Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty), and the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Thune).

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, this is always a very busy time of the year if we are still here, and it has been a long time since the Congress wasn't here in the first of December. There have been years within the last couple of decades where we actually got our work done fairly close to the time that the spending year started. We are not close to doing that now. In fact, the apparent best-case scenario is that we will need to extend this year's spending--the spending that ended on September 30--through most of the month of February before we really can get down to the work that you and I would like to see happen, as we serve on the Appropriations Committee. We are here a lot of times in December, but we are seldom here in December without having made a real start on the work that has to be done. Instead of the work that has to be done, we seem to be down to the work that our friends on the other side really want to do. Of course, that means the trillions of dollars of spending beyond what we would normally spend. That is being described by people as transformative, as once-in-a- century, as FDR-like. The one thing it is for sure is it is 100 percent partisan. Nobody expects a single Member of the Senate on the Republican side to vote for this reckless tax-and-spending bill. You can tell, as you listen to the description of the bill, that there is beginning to be more and more worry about what the American people are thinking that this bill might really wind up doing to their families and to the country. When they hear that it is going to be transformative, when they hear that the entire economy will be different and people's problems will change in dramatic ways, people really begin to have to wonder how that happens, particularly when we hear that this won't cost anything. Well, of course it is going to cost something. You can say all you want to, that the cost is zero, but the cost can't possibly be zero of something that is going to transform the economy and solve people's problems. Somebody is going to have to pay for that. At one time, it appeared that, well, maybe we will just raise every bit of those extra spending dollars on new tax dollars. That hasn't happened yet in any bill that has been brought forward. In fact, the bill that the Senate is going to receive from the House has an actual deficit, even by the Congressional Budget Office standards, of about $350 billion. In 2019, we almost decided that we couldn't move forward on the debt ceiling because the Speaker of the House said: We are not going to help on the debt ceiling unless there is another $19 billion of domestic spending. This was 2019. We spent weeks fighting about whether we would spend another $19 billion. The Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary Mnuchin, was down here about once or twice every week in the negotiations that it would take to decide if we are going to spend $19 billion. Now we are talking about a $350 billion addition to the national debt, and that is even if you accept all the gimmicks in the bill. There are other negative effects as well. One of those big negative effects will be, of course, the impact of inflation on families. We are already seeing the impact of the big--the spending bill in March, the $1.9 trillion of spending that out of nowhere came into the economy, totally unpaid for, totally partisan. Last year, we had five bipartisan bills that both sides worked hard to do what we needed to to respond to COVID, to try to stabilize the economy. This year, we started off the year in March with an almost $2 trillion totally partisan bill, and that partisan bill is beginning to have the kinds of effects you would expect it would have. Costs are going up. There is more money out there, and mostly there is just money that is just made up out of thin air. It is borrowed, where the government is borrowing from itself. We are issuing bonds and buying the bonds at the Fed and then sending money to people. They are spending that money, and, of course, that has an impact on costs. Then there are energy policies that have an impact on costs as well-- the immediate decision to not move forward with a significant energy pipeline that was being built; the immediate decision to do what we could to reduce the domestic production of energy. That has had exactly the results you would expect it to have, just like putting this money into the economy has had a result. So everything from home heating costs, which are estimated to go up as much as 50 percent this year if the weather is no worse than last year, to filling up your gas tank--we have a chance of setting a new personal record every time you pull up to the gas tank and wonder how much money you can put in that empty gas tank today--to buying groceries, to even getting people together for the holidays. Independent analysts of the big tax-and-spending spree say that the number isn't $1.7 trillion, but it is about three times that, about $4.8 trillion. Now, how could you go from 1.7 to 4.8 just like that? You do it by assuming, as our friends who are sponsors of the bill do, that the spending in the bill will actually be spent over the entire 10 years. There is one program where families with kids at home get a check every month from the government. That program costs about $450 billion a year, and it is in the bill for 1 year. Well, nobody on the other side believes it is going to be in the bill for 1 year, and nobody voting against the bill is at all certain that it is going to be there for 1 year. Most of the analysts say, no, that is going to be there for not 1 year but all 10 years. So you add another $450 billion times nine, and suddenly you have added trillions more in spending to the bill. There are other programs that last 2 years, and some programs last 4 years. Almost none of the programs that are to be paid for in 10 years--and even with a $350 billion deficit--almost none of the programs to be paid for in 10 years last 10 years. They are just in there to get the program started, to get people convinced that they really need the government to do something for them that the government hasn't done before, and then see if we can extend that. As I mentioned, back in March, we had already done this once with a totally partisan $1.9 trillion spending bill. What happened after March? We got inflation to a 30-year high in the August numbers and consumer confidence to a 10-year low. You have to work pretty hard to get inflation at a 30-year high and consumer confidence at a 10-year low, but that is what happens when you put $1.9 trillion into the economy that wouldn't have been there otherwise. So what would happen if you put $4.8 trillion into the economy that wouldn't be there otherwise? The people who are most impacted by the results of that are the very people the bill purportedly is going to help, is designed to help. We are going to solve all of your problems. Well, first of all, the government is not going to get that done. We are going to solve Americans' everyday problems, but if you do that by raising their costs higher than their pay can go up, you haven't done anybody a favor. President Biden campaigned on a return to normal, but he is governing on what his self-described allies say is radical change. Well, those two things seem to me to be in pretty big conflict. You can't have ``return to normal'' and ``radical change'' at the same time. There was no mandate in the last election. The Senate is as evenly divided as it could possibly be--50-50. In the House, Democrats have the closest margin that they have had in 170 years and one of the closest margins that anybody has had in decades. Americans want their elected representatives to stop selling every crisis as an opportunity to impose another one-sided view of how the country needs to move forward. You hear and I hear at home and even from the press: When is the Congress going to work together? Well, we worked together last year to do five bills to respond to the COVID and economic crisis, and we did that together. That was a pretty good model. Frankly, I think it was the model that the American people were thinking about when they voted for this closely divided Congress and in a fairly closely divided Presidential race at the conclusion of the election. Families need real solutions to the challenges they face. Reckless tax and spending, driving inflation, sending gas prices to alltime highs and home heating prices to alltime highs and increasing the cost at the grocery store--if there are things to buy at the grocery store-- by 15 or 20 percent surely, isn't what we want to pass on to our children, our grandchildren, our people, hard-working families out there today trying to make things happen and make things better for their families. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, one of the most striking things, I think, we are beginning to notice this year is that the holidays are taking on a really different look than we have seen in a long time. Actually, for about a generation now, we have seen more choices and, more often than not, declining prices, which has made it possible for American families to have things that, in the past, they had not thought were possible for them to have. The pandemic, of course, was a big obstacle a year ago, as people were forced to alter or cancel their plans for their families to get together. And I think many of us were really looking forward to a more traditional holiday season this year. Hopefully, that season still allows people to get together. But I think we are also beginning to see people think they are going to have to scale back their celebrations or be prepared to pay a lot more for them; maybe just simply paying a lot more to get there, to start with, as gasoline costs have gone up dramatically. I think we are about 46 percent higher in our gas costs than we were a year ago. For a lot of families, that is a deciding item of whether you can actually get to Grandma's house or not. This time, the change in plans isn't because of the virus; it is because of inflation and supply side issues that, frankly, the government has done a lot to help cause. Jason Furman, who was the Chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, said recently: ``The original sin was [the size of the] American Rescue Plan.'' According to Jason Furman, he said: ``It contributed to both higher output [and] also higher prices.'' Now, what he was talking about was the American Rescue Plan. This was the so-called COVID relief plan from March. It was a law that the Democrats passed entirely by themselves--despite there being a lot of warnings that the economy was already beginning to recover--that put another $2 trillion into the economy, including a lot of money that went to State governments that, clearly, didn't need it and local governments that, maybe, needed it a little more than the States did. We had States that were having alltime high revenues, and we had already helped States in a number of different ways. Then, suddenly, we had to beat all of that by sending money to States and sending $2,000 to everybody, almost, and thought that wouldn't have any impact. I am not sure who we were trying to save in this effort for relief. There was no reason to believe, in March, that the economy wasn't headed on the way back. What we did in March with that legislation was just pour more fire on an economy that was already about to roar back in a good way. The warnings