Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, in reserving the right to object, my colleague Senator Paul is well-intended in this recommendation, and I listened to it carefully, as I am sure others did. The Page Program, which has been in effect since 1829, has become a program of both opportunity and education and is a program that the Page Board, the Senate Page Board, has responsibility for. I would say, in looking at the immediate future, the pages who are here now, the pages who have agreed to be pages in the summer, and the pages, I think, who are in line to be pages in the fall--and their families--have all looked at these recommendations. They have all decided they are recommendations they would be able to meet. Maybe more importantly, they also have decided to make that family decision for their children to be here and be pages as high school juniors, perhaps, because of the standards that have been set that they are well aware of. I would hope that Senator Paul would continue to talk to the Page Board. I think the Page Board has a very important job to do. They accept an incredible responsibility of the relationships that they have decided to enter into between the pages, their families, and the Page Board in representing the Senate. That Board has some oversight from the Rules Committee, and I yield to the chairman of the Rules Committee.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I want to continue to talk about some of the challenges the administration is facing and the country is facing. Let me talk for just a little bit about the border, about the economy, and about our ongoing concerns on COVID. First of all, the border--we have had a number of people come to the floor and talk about the border, the problems at the border. Many of these problems were really self-inflicted on day 1. The President, on the first day of his Presidency--and I chaired the inauguration on January 20. Hours after that, the President decided to stop building the wall. I was never an advocate of needing a wall everywhere along the southern border, but we had a wall in lots of places already. It was doing some good, but it wasn't doing as much good as it needed to do. And just the idea that we--with the material on the ground and the old wall torn down--would decide to stop building the wall, I think, started these problems. And if that wasn't enough, then-President Trump had made arrangements, the State Department had made arrangements--everybody involved--with Mexico to have people who were applying for asylum wait for their court date in Mexico. It was my view at the time that we should do anything we could to help the Mexican Government make that work because the alternative was people would come into the United States and not show up for an asylum date later. In Mexico, they have learned that they weren't going to qualify for asylum because fewer than--9 out of 10 people, roughly, will not qualify. You found that out before you got into the United States and successfully had entered our country, even though you weren't eligible to. If you were waiting in Mexico and you found a lawyer to talk to and maybe even a way to hear your case in some way there, you would find out that you weren't going to qualify for asylum 8\1/2\ times or 9 times out of 10, and that is where you should have found that out. To come in the country and wait for months to have a court date that you may or may not show up for just simply has not worked, and everybody that understands this system understands it doesn't work. And everybody that understands the obligation of a government understands that a government has some obligation to control its own borders, and you don't control your own borders by having people come into the country that aren't legally eligible to come into the country and then just stay here. So that policy produced real chaos. And then title 42, under the public health law, was another thing that we put in place, as we put all kinds of other COVID-related protections in place. And now we want to eliminate title 42. The only place, apparently--if you follow the CDC closely right now--that we don't need to up our game on COVID protection is the border of the United States. None of these things makes sense. We have too many people who have been encouraged wrongly and told: You come to the United States, you ask for asylum, they let you into the United States, and then you don't show up for your asylum hearing. I am for legal immigration. I am for solving the Dreamer problem. I am for doing a lot of things that we need to do to make our immigration laws work properly. We need to understand the workforce needs of the country. We need to understand what to do about people who came or stayed illegally. But we also need to understand how to secure the border. And that is where, for any of these other things to work, you have to do that. The COVID problem, as I said, appears to only be a problem at the CDC--well, actually, it appears to be a problem everywhere but the border. The CDC, just yesterday, had a new rule that even for domestic travel, people should now--their advice is have a test for domestic travel--before you get on an airplane to go domestically, to have that test. The efforts that we were working on and working hard on to replenish the categories that have been spent for research, particularly for the therapeutics that we need to have a stock of that haven't been fully certified yet--so they have to be the Government is the purchaser of those--we were working on a $10 billion bill. And even this morning again, the Secretary of Commerce, at our appropriations hearing, said: Well, that would just be a start. We need 10 or 20 or 30 billion more before the end of this fiscal year than we currently have, and it is an emergency--10, 20, 30 billion more than we have now. But at the border, no problem at all. At the border, this is no problem. We need billions of dollars to deal with it internally. We need to not only have fewer tests, which everybody agrees, fewer standards for domestic travel; we now need a new standard, they say, for domestic travel. Surely they will think about that. And while we are negotiating, again, spending, this issue comes out simultaneously that the border is a problem. And then, of course, everybody knows the economy is a problem. All you have got to do to find out the economy is a problem is go to the gas station or go to the grocery store, and most Americans do that and do it a lot. And when gas prices go up, when food prices go up, every family knows it. What we are seeing now is inflation that I think it is 8.5 percent. It may be settling in at 8.5 percent. But wherever it settles in, it is a whole lot higher than it was at any time during the Obama administration. The highest month in the entire Obama administration of inflation--that is not a year average--the highest single month was 3.4 percent. Under President Trump, the highest single month was 2.9 percent. We are now at 8.5 percent, and the Producer Price Index has been in double digits since December. That is usually a sign that the other index is going to follow that double-digit, scary number that is out there. So energy policies that produced exactly the result you would think they would: higher energy prices; spending policies: the American Rescue Plan. I thought, at the time, it was a final COVID bill, but when you looked at the bill before we had a chance to vote on it and saw it, it really didn't have very much to do with COVID. Maybe 6 percent of the $1.9 trillion went to COVID. The rest of it went to things that put money in people's pockets to help them recover in an economy that was already recovering. You can't spend $1.9 trillion in a short period of time, even in the biggest and most vibrant economy in the world, and not drive up prices. So whether it is inflation, whether it is the economic stress--I talked to a group of Missouri realtors today, and, of course, they are beginning to see people wonder if they can afford a house at the interest rates that are out in front of us. It makes a big difference if the interest payment is based on 3.5 percent interest or 5.5 or 6.5 or 7.5 or, as it was in the mid 1980s, 11 to 15 percent interest. These are issues we need to get under control. Most of these issues have an explanation that is rooted in confused policy decisions in the administration. I look forward to those confused policy decisions heading in a different direction. Let's look at the information. Let's be realistic. Let's not continue to see all of these things headed in a direction that makes no common sense in America today. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I rise today to honor the 75th anniversary of the Memorial Baptist Church of Arlington, VA, for faithful ministry and service to Arlington and the greater Washington, DC area. For decades, they have lived up to their covenant to engage in Christian care for each other, through bible study and dedicated work for the advancement of Christianity. Memorial Baptist Church's first public service was held on Easter Sunday, April 6, 1947, at the old Glebe Theater near what is now Langston Boulevard. Memorial Baptist was officially organized on April 28, 1947, less than a month after its first service, with Reverend James Farmer becoming the church's first pastor. One year later, on April 28, 1948, they celebrated the groundbreaking of their chapel, a building that is still the center of the church today. Since construction finished in 1949, locals from all over the area have come to worship and be a part of their congregation. Since Memorial Baptist's inception, they have been a catalyst of community engagement, worship, and service. Along with being a center for Christian prayer and values, they have brought people together in weekly bible studies, adult classes, and family picnics. Memorial Baptist Church also has a long history of faithful ministry and service to the Arlington community and around the world, including mission partnerships in Kentucky, Ukraine, and India. Memorial Baptist Church has forged 75 years of history and tradition for the local community. Memorial Baptist Church will continue to minister and serve in the name of Christ with a variety of services, programs, and activities in anticipation of a bright and productive future.