capitol, and along 
with the portrait, there is also kind of a bio that is right there so 
that people going to the North Dakota State Capitol can see the people 
from across our State who are inspirational leaders. The pictures are a 
montage, so that you put up things in their life.
  In the case for Sister Thomas, she went to the University of Mary 
there, and they can see and get a visual sense of what the person 
looked like, the important things they did, and then we have a bio that 
goes with it.
  I am going to reference just a couple of the lines we have in the bio 
we put in there:

       Sister Thomas is recognized as a woman who lives, serves, 
     and leads by example. Her personal achievements, character, 
     and leadership have been an inspiration to countless 
     individuals, students, entrepreneurs, and business and state 
     leaders. Envisioning the University of Mary as the Nation's 
     premier institution for the preparation of servant leaders, 
     Sister Thomas promotes competence, communication, commitment 
     to values, and service to community. Her strong belief in the 
     ability of an individual to go into leadership through 
     service is an example for North Dakota and the nation.

  There is a lot more, but those were some of the things we put in 
there to try to capture who she was, what she did, and what a 
difference she made in the lives of so many.
  As I say, I don't know that I ever met anyone who didn't immediately 
like her, but it was more than that. I mean, there are a lot of people 
who are likeable, affable, and amiable. She was all of that. She was 
very, very likeable. She had a great smile, good wit, and good humor. 
She was a really good speaker. She was always very prepared, always had 
a good message, and was well-spoken, but she had a great smile and a 
ready laugh, and she immediately made people feel comfortable. You 
could see how she would lean in and gaze in on them and just start to 
say: Tell me about you. Give me some of what you are, A little bit of 
what is your spirit, what moves you, what makes you. What are you 
interested in? What do you like? How are you feeling?
  She just did it naturally.
  I just, again, can't think of anybody who ever met her and didn't 
come away saying: You know, I like her, but she is special. She made me 
feel good. She made me feel good. She seemed interested in me. She is 
genuine. She cares. She made an impact on me.
  They remember her, and it was positive, and it was strong.
  Mikey and I extend our deepest condolences to her loved ones, and 
when I say her family, she had a huge family because everybody she met 
was basically her family, all those kids and all those students. We 
want to express our sincere appreciation for her lifetime of service 
and her commitment to her community and her commitment to God. Sister 
Thomas was patient, Sister Thomas was wonderful, Sister Thomas was 
beloved, and Sister Thomas will be missed very, very much. God bless 
her
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.


                            The JUSTICE Act

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, today my colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle voted to block consideration of the JUSTICE bill. This 
happened to be the first major piece of police reform legislation in 
years.
  To be clear, this vote wasn't a vote to pass the bill in the Senate. 
It wasn't even a vote to limit debate on police reform. It was a vote 
on whether we could simply begin debate on police reform.
  We are standing now on the floor of what is called the world's 
greatest deliberative body, the U.S. Senate. Yet my colleagues on the 
other side wouldn't even entertain a debate on an issue that has 
stirred our Nation and shaken it to its core.
  We know why we are here. There was a murder of a citizen in 
Minneapolis--George Floyd. There have been peaceful demonstrations all 
over the country since then, and Congress's time to respond probably--
probably should have responded years ago, but this has brought to a 
head that we need police reform.
  Yes, we are in the world's greatest deliberative body, we are told. 
The Senate's legacy and prestige are built on our ability to debate and 
discuss legislation, to address the most pressing issues before our 
country. My colleagues on the other side have robbed the American 
people of the opportunity to pass meaningful police reform.
  On the other side, they argue that the JUSTICE Act doesn't go far 
enough and that their version of police reform is the only bill worth 
considering. All the brains in the U.S. Senate are on the other side of 
the aisle, is more or less what they are saying. I want to remind them 
that we live in a country with diverse ideas and varying opinions. 
Debating those differences is the only way to make meaningful reform.
  Democrats complain that their views weren't represented in this bill. 
Well, the JUSTICE Act contains a number of proposals that actually have 
bipartisan support. Even if that wasn't enough for them, every Democrat 
would still have an opportunity to make additional changes.
  On our side, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina led this effort for 
all of us. Forty-six of us are joining him. I hope the other seven will 
join in as well. But that is just Republicans, and this is a bipartisan 
bill--presumably not bipartisan enough to satisfy the other side but 
still bipartisan--and they wouldn't let us move ahead.
  Senator Scott made clear when the bill was introduced last week that 
he was interested and willing to discuss changes. Leader McConnell 
pledged an open amendment process. Even Speaker Pelosi noted that she 
welcomed the opportunity to conference the Democratic House police 
reform bill with Senator Scott's JUSTICE Act.
  Instead of letting our time-honored legislative process work, my 
colleagues sent a letter calling the JUSTICE Act ``unsalvageable.'' 
Let's remember--these are the same Senators who insisted that the 
Senate consider a police reform bill before the July recess, which 
starts next week. Now that they are getting what they asked for, they 
say they don't want it anymore--at least that is what their vote tells 
me today.
  My question is, What are they afraid of? Are they afraid of losing 
control of