were right on the money. In October, inflation rose 6.2 percent over the cost of a year ago. That is the highest increase in inflation in 30 years. A lot of Americans alive today and, certainly, a lot of Americans who are in the workforce today don't remember the inflation of the seventies and the early eighties that made it just hard for families to keep up; that made it hard for families to buy a house; that made it hard for families to pay the basic bills. I hope that we are not going to get a strong reminder of that, but it certainly looks like we are. The prices for many of the things that will be on the Thanksgiving table are going up. The New York Times, about 2 weeks ago, had a front- page article that this would be the most expensive Thanksgiving ever. Then they went through that list of things to talk about that. The price of turkey, by the way, has gone down a little bit in the last few days. It was projected to be 20 percent higher. It is only 18 percent higher. So your principal protein on the Thanksgiving table will cost 20 percent more or 18 percent more than it did a year ago. Other protein is even higher than that. Potatoes are 17 percent higher than they were a year ago. Green beans are 39 percent higher than they were a year ago. I don't know if we are beginning to see a pattern here or not, but there, clearly, is one. Butter is about 30 percent higher than it was a year ago. If your grandmother's recipe for stuffing--or, as my grandmother called it, dressing; we had turkey and dressing when I was growing up--includes onions, onions are 50 percent higher than they were a year ago. So, between the labor shortages, the high costs of raw materials, and more expensive transportation, the food supply chain is just about as messed up as the rest of the supply chain. We don't import nearly as much food as we may import other things, but that food supply chain isn't working for us either. Now, shoppers are already beginning to see bare spaces on grocery store shelves. Places you were going 6 months ago, when you had a choice or even 6 weeks ago when you had a choice, suddenly there is one item there of what you are trying to buy or maybe no items of what you are trying to buy. There is just simply not a choice that you can make at the store because the product you want to get is not there--and not just the brand-name product, the product is not there in growing cases. What are we going to see when the Christmas holiday--the holiday shopping season really begins right after Thanksgiving. Black Friday, or whatever other day you are going to do that shopping in, I think you are going to see--American families and American individuals are going to see lots of challenges. Wait times for ocean freight--we have all seen those pictures now of the backup of ships waiting to get to the port in every port in the country--every port in the country. Wait times are about 45 percent longer than it was last year at this time. Shipping rates from China are around 400 percent, four times higher than they were a year ago. Things that cost $2,000 a container now are much more likely to cost something like $12, $15, or even $20,000, just for the container--moving the container from where it is filled up to where it gets off the boat at one of our ports. Traffic jams at the big ports are a problem in every place. There is a shortage of 80,000 truckdrivers to move things once they get unloaded. We made it so appealing for some people to stay home from work that they have, at this point, still decided not to go back to work or decided to retire early. They were getting that enhanced unemployment check for a couple of years, decided that maybe that life in the truck, which is a hard life, or that life on the dock, which is a hard life, or that life at the grocery store stocking shelves, which can be challenging every single day, or any other job was just not a job that they were going to go back to. I mentioned President Obama's economic adviser earlier. Well, he said another pretty revealing thing at the same time when he talked about supply-side problems. He said, and this is his quote also: ``It would be foolish to count on a return to normal within the next year.'' Within the next year. So things are not going to get better if we don't get back. They are likely to get worse. Then he said inflation ``is likely to remain uncomfortably high.'' Now, I am not going to talk about what his personal economic circumstances may be, but if they are uncomfortably high for him, they are painfully high for lots of families. So here we go again. By the way, not only was the $2 trillion bill done just by one party--not a single Republican voted for it in March. Not only did that feed the flames of inflation, but now we are right back talking about a bill that if every program was extended through the 10 years, it would be a $4 or $5 trillion bill. It is impossible to understand how you wouldn't see that as another thing that is going to really create great risk. We have had every warning sign we could possibly have. When Washington pays people not to work, it gets awfully difficult to fill all the open jobs. When Washington gives people money that Washington has borrowed or just simply kind of made up, that is awfully hard. The predictions that have been made about what happens with excessive unemployment payments, the predictions that have been made about money borrowed and put into the economy that we don't have, have actually turned out to be right on target. So Republicans are warning again, if our colleagues on the other side continue to plan to move forward with another--however number you want to describe it. I think it is very fair, if all of these programs are extended, to describe it as $4 to $5 trillion. It is fair to describe it as $2 trillion, if actually you start these programs that people will like having government take this new responsibility and then think they can actually stop after 1 year or 2 years or 3 years. Nobody believes that, and frankly I don't know anybody on the other side who thinks that is the plan. They understand the plan is to have a $2 trillion pricetag and a $5 trillion ultimate payout for the things that that pricetag starts to pay for. Nothing about being uncomfortably high--let's talk about the pain that you could have as you tighten your belts not just for the holidays but for the foreseeable future. Transportation, food, home heating in the winter, it doesn't get more basic than that. And if transportation costs go up, gasoline goes up 46 percent, food goes up 15 to 20 percent. Home heating costs are projected, in many places, to go up somewhere between 50 and 100 percent. Even if you got a little bit of a raise at work, that raise is immediately taken away by just the basic fundamental things you have to have. We need to work with our friends on the other side. We need our friends on the other side to see the warning signs of what has happened with what we have done, what has been done this year already, and exactly understand what will happen. If we do more of the same, we are going to get more of the same, and more of what is happening right now is not what people we work for need or deserve. I hope we get serious about the things that our actions create. With that, I yield back.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, there are lots of things we disagree on here on the Senate floor, but one thing we all agree on is the importance of getting the right people to help us do these jobs. I rise today to honor one of my outstanding staff members, Derek Coats. Derek has recently been awarded the Great Griffon Award by his alma mater, Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, MO. The Great Griffon Award is given to those Missouri Western alumni who have made outstanding contributions to the workforce, to society, or to Missouri Western. Derek has done all three. After graduating from Missouri Western in 2002, with a bachelor's degree in political science, Derek began his service to Missouri in the U.S. Senate, in the office of my predecessor, Senator Bond. He served on Senator Bond's staff through 2010 in a variety of different jobs, rising to the role of district office director. When I came to the Senate in 2011, I asked Derek to join my team. Since then, he has served as my State director and deputy chief of staff, overseeing day-to-day operations across five statewide offices. Derek regularly spends his days traveling the State, meeting with Missourians and hearing their issues and concerns. The information he shares with me from those visits ensures our work in Washington aligns with the critical needs and priorities of our State. To provide just one of many examples, this information assisted in my efforts to work with others to restore year-round Pell grants to community colleges and all colleges and universities in our State. That, of course, included Derek's alma mater, Missouri Western. Derek's knowledge and experience are an incredible asset to me and to our entire team. The work he has done in the Senate has touched the lives of so many Missourians, and our State is all the better because of it. Missourians and I have benefited from having Derek on our team, and I am glad he is being recognized for his hard work. He has so much to be proud of, as does his wife Kellie Ann and his son Carter. It is certainly my pleasure to join Missouri Western State University in honoring Derek Coats for his service to the State of Missouri and, frankly, for his service to the entire country. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Well, Madam President, in just a few short months this year, we have seen a long list of problems develop in the country. Some of them my good friend the Senator from West Virginia just talked about. They range from inflation and debt to the hiring crisis, major disruptions in the supply chain. When I was home in Missouri last week meeting with all kinds of employers and all kinds of businesses, big and small, everybody said: We can't find workers; we can't get the supplies we need; and we can't keep up with inflation. What is astonishing to me is the Democrats continue to move forward with their $3.5 trillion reckless tax-and-spending spree. And, you know, it is easy to take that number and just reduce the length of time you are going to try out all these new policies, and we are going to have to talk about that because that is going to be a big mistake. In fact, the $3.5 trillion reckless tax-and-spending spree, I think, easily--if you extend all of the policies through the whole 10 years-- becomes a $5 trillion reckless tax-and-spending spree. If you reduce the policies, it is pretty easy to get it to $2 trillion. But if you reduce the policies by just saying, ``Instead of 10 years, we are going to have this policy for 3 years; instead of 5 years, we are going to have this policy for 1 year,'' all you have done is put future Congresses in a place where, frankly, Democrats would hope they can't say no. After a year of the program, they can't say no to the second year of the program; or after 3 years of the program, they can't say no. I wouldn't take a whole lot of solace in the idea that we are going to reduce the number unless we look at the policies behind the number. Now, some of my colleagues and some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle--the side of the aisle that the Presiding Officer will be sitting on now, the majority side of the aisle--have jumped headlong into this for the most part, but some of our colleagues have really raised some important questions. For instance, one