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate Mr. David Hauck on his retirement and recognize his 35 years of dedicated service to the Congress and the American people. A native of Minneapolis, MN, Dave began his Capitol Hill career while still a graduate student at American University, working part-time as an elevator operator in the Senate. After completing his degree, he spent 5 years working on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where he served as hearing coordinator and systems administrator. Following his time on the Foreign Relations Committee, Dave became the assistant director of the Congressional Special Services Office. In 2008, Congress established the Office of Congressional Accessibility Services and made Dave its founding director. For over 29 years, Dave has worked to ensure that individuals with disabilities, including Members, staff, and visitors to the Capitol, have the best possible access to facilities and events throughout the Capitol Complex. In addition to helping Congress create and staff the Office of Accessibility Services, Dave also worked with Congress throughout the construction of the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center--CVC--to make the CVC accessible to all visitors. Dave and his team have handled the day-to-day accessibility needs of Congress and played an important role in every major event Congress has seen over the last three decades. Dave has been a staunch advocate for the accessibility community throughout countless joint sessions of Congress, the lying in state or lying in honor of many beloved Americans, and the inaugurations of seven Presidents. When I chaired the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies for both President Trump and President Biden's inaugurations, my staff and I saw firsthand how invaluable Dave's expertise on accessibility issues was to planning a seamless inauguration. Today, it is my pleasure to thank Dave for his many years of service and to congratulate him on his retirement. I wish him the best in his next chapter, as I am sure so many here do.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I rise today to honor a St. Louis, MO, resident whose name and family are synonymous with supermarkets across the Midwest. Todd Schnuck, a dedicated community and business leader, is being honored with the Glen Woodard Award for Outstanding Leadership in Public Affairs by the Food Industry Association. Todd Schnuck is the third family member of the third generation of Schnucks to be CEO and chairman of Schnucks Markets, Inc., and has been a community and industry advocate since entering the family business in the late 1980s. During the next 30 years, his leadership built Schnucks into the food industry leader it is today. Todd joined the family business after college in 1987 to help facilitate new acquisitions for the company. Over the next two decades, he would help Schnucks build its footprint throughout the Midwest through acquisitions and expansion. Schnucks has over 100 stores today and employs 15,000 associates spanning five States. In 2014, Todd was named CEO and chairman of Schnuck Markets, Inc., holding the same position his grandfather did when he started the company in 1939. Along with the terrific work Todd has done for the business of Schnucks, he has been an even greater community leader. Todd has not only made Schnucks an employer of choice in the State of Missouri, but has worked closely with the United Way of Greater St. Louis. He is also currently chairman of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and holds board seats with the Opportunity Trust and the Arch to Park Equity Fund. I know firsthand what a strong advocate Todd is for the food industry. He is in a unique position to be a credible voice for the supermarket industry, spending his career leading and growing the family business. I congratulate Todd on the Glen Woodard Award for Outstanding Leadership in Public Affairs.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Exactly. I am so glad to be here with you, Senator Stabenow. We have been friends for a long time and have worked together on a number of issues both in the House, to which we came at the same time, and in the Senate, when I got to the Senate. Clearly, this is one of the things of which, I think, we both have a strong sense that we have really made a difference in not only how we look at mental health but in also the way we talk about mental health. To Senator Stabenow's point of treating mental health like all other health and ``what happens when you do that?'' we got an award last month when I was home and Senator Stabenow was virtually in Jefferson City, MO, for a few minutes with the Missouri Behavioral Health Council, and we received the Excellence in Mental Health award. Brent McGinty, the head of that council, gave a talk about what they were doing and what they were seeing from what they were doing. Also, we talked about the partnership with community health centers, another thing we have worked together on. Joe Pierle and Brent McGinty are actually both here today, coincidentally, as we are talking about this issue that is so important to both of them. I have often thought about the same type of discussion we had in 2013 as Senator Stabenow just pointed out. We went through the Community Mental Health Act from 1963, and it became apparent that many of the things that probably should have been closed but were serving a need, did get closed, but then the support system didn't come in, in the way that anybody would have envisioned when that came together. I can remember it in Missouri when some of our mental health facilities or hospitals were closed, and that was a fine thing if you had what the bill that President Kennedy signed had in mind and, I think, what we have had in mind. One of the things we have looked at is--we have looked at 41 States now that have some efforts, some unit, of excellence in mental health-- the Certified Community Behavioral Health Centers--in their States. Maybe it is a big county. Maybe it is a city that was able to qualify with the 365-days-a-year, 24/7 standards and with the kind of staff available that you have to have to meet that criteria first. We now have eight States, including Michigan and Missouri, in this process. One of the things that is happening in all of those units is keeping track of the person's other healthcare challenges when you are dealing with their mental healthcare challenges. The NIH says about one in five adult Americans has a diagnosable and almost always treatable behavioral health issue, and one in five adult Americans probably has other health issues as well. In fact, obviously, they would have. One of the things we have been trying to keep track of is what happens in the real, confined healthcare world when you deal with people's mental health problems like they were any other health problems. Do they start showing up at appointments more frequently? Do they take the medicine that they are supposed to take for either behavioral health issues or other health issues? Are they eating better or sleeping better or feeling better about themselves? I think it is pretty clear and totally logical that that would be exactly what happens. Another thing we have seen, after the 50 years of whatever happened in mental health between October 1963 and the day we were on the floor in 2013, is that, in so many ways, the police department, law enforcement, and the emergency room became the de facto mental health system for the country. We have had people come and be part of the press conferences with us, Senator Stabenow, when we are talking about fewer people being taken to the emergency rooms and the importance of having a contact that you can make or have, maybe, a place that is not only a place to spend the night but also a place for you and your family so you know that you are going to have an ongoing opportunity to have a relationship to deal with your mental health problem just like you would if you had to be taken to the hospital with other problems. We have seen some things there, Senator Stabenow, that you may want to talk about a little bit--everything from the iPad that law enforcement officers and the crisis intervention team uses in Springfield, MO, and other places in our State to where they can immediately link the person they are dealing with up on the screen on the iPad with the behavioral health counselor who is there any time of the day--fully manned, 24/7--and see what begins to happen when a professional is dealing with a person in crisis. I have seen that happen, and I am sure I was there with, probably, the best crisis intervention center person the police department had. You can tell the difference when they start looking at that screen and talking to somebody who is always a behavioral health specialist but also who is just a little bit removed and is totally prepared to enter into that discussion. We have had lots of people talk about the impact on departments and emergency rooms, Senator Stabenow.