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the process if it goes to a vote? Well, then, they are afraid of 
democracy. They are afraid of the American people who elected each 
Senator in this body and trusts each Senator to represent them by 
voting on legislation.
  Are they afraid that their ideas won't be adopted? The JUSTICE Act 
has many similarities to the Justice in Policing Act. We want to find a 
way forward on a bipartisan basis. If ideas have merit, they will have 
to be voted on and be included.
  Are they somehow afraid that if we make progress, it will be 
perceived as giving the President and his party a win? I have been 
around here long enough to know that in an election year, it gets 
harder and harder to get things done because neither party wants the 
other to get any credit for anything or have an advantage. But on an 
issue as important as this, it is the height of cynicism and hypocrisy 
to prevent progress to gain political advantage.
  I am reminded of a Scripture: ``For what shall it profit a man if he 
shall gain the whole world but lose his soul?''
  The American people expect better. I know that my fellow Iowans 
expect better. Frankly, I expect better as well.
  I hope my colleagues reconsider their obstruction and let us get on 
with crafting a bipartisan police reform bill. I know my colleagues on 
the other side share our desire to deliver for our constituents. I 
don't doubt their sincerity about wanting to address inequities in the 
communities or unfairness in policing. I don't doubt they would have 
had legitimate ideas on how to improve this legislation if it had come 
before the Senate. But at the very least, we can't accomplish any of 
those things unless we start debate.
  We have done it before on other issues. Only 18 months ago, this 
Chamber passed the FIRST STEP Act, the most significant criminal 
justice reform bill in a generation. That was a strong bipartisan bill. 
It wasn't easy, but Senator Durbin and I and Democrats and other 
Republicans in addition to the two of us found a path forward and are 
giving thousands of Americans a chance to improve their lives when they 
leave prison.
  I am frustrated that the Senate can't consider this JUSTICE Act, but 
I promise Iowans and the American people that this partisan exercise 
doesn't represent my last hope for meaningful change. I stand ready to 
work with any Democrat or any Republican on the issue of police reform, 
and, for sure, I am not alone in the willingness to do that.
  In fact, at the Judiciary Committee, just last week, the issue was 
police use of force and community relations. At that meeting, Chairman 
Graham indicated that he wants to hold more hearings on this issue.
  So I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle not to let today's 
vote be the end of the story. There is and has been an evergreen issue. 
George Floyd's murder was the spark that ignited a national outcry. We 
must rise to the occasion. We cannot let election-year politics and 
differences of opinion prevent us from even discussing how best to 
improve justice and safety in our community.


                          Flynn Investigation

  Mr. President, I will speak just a short period of time on another 
issue that was resolved today by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. 
Finally, justice has been done to a person that has been very unjustly 
treated, a person by the name of Lieutenant General Flynn, who served 
this country 33 years in the military.
  Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered 
the district court to grant the government's motion to dismiss the 
Flynn case. Remember, this has been going on for almost 4 years.
  I am pleased the appeals court upheld what it rightfully called 
``clearly established legal principles.'' The appeals court said that 
the first ``troubling indication'' of the district judge's ``mistaken 
understanding'' of his role was to appoint a former judge, and now a 
private citizen, to argue against the government's proposal to District 
Judge Sullivan to dismiss the Flynn case. Remember, the reason for that 
was that he was mistreated in the first place.
  As the majority opinion said: ``The court has appointed one private 