Senator said recently that expanding social programs while ignoring the millions of open jobs--this is that Senator's quote--``will only feed a dysfunction that could weaken our economic recovery.'' And, of course, that is exactly right. Businesses across the country are trying to hire workers for the more than 10 million job openings. Half the small businesses say they have jobs that they are struggling to fill--one-half of all small businesses. I was in Farmington, MO, one day last week, and somebody at that roundtable said: I used to say we need to do whatever it takes to get skilled labor, and then occasionally I would say we need to do whatever it takes to get part-time labor. Now I am saying we need to do whatever it takes to get labor. Because they can't fill the jobs they have. What I was hearing all over our State, and I think every Senator in this body is hearing the same thing, which is that people can't find the people they need to do the work. Part of the reason that there are empty store shelves is you can't get people to keep those store shelves stocked, but part of the reason is that they can't get things to the stores to put on the shelves. Everything from shipyards to trucking routes, to supply chains aren't working the way they should right now, and, largely, it is because they don't have the help they need to have. Now, I am all for looking at our long-term supply chain needs, bringing things closer to our shores when we can do that, but that is not the problem right now. The problem right now is we can't get the things that come to our country to the places that they need to go, nor the things that are made in our country to the places they need to go. Businesses are trying to keep up with worker demand, but worker shortage is making that impossible. Expanding and creating government pay--government handouts, I think, was what one of our colleagues on the Democratic side had referred to them as--if they are not connected to need or to work doesn't make sense. We all want to help people who are in need, but we all want to do that in a rational way. Another Democratic Senator pointed out the danger of all this extra government spending the President wants is going to really drive up inflation. And that is also correct. You can't put hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy and not have that drive up inflation. If people have money that they wouldn't have otherwise, particularly money we had to borrow to get there or money we had to take out of the functioning economy to get there, that money gets spent, but not in the way that you would want it to be spent to grow an economy and do the best things for individuals and families. The big spending spree really began in March with a partisan--a totally partisan, one-side-of-the-aisle only--$2 trillion so-called COVID-19 relief law. But, frankly, it was a recovery plan when a recovery was well underway. I think the recovery plan slowed down the recovery and made it less likely that people would get back to work. It made it more likely that people would have money to spend that they wouldn't have otherwise and drive inflation. The expert opinion of economists on both sides of the aisle, who said that what was done in March of this year would assure inflation would rise, it is exactly the same thing they are saying about the bill that is being debated right now. It has already happened, and it is happening. Americans are paying more for everything from groceries to gasoline, to a big purchases, like a new car, or even a used car is selling at a new sudden premium. Consumer prices have jumped 5.4 percent from 1 year ago. That is not the kind of thing that does anything to help families. In fact, according to Moody's Analytics, a family earning an average income of about $70,000 is spending an extra $175 a month on food, fuel, and housing because of what that article referred to as President Biden's inflation. The White House Chief of Staff the other day, when I asked about inflation, said: Well, inflation was really a ``high class problem.'' I am not exactly sure what a high class problem means. If it means it is a big problem, that is right. If it means as I think it means, it is a problem that only wealthy Americans have to deal with, that couldn't be right. It is not an upper-class problem or a high-income problem. It is a problem that hits low-income households the hardest. In the University of Michigan's latest survey of consumers said that only 70 percent of the people in that survey--that consumer survey, only 30 percent of people expect to be financially better off next year than they are right now. Seventy percent thought they would either be worse off or not make any gains at all. That is not what we were seeing in 2018 and 2019 under the other tax policies where, for the first time in a couple of decades, the distribution of new income was strong at the lowest levels of working families. The Democratic response is: Let's raise taxes. Let's spend trillions of dollars. Let's pile up more debt. Or that one theory: No, it won't cost anything because we are paying for it. Well, obviously, if you are paying for it, it had to cost something. And how are you paying for it? You are paying for it by taking things out of the economy in one hand and shoving them back into the economy with another. At one point, one of our friends on the other side of the aisle expressed his opinion, as he put it, that ``any expansion of social programs must be targeted to those in need and not expanded beyond what is fiscally possible.'' That is, of course, the right position. All of us want to help people in need, but we don't want to expand that group beyond what you can fiscally deal with and not harm their own opportunities in the economy. This reckless tax-and-spending spree includes a number of ways on how to expand social welfare programs and to cover people with high incomes. They are trying to create permanent, expanded subsidies for ObamaCare insurance plans. Now, we clearly have subsidies. They are clearly permanent. They are clearly substantial. But the bill wants to not only make the subsidies higher, but it wants them to be higher for more people who have higher incomes to start with. They are also talking about tuition-free community college. Well, there is almost no community college in America today that is not already tuition-free for those people who we have decided are in the greatest need. That is what Pell grants are all about. There is no community college in Missouri, and few community colleges anywhere in the country, where the full Pell grant doesn't pay all tuition, all books, and all fees with a little money left over to travel back and forth to the campus. I am a big supporter of Pell grants. I worked a few years ago to go back to where we have year-round Pell grants. So if you are going to school and something is working for you, you can stay in school. You don't have to take a summer off and get a different job and then think you are coming back in the fall to find out that that just didn't work out. We have solved this problem. If we haven't solved it adequately, well, let's increase the Pell grant amount. And if that doesn't do the job, why don't we increase the amount of family income you can have and still qualify for the maximum Pell grant or some other portion of the Pell grant? There is an obvious solution here. As a matter of fact, in the markup of the Labor-HHS bill, I think we added $400 to the annual Pell grant this year, which is a pretty substantial increase in that grant. The government already spends more than $28 billion every year for Pell grants. If you really want to make higher education expensive, make it free. Go to every higher education institution in America, starting with community colleges, and say: We are going to make this free. I was a university president for 4 years, and we have all seen what happens as we increased the government support for higher education. I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. I am a big advocate for higher education, but everybody needs to have a stake in the game. You value what you pay for. You value what you have a commitment to. Free usually doesn't get you where you want to get. We don't want to duplicate what we are already doing, and we don't want to create free programs for people who don't need free programs. Finally, obviously, a lot of emphasis and unease on these tax increases. One of my colleagues on the other side said our Tax Code ``should not weaken our global competitiveness or the ability of millions of small businesses to compete.'' That is undeniably true. The 2017 Republican-led tax law followed a consensus that we need to bring the U.S. in line with our global competitors. Let's not get out of line and make it harder for us to compete. We were on an incredible trajectory of job creation and pay for all of the working-class families that had been left out of the system for too long. We could easily wipe out those gains with a corporate tax rate increase that loses our competitive advantage to people who we don't want to lose it to. Democrats are also aiming several of their tax hikes at small businesses and family farms. They plan to hike, we hear, those taxes by 57 percent of the top marginal rate, from 29.6 to 46.4. There are a lot of concerns with the legislation that President Biden and his allies in Congress are trying to push through. The American economy is struggling against the headwinds of an, frankly, administration that has done so much to create on its own. This terrible legislation would just make everything worse. Let's not work on one side only to make everything worse. Let's see what we can do to work together to make everything better. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to thank my good friend Senator Moran for actually all he has done to try to make it possible to see the FIFA World Cup games come to Kansas City. This is the biggest sporting event in the world. Frankly, soccer has become a bigger part of the entire American society. Kids are playing soccer out there before they can really focus on which way the soccer ball is supposed to go. There is maybe nothing more fun than watching the 3- and 4-year-old soccer match just to see what happens in that match. But around the world, it is important. It is important where Jerry and I live. Giant banners with the phrase ``We Want the Cup'' are proudly displayed on buildings. They are on the streetcar. They are everywhere you want to look. The Kansas City Chiefs' quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, and the Royals' catcher, Salvador Perez, are leading the charge to bring the World Cup to Kansas City. There is no question that sports are a major part of where we live, professional and nonprofessional. The Women's World Cup in 2019 was celebrated by fans watching games in the Power & Light District. They were broadcast on TV all over the world. Watching Kansas City fans watch the World Cup, we saw hundreds of thousands of fans flood the streets to join the Kansas City Royals in celebrating their World Series title in 2015. We saw an incredible crowd when the Kansas City Chiefs brought home the Lombardi Trophy in 2019. In 2023, Kansas City will host the NFL Draft. So if our friends from the World Cup selection team are watching, there are others things that have happened to give evidence to the great sports heartbeat of Kansas City. There is plenty to look at and plenty to see. We have the infrastructure we think we need to meet that world sporting event. Arrowhead Stadium, as Senator