Mr. BLUNT. Well, we are. As to what you were talking about with getting people into the healthcare system instead of the criminal justice system, it is, obviously, one of the goals we should have. Missouri's really got started in January 2017, and in the first 4 years in these certified centers, they served more than 150,000 Missourians and more than 3,500 veterans. That was a 41-percent increase over the 4 years of not being in the program to being in the program. Not only is it able to serve people, but because of the way this is set up, you are able to serve people so much more quickly. You are able to have the staff that you can have because you know you have got the funding you need to have the staff--largely, this is an increase of the Medicaid coverage, but the other Medicaid costs go down more than the behavioral health costs add to the system. We have always known that this was the right thing to do--right thing to do in the long run, right thing to do for police officers, right thing to do for the emergency room, right thing to do for the prison system, right thing to do for the people being at work. I think what we are showing here is, not only is it the right thing to do and saves money over time, but it is the right thing to do and largely pays for itself and maybe more than pays for itself within the immediate context of healthcare; and that is one of the things we are looking at. What we saw in the last 2 years with COVID was the real crisis that became part of that healthcare crisis with a mental health crisis, of isolation, of people who developed some kind of dependency. If you don't have a mental health problem before you become dependent on opioids or something else, you have one as soon as you become dependent on those. The suicide numbers went up. Having a structure in place ready to reach out and man the suicide hotline to get people to where they need to get--there is no waiting list for somebody who is thinking about doing harm to themselves or others. We need to have a society where we understand that is an immediate problem; it has to be dealt with immediately; and it is a societal--not only a societal goal, but, actually, it should be one of our primary responsibilities in this society. And I think that is what we are seeing here over and over again, Senator Stabenow.

Mr. BLUNT. We are, too. Mr. President, we look forward to you joining us in this effort.

Mr. BLUNT. I think in almost--in all of the States, once they get this fully running the way they hope it will, that everybody who needs to be seen the first day is seen the first day.

Mr. BLUNT. There may be an occasional evaluation where you talk to somebody and realize this is something that you don't have to put at the very front of that day's line; but if you need to be at the front of the line, you get to go to the front of the line. If you need to be seen the first day, you get to be seen the first day. No more 7-day waiting period for a crisis moment.

Mr. BLUNT. People still may have to occasionally wait and come back tomorrow or come back Wednesday or whatever the schedule might be--and I think that is critically important. Now, Senator Stabenow, what you and I are trying to do is to further expand the opportunity. You know, the President said in his State of the Union message: Let's get all Americans the mental health services they need. That is a quote: ``Let's get all Americans the mental health services they need.'' That was a goal in the President's State of the Union message; it should be a significant goal for the country. What we would like to see happen in this Congress is the expansion of excellence in mental health to every State that wants to do it. Initially, we had 24 States apply to be part of the 8 pilot States. Nineteen of them went all the way through that entire process. You know, all 50 States may not apply, but we would like to create an environment where all 50 States could apply. Frankly, every time we get a score on this bill, the score is a little lower than it was before because I think the facts are beginning to persuade even the Congressional Budget Office that this makes economic sense to do. And there may be some startup costs, but the long-term costs may be actually long-term savings. If you do the right thing and save money while you are doing it, Mr. President, that is a pretty good place to be in for a society or a government or a country; and that is what we are trying to get done, Senator Stabenow, in this Congress.

Mr. BLUNT. Right. Right.

Mr. BLUNT. You can have a community behavioral health center working with a primary care center or you could have an independent provider working with their other healthcare provider or vice versa. It is very interchangeable. The one criteria for the certified community behavioral health centers is the level of staffing--24/7, 365 days a year, always available to be that critically important partner that people with a mental health challenge need. And, frankly, their families and people who care about them need it as well.

Mr. BLUNT. This is a big challenge for the individual that has a behavioral health problem, but it can be an equally big challenge for people who care about them.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 5 minutes before the scheduled rollcall vote.

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, there are really few jobs in the country as difficult, as dangerous, and as demanding as the sacrifice of being a law enforcement officer. I would suggest the one job that may possibly be harder--and certainly in my view is as hard--is to be the family member of a law enforcement officer, wondering all during that working shift what might be happening to the person you care so much about. You know the challenges to these officers and their families--the challenges they face today are intensified as local departments struggle with the staffing shortages caused by record high departures and difficulty filling the open positions they have got. The Eastern Missouri Police Academy had around half as many recruits join in 2021 as they had in 2020. In my hometown of Springfield, MO, they have 40 vacancies right now they are trying to fill in the department. In January, the Columbia, MO, Police Department had around 20 vacancies in a force that its maximum size would be 187 or so people. According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch in September, officer departures in St. Louis City and St. Louis County spiked in 2021 and were at a pace to be up to 60 percent higher in each of those departments than they had been in the average year. In the police force here, I was with Chief Manger yesterday, and he pointed out that retirements and resignations were 50 percent higher than they have been in recent years in 2021. The new chief of police at the St. Louis County Police Force said: My biggest priority is hiring and finding people who will do these jobs. These staff shortages are unfortunate, but they are in so many ways predictable of a movement that villainized enforcement for, I think, political gain in many cases. Officers have been demoralized by the ``defund the police'' crusade. They have been discouraged by prosecutors who put dangerous criminals back on the street or even put out a list of crimes that people will not be prosecuted for. That is well beyond the standard of belief that most people would have had, actually, until they heard it, my guess would be, that, no, these are crimes that we are just not going to prosecute people for. Police saw themselves, in many cases, forced out of the force because of a vaccine mandate they didn't agree with, often going to smaller forces that had less than 100 people. All this is happening, really, against a backdrop of a crime wave that is harming communities of all sizes all across the country. When I talk to police chiefs, I hear concerns that a lot of good candidates are deciding maybe law enforcement won't be the career that they want to have. When I talk to the sworn officers that I see here every day and I see at home, I hear many of them feel they just simply have a job where they face danger but they don't get enough support that they need to do the job that they need to do. Police work has always been dangerous. We have always lost officers. They have always been courageous in their willingness to stand up, but last year was the deadliest year ever for law enforcement officers. Four hundred fifty-eight officers died in the line of duty in 2021, 128 of them from gunshot wounds or fatalities from traffic. You don't have to travel very far away from here, just down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, to understand what it means to lose officers and what it means to lose them in protection of the country. The marble walls there bear the names of thousands of officers who have been killed in the line of duty. Each corner of that memorial shows a lion protecting its cubs. We have always seen law enforcement as our protectors, not as those we should somehow fear. It eats away at our society to say that we appreciate law enforcement but we really don't want to do what is necessary to support law enforcement. I think there is no data that says one or more tweets that say ``defund the police'' leads to two crimes or two muggings, but it simply makes common sense that when police departments are understaffed and undertrained, it increases the risk of violent crime on the officers themselves and the communities they serve. As the cochair of the Senate Law Enforcement Caucus, one of my priorities has been to ensure that law enforcement officers have the support and resources they need to do the job they are asked to do and do it as safely and effectively as they possibly can. We certainty all can and I think would agree--I certainly would--that there really should be zero tolerance for police misconduct. Taking the oath to support and defend and then somehow not conducting yourself in the right way, if you cross that line, you ought to be held accountable. We need to view people on the line as people who are there to defend us, to serve us. We need to make this a profession that people want to be part of, and if they are willing to be part of it, we have provided them everything they need to be safely doing the hard work that they are asked to do. I yield the floor. Vote on Bush Nomination