citizen to argue that another citizen should be deprived of his liberty 
regardless of whether the Executive Branch is willing to pursue those 
charges.''
  The DC Circuit is ordering an end to this charade, and let Lieutenant 
General Flynn get back to his life and his family. Remember, this is a 
case where we set up--and you saw the emails from people that were 
going to prosecute him. Is this to get him fired--to get Flynn fired? 
Or is it to get him prosecuted? That is how open it was, but we didn't 
know about that until a few months ago.
  So, today, Flynn's legal team released Strzok's notes regarding a 
meeting between Obama, Biden, Comey, Sally Yates, and Susan Rice. These 
notes appear to show several important things. The first one is, Comey 
said the Flynn calls with the Russian Ambassador ``appear legit.'' Two, 
President Obama ordered Comey to ``look at things.'' Three, President 
Obama directed that ``the right people'' investigate Flynn. Four, Vice 
President Biden appeared to raise the Logan Act.
  Those four things lead to these questions. Well, if it was legit, 
then, why ``look at things''? If it was legit, why would Biden mention 
the Logan Act? These notes raise legitimate questions. For example, did 
President Obama and Vice President Biden deliberately take steps in the 
final hours of their administration to undermine the incoming 
administration? It sure looks like that is what they were up to.
  It also is reasonable to question the extent of President Obama's and 
Vice President Biden's knowledge about Russia and the Flynn 
investigation. I give this to you as an example. We know that on 
January 4, 2017, the same day that Strzok allegedly wrote the meeting 
notes, the FBI wrote a closing memorandum on Flynn, who was code named 
``Crossfire Razor'' by the FBI, that said the intelligence community 
could find no derogatory information on him.
  So they couldn't find any derogatory information on him, a person who 
had served in the military for 33 years, got out as a lieutenant 
general, and was going to be the National Security Advisor for this new 
administration. They could find no derogatory information, but for the 
next 3\1/2\ years, he has been fighting for his freedom. Then, on that 
very same day, January 4, 2017, the FBI was ready to close this Flynn 
case--probably based on the fact that Comey said that all this 
connection between Flynn and the Russian ambassador was probably legit.
  But that doesn't matter to somebody by the name of Strzok, who was 
kind of leading all of this. He asked another FBI agent: ``Hey if you 
haven't closed Razor don't do it yet.'' The case was still open at the 
moment and Strzok asked that it be kept open ``for now.'' Strzok then 
messaged his lover, Lisa Page, saying that Razor still happened to be 
open because of some oversight and said to her--I don't know whether 
this is tongue in cheek or whether it was real serious, but he said: 
``Yeah, our utter incompetence actually helps us. . . . ''
  So what is helping us? It seems like any excuse to keep going in 
getting Flynn. At that point, we all know the case should have been 
closed, but 3\1/2\ years later, it is just solved by a decision of the 
DC Court of Appeals. So, instead, even in light of Comey apparently 
saying that the calls between Flynn and the Russian Ambassador appear 
legit, President Obama--still President of the United States--directed 
Comey to ``look at things'' and make sure ``the right people'' 
investigate it.
  That has kind of been questionable, the extent to which President 
Obama was involved in this, but it seems like those quotes make it 
pretty clear. And then, at this very same conversation, Vice President 
Biden chimed in as well by bringing up the Logan Act, which was used as 
a pretext to interview Flynn weeks later. Mind you, all of this 
happened after the election. Now people are raising questions about: 
Why are you worried about things that happened 3 years ago? An 
injustice was done to Flynn, and if you let people run wild over the 
freedoms and liberties of the American people, if it can happen to a 
lieutenant general, it can happen to anybody else, and we saw it happen 
to George Floyd. He was murdered because of justice and the 
constitutional rights of people not being followed.