Moran mentioned, is top notch. It is a great place for fans. It is a great place to feel the sense of the game and what can happen there. Local leaders have done everything they could, I think, to secure the right kind of practice fields, the right kind of facilities. Children's Mercy Park would be one of those. In 2021, the Concacaf Gold Cup was hosted there. Mayor Quinton Lucas is here today. In fact, he is here watching us today from the Gallery. He is here advocating for all things Kansas City but is a particular advocate for seeing this world-class event come to Kansas City. Location is another advantage we have. We are right in the middle of the country. We are close to the host cities in Canada and in Mexico that would be part of this event. I think we are better positioned than the other 16 cities to really move forward on this bid. The new airport, as Senator Moran mentioned, will be welcoming to whoever comes to this event if they come to Kansas City. They are going to be pleased with that facility. There are lots of opportunities in Kansas City to spend your free time and enjoy what we get to enjoy all the time: the famous barbecue, the world-class museums, the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City, the Nelson-Atkins art gallery. There is really a vibrant nightlife and music scene in Kansas City today. Nearby States have agreed that Kansas City is the right choice. It has become the Midwest choice for this event. In May, associations that represent 310,000 youth soccer players, coaches, and referees from the Midwest came together to endorse the Kansas City bid. The financial benefits are obviously benefits that we would be excited about if we get a chance to host this. According to the Kansas City Sports Commission CEO and president, Kathy Nelson, the economic impact on the region could be up to $1 billion. With a rich sports culture, endless entertainment options, strong infrastructure, and an easily accessible central location in our country, Kansas City is the right choice for the 2026 FIFA World Cup host city, and Senator Moran and I and our colleagues from Kansas and Missouri endorse this effort and are glad that the selection team is looking today at what they are going to get if they decide to come to Kansas City. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, obviously, when you look at what needs to be done in the fall and, frankly, if you look at what needs to be done in the next few weeks, there are important items ahead of us. One of them that my colleague from Florida just did a good job talking about is setting the debt limit for how much Federal Government debt should the country be able to tolerate. One way to do this is to set a limit. Another way that some of my colleagues appear to really prefer is just to set a date and say we are going to postpone any limit until that date, and we will just see what happens. We will see how deep the debt gets between now and then. But we really don't want to talk about a limit, and when you look at what that limit is likely to be, you would understand why you wouldn't want to talk about that. We have really seen this coming for some time. It shouldn't be a crisis, except, frankly, our friends on the other side seem intent on making it a crisis and seeing if they can include all of us suddenly in a spending discussion that we haven't been in up until now. How much debt can we have? How much can we afford? But what we have seen this year is, how much money can one side spend without involving the other side in any way? We have never approached the debt limit in at least the last 25 years, that I am aware of, in a way that didn't involve talking about spending. In fact, I would argue that there is no real reason to have the debt limit if it doesn't force a discussion on spending. Other countries don't have it; we have it. One reason I have always thought it actually served a purpose was it always generated a discussion on spending--not just a discussion on full faith and credit but how much money are we going to spend. In fact, when President Obama was President and the debt ceiling had to be extended, we had a discussion about what our spending caps were going to be. We had a decade, because of that, of spending caps. We didn't always stick with them, but to not stick with them, you had to change the law, so that forced another discussion. We have all heard for a decade about the caps deal, the spending caps deal. Well, that was a discussion that was had so there would be a bipartisan agreement on the debt limit. In June of 2019, we saw the debt limit coming again, and by that time, Speaker Pelosi, who was the Speaker of the House in charge of a majority in the House, said she wouldn't cooperate in doing anything on the debt limit unless the administration agreed to spend more money. So there you have a spending discussion, but you also have one body of the Congress where the leader of the entire majority is saying: We are not going to be part of the debt limit unless we have an agreement on spending, and we want to spend more. From that moment on, Secretary Mnuchin, the Secretary of the Treasury, was up here over and over again, negotiating with the Speaker of the House on just how much more it was going to take for her to be part of the debt limit. Now, here we are in almost October, 9 months through the year. Republicans really haven't been asked in any serious way up until now this year how to set parameters for government spending. We would like to spend less; the other side would like to spend more. But no Republicans--zero Republicans--have been involved in a plan to eliminate important parts of the 2017 tax bill that clearly were producing the kinds of economic results we had hoped for at the beginning of the pandemic. No Republicans were part of the plan to spend right at $2 trillion in the March COVID relief bill even though we really saw our economy already coming back. By the way--no surprise--when you spend $2 trillion, inflation is one of the things you are going to get when you put that much money into the economy on top of what we put in in 2020 in a bipartisan way to try to stabilize the economy. Well, the economy was clearly stabilized by the first of last year, and no Republican, again, let me say, was part of how to spend that $2 trillion. No Republican has been part of the discussion of how to spend what our friends on the other side say would be a $3.5 trillion, reckless tax-and-spending amount. Others estimate that 3.5 really would be 5 trillion. But, again, the point is not how big it would be; the point is, no Republican has been part of that. If you look at what is actually in that legislation as it comes out of the House, some of the things are pretty amazing. There is $3 billion on a project called Tree Equity. Now, I don't think that is to make all the trees the same size. I assume that is a project to be sure that everybody has their fair percentage of the trees, whatever that would mean and how you describe that. There is $200 million for the Presidio, the park in Speaker Pelosi's district--$200 million. They are talking about $8 billion in that bill for a new Civilian Climate Corps and $7 billion to buy electric vehicles for the Postal Service. Their plan comes to us with $105 million for ``entrepreneurial training'' for people who are currently or have just been incarcerated. There is even $5 million in that bill for electronic voting systems for union elections. I am not opposed to union elections and am not opposed to unions having them. It would seem to me that they have up until now figured out how to provide their own equipment for their own elections or rent it or lease it. It is certainly a new sort of government involvement in that activity. Frankly, the list goes on and on. At $3 trillion, you are likely to have a lot of ideas. Seems to me that a lot of the ideas are, you come up with a number, which is what it takes to eliminate the 2017 tax cuts, and then start talking about, how many new things do we need to do to support that number? Well, this shouldn't be an emergency. September is pretty late to reach out to the other side and not even now say ``Well, let's talk about our spending priorities,'' but say, ``Well, you need to help us with this because at some point, there is some money that had to be spent that was your responsibility too.'' I guess we could have said that to Speaker Pelosi in 2019 when she said: Not going to do it unless we get more spending. And we wouldn't have had an agreement in the Obama years if we hadn't set a cap on spending. The truth is, this isn't Speaker Pelosi's money, and it is not Senator Schumer's money, and it is not my money. We are talking about the money that belongs to the American people. They need to have a say in this. In a 50-50 Senate, one side deciding ``We are going to make all the decisions about spending money'' means that one side is likely to wind up making all the decisions about how to reach the debt limit. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in honoring the 13 servicemembers who were killed in action in Afghanistan last month doing what only the bravest and the most extraordinary Americans do: risking their lives to save others. Every name has been mentioned on the floor today, but no matter how often we mention those names, we can't restore those individuals to their families. We can't restore them to their communities. We can't restore them to the people they served side by side with in the military. But we can remember what they did--what they did collectively, and what they did individually. One of the marines we tragically lost in the attack at Kabul airport was Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz of Wentzville, MO. He was just 6 months old on 9/11. In fact, we have seen that discussion many times of people who now give their life who were babies or not yet born on 9/11, 20 years ago. Even though he was 6 months old on 9/11, he knew what he wanted to be, and he knew he wanted to be a marine by the time he was a sophomore in high school. He started training as a teenager, years before he enlisted. After graduating from Fort Zumwalt South High School in St. Peters, MO, he realized his dream. He joined the Marines and served as an infantryman. Jared's father Mark Schmitz says his son--this is his father's quote and it is a great thing to be able to say about your son. Mark Schmitz said his son ``looked out for everybody. Anyone who needed help, he was there. He was selfless. He never put himself first.'' Of course, we see another moment when he and the others whose lives were lost and others who were injured--some dramatically injured-- didn't put themselves first; they put others first. Friends remember Jared as energetic, as happy, as a faithful fan of the St. Louis Blues. Others will remember him as 1 of 56 Missourians who made the ultimate sacrifice as part of the either Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation Freedom's Sentinel. We remember and honor each and every one of these heroes from our State and heroes from every State who have given their lives for freedom in this post-9/11 world, where we don't know exactly where the borders are or who--where the enemy might be at any given time, whether they are going to strike at home, where we live, or whether they are going to strike far away, where others are representing us and defending us. We remember and honor each of them. We pray for their families and all who will feel the loss for the rest of their lives. We need to now do our part every day to live lives worthy of their sacrifice, never taking for granted the freedom and security we have because they were called to serve and support it and guarantee it for another generation. I know I join all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle as we think of those who are serving today, those who are willing to pay the ultimate cost and, particularly today, as we focus on these 13 individuals who did pay that price. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I am proud to join my friend and my colleague Senator Klobuchar as we introduce and support this amendment. You know, every day when I come to work at the Capitol, the first person I see is almost always a U.S. Capitol Police officer, and no matter how late I leave at night, the last person I see is almost always a U.S. Capitol Police officer. I was working in this building on 9/11, and one of the last people to leave that morning as the Capitol Police encouraging us to get out of the building, but the last person I saw as I left the building who was still in the building was a Capitol Police officer. The Capitol Police have a hard job to do. They not only defend us, but they defend democracy in a way that other police officers are not asked to do, and they always do it at the highest level of professionalism and dedication. That was never more evident than it was on January 6. It was a difficult and sad day for Americans but especially for law enforcement officers who serve and protect the Capitol and for their families. I have often said that, very possibly, the hardest job to do in America today is to be the family member of someone who works in law enforcement. Maybe the second hardest job is to be the person working in law enforcement. But those families on that day were watching television, listening to the news, seeing their very worst fears play out for all the world to see on a day that was horrific for them, horrific for the person they love, and horrific for those who love this building and what it stands for. I am incredibly grateful for the heroic actions we saw that day from the Capitol Police, from the Metropolitan Police, who, along with Chief Conte, who was the Acting Chief at the time, were here within 10 or 12 minutes of being called and here in force in that period of time. Others came from around the region, and all those law enforcement people who were here to help that day, we are deeply appreciative of. The legislation we have here really calls on us to recognize the selflessness, the dedication, the willingness to stand in the way of danger as others are able to try to get away from danger. It honors the sacrifices they make and their families make every day. I hope, by passing this Congressional Gold Medal bill by unanimous consent, we send a clear message to law enforcement officers that we are united in our appreciation of all they do to keep us safe. I urge my colleagues to join not only in supporting the unanimous passage of this bill but also to be quick in talking about our deep appreciation for those who serve in such a special way as we try to do our work here every day. I yield back.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, when President Biden was campaigning last year, he made the pledge over and over again that he wouldn't raise taxes on any American making less than $400,000 a year. Frankly, I think that is a good pledge, and it is one that he keeps making. But right now, it seems that the facts would prove that he and, frankly, our Democrat colleagues here in the Congress are pushing for this reckless tax spree, this reckless spending spree in a way that makes it impossible for him to keep that pledge. The Tax Foundation--and people can check this if they want to verify these numbers--looked at President Biden's 10-year plan, the plan he outlined in his 2022 budget. This is not a plan that the Tax Foundation or any other group came up with on their own. They found that his plan would mean a higher average tax burden nationwide, including for middle-class Americans. In some States, the average taxpayer would see increases immediately; in others, tax hikes would grow over time as the various provisions change in the way that the President's plan says they would change. You know, no matter what the President says, the tax burden is getting heavier under his plan for middle-class families in every State. In Missouri, the tax burden on the average filer would be $618 higher in 2026 than it is today. In New Hampshire, it would be $1,072 higher than it is today. And maybe most importantly, in Nevada, it would be $1,293 higher than it is today for the average taxpayer. And if that doesn't convince you, there was another analysis recently. This one was from the reliably liberal Tax Policy Center. It predicted that three out of every four taxpayers earning $75,000 to $100,000 a year would be worse off next year under the Biden plan. By 2031, that organization estimates that 95 percent of the people making between $75,000 and $100,000 would suffer losses on their tax bill The tax-and-spending spree envisions monster tax hikes on business, but we all know when you raise taxes on business, they have to get the money from somewhere. In fact, there are only a couple places to get the money, and one is from workers and one is from customers. And trying to figure out that balance where you don't lose customers and you don't lose workers is pretty hard to figure out. You really can't isolate middle-class workers from these tax impacts. You also can't isolate middle-class customers from these impacts. You can't keep those families from paying higher prices when a chunk of the business tax that the President and Democrats talk about have to get passed on to customers. So President Biden's tax increases are likely to boost inflation even more than we have seen already, and we have seen a lot of it already. Go to the gas pump, go to the grocery store, go to buy clothes, go to have the basic necessities you have to have, and you are going to see that they are substantially higher than they were a year ago or 2 years ago before COVID, a year ago during COVID. The President's budget effectively repeals the individual tax cuts enacted by Republicans in 2017. The cuts that were enacted in that law for Americans, really, across income levels, have rate reductions that have to be extended in 4 years. The President's plan doesn't call for extending any of those rate reductions. Under the President's proposal, someone making $94,000 per year will see her marginal tax rate jump from 24 percent to 28 percent in 2026. Added to that, you have got higher taxes that Democrats plan to impose on family farmers and ranchers who are hoping to pass along their family business to the next generation. And, frankly, instead of advocating for these middle-class Americans I have just talked about, our Democratic friends seem to be fixated on restoring the tax break that overwhelmingly benefits wealthy Americans in high-tax States. They are pushing to allow people to deduct more than $10,000 in State and local taxes on their Federal returns. That scheme, by the way, would allow the top 1 percent of earners to increase their after-tax income by about 2.5 percent, 2.8 percent, while the bottom 60 percent of all filers--if that law is changed back to what it used to be, the bottom 60 percent of all filers would gain less than one one-hundredth percent on average. It is clear that President Biden's tax hikes will hit a lot of Americans and a lot of Americans that make less than $400,000. The higher tax costs will hurt people who are already struggling with higher prices at the pump and everywhere they shop, and it will hurt our economic recovery. My friends may not want to admit--and I wouldn't either if I was them--that they are going to raise taxes on middle-class families, but that is exactly what they are doing. And if anybody doesn't know it now, they will know it if Democrats in the Senate and the House get their way. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, a lot of time when people come to Washington, they come up with ideas for new policies, and they have a theory of how those policies are supposed to work. What they don't always know are the unintended consequences of what that law is going to produce. As a matter of fact, I have said on occasion that the most certain thing that will happen when we pass a law is unintended consequences, and I haven't been proved wrong very many times on that. The unintended consequences are things that nobody saw coming. They are things you didn't expect to happen the way they did. Smart people writing the laws may do all they can to anticipate everything they can, but there is always something never thought of. So it is helpful to have information that tells us what the consequences are likely to be. The topic we are talking about here today is filled with intended consequences if you look just beyond the comment you are making at the impact it is going to have. In this case, the proposed laws are a couple of ideas my Democratic colleagues have as to how to pay for the spending spree they are on right now. The tax-and-spend plans include a lot of bad ideas, but two of the tax ideas are particularly bad and will have particularly devastating impact. First is a proposal from Senator Sanders to raise the death tax on farmers and ranchers, to change the exemption and do things that simply raise that tax. The second would be to impose the double-death tax by eliminating what Senator Moran was just talking about, the stepped-up basis in calculating how much families have to pay. The research tells us what we can expect to happen if these two bills pass. Research was done at the Texas A&M University that looked at a representative group of 94 farms in 30 States. You can look at this research. You can verify my facts. With 94 farms, 30 States, they found that under current law, 2 of those 94 farms could expect to be hit by a big death tax when the farm goes from one generation to the next. But if the step-up basis tax hike proposed by President Biden and Democrats in Congress were enacted, the researchers found that 92 of 94 farms would be hit hard. The average additional tax liability would be $726,000. So 94 farms; 30 States; 92 farms affected; the average tax, $726,000. That is not the total taxes; that is just the additional taxes if these two bills pass. If these tax hikes favored by the other side were allowed to pass, we would have 92 farms paying a higher tax bill. That average additional tax would add up to more than $1.5 million. Many families would be forced to sell all or part of their farm. And these aren't families who are inheriting big stock portfolios or families who are inheriting multimillion-dollar beach houses. They are not families who focus on every way you can think of to cheat the tax law. They are not billionaires looking for every way they can use a loophole. These are farmers and ranchers who have put their lives into the effort to make their farms work. I will point out also that these same statistics would apply to many small businesses. Give this same speech for small businesses with many of the same considerations. According to the Missouri Department of Agriculture, our State has 95,000 farms. They cover two-thirds of the State's total land acreage. The average Missouri farm is 291 acres, and almost all of them are owned by families. Between the investment there and the efforts that have been made, those families can be devastated in what they have worked hard to put together. So for my friends on the other side of the aisle, I point out that unintended consequences are one thing, and unintended consequences often happen, but here we know what the consequences are. So if these bills pass, this is intended consequences to make a big difference for family farms, for ranches, and, frankly, for small businesses as well. I hope my colleagues will not go forward with these tax hikes on family farms. We know what damage it will cause. It is easy to verify. Don't make the family sell the farm. Don't make the small business sell the farm to a bigger business. Don't make these mistakes that have clear and intended consequences if this is what the Senate and the Congress will do. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, today I would like to recognize a good friend who has meant so much to those in St. Louis, across Missouri, and throughout the Nation. Betty Thompson passed away Sunday, July 11, 2021, at the age of 81. Betty was a great leader, respected voice in the community, and was known for her service to others. Along with her public service, she was known for her generosity and caring nature to help those in need. She was the first African American to serve on the University City City Council and remained on that council for 18 years. She then was elected in 1997 to serve in the Missouri House of Representatives where she represented the 72nd District until 2004. From being a State representative to her advocacy for civil rights, she truly was a beacon of light. Betty and I saw each other many times over the past 12 years. She provided a welcoming environment no matter the place and was always a trusted counsel during our conversations. Jack and Betty Thompson were a month away from celebrating their 62nd wedding anniversary. Along with her husband, Betty is survived by her children Tony Thompson, Sonja Branscomb, and Kwame Thompson, and seven grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her son, Tyrone Thompson, and grandson, Tyrell Thompson. I am grateful to have known Betty and thankful for the impact she has had on my own life, as well as those around Missouri.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, like all of us, I just got back from spending some time at home. I got back from being there and making a difference. I think one of the important things of being outside of Washington is you get a chance to hear what people are really concerned about. We have all kinds of speeches given here every day of what Members of Congress are absolutely sure people are concerned about. I think that topic becomes much more crystal clear when you get home. I know it is certainly much more crystal clear to me when I am home in Missouri. Over the Fourth of July holiday, there were a number of visits all over the State--to Columbia, St. Louis, Montgomery City, Monroe City. There were lots of events everywhere in the State at which I talked about the importance of getting the vaccine and the progress we were making there, but the first thing that people wanted to talk to me about was inflation. People are already seeing that prices are well above the numbers that they believe they are seeing that the official numbers are confirming. In May of this year, prices were 5 percent higher than they were in May a year ago. In June, they were 5.4 percent higher than they were a year ago, but people are seeing a lot of prices that are higher than that. The price of whole milk is up 7.5 percent from a year ago. The price of an airplane ticket has averaged up about 25 percent from a year ago. Used cars are more expensive than they were last June. In fact, they are 45 percent more expensive than they were a year ago in June. There is an incredible increase in the cost of things that people not only want to buy but on those things that are more pressing: what people have to buy and need to buy. A lot of people specifically talked to me about gas prices. I was on the road a lot, driving a lot while I was home, and I saw those prices for myself. The average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline nationwide is about $3.15. That is 45 percent higher than in June of last year. That is a hidden tax that working people pay every day. Whether it is a hidden tax on a glass of milk, a hidden tax on a tank of gas, or a hidden tax on other things that they like to do or have to do, it makes a real difference for the people who want to take a vacation or have to travel to work. In the part of Missouri that I live in, there are a lot of little towns that have manufacturing jobs. It is not unusual for somebody to drive 40 or 50 miles one way to get to that job, and if gasoline is 45 percent higher than it was a year ago, it makes a real difference. That is a real hidden tax, and it is usually a hidden tax on the people to whom the President rightly would not want to pass on tax increases. I think the administration has to start taking into account the issues that are out there. Larry Summers and others from the Obama administration have warned of the great risk of inflation. When we talk about energy, for instance, I think we have to do that, clearly, in a way that, if we are making transitions to energy, we don't make those transitions in a way that needlessly have a negative impact on families and on opportunities. In his first few days in office, President Biden rescinded the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, and not too long after that, he blocked the new oil and gas leases in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. These were things that Congress had talked about for a long time and, in some cases, were things Congress had specifically decided were timely to do, but an Executive order from the President decided, no, we are going to head in a different direction. That was just the beginning, really, of what my colleagues have seen in the discussion in Congress and what my Democratic colleagues in Congress have in mind. So, if you like paying higher prices for gasoline, you are going to love what happens to the restrictions that go into effect and drive prices of all energy even higher. The other thing I talked to small business owners about and, frankly, to all business owners about was the trouble in finding enough workers. Republican Governors in 25 States have now determined that the larger unemployment benefit kept people from going back to work. People were choosing to stay on the sidelines rather than go to work. Frankly, if you looked at that $618 weekly unemployment check that was the average in America in May, that unemployment check didn't have any childcare costs associated with it, and it didn't have any travel to work associated with it. You have to have a job that pays a lot to not consider, if I am continuing to get this check, why should I go back to work? Missouri was one of the 25 States that decided that the extra bonus was not only bad for families in their not going back to work but that it was bad for our economy. So, as of June 12, the return to the important but much lower normal unemployment benefit happened in our State, and I think you can already see people making the decision that it is time to go back to work. Surprisingly, even though we have created a lot of opportunities for people to stay home, the June economy created 850,000 new jobs, and we should all feel good about that, but if this is an economy that has created 850,000 new jobs, at some point, we have to stop pushing money into that economy that we don't have. There are, obviously, a lot of factors at play here, but the 850,000 people going back to work is an important and a significant thing. Part of the explanation, obviously, is the rush by Republican Governors, principally, to eliminate that bonus, but part of it is just simply an economy that is already beginning to rebound--to rebound based on the current tax structure and rebound based on what governments already spend rather than this incredible rush to drive inflation even further. The Congressional Budget Office put out a new report recently that read the Federal deficit for this fiscal year will be more than $3 trillion. The problem is that nobody has any idea what $3 trillion really is, and that probably includes most of us. If I said the deficit was $3 million or $300,000, somehow divided up to every American family, we would immediately think: Oh, my goodness. We could never deal with that. By the way, it was just announced that there is a budget agreement on top of that $3 trillion deficit to spend another $3.5 trillion. It is time we started talking frankly about how much $3 trillion really is. That $3 trillion is something that somebody has to pay back sometime. All that borrowing and spending has been one of the big factors contributing to inflation. It doesn't even count the $3.5 trillion, again, that had been added just overnight in that discussion. Some people are beginning to call this Bidenomics. I think Congress has to take its share of responsibility here. The belief that we can spend without limit and that it won't cause any problems is outrageous. The idea that we can pay people not to work or pay them more than they would make if they did work is outrageous. All of these things lead to unintended consequences. There is a belief that high gas prices and inflation are just temporary and that people shouldn't be concerned about it. Well, people are concerned, and they should be concerned. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will spend some time listening to people, hearing their concerns. I hope they will reconsider their policies that are fueling inflation and holding back our economy I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, when I look at this substitute, I am reminded of the adage, the new boss is the same as the old boss. In this case, the new bill is the same as the old bill. It has a different number, but it still maintains the same flawed policies that S. 1 maintains. Obviously, the majority would like to pass this bill or they wouldn't have labeled it their most important piece of legislation for this Congress. The House of Representatives labeled the same bill, ``H.R. 1,'' their most important piece of legislation for this Congress. The changes basically give election officials more time to implement policies that I don't think we need, and I think the changes don't make the bill less bad. In fact, what the bill does is it creates a new boss for elections, but the new boss is the Federal Government. It is not about voting rights. It doesn't add any group or any individuals to the group of people who can vote, the kind of thing that Congress has done in the past, starting in the first century of the country and moving on until today. It is, frankly, a politically motivated, Federal takeover of the election systems that would make, in my opinion, elections more chaotic, less secure, less nimble in their ability to deal with individual circumstances that occur on election day. (Mr. MARKEY assumed the Chair.) The strength of the election system is the diversity of the election system. This is what President Obama thought in 2016. He may not still believe that, but I still believe it. S. 1 would force a single partisan view of elections on more than 10,000 voting jurisdictions across the country, taking control away from States, taking control away from local officials--frankly, they are the closest people to the voters--and instead giving it to people in a far-away national capital without the same sense of importance of the people believing that what happened on election day at your precinct is what the voters intended to have happen that day and