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. The ability to secure your border--to follow my good friend from Ohio, the ability to secure your border is actually one of the fundamental responsibilities of a legitimate government. Even former President Obama, within the last few months, has looked at what was happening at the border, and I believe the word he used was ``unsustainable.'' We cannot continue to let this happen. It is a border crisis, whether the administration is willing to call it a border crisis or not. There are drugs coming across, and I know my friend from Tennessee is going to talk about that, as the Senator from Ohio did. More than 2 million people were apprehended trying to cross the border last year. Of that number, more than 171,000 were unaccompanied children. The year before it had been 37,000. In 2020, it was 37,000 people. It should have been a warning sign. Thirty-seven thousand children is bad enough, let alone 171,000--almost four times the number who came the year before. We need to ask ourselves, what are we doing to encourage that? Why would parents let their children come or send their children or why would children come on their own to the border at the numbers of 171,000? Obviously, we don't know exactly how many people actually entered the country illegally. So if 2 million people were apprehended entering the country, some of them may have been making repeat efforts to come into the country, but there is no real evidence that very many people get sent back, but let's assume some do. So some of the apprehended people may have been multiple offenders, if you will, of trying to violate our law by coming in. I think it is more reasonable to believe that more people weren't apprehended than were apprehended multiple times, so we have a huge problem here. The policies have already been discussed. Why would the number--just over 2,035,000 last year--be 272 percent greater than the year before? Things happening in the countries they come from aren't different, substantially, than they were the year before. The weather is not in crisis in any way different than it was the year before. So let's look at day 1 of the Biden administration, where one of the first decisions is, we are going to stop building the barrier that is in the process of being built--not we are going to debate whether we should do more of it or not, but we are going to stop building the barrier that Congress has appropriated the money for, that the equipment has been bought for, that the necessary metal and fencing and other things have been bought for, and they are delivered, and after we get that up, let's decide if we need to do more. I have never been of the view that every inch of the border needs to have a barrier, but I have always been of the view that a barrier or a fence or a wall, whatever you want to call it, has to be helpful, particularly if it has the technology that was going into this fence. So, you know, just watching that great investment that the American people made sit there and not be completed is a problem. Some wall and fence had been torn down already so the new wall and fence could be put back up. We have areas that don't have the kind of fence they had 5 years ago or 10 years ago or under the Clinton administration because we said, no, we are just going to stop doing what the Congress has already provided money and the authority to do. And then the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy, which, frankly, I thought was one of the most amazing things that our government got the Government of Mexico to agree to. It was a major step on their part to help us not only secure our border but discourage people from needlessly coming all the way through Mexico. You know, most of our immigrants are not Mexican immigrants anymore; they are Central American immigrants; they are the immigrants whom others have talked about today from all over the world. But they come through Mexico, and Mexico doesn't like that either. So why would ``Remain in Mexico'' work? ``Remain in Mexico'' was working because people, when they see that they are not going to be let loose in the United States or delivered somewhere in the United States and told to come back in 90 days or 5 years later, when they see that is not going to happen, and they talk to anybody who understands the law, 9 out of 10 of them know that they have no chance for an asylum claim. And they are in Mexico. It is not that they have no chance for an asylum claim and they have arrived and been taken somewhere in the United States and told to return at a later date. It clearly just did not work. The ``Remain in Mexico''--we could have put more money there. In fact, we put quite a bit of money there but then walked away from the facilities that were just about to begin to serve the purpose in the way that the American people--the most generous people in the world about people coming to our country and some of the, I think, most liberal immigration laws in the world for legal immigration. We could have made an investment so that people could have safely and securely understood that you are not going to be able to advance this asylum claim. The easiest thing in the world to do is show up at the border and say we are claiming asylum. The U.S. Government sends you somewhere in the United States to wait and come back later for a hearing. Now we see people--single adults--getting on planes in the middle of the night and being flown to other airports and getting off in the middle of the night. I have even heard--surely this can't be really accurate--that you are told to use your arrest papers as your identification to get on the plane. If we have come to the point where our border policy is use the arrest papers to get on the plane so wherever we take you, you are able to then be part of our society until somebody catches you and tells you, you can't be part of our society, it is a huge problem. The border is out of control. There is clearly a border crisis. I am a major supporter of legal immigration. I am a major supporter of kids who were brought here by their parents illegally, grown up in America and not gotten in trouble. I think they should be able to stay, and we should want them to stay. I am not a supporter of this blatant violation of the law and sending a message to the whole world, here is how you get done what you want to get done, even though it is against the laws of the United States to do what we are clearly helping you do. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I have been on the floor most of the day today, and I think I heard virtually every speech given. I was reminded again, as the day went on, of really the broad-based talent of people in the Senate. I spent some time, a couple of years ago, over the course of about 6 months, kind of watching individual Senators and trying to figure out how they got here. And with only a couple of exceptions, I could figure it out: that unique ability to communicate or to explain things in a way that people understood them or to appear to just know more than other people knew about things that people knew Senators need to know about. And I was reminded again of the tragedy of how little we use that collective talent. There is absolutely no telling what we could do if we would decide, as 100 people who figured out how to get to the U.S. Senate, how we would work together and solve big problems. And I think we all know where we are today. But I do hope, as Senator Schumer mentioned, that we listen to each other as people express different views. Certainly, the Senate would be a better place if we spent more time on the floor listening to each other and talking to each other. Now, on this bill, I think we all know where we are headed. In my view, having watched election legislation for a long time, it seems to me this is just another version of an election bill introduced by Democrats. There is not much new in this bill. Both the Rules Committee, where I serve, and the Senate have already rejected this Federal takeover of elections several times this year. Now, many of my friends on the other side said: Well, why wouldn't Republicans just want to debate this bill? I don't think anybody said: Why wouldn't the Republicans want to amend this bill--because there was no opportunity to do that. We have been on the bill now for several days. We got on the bill. It was a fairly crafty way to get on the bill, with a 51-vote vote. It is fine with me to be on the bill. But our friends on the other side decided there would be no amendments on this bill. And I think Republicans, from the very start, sensed that this would be a bill where we would get a ``yes'' or ``no'' vote on a bill that really would