[[Page S3197]]

  So then we have the incoming Trump administration and all this going 
on, having no idea that Obama, Biden, Comey, and Strzok were busy 
setting the stage for what would become a multiyear struggle to show 
that Trump didn't collude with the Russian Government--so much for a 
peaceful transition of power from one President to another and from one 
political party to another. It was something that for 240 years we 
prided ourselves in, but not in this case. Ever since the election, 
November of 2016, think of all the things that have been done to get 
Trump out of office, and it started even before he was sworn in.
  Well, thankfully, the DC Circuit stepped in to restore a bit of 
justice after the government's multiyear campaign to destroy Flynn's 
reputation. The FBI and the Department of Justice's actions to frame an 
American citizen, drag that citizen into court, setting him up to plead 
guilty to lying, and then doing everything they can to cover up their 
transgressions should never happen and should never have happened 
either. Let's all hope it never happens again
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             Pension Reform

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am here to talk about a complicated but 
really important issue, and it is one that Congress and the 
administration needs to address before it results in a devastating 
financial impact on millions of retirees, raises costs to thousands of 
businesses, some of which are going to go insolvent--bankrupt--unless 
it is dealt with, and an issue that can harm the overall economy if it 
is not dealt with.
  The Presiding Officer has been very involved in this issue, and I 
hope others will bear with me as we talk about it, because it is 
complicated, but it is really important. I am talking about 
multiemployer pension reform, and as anyone who is working on this 
problem can tell you, it is something that we cannot ignore.
  Briefly, a multiemployer pension plan consists of multiple different 
companies. Usually, employees in a single union pool their assets 
together, and they provide a defined benefit pension--the old-style 
pensions, a guaranteed pension, so-called--to cover workers and 
retirees. These plans are jointly administered, then, between the 
unions and the employers as trustees, who determine the benefits and 
the employer contributions based on the collective bargaining process 
and subject to whatever statutory funding requirements there are that 
we provide here in the U.S. Congress and through law.
  It is a system of a lot of different employers coming together and 
providing a pension under one union typically. This system now 
comprises over 1,400 plans covering 10.8 million participants and their 
families. Unfortunately, it is on the verge of collapse. The system is 
underfunded by more than $638 billion, and that figure has probably 
increased significantly due to the coronavirus epidemic and the 
resulting impact on the economy.
  On top of that, there is the Federal entity that ensures these 
pensions. Pensions are sort of a guaranteed benefit, so-called, but 
they are guaranteed in a sense because they are insured by a Federal 
entity called the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. That PBGC for 
the multiemployer program is projected to become insolvent in less than 
5 years. Over 1.4 million workers and retirees are in plans already in 
what is called ``critical and declining status,'' meaning they are 
facing benefit cuts of over 90 percent. So that is the problem.
  This chart can sort of show it to you here. These are the assets at 
the start of the year--2019, 2020, 2021--and this is what happens. The 
assets go down. The liabilities go up. This is the financial assistance 
provided to the various plans. So, as you can see, the green is only 
going to last until 2025. And, again, with the new economic numbers, 
that will be exhausted even before that, which creates a real problem 
for those plan participants or retirees, for the companies that are 
going to have huge new liabilities--and some of them will not be able 
to handle it and will not be able to stay in business--and for our 
economy, because that will then have a contagion impact on the entire 
economy.
  So those workers who are expecting to have the benefit because they 
are still working and those retirees who are facing these cuts are 
looking to us to come up with a bipartisan solution to address this 
crisis that faces the multiemployer pension system and the PBGC. They 
are counting on us to put in place commonsense reforms to ensure that 
these hard-earned pension benefits will be there for workers and 
retirees during their retirement.
  A lot of these workers will tell you that they didn't take the pay 
increases or they didn't take the healthcare benefits the size they 
wanted in their collective bargaining because they bargained for this, 
which was the hope of having a pension--a guaranteed, defined benefit 
pension--and now they are seeing the possibility that that could result 
in a 90-percent cut in their benefits.
  Over the past several years we have been working on this, I have been 
involved with it. I have been working on the Finance Committee, which 
is the committee here in the Senate that has responsibility for this 
issue.
  In 2018--so going back 2 years ago now--I was participating in 
hearings as a member of the Joint Select Committee on Solvency of 
Multiemployer Pension Plans. It was a 1-year committee. It was House 
and Senate, Republican and Democrat. We were supposed to get to a 
solution for this problem before it gets worse, and we spent countless 
hours trying to do that. I spent countless hours in meetings with 
beneficiaries, retirees, spouses of theirs.
  Ohio was one of the States hardest hit. I have heard their stories 
about how years of mismanaged pension plans have put them on the hook 
for unthinkable cuts in the pensions they just assumed were going to be 
there.
  Let me spell out how precarious this is for my home State of Ohio. We 
have over 60,000 active workers and retirees in multiemployer pension 
plans at immediate risk of becoming insolvent--probably more than any 
other State in the country. Many of these Ohio plans have already been 
forced to drastically reduce benefits, by the way, including the Iron 
Workers Local 17 Plan in Cleveland, the Southwest Ohio Regional Council 
of Carpenters Pension Plan, and the Toledo Roofers Local 134 Pension 
Plan.
  Some are already insolvent, like the Teamsters Local 116 of Cleveland 
Pension Fund, so for some, unfortunately, this insolvency has already 
happened.
  The Central States Pension Fund, which is the single largest plan 
that is in this critical and declining status, is projected to become 
insolvent in 2025--the same time the PBGC is because when it goes 
under, PBGC goes under; it is that big. They have 44,000 participants 
in that plan in Ohio--again, more than any other State. The majority of 
Central States' retirees are veterans, by the way, according to the 
National United Committee to Protect Pensions. They receive about $360 
million in annual benefits from their pensions. By the way, that money 
goes right back into the economy. They spend it.
  Unfortunately, years of bad Federal policy with respect to funding 
and withdrawal liability rules, losses on risky investments, and 
failure to take proactive action have brought many of these pension 
plans to the brink of insolvency. The result is that these hard-working 
Ohioans in Central States face pension cuts of over 90 percent if no 
action is taken. That is unacceptable. We can't let that happen.
  By the way, it is not just a retirement security issue, as I said 
earlier; it is a jobs issue. The multiemployer pension system consists 
primarily of smaller businesses that face uncertainty and a higher cost 
of doing business due to the liability they will face called withdrawal 
liability.
  More than 200 small businesses are in Central States alone in my home 
State of Ohio--200 businesses that face huge withdrawal liabilities, 
many of which are much bigger than the book value of the company, 
meaning, of course, that they are not going to make it.

[[Page S3198]]