that the people who were voting were the people who were legally able to vote, not people who may have voted somewhere else--not people who may no longer live in the jurisdiction they are voting in and no longer qualified to vote for that county official or that State representative or whoever, but people who are legally able to vote. I think this makes fraud easier to commit and, frankly, harder to detect. What we should be doing is making it easier to vote and harder to cheat. I think what we are doing here is making it easier to cheat and harder to find it out. We allow, in this bill, if it was the law, unlimited ballot harvesting. This is where anybody can go around and collect ballots and, theoretically, be sure that they get to the election authority, but who knows? Who knows what ballot got lost in the mail and what ballot never got in the mail? One of the things the ballot harvester would develop a pretty good sense of is how the person voted whose ballot they were harvesting. This bill undermines popular voter ID laws that more than half of the States have implemented. It makes it more difficult to maintain accurate voter lists. It permanently tips the scales in favor of our friends on the other side by politicizing the Federal Election Commission--a Commission that was established, just like our Ethics Commission in the Senate, with an equal number of one party and no imbalance. This politicizes the Federal Election Commission. It makes it a partisan Agency, not a bipartisan policing Agency. It pours Federal funds into campaigns, and it chills free speech--bad policy, I think, in search of a problem. Democrats have said this is necessary to increase voting rights, particularly for minorities, but the overall turnout in the year 2020 was about two-thirds of all the voters--the highest percentage of voters who participated in over a century. What we have here is an election that had the highest level of participation in over a century. Most States had their highest voter turnout in 40 years, and we decide we need to change the system. S. 1 isn't just about bad policy; it is about what Democrats have seen as a political imperative. Frankly, this has been the bill that Democrats have offered for about the last 20 years. It varies a little bit from time to time, but about 20 years ago and maybe before that. I was a chief election official in our State at that time. I don't remember Democrats offering this before 20 years ago. But starting about two decades ago, every couple of years and certainly every time Democrats get in the majority in the House, they pass this bill or one almost exactly like it. When asked about what it would take to maintain the current majority in the House, Speaker Pelosi said: Well, it would be better if we could pass H.R. 1 and S. 1. Now, that sounds like she thinks there is a political advantage there. I respect the Speaker's political judgment and always have respected Speaker Pelosi's political judgment. Her judgment would be that this would be better for Democrats than not changing the current election law. S. 1 is really full of unnecessary and, as it turns out, unpopular provisions under the label ``Would you like to vote for a bill that would secure democracy?'' Well, of course. Who wouldn't want to be for securing democracy? Fortunately, this bill has been around long enough that people have begun to understand what is in it--the same list that has been out there before. This bill would render State voter ID laws meaningless by requiring States to allow affidavits in lieu of identification. In other words, you say who you are at the polling place. Well, anybody who is going to try to cast a ballot at the polling place they shouldn't cast is probably also likely to be willing to say they are qualified to vote at that election. In a recent poll, a poll that came out this week, 80 percent of Americans supported voter ID laws. Another poll just a couple of weeks ago showed national support for voter photo ID was 75 percent. That included 69 percent of Black voters and 60 percent of Democrats. So we have a principal position of this bill that 80 percent of all voters--at least 75 percent of all voters and 60 percent of Democrats are for, but this bill changes that law that makes sense to almost everybody. This bill requires that unlimited ballot harvesting that I talked about just a minute ago. The only time I recall a congressional discussion recently about ballot harvesting was last year when the House of Representatives refused to seat a Republican-elected Member because that campaign had used ballot harvesting. Now we have a law that requires every State not to prohibit ballot harvesting. The risk of fraud, the risk of every ballot not getting to the place ballots need to be certainly increases when you hand them to a ballot harvester--usually somebody paid by a campaign or a party to go around and collect ballots and someone whose motivation to get those ballots all turned in may not be everything you want it to be. Sixty-two percent of respondents in one poll said ballot harvesting should be illegal. It is another provision in this bill that clearly is not a popular provision if people begin to look at it. Again, voting to protect democracy--sure, that is popular. But the way this bill does it, when people look at it, is not popular. The bill requires States to give felons the right to vote in Federal elections when they are out of prison. Some States do that; some States don't. Of course, if this bill passed, every State would have the choice of going ahead and doing that or having two sets of voter rolls, one for Federal elections and another one for non-Federal elections. That, of course, makes no sense at all. What this bill anticipates is that no matter what States wanted to do, this is a provision they would have to adopt. There is another way to get that done: Go to State legislatures and explain the value of having that changed if that change needs to be made. This bill restricts the ability of States to maintain accurate voter rolls. Many States--States with Democratic Governors or Democratic secretaries of state, Democratic legislatures--have worked hard to see that they had a system in place where you would periodically check and see if the people who are registered to vote are still where they registered to vote from. Our State--I think a lot of States--if you move to another county and register to vote there, you are supposed to say as part of that process who you could notify to get you off the voter rolls, but there is no requirement that that has to happen. A periodic check of the voter rolls was seen not too long ago as a huge protection of democracy. This makes it much harder to do. But a 2018 poll found that 77 percent of Americans supported this kind of voter roll maintenance. Frankly, it would be pretty hard to come up with a bill that had so many major tenets that were so out of step with what people think the government ought to do and what they want their State government to do and in most cases where State governments are doing this. This bill provides government funding for campaigns--$6 of Federal money for every dollar raised from small donors. Small donors is under $200. Frankly, if you were doing this, there would be--the current Members of the Senate, under this bill, could receive up to, collectively, $1.8 billion from the Federal Government to run their campaigns, to attack their challenger, or whatever they want to do with their campaign money--$1.8 billion to do that. It is pretty easy to qualify for this money. We saw people raise money in the first quarter of this year. That would have qualified--in the case of our friend the Senator from Texas, Senator Cruz, somewhere between $25 and $30 million would go to his campaign. We had a markup on this bill in the Rules Committee. Not a single member of the Rules Committee, Democrat or Republican, including Senator Cruz, thought Senator Cruz should get $24 or $25 million from the Federal Government for his campaign. The bill creates a partisan Federal Elections Commission. It gets rid of that bipartisan makeup that has been there from the very start. This bill chills free speech in that it creates a disclosure document that makes people really reluctant to give money to other groups who aren't candidates who like to talk about elections. It federalizes redistricting. S. 1 would put in place one set of Federal rules for redrawing congressional districts. That has always been the role of the States. If the State wants to give that to somebody besides the legislature, they can do that, and many States have done that. But States have been the constitutionally designated place to determine how they draw congressional maps in their own States. Even if a State manages to comply with all these requirements, under this bill, the Justice Department would have to be involved. Under this bill, the court of jurisdiction in all cases on redistricting would be the Federal court in Washington, DC, not the Federal court in the circuit that Missouri is in. You wouldn't even start at the district court in Kansas City or St. Louis. The Federal court in Washington, DC, would be the place you would go. Of course, the purpose of the bill is to bring all these election decisions to one place. The idea that the best decisions are always made in Washington, DC, on all topics is an idea that most Americans don't agree with. There are things they think we can do and should do and can only do because they can't do them any other way, like defend the country and set big national priorities. But for well over 200 years now, local election officials responsible for the sense of credibility of what happens on election day have done this job. I think they have done it well. This bill would require States to take burdensome actions and make expensive changes in their election systems. Even if the States have already adopted some of the so-called reforms, they in all likelihood would have to make changes in their system to comply. So the Federal takeover of elections shouldn't happen. I urge my colleagues not to support it happening. The American people don't want to see the things imposed on our election system that are in this bill. I urge my colleagues to vote against this harmful legislation. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Thank you. Madam President.