dramatically change how we pursue elections. Now, while it has a new name--it is more than 700 pages--it is nearly identical to the Freedom to Vote Act. It is substantially the same as the two versions that couldn't get 50 on that side, S. 1; very similar to the Senate bill, H.R. 1; and very similar, frankly, to the election bills that I have been watching for 20 years. And there has always been a different reason to do about the same Democrat-sponsored bill in the House and Senate. After 2020, the reason was, well, the equipment is too faulty, and we have got to have more Federal control of what happens in the States. After 2016, the reason to have a massive election bill was, well, there is just not enough security in State elections, and the Federal Government has to intervene in some major way. After 2020, even though the Federal Government didn't intervene in a major way, suddenly the elections were the most secure in the history of the world. Both parties alleged that at one point. Now, we need to have this bill because some States are passing legislation that in most cases looks at the real outreach that they appropriately did for the pandemic, and thinking in 2021 that the pandemic was over, thinking, what do we want to keep from what we did in that outreach, and what do we want to decide we should only do during a pandemic? I haven't found very many places, if any, that couldn't be easily explained, like postal regulations and other things, where the States have made changes and rolled back their pandemic outreach, where they don't have more opportunities to vote now than they had in 2018, the last election before they should have done extraordinary things. Actually, one lesson we probably taught State legislators here is, don't do anything to try to amend an immediate moment because if you try to undo it when that moment has passed, you will get on what Senator Lankford described as the ``bad list.'' He also did a pretty good job explaining that a lot of States that weren't on the bad list don't have nearly the opportunities to vote as the States that are on the bad list. I was an election official for about 20 years, including the secretary of state for a good part of that time, and I always thought that the diversity of the system was one of the strengths of the system. I thought, as President Obama did in 2016, that the diversity of the system made it really hard for outsiders or insiders to figure out how they could rig a national election. I still think that. This bill undermines, really, a lot of State voter laws that are pretty popular with voters, and we have seen that expressed even in recent elections in like New York City. Prohibiting voter identification for mail-in ballots would be one of the things that you wouldn't want to do. If you wanted to have mail-in ballots, you would want to be sure where those came from. Frankly, you would want to have an objective standard, like your voter ID number or some other number that was uniquely yours, rather than a subjective standard, like how you signed your name when you were 18 as opposed to how you are signing your name when you are 68. That was one of the changes, by the way, in the Georgia law, which should have helped more people than not. This bill retains S. 1's mandate on ballot drop boxes and federalizes rules for redistricting. I think it chills free speech and requires felon voting. Now, why would anybody want to be against any of those things? There are reasons, frankly, to be against all of those things, but States make that decision for themselves, and in some States, it may work very well, and in others, it might not. Of the top sweeping election administration changes in this bill, the S. 1 policies in this bill disrupt State efforts to maintain accurate voter rolls. Now, accurate voter rolls were seen as one of the great progressive moves forward so you would have some sense that the people who voted on election day were actually people who were supposed to vote, and it is also important to vote in that district. If you just vote anywhere, and your legislative district where you should have voted was decided by four or five votes and you were one of those four or five, suddenly, that is a bit of a disservice to everybody else. The bill would send Federal money to campaign coffers at the rate of 6 Federal dollars for every dollar raised. It even goes so far as to add a second public financing program that would give people $25 in Federal funds to contribute to House candidates. Now, this 6-to-1 match is only for House candidates. That may not be what the final bill would say if we passed this bill, but it is only for House candidates now. And, of course, this Federal money would be eligible to be matched by 6 to 1 other Federal dollars. That is a pretty good deal. You give somebody 25 Federal dollars, and it could be matched with 6 to 1 other Federal dollars. This bill sets up a framework that would result in, I think, every congressional district map likely to be drawn by Federal courts. How many maps have we seen this time that were drawn by new improvements that the States made that didn't turn out to be, one, any better than the old maps and, two, wound up being drawn by judges? The John Lewis Voting Rights Act--he was a friend of mine. I served with him. I traveled with him. I laughed with him. I liked him a lot. I admired him a lot. The Voting Rights Act was 12 pages when it was introduced in 1965. The John Lewis Voting Rights provisions here have a great name, but they are 120 pages. I voted to extend the Voting Rights Act, and I would do it again, and I would be proud to do it if it was named for John Lewis. But 735 pages, and saying that if we don't vote for that 735 pages, somehow we are opposed to the Voting Rights Act or opposed to the heroism of John Lewis? I don't think so. Since it doesn't have the support to pass under the current Senate rules, the next thing we will do is attempt to really gut the legislative filibuster to force it through. My Republican colleagues have spoken at length about the consequences of doing that, as have Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema just the other day. The justification rests on really a narrow basis that somehow the protection of the minority no longer matters. The danger of overturning 200 years of election administration by the States--I am going to resist doing any of the quotes this late in the day that you have heard over and over again of our Democratic friends who just a couple of years ago were saying--or less than a handful of years ago--how critically important it was that those rules never be changed. You know, if Democrats eliminate the 60-vote rule for election legislation, there will soon be no filibuster left. Today, it would be a carve-out for the election administration. Three or four weeks ago, it was a carve-out for raising the debt limit. The next carve-out would be for whatever seems to be important that day. The carve-out won't work. I don't think anybody here believes that any longer. This would be the first step in just eliminating an important distinction that makes the Senate a place where we have to think about what we do. It eliminates some of the chaos that occurs when you have a party change. In the past two decades, a single party has controlled both Chambers of the Congress and the Presidency four times, alternating between Democrats and Republicans. The Senate is what has kept the country from wildly going from one direction back to the other. We don't want to lose that. It would be a disaster for our citizens, a disaster for our economy. Having that sense of having to think about this just a little bit before you head in another direction is what the Senate is all about. I certainly hope my colleagues today will not pass this Federal takeover of election laws and will also resist the temptation to change the rules of the Senate. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, the Senate is designed to be a place where the Members of the minority party and the millions of Americans they represent are heard. In this Senate, the minority could not be any bigger. In fact, if the minority were any bigger, we would be in the majority. This is a 50-50 Senate, and it is no time to take away the protections that the Senate for almost 200 years has afforded to the minority. The considerations given to the minority are important not only to the Senators and the millions of people they represent, but I think they are important in how the country moves forward. I served in the House. I like the House. I watch the House as closely as any Senator does. Every time the House changes, the House passes a bunch of pretty dramatic legislation. Then it comes to the Senate. That dramatic legislation they passed in the House doesn't go anywhere in the Senate. When the House changes again--and it has a number of times in the last 20 years--the other side comes in and passes legislation that reverses all of that and maybe does a little dramatic legislation of their own that also doesn't go anywhere when it gets to the Senate. If all laws were passed by a simple majority, there would be the potential for the majority to rewrite the country's laws constantly, no matter how small the shift in power was. It is always a mistake, frankly, to act like you have a mandate if you don't have one. It is a mistake for the country to change direction dramatically before the country has had time to think about it. The bureaucratic whiplash could be enormous. The economic impact could be