  In fact, if a systemically important plan like Central States were to 
become insolvent, contributing employers face the risk of being 
assessed unplanned withdrawal liabilities that will result in a wave of 
bankruptcies and a contagion effect across the economy as plans with 
overlapping contribution bases also fail. It will not just be that 
plan; it will be other plans as well because the companies pay into 
different plans.
  Even if they are not assessed withdrawal liability, employers will be 
forced then to make contributions into an insolvent plan, making those 
companies not competitive in the labor market. They will not be able to 
pay their employees as much because they are making the payments into 
the insolvent plans.
  These jobs are essential to our economy--right now, more than ever. 
Many of the current workers in the Central States Pension Fund, as an 
example, are truckdrivers, and these are the very truckdrivers who are 
keeping our grocery stores stocked. They are the supply lines running 
through this coronavirus crisis. They have put their health on the line 
for all of us, and we need to do our very best to ensure that the 
pensions they have earned--rightly earned--will be there for them.
  While these problems were well known before the current economic 
downturn, this slowdown is only going to accelerate the crisis. As CBO 
projected in late April--that is, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget 
Office--the second quarter of this fiscal year is projected to mark the 
largest percentage drop in economic output in recorded history, with 
the GDP projected to fall 40 percent on an annualized basis. That has a 
real impact on these pensions.
  As chair of the Senate Finance subcommittee with jurisdiction over 
these multiemployer pension plans, I have been working on this issue 
with Democrats and Republicans alike, and I believe a balanced, pro-
growth solution to the problem is possible. I also know that it is 
needed.
  As bad as the pension crisis is for these retirees we talked about 
and for their individual plans, it also has a broader impact on our 
economy, so all of us should be interested in solving this problem.
  It will not be easy, especially given the unprecedented health crisis 
we now face, but putting off this difficult work today means greater 
costs tomorrow. The costs compound, so it gets worse.
  The multiemployer program deficit is projected to rise significantly 
if we wait until this period--around 2024 or 2025. Even if we didn't 
have this pandemic, this is an issue we owe to our constituents to take 
proactive action on.
  We have come some way on this project, and we have made some progress 
over time. In 2018, Senator Sherrod Brown and his co-chair Senator 
Orrin Hatch and I put together a framework for reform while serving on 
this Joint Select Committee on Solvency of Multiemployer Pension Plans. 
I think that framework can effectively address the crisis. We called it 
the bipartisan framework. It would have provided PBGC enough resources 
to prevent its own insolvency and put in place structural reforms to 
the funding rules and the way plans are governed to ensure a long-term 
solution going forward.
  Unfortunately, the joint committee was not able to reach final 
agreement on these reforms, and therefore we weren't able to stabilize 
the PBGC and put it on a stronger financial footing. But I strongly 
believe that the mechanism to address the immediate crisis that is in 
this bipartisan framework still offers the right way forward for us to 
get this done. In fact, I am pleased there is a renewed interest in 
addressing this crisis using this framework right now.
  The House-passed HEROES Act--that is, the legislation the House 
passed to deal with the COVID-19 crisis--includes a proposal to try to 
fix this problem. Again, it is a step in the right direction in that 
they have chosen to adopt the approach of partitioning at-risk plans to 
help address the immediate crisis. That is the approach we took.

  This is a step away from their previous plan in the House and among a 
lot of Democrats in the Senate, which employed a loan structure for all 
inactive liabilities and, based on CBO analysis, would not have 
prevented PBGC from becoming insolvent. So this new structure makes 
more sense, and it is closer to the Senate bipartisan framework. The 
new House plan, therefore, costs a little less, and retirees also get 
more certainty from it.
  There are some flaws in the House Democrats' approach that still make 
it a nonstarter over here in the Senate.
  First, there is no shared responsibility when it comes to 
strengthening the financial condition of the PBGC. It entirely relies 
on taxpayers--so $59 billion of taxpayer funds over the next 10 years. 
Some on our side of the aisle, of course, find that to be a bailout by 
the taxpayers when, in fact, there ought to be more shared 
responsibility. This is particularly important now as there is more and 
more concern about the public money that is being spent.
  Second, the House proposal includes no structural reforms whatsoever 
to the rules governing how multiemployer pension plans operate, how 
employer contributions are determined, and corrective actions that 
trustees can take to improve plan solvency and protect the 
participants.
  What we don't want to do is solve the problem with a bandaid and then 
have the problem come right back again. We want to get this right. The 
reforms have to address the underlying flaws in the system and ensure 
that PBGC can function as a self-sustaining entity rather than a new 
line item in the Federal budget funded by permanent entitlement 
spending. This has to be something that solves the program long term. 
We can't put in place a partial solution that will require Congress to 
come back again and again in the future. Unfortunately, the House 
Democrats' plan fails to achieve this.
  In my view, any plan we make to reform the multiemployer pension 
system has to adhere to three main principles:
  No. 1, we do need shared responsibility to address the immediate 
crisis. We should not pass a legislative solution where the bill is 
entirely footed by taxpayers. Employers and participants must share the 
responsibility of fixing this problem--not taxpayers alone since 99 
percent of taxpayers aren't participating in this system.
  A recent poll by McLaughlin & Associates of 2,700 likely voters in 
Midwestern States found that 76 percent of voters support a shared 
solution based on a combination of financial contributions from 
employers, retirees, and taxpayers.
  A Congressional Budget Office 2017 working group paper found that 
both various exemptions from government employer contributions and 
accounting standards used by multiemployer plans played significant 
roles in allowing PBGC to become insolvent. So both exemptions from the 
employers putting money in and the accounting standards are the reason, 
they say, that PBGC became underfunded. So greater employer 
contributions are part of getting these plans back on track.
  Second, I believe any solution must ensure sustainable solvency for 
the PBGC. Again, this is important to be sure that we are solving this 
problem. Overall, I believe premiums should be a significant 
contributor to the health of PBGC, covering at least half of the cost 
of recapitalization.
  We also need our plan participants to pitch in, in the form of 
solvency fees paid directly to PBGC. With a significant variable-rate 
premium, by the way, we can make these solvency fees as low as 10 
percent or maybe even lower. We need to think long and hard about the 
levels of shared responsibility that could include premiums imposed on 
workers, on unions, and increased flat-rate premiums as well. These 
would be small contributions but significant in the sense that 
everybody would be participating, everybody would do a little bit, and 
the taxpayers would be asked to do a lot too. But the only way we can 
get the taxpayers to make a substantial contribution is to ensure that 
there is this shared responsibility.
  Third, any solution must ensure there is sustainable solvency for the 
multiemployer plans in the future. Any bipartisan solution should 
include structural reform to the funding rules governing employer 
contributions to multiemployer plans so that Congress and the Treasury 
will not be regularly called upon to bail out a large number of 
underfunded plans.