enormous of the changing policies on regulation and taxes and everything else in a dramatic way every time one side gets some small advantage over the other side. For the past year, we have heard a constant refrain from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle that the legislative filibuster--the supermajority to move to finalize a piece of legislation--must be reformed. At the present moment, we are hearing it must be reformed only, maybe, for elections, that we should have a carve-out for elections. Just a few weeks ago, it had to be reformed to have a carve-out for the debt ceiling. I am sure, if we had done either of those things, in a few weeks, we would be talking about a third carve-out. And what are we doing it for? We are doing it for what I see as a federalization of the election process. When asked in a Morning Consult/POLITICO poll that was just released today--so this is something the American people have just weighed in on today. When they were asked which of the three voting ideas that were polled should be a top priority of the Congress in the voting area--one was reforming Congress's role in counting electoral votes; one was expanding voting access; one was expanding the oversight of the State changes in elections--they were all beaten by ``none of the above.'' ``None of the above'' got more votes in that poll than some of the top priorities the Democrats were talking about. We hear that we have to extend the Voting Rights Act. We have even titled the Voting Rights Act after a person whom I served with in the House, whom I traveled with, whom I had a close friendship with--John Lewis. That would be a good reason for me to vote for the Voting Rights Act, and certainly I voted to extend the Voting Rights Act before. In fact, I would vote to extend the Voting Rights Act today, and I would even be more happy to vote for the Voting Rights Act today if it were the Voting Rights Act that just happened to be named for John Lewis. The Voting Rights Act in 1965 was 12 pages. The extensions have all been about the same size. This bill has another 110 pages of additional legislative things that don't deal with the principles of the Voting Rights Act at all; they deal with the Federal Government's taking over the election process. We have seen our colleagues talk about this in one bill after another. I think the motives are pretty transparent right now; it is another way to break the filibuster. But we hear that the laws that States are passing--and by the way, the States have been passing election laws for the whole country, as it relates to their States, for a little over 200 years now. The Constitution was pretty specific as to who would conduct elections in the country and who would set the rules and regulations in the country for those elections. We hear that these laws are very restrictive. Now, mostly, these laws are laws that the legislatures leaned forward, as they should have, in my opinion, in a pandemic environment. It was an election that, in at least 100 years, we had never conducted anything like with the pandemic experience we were in. So they leaned forward. They allowed things that had never been allowed before: more mail-in voting, voting from your car, voting from a parking lot, all sorts of things. Then those same legislatures looked back at what had happened as a result of that and said: Do we want to keep all of this as if we were going to have a pandemic every year or do we want to keep part of it? In every case that I have looked at, the changes in election law made it easier to vote in 2021 than it was in the last election before the pandemic. I would encourage all of my colleagues, who are such sudden experts on Utah and Iowa and other election laws, to look at the 2018 election laws and see how they compare. What the legislatures did was exactly what you would hope they would do--respond to a crisis and, when the crisis is over, evaluate how much of that we want to keep as part of our permanent system and how much of it was only in crisis. What do these laws do? In Utah, the State legislature determined it would be appropriate for the Lieutenant Governor, who is the chief election official of Utah, to get the names of deceased individuals from the Social Security Administration and give them to county officials, who would take their names off the rolls. That is listed as one of the things that make it harder to vote--well, harder to vote for dead people. That is fine. I, actually, asked this question in a hearing of someone--one of the election-monitoring people who said this was difficult. I said: Well, what about that? He said: The Social Security Administration is often wrong. Well, if anybody is going to get something straightened out pretty quickly, it would be a living person who no longer is getting their Social Security check because the Social Security Administration had them on a list of people who were deceased. What a foolish argument that was for that to be a repressive thing. In Georgia, the State legislature adjusted their mail-in ballot deadline to ensure voters who requested mail-in ballots got their ballots with enough time to cast them. They brought their date more in line with the advice of the U.S. Postal Service. The truth is that lots of States did this. States like Georgia and Florida now include specific provisions in State law that allow for the use of drop boxes. In fact, they have to have at least one in every county. There were no drop boxes in Georgia anywhere before the 2020 elections. Now there have to be drop boxes everywhere, and it has to be understood where those locations can be found. States like Iowa and Georgia implemented more early voting days than the so-called Freedom to Vote Act would require. In fact, these States had more days of early voting than many States that have Democrat-led legislatures, like New York and Connecticut and the President's home State of Delaware. They also forgot that many Republican States, like Arizona, Florida, and Georgia, have already implemented no-excuse absentee voting. I was an election official for 20 years, part of that as the chief election official in our State, the secretary of state. I am absolutely confident that nobody takes the security of the elections and the confidence in the elections and the ability to register and vote in an easy way more seriously than people who are directly answerable to their neighbors, if they are the local official, or to the people who vote for them, if they are the State official. President Obama said in 2016 that the diversity of this statewide system was one of the strengths of our system--the State-run system-- and one of the reasons it would make it really hard for any outside entity--any foreign entity, any outside group--to truly try to rig a national election. I have got more to say. I am going to submit the rest of my remarks for the record. I am sure there will be more time to talk about this next week. On ballot harvesting, 62 percent of people in one poll are opposed to ballot harvesting. Ballot harvesting is when you ask somebody to give you their ballot. You say: I will turn it in for you. Well, maybe--who would know? I will put it in the mail for you. Who would know? If it never gets to the counting place, it just got lost in the mail. One of the reasons it might have gotten lost in the mail is the ballot harvester knows, with almost certainty, that the way you marked your ballot is not the way the ballot harvester would prefer to have the ballots marked. Seventy percent of Americans support voter maintenance. That is eliminated in many ways by the law being proposed. One proposal even went so far as to tell States the kind of paper their ballots would be printed on. If you really want to make it easy to impact an election, be sure that somebody knows the exact paper that every entity in America prints their ballots on and gets some of that to use to try to divert the election and make the election less secure. We are going to hear a lot about this over the next couple of days. I certainly would welcome the opportunity to have more time, and I am sure I will have more time, to talk about what is in these bills, both the State bills and the Federal bills, as opposed to what people are saying is in both bills. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, on Monday, the United States set a new pandemic record with more than 1 million new cases in 24 hours. I am sure you and I and everyone who is thinking about this would have hoped we would be in a very different place right now than we are, but it is pretty significant, 2 years into the pandemic, to set that kind of record. What is most concerning about this is many people who are concerned with catching the virus or who think they may already have it can't get access to tests. I just heard earlier today on a call where the administration was providing information that they have asked for a request for information about who could provide a test and then made a request for proposals about who might be able to provide tests. But we are way down the road to be asking about who can provide tests. Congress has provided more than $80 billion for COVID testing. If you look at the size of the defense budget, this is a pretty big percentage of the defense budget. We have lost track, I think, of how much money $1 billion or $1 trillion or $80 billion is, but the administration has had $80 billion. Over half of it, $47 billion, they got in March in the American Rescue Plan. This is supposed to cover everything from research and development of new rapid tests to manufacturing and purchase of these tests, to funding for State and local governments to distribute these tests. Here we are 9 months later, and we are concerned that we don't have tests because we don't have enough tests. For the last month, Americans have faced long lines at testing centers. They have gone to places where they thought they could purchase a rapid test to find empty shelves. The question I really have is the same that many Americans have, which is what went wrong? Why are we facing such a shortage of tests now? How could we possibly have had $80 billion available for a minimum of 9 months and now we are back in a testing problem? I think the answer surely is not a lack of funding but, I think, more fundamentally, a lack of strategy, a lack of priority, and a failure to anticipate the ongoing testing needs by the administration. When this administration came into office, their COVID-19 policy could have been called ``Vaccines First.'' And while I have been vaccinated and while I have urged all Americans to get a vaccine unless your doctor tells you not to, it has always been clear to me that the vaccine was only one part of the process. In fact, if you remember, from the very first, the vaccines were at a level that indicated that roughly 1 out of 10 people that had a vaccine would also get COVID. What we know now is that person who gets COVID that had a vaccine is not going to be incredibly affected by it, in all likelihood, but it shouldn't have been a shock that many people who got a vaccine would also get COVID and would also want to know if they had COVID. Yet, for a full year, the administration has focused almost exclusively on one thing and testing and treatments have not had the attention they should have had or now that they must have. That failure has come at a steep cost. Today, Americans can't find over-the-counter tests, and the Nation lacks a comprehensive reliable testing infrastructure. Early in the pandemic, former Senator Lamar Alexander and I were on the phone nearly every day with officials from the Department of Health and Human Services to get a better understanding of how to fight the virus. He was the chairman of the appropriating committee. I was the chairman of the authorizing committee. We thought we had come up with a plan that, if carried out, would work just right. In fact, the result of those conversations was a twofold testing response. First, we started a program at the National Institutes of Health we called RADx, which we kind of based, roughly, on the TV program ``Shark Tank,'' where people brought ideas in about how they could produce a test in ways those tests were not being produced. Over $1 billion was invested directly with a dozen different companies that are producing today almost all of the tests that are available in stores. But, obviously, being sure that they were producing them at the volume that they needed to be produced was something we should have been paying attention to. We wanted to bring more tests to the market. We wanted to do it as quickly as possible and provide the necessary government intervention to do so. In the first 6 months of the RADx Program, at the end of that 6 months, they were delivering 2 million tests a day and 100 percent of all of the tests that were available for at-home testing. Secondly, Senator Alexander and I thought that testing should be widespread and easily available, easy to take. As we pushed to reopen schools and keep them open, we want to do the things that have a test that is frequent, that is inexpensive, and makes sense. We went on and appropriated more than $30 billion for testing activities in the first five bipartisan bills to deal with COVID. Later, in the American Rescue Plan, an additional $47.8 billion for testing activities was made available. Now, remember this is legislation that was partisan in nature. No Republican voted for it. It had easier transfer authority from category to category than any appropriations bill in the last 10 years, and, frankly, we sent a letter to the Secretary of HHS this week--Senator Burr and I did-- asking exactly what did this money get spent on. I am afraid we are going to find out not nearly all of it got spent on testing. The lack of funding has not been a problem, and I think we need to know what happened to the money and what we need to do to make the kind of investment now that we thought that $80 billion would surely have made. When people asked last month about the difficulties in getting tests and why the administration wasn't making tests free and available, the White House Press Secretary said--she just dismissed the idea out of hand. Then, less than 3 weeks later, they did an about-face and announced they would distribute rapid tests to any American who wants one. That is a bold idea, one Europeans have been using throughout the pandemic. Let's look at what the administration actually did. They will spend $3 billion for 500 million rapid tests. That would be about 1\1/2\ tests per person. They are also saying right now that really to have faith in the rapid tests, you probably need to take two of them, so the 1\1/2\ per person doesn't do quite what it needed to do. The approach to the answer to our testing shortage is not to spend to send 500 million tests to the American people. These tests haven't been purchased yet. They haven't been produced yet. They haven't been distributed yet. And what do we do in the next weeks as we wait for even that to be done? Finally, the administration says that the at-home tests are ``less sensitive'' to the omicron variant than they need to be. I hope that is not the case. It is time the administration began to recognize that vaccines are a powerful weapon, that we need to continue to focus on them, but we also need to have a broader strategy. That strategy has to include people finding out whether they have COVID-19 or not. This is a wake-up call. I hope we wake up.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the rollcall vote be announced.

Mr. BLUNT. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BLUNT

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, Dr. Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health, will retire this month after serving as the Director since 2009. That will be 12 years in one of the most challenging jobs in Washington, maybe even in the world. Dr. Collins served under three Presidents in that job. No other person has served under more than one President. During that 12 years, certainly there had been amazing advances in healthcare. As a Washington Post reporter put it, and this was a quote from his article, ``News that Francis Collins is stepping down as Director of the National Institutes of Health is a bit like hearing that Santa Claus is handing off his reindeer reins.'' This is the time of year to think about that. When he announced his retirement earlier this year, it was certainly followed by a flood of comments from the scientific community. They used words like ``brilliant,'' ``national treasure,'' ``smartest man in any room,'' ``beloved,'' and ``gentleman.'' I would also echo those words. I think I would add, from the great opportunities I have had to work with him and spend time with him, ``straightforward,'' ``kind,'' ``respected.'' By the way, he never seems to need to act like the smartest person in any room even if and when he is. You know, throughout the 12 years he has been Director, he has made countless contributions to biomedical research and public health. Under his leadership, the NIH started groundbreaking research programs like the BRAIN Initiative, which is aimed at revolutionizing our understanding of the human brain, and the All of Us Precision Medicine Initiative, which is a historic effort to try to tailor medical care to the individual, and we see that is where medical care is going. As the Director of the NIH, Francis presided over the creation of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, which translates basic science discoveries into cures. He started the Cancer Moonshot and the Accelerating Medicines Partnership and increased investment in Alzheimer's and opioid research. He also steered the U.S. Research Enterprise during a once-in-a-lifetime infectious disease pandemic. Without his vision and leadership, we may not have been able to develop and deliver several FDA-approved COVID vaccines, COVID therapies, and diagnostic tests in less than a year. We wouldn't want to forget that this wasn't the first major health challenge that Dr. Collins navigated us through. He also led the responses to the H1N1 flu outbreak in 2009 and to the 2014 and 2015 Ebola outbreak. It does sort of make you wonder why he was still there when this pandemic came along, but, again, we are fortunate that he was. His impact on health and healthcare really didn't start when he became the NIH Director. In fact, before becoming Director, he made significant contributions to the research field of genetics. He codiscovered the gene that causes cystic fibrosis, and he found genes for Huntington's disease and type 2 diabetes. Maybe his most significant scientific contribution was to head the Human Genome Project, which mapped and sequenced the full human genome for the first time. That monumental effort has allowed scientists to unlock some of the great mysteries of human life. It has created the potential to develop treatments and cures for some of our most serious diseases. What it has really done is to have allowed us to begin to think about personalized