[[Page S3199]]

  Retirees need to know these plans are secure. This includes gradually 
phasing down the rate at which plans may value existing pension 
liabilities, which are promises to retirees that should be kept but are 
being budgeted for through investments that the Congressional Budget 
Office says are high risk. Without any rules on how these pension 
liabilities are valued, there is high risk. Here is what the risk is 
now. Here is the average multiemployer plan target rate of return. Here 
is a conservative way to look at it, which would be the interest rate 
on 10-year Treasuries.

  By the way, the 10-year Treasury is now down to just about 1 percent, 
so it has gone down even further. This gap is that high risk the 
Congressional Budget Office is talking about. So there needs to be some 
solution here.
  I understand that this needs to be phased in. It needs to be gradual. 
It needs to be reasonable. But we have to, again, ensure that retirees 
know that, when they get into a plan and make contributions to a plan, 
it is going to be there for them.
  The Senate Finance Committee published its own proposal in November 
which attempted to get at these two goals of addressing the immediate 
crisis through shared responsibility and preventing a future crisis 
through reforms to the funding rules. This was a Republican plan put 
forward by Senator Grassley, who spoke moments ago. That proposal was 
called the Multiemployer Pension Recapitalization Reform Plan. It is 
not perfect, but it is worth emphasizing that the Trump administration 
supports this proposal and put out a Statement of Administration Policy 
endorsing it, saying: ``We believe it has the potential to serve as the 
base for a long-term solution to the multiemployer pension crisis.'' I 
have talked to several people within the administration, and I think 
they are also committed to a bipartisan agreement in this Congress to 
try to solve this problem.
  Again, the plan put out by Senator Grassley and also Senator 
Alexander may not be perfect, but now you have two plans out there, 
both of which use the same basic structure, and I think there is an 
opportunity here for us to come together.
  Right now, I know some of my counterparts in the House who have 
worked on the multiemployer pension proposal in the HEROES Act want to 
know whom they should be negotiating with because they are not 
negotiating right now on how to find that compromise. I would suggest 
talking to the Finance Committee. That is where the jurisdiction is. 
That is what the administration has indicated as well.
  We have been working all year with the PBGC on a reasonable proposal 
that we believe can get support from the National United Committee to 
Protect Pensions, many of the Teamsters local unions, and many 
employers who are trying to stay afloat right now.
  The Senate Finance Committee will continue to reach out to have a 
serious conversation with Democrats on both sides of the Capitol to 
help address this immediate crisis and ensure sustainable solvency for 
the multiemployer pension system. In order to reach an agreement on 
this issue, shared responsibility will be necessary to make it work, in 
my view.
  To reiterate, we are willing to put serious Federal money on the 
table--taxpayer funds--and we are willing to negotiate, but it has to 
be a balanced approach.
  The time to act is now. The Senate Finance Committee has this 
commonsense proposal on the Republican side--again, vetted by PBGC--
that, while not perfect, is an interesting starting point for us to 
come together. The House has their own proposal that has many 
similarities in terms of its structure. So let's build upon those, as 
Republicans and Democrats, to ensure we can get our multiemployer 
pension system back in working order. We owe it to the retirees. We owe 
it to the workers, to the participants in these plans. We owe it to 
these small businesses. Let's get serious about this and ensure we can 
protect the retirements of hard-working Americans we represent. 
Taxpayers deserve proactive action now, and so do workers and so do 
retirees. Let's get it done.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.


                            The JUSTICE Act

  Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, nearly a month has passed since George 
Floyd died. In a show of unity, which bridged divides Americans--
Republicans, Democrats, Independents--demanded that something be done 
to prevent such deaths from happening in the future. Republicans are 
trying to do something.
  Thanks to the leadership of Senator Tim Scott, the Senate is trying 
to consider the JUSTICE Act, a major bill to reform police departments 
in meaningful, practical ways; yet today, Democrats blocked 
consideration of the bill. I hope Democrats allow the Senate to at 
least debate the JUSTICE Act. If Democrats don't like the bill, offer 
an amendment. Make the case. Reforming police departments, making 
justice fair, and equal for all is a bipartisan issue.
  I smiled when I was sitting in the Chair where you are right now, Mr. 
President, when a Senate colleague, who is a Democrat, spoke yesterday 
and described the Senate as the world's greatest deliberative body. I 
thought she must be sarcastic. I say that because Democrats refuse to 
allow deliberation. The people sent us here to solve problems. Let's do 
the work.
  As I was sitting in the Chair yesterday, I heard Democrats 
rationalize why they refuse to allow debate. As best as I can tell, 
they refused to allow any deliberation because they are not sure that 
what they want to be included will be included.
  I think now it is time to review that which most of us learned in 
fifth grade. Just for a civics lesson for my Democratic colleagues, I 
am going to go through how a bill is passed and to show that, even 
though they don't like how the bill starts, they can actually change 
how it ends and vote against it if they don't like it.
  We all learned this. This is how a bill is passed. We get an idea 
from a constituent. Those ideas are on the street right now. They want 
reform of how policing occurs, to make sure that it is fair and 
equitable for all. The bill can go through the House. It is debated on 
the House floor. If it is approved, it comes to the Senate.
  I am going to interject here. The Senate may come up with its own 
bill, and it goes to the floor. Here, it says the bill is debated. That 
is not happening. Filibuster and cloture may occur, and the Senate may 
approve the bill.
  Let's stop here. If the Democratic Senators don't like the bill in 
its current form, they can amend it. If they don't like the way it is 
when it is amended, they can vote against it. If they vote against it, 
it will not pass. If they don't like where it ends up, after we 
deliberate, debate, and offer amendments, they can still defeat it.
  Let's just imagine that it does get approved, then it goes to the 
conference committee--you and I know this--but there are some watching 
who heard this dialogue yesterday or these speeches yesterday from our 
colleagues on the Democratic side. Let me just remind people, if we 
approve a bill, it still goes to conference committee.
  The legislation passed by the House of Representatives is considered; 
those two bills are merged; and then it comes back for another vote. 
They have a chance to amend. They have a chance to vote against it if 
they don't like the final product, and then it is going to a conference 
committee with Speaker Pelosi's version, and then they get to vote 
against that if they don't like that.
  If all they do is allow deliberation of the bill--in what one said 
sarcastically was the ``world's greatest deliberative body''--they 
would have this, that, and that opportunity to either change, 
disapprove, or to vote on something which they finally approve. That is 
how it is supposed to work.
  By the way, my young aide was bringing us into the Chamber and saw 
somebody in the hallway, and the young person said: Hmm, it doesn't 
work that way. He remembered seeing this cartoon, this YouTube, when he 
was a kid. All he could say was: It doesn't work that way.
  It should. It is how our Founding Fathers set it up. But the other 
side decided it doesn't work that way, and that is too bad. That is too 
bad because, if we don't do the work, if we don't deliberate, if we 
continue to have status quo over the change and the reform that all the 
American people are

[[Page S3200]]

demanding, then we will not be answering the pleas of those peaceful 
protesters who are asking for that change.
  The cynic might believe the Democrats blocked deliberation of the 
JUSTICE Act because they don't want the President or the Republicans to 
have a win in an election year. If that is the case, if this is purely 
political, they have let down the American people, especially those who 
demand justice. They let down the American people just to score 
political points.
  Maybe they blocked it because it doesn't include the Democratic 
Party's new wish list: defunding and abolishing police forces. Perhaps 
they knew that, if somebody offered an amendment to the JUSTICE Act to 
defund police, then Members would be forced to vote on the measure 
rather than just pay lip service to an idea that is going nowhere.
  Let me say, defunding and abolishing police forces is not the 
direction Republicans believe we should take, for obvious reasons. Mobs 
are destroying and defacing property and destroying and defacing 
monuments of national heroes--George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, 
Ulysses Grant. World War II memorials are being defaced with swastikas, 
torn down by a mob that hates the United States of America.
  When you establish a so-called police-free zone--an absurd promise 
for a utopian society that is, in fact, full of crime--the one in 
Seattle has had, I think, four shootings--at this point, the mob's goal 
is not justice for George Floyd; the mob's goal is about displaying 
their hatred for the United States of America.
  If Senate Democrats reject that behavior of the mob, let the country 
hear you. Reject it. But that would require debate. That would require 
deliberation. That is what is being denied the JUSTICE Act. That is 
what Senate Democrats will not allow.
  Here is what Senate Democrats blocked when they decided against 
allowing deliberation of the JUSTICE Act, if you will, addressing the 
demands of the people who are calling for reforms of policing. They 
denied stronger accountability measures for the police departments. The 
JUSTICE Act requires reporting of use of force and no-knock warrants. 
It increased penalty for false police reports. It institutes penalties 
for failing to properly use body cameras. It requires sharing of 
disciplinary records so that departments will know whether an applicant 
has the history of bad behavior in another law enforcement department.
  By the way, some of the Senate Democrats have said they want to 
outlaw these things. Offer an amendment. That is why you deliberate. 
You don't come up with a deal in a back room and bring it--and, oh, my 
gosh, we have to vote on it. You offer an amendment. Allow 
deliberation.
  Why will they not respond to the pleas of the American people to 
deliberate, to consider, to come up with some form of fairness and 
policing for those who feel like it has been denied?