medicine--realizing that every person is different than every other person and that everybody has the capacity to fight back against any disease that challenges them. Usually, the disease can quickly overwhelm that capacity, which is why the addition of immunotherapy and the addition of personalized medicine are such critical tools for today. His work had a tremendous impact at the time, and it will have an even greater impact. We can see that impact as we move forward and look at how we need to look at personalized medicine. All of this has been accomplished in a way wherein very few scientists, I think, could have had the articulation of vision that Francis has to share it in a way that people can not only begin to understand these concepts but buy into the concepts. Certainly, one of the proudest accomplishments I had in the Senate with him was in working to increase NIH funding. When I became chairman of that committee 7 years ago, we had a 10-year stagnation, really, in funding. In working with Senator Durbin, who was here earlier this morning and talked about Dr. Collins--I tried to grab, to join, that moment but couldn't--and with Senator Alexander and Senator Murray on our side of the building and many others and in working with Congressman Cole and now-Chairwoman DeLauro of the Committee on Appropriations on the other side, we just decided we were going to make NIH research a priority and, over the next 7 years, increase funding by 43 percent at a time when so many things were happening so quickly. Francis Collins, of course, not only was part of sharing that goal but, frankly, was also part of saying: Don't come up with a goal where, when you get there, you are going to stop. Let's keep moving forward as long as we are making the kinds of scientific advances that we know the country needs to make and the world needs to make. And we are doing that. Finally, he may be remembered the most in many cases for the hope he just has been able to bring to patients and communities. He is a physician. He is a scientist. He has been the Director of NIH, as I said, for 12 years. But part of his real ability is the ability to share who he is and to share the potential of science. During the time of COVID, we saw Francis coming up with songs and other ways to really focus on the pandemic and the way we need to respond to that pandemic. He is an incredibly skillful person. His legacy, I think, will live through generations of researchers. He has inspired the countless lives he has touched. His impact will be felt for a long time. I just want to say, on behalf of all of my colleagues--all of whom have been part of that progress of making NIH and health research a priority--thank you, Francis, for your leadership, for your friendship, and for your public service.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I think we are a little beyond our time on this side, but I am grateful for my friend from Rhode Island who is willing to let me have a chance to make the points I wanted to make. And I think, as is often the case here, many of them have already been made and were just made pretty well by Senator Portman, certainly, in the spending bill he was talking about and the tax bill that he was talking about. We keep hearing that a majority of all Americans like these programs; that if they could just know what was in the bill, they would like the bill. We are going to have some time now over the next few weeks, I am confident, to talk about what is in the bill. These are programs that are supposed to make life better for everyday Americans. Things like paid family leave, I am sure would be helpful in many, many cases. But what the Senator from Ohio was just talking about, you know, four times what this bill would spend on paid family leave it pays on tax cuts for the wealthiest families. When people begin to look at that, they are going to have to wonder, how is that priority established to where the second biggest spending item in the entire bill would be tax cuts for the wealthiest families in America--$230 billion of that $1.7 trillion is tax cuts for those families. The deductibility of State and local taxes goes from $10,000 as a cap to $80,000 as a cap. Let me just repeat what I think I just heard, which was that 70 percent of this tax break--70 percent of that entire $230 billion--goes to the top 5 percent of all taxpayers; 94 percent goes to the top 20 percent; and 85 percent goes to the top 10 percent. Those are pretty big numbers in a bill that is supposed to make life easier for everyday American challenges. Now, I am sure the top 5 percent of all taxpayers have their own challenges. I am also sure they are different than my challenges, but they are not the challenges that everyday Americans face. It is pretty amazing, I think, in all the discussion of what this bill is designed to do, that that is what would happen. Vaccine Mandate Madam President, let me talk about one other topic as I make way here for the Senator from Rhode Island. I want to talk a little bit about the vaccine mandate and what I am hearing about that. Yesterday, in a vote in the Senate on the Congressional Review Act, which is when we have an opportunity to look at regulations proposed by the administration, 52 Senators from both parties--Senators from both parties made up that 52--voted not to go forward with this mandate. It is very possible to be pro-vaccine and not pro-mandate. I am pro- vaccine. Over and over again, I have recommended to my friends and my family that you get the first shot and, now, if you are available for the booster shot after you have had either one or two of the other shots, to get that one too. The vaccines have made a big difference. Frankly, my advice would be, unless your doctor tells you you shouldn't do this, I think you ought to do it. The mandate just appears not to be working. I am not even going to assume it was designed in a way that the administration thought it would have the impact it appears to be having, but it is clear and it is out there. You know it, and I know it. I have visited with Missouri hospital administrators, and they may have been at a place where, just a few days ago, if that mandate had gone into effect, you couldn't have gotten Medicare or Medicaid patients paid for at your hospital if you weren't 100-percent vaccinated. Now, fortunately, a Federal court said: No, we are not sure the President has the authority to do that, so we are going to postpone that. But as we approached that deadline, I kept hearing more and more hospital administrators say: We think we can get almost all of our professional staff vaccinated, but we are not even sure about that. We are absolutely sure we can't get 100 percent of the people--those who work in the cafeteria, who mop the floors, and who provide security for the building--vaccinated. So we wouldn't be able to participate in those programs, and that would create a serious problem, particularly in small, rural hospitals. There is the next mandate, the one for every group that has more than 100 employees in it. All kinds of police officers, for whatever reason, either don't want to get vaccinated or don't want to be told they have to be vaccinated. You know, we have enough problems right now in finding police officers and firemen and first responders that, if you delete those forces, our current problems will be even bigger. That is what will happen. If you have got that 100-person force but you still want to be a police officer, in all likelihood, within driving distance, there is a 20-person police force or a 5-person police force. It may be a little easier, safer job anyway, and you will not have to be told by the government what you have to do. I am hearing that from schools. We have schools where the National Guard is driving school buses. By the way, a lot of the people in the National Guard are thinking about leaving the National Guard if they have to do something like this. You know, what people really, I think, resent is when government tells them: You have to do this, and you have to do it for your own good. If it is for your own good, that is probably a decision that you should be allowed to make. Whether you are allowed to make it or not, this is the response to all of these mandates, whether it is the Health and Human Services mandate on hospitals; the mandate on Federal contractors--and, by the way, we need those Federal contractors or we wouldn't have contracted with them--or the mandate on policemen and firemen and grocery store workers. I saw a number the other day of 50-some percent--I think it was 56 percent--of the people who work in a grocery store would rather work somewhere else after what they have gone through in the last year: shorthanded; more people getting food at the grocery store than ever before. They are looking for a reason to say: OK. I am done with this. We need our grocery store workers. We need our healthcare providers. We need our policemen. We need our firemen. We need our school bus drivers. We need our schoolteachers. This is not working. Fortunately, up to now, Federal judge after Federal judge has said: We don't think you have the authority to do this, and we are going to suspend the implementation of these mandates. I think this gives the Biden administration a chance to look at this again and realize that the unintended consequences of what they were trying to do might be more significant than the consequences of what would happen if you forced compliance. I thank my friend for giving us a few extra minutes. I yield the floor.