  Let me continue. The JUSTICE Act requires the Department of Justice 
to develop and provide training and deescalation and intervention 
techniques to prevent police encounters from getting out of hand. That 
training works. The New Orleans Police Department has implemented it.
  One of the images I saw when the riots were occurring in Minneapolis 
was the New Orleans Police Department taking a knee with protesters in 
Jackson Square--literally on common ground--to say that we are with you 
to work towards a solution. That is because of this sort of training 
being instituted there. I am so proud that my State has example of that 
which works. This bill would take that which works and make it common 
across the country.
  The JUSTICE Act also requires training and education about the 
African-American socioeconomic circumstance so officers can gain a 
better perspective in these communities. It promotes understanding of 
how African-American males are impacted by experience, including 
education, healthcare, financial status in the criminal justice system. 
It helps departments know the best practices for police tactics, 
employment processes, community transparency, and how law enforcement 
can best engage on issues related to mental health, homelessness, and 
addiction.
  Senator Scott, drawing from his own experiences, crafted a bill with 
reforms that will lead to more accountability, fewer uses of force, and 
a better understanding of disenfranchised and minority communities that 
police should also serve and protect. Criminal justice reform advocates 
have long called for the very same reforms the JUSTICE Act institutes. 
In fact, there is a lot of agreement between Republicans and Democrats 
on many of the reforms in this bill.
  I will ask once more: Why are Democrats blocking even a consideration 
on this floor of this bill? If you don't like it, work to change it. If 
it passes, it only passes with your votes. If it does pass, it then 
goes to the House of Representatives for reconciliation with their 
bill, and then it comes back. But we should at least debate--at least 
pretend to hear the cries of the American people who are asking for 
justice for those who perceive that they have been denied.
  We know that the JUSTICE Act brings about the changes to policing 
that Americans are calling for: more accountability, deescalation 
training, education, and other things. Yet again, Senate Democrats have 
blocked even a discussion of those reforms.
  I ask myself--it doesn't make sense, good people--why would they 
block even consideration, any response whatsoever to the cries of the 
people on the street that the Congress do something? Why would they 
even do that? Then I return to this. I think they are afraid that 
someone on their side of the aisle will offer an amendment to defund 
the police, and they would have to go on the record as to whether or 
not they are going to appease a radical left base to vote to defund the 
police or whether or not they are going to support the men and women in 
uniform that protect us all. They don't want that.
  It is not just a political calculation that they don't want President 
Trump to have a win, I suppose; it is a political calculation that they 
don't want a loss. They don't want to be forced to declare their 
support for the police or their support to defund the police.
  They are ignoring the cries of protesters demanding that George Floyd 
never occur again in order to cover political tracks. I think it is 
important to recognize that defunding the police, which I think is a 
radical concept, is absurd. We need police officers. In fact, I am 
always struck that my colleagues of both parties always thank Capitol 
Police for the service they do.
  Don't the people who live in our community thank the police officers 
to keep their business from being stolen and robbed or burned? I think 
they do. But on the other hand, if you think police should be defunded, 
allow that amendment to come up, and then vote on it. The American 
people didn't send us here to duck tough votes. They sent us here to 
declare that which we believe in but also to represent their interest.
  A word about the mob that is not peaceful protesters advocating for 
justice for all but those who hate the United States of America, who 
wish to erase our history, and who wish to replace our national heroes 
with toppled statues and swastikas and hammer and sickles upon the side 
of the building. The irony is that most of the mob relies upon 
constitutional protections of free speech and freedom of assembly. We 
cherish those rights. We cherish them and thank those who are 
peacefully protesting for exercising those constitutional rights.
  I also hear from some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
that, somehow, these actions of anarchists are just violent. There is a 
sentiment that says we try to enact change peacefully, but nothing is 
happening. I, unfortunately, have to agree with them.
  The Republicans have brought forward a bill that would peacefully 
begin to make changes in how policing is understood and practiced and, 
in peacefully doing so, bring about change for which they are 
advocating. But again, nothing has happened because Senate Democrats 
have decided that they don't even want to debate a bill, offer 
amendments, vote against the final product, or allow it to go to a 
conference committee with the House of Representatives to be changed 
once more to perhaps come more to their liking.
  Again, my Senate Democratic colleagues are not just blocking reform;

[[Page S3201]]

they will not even allow discussion of reform. They don't want to talk 
to Republicans about it. They don't want to take a stand on defunding 
and abolishing police departments. Rather than have a debate, we go 
into hiding, leaving the issues regarding the reform of policing 
unresolved. I hope my Democratic colleagues allow the debate to occur. 
I hope they recognize the importance of this issue to all Americans, 
especially to those in communities of color, but really to us all.
  To my colleagues on the other side of the aisle: Come back to the 
table. Let's hear your amendments. Let's have debate. Let's enact the 
change we need by building a consensus on the best path forward. Let's 
live up to the statement that the Senate is the world's greatest 
deliberative body.
  Together, the Senate--Republicans and Democrats--can deliver change 
for the American people. We can bring about the unity that we as a 
country desperately need in order to heal as a society, but this will 
only happen if my Senate Democratic colleagues stop hiding behind 
procedural votes.
  Come to the floor. Let's deliberate. Let's do what the Founding 
Fathers imagined that we would. I know that it is politically 
difficult, but sometimes, we have to rise above political difficulty 
with a challenge of time, and that challenge is now.
  I yield back.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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