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, let me say, our times got changed today a little bit, and I was trying to finish another thing to get over here and hear in person what Senator Stabenow had to say. She has been an incredible leader in this effort, a great partner. As she mentioned, we came to the floor the last day of October 2013, which was the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's signing the Community Mental Health Act. Well-intended, but an awful lot of it just didn't get done. Facilities were closed that maybe were well overdue to be closed, but the opportunities weren't put in place to replace them as that act had hoped they would be. I think we have been in the process of making big strides toward doing that. That was 2013. In 2014, we were able to get the first pilot project for Excellence in Mental Health put into place, an eight-State pilot project, where we were looking not only at the impact on those individuals and families who needed to have their behavioral health issue treated like all other health issues but also, frankly, looking to see what impact it had on all their other health issues when your behavioral health issue is being treated as it should be. One of the great costs in healthcare is missed appointments. You have got to believe that almost 20 percent of the population that has a behavioral health issue is more likely to miss an appointment than everybody else, and, of course, that costs the whole system, but it particularly costs them. If you are going to the doctor when you need to, taking the medicine you are supposed to take for any kind of health issue, eating better, sleeping better, feeling better about yourself, your health issues are dealt with in a different way. Nearly one in five Americans, according to the NIH, has a behavioral health problem, but only a fraction of those Americans get the care they need. The NIH says they have a diagnosable--almost one out of five Americans has a diagnosable and almost always treatable behavioral health problem. But, certainly, one out of five Americans who have that problem don't get the care they need to deal with that problem. The COVID pandemic added to many of those challenges, and, realistically, it would, if you think about it. If you have got a behavioral health issue, that is not normally going to be helped by isolation, by worrying about healthcare for yourself or somebody you care about, wondering whether you are going to lose your job or someone in your family is going to lose their job. None of those things are going to be helpful. The other area that comes into play there is an addiction issue of any kind. If you don't have a behavioral health issue before you have an opioid dependency or some other addiction issue, you certainly have one after that addiction takes over. So all of those things were exacerbated by the pandemic. The percentage of Americans with symptoms of anxiety or depression grew by more than 40 percent. Drug overdose deaths increased by 20 percent between October of 2019 and 2020. It was 30 percent. I think I may have said 20--30 percent. That was after 3 years of having drug overdose deaths headed in a dramatically different direction, but suddenly 2020 was the highest year ever for drug overdose deaths. So the challenges of that are great. We now have 10 States, including both Missouri and Michigan, that went through a competitive process and became part of the original Excellence in Mental Health States. In all of those States, we have certified community behavioral health clinics that have to meet standards. They have to meet standards of who staffs that clinic; they have to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with crisis management as a possibility. They can do preventive screenings. They can determine appropriate care coordination with other providers, like emergency room departments or veterans services. All of those things make a dramatic difference in people's lives. People getting help through the clinics often have access to primary care treatment as well. I have visited a lot of those clinics in our State. I have seen what happens with these demonstration projects. They are enabling more people to get the complete healthcare they need--and, again, including mental healthcare and addictive treatment--quicker, closer to home. In new data from the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, 84 percent of those clinics, the CCBHCs they are calling them--84 percent of them were able to see clients within the first week. I think 100 percent of them were able to see a client who needed to be seen that day, that day. I certainly hope that is the goal. I hope nobody goes to a clinic, if professionals believe you need help right now, who doesn't get help right now. But 84 percent of the people who show up get an appointment within the first week. That definitely was not the case 10 years ago, and it is not the case now in States that haven't become part of this program. Ninety-five percent of those clinics are involved with law enforcement activities and nursing and criminal justice centers. In my hometown of Springfield, MO, every patrol officer who has been trained in crisis intervention has an iPad with them that they can connect anybody they are talking to with a 24/7 Burrell community health center. And they do. I have seen that happen. I have traveled with officers who have done that. And, by the way, I am sure they didn't have me with an officer who wasn't really good, but you could see, no matter how good that officer was, the individual, when they were talking to somebody at the clinic who was a professional dealing with this all the time, you could see that conversation took on a totally different tone. We have seen more and more efforts to try to help with substance abuse. We have been able to fund the federally qualifying clinics in new ways because of that. So 10 States are totally in this program. Forty States, under an amendment we made a couple of years after we got started, have been able to take county units or other units that they can qualify into the Excellence in Mental Health Program. So what we are working on now with our colleagues is an effort to, once again, make this available to the entire country. I think we have had enough proof in the last 7 years or so to show it makes a big difference. Again, let me say, everybody has always known that this is the right thing to do, and they have always known it is the thing that even was financially smart in the long run. I think we are also showing here how, in the immediate healthcare context, it makes a financially smart investment to help somebody with their behavioral health challenges as you are working with all of their other health challenges. Behavioral health, mental health needs to be treated like all other health. This Congress, this year, hopefully starting in this Senate, has the ability to say: OK. We are ready to open the door now to every State that wants to participate in a program that would treat mental health like all other health. I know Senator Stabenow and I are going to be working hard together, and you are going to be helping us as we work to get this done. Thank you for the time today. I look forward to the further debate of these issues. I think we have come a long way within the last 8 years. We can see the full opportunity here right on the horizon. The Congressional Budget Office, every time they look at this, thinks it costs less than they thought the time before because they are seeing the overall impact in ways that we thought these pilots would prove. So let's get this done this year. I look forward to working hard to do it and look forward to a full debate and vote on this issue on the Senate floor. I would yield back.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, you and I, as we sit on the Rules Committee, saw the debate on this bill--the bill that the sponsors call the For the People Act. I think it really more accurately could be called the ``For the Politicians Act.'' S. 1 was marked up in the Rules Committee last month, a markup that I certainly raised a number of concerns about the bill and others did too. It is more than 800 pages that contains policies relating to election administration, to campaign finance, to redistricting, and much more. Now, the truth is, we don't know what bill will come to the floor because this bill couldn't get out of committee. And apparently we are going to not use the committee process but, in fact, we will bring a different bill to the floor that nobody has seen yet. But this bill seems to get bigger over time, not smaller over time. It includes the overwhelmingly bad idea that Congress should impose a Federal takeover of elections and force a one-size-fits-all approach on the more than 10,000 voting jurisdictions in the country. There are very few things that you can develop a formula that works just right in 10,000 places. In fact, in our States and in the District of Columbia, we have a pretty significant problem coming up with 51 different structures that work for everywhere in every jurisdiction that is impacted by that. This bill also has some deadlines that are so short that if it became law, it would create chaos in next year's elections and make the election process less trusted, not more trusted. We should be focusing on Federal laws and State laws that make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. I think this bill makes it easier to cheat and harder to figure out whether anybody cheated or not. S. 1 undermines the popular State voter identification laws. The majority of our States now require some kind of identification. And an overwhelming number of voters believe that voter identification at the polls is a good thing. This bill allows political operatives to fan out across a community and collect an unlimited number of ballots. In fact, it says States can't even stop that process of ballot harvesting. Those ballot harvesters can collect ballots from you. They can collect ballots from your neighbors, from vulnerable voters like people in nursing homes. And, frankly, who knows if they turn them in or not? Who knows if they put them in the post office box or not? If they never show up, the ballot harvester, who may very well know that your ballot is a ballot they don't agree with, could just say, ``Well, I don't know what happened. It must have been lost in the mail,'' and who would ever know whether it was lost in the mail or not? In addition to undermining voter identification laws and making it possible for complete strangers to take your ballot, S. 1 disrupts States' long-made efforts to maintain an accurate list of eligible voters. Voter rolls are the foundation really of election administration. I was the chief election official in our State. I was a local election official in our State. Accurate lists of who can vote that people can look at before the election, during the election, and after the election create great confidence in the process. Accurate lists ensure that voters are able to cast a ballot--and the ballot they should cast--in the districts they actually live in. That can be pretty complicated sometimes, and really only the election authority can be aware of that when they know exactly where you live. Election officials, when you have accurate lists, know who has voted, and, frankly, they know who hasn't voted. So if the same person comes in or at least a person pretending to be the same person comes in a second time, they know that. Accurate voter lists allow voters to check in more quickly to get that efficient and quick exercise of democracy done. One of the things everybody constantly talks about is, well, we make it too hard to vote. If you really want to make it hard to vote, make it hard to figure out who the voters are who are supposed to be voting at a given precinct. The right to vote is a bedrock principle in our democracy. The right to vote wherever you want to vote is not a bedrock principle in our democracy. You can't just decide: Well, this year I think it is going to be pretty competitive in some other State. I will just drive over there on election day and vote. Frankly, you can't just decide: You know, that congressional district next door to the one I live in looks more competitive than the one I live in. I think I will go over there and vote this year instead of in the district that the census tract would have put me in. The right to vote is a bedrock principle. The right to vote wherever you want to isn't. Some of our great local administrators figured this out. In St. Louis County, the biggest single election jurisdiction in Missouri, you can vote anywhere in the county, but at the place where you go vote--the ballot for you individually is generated at the place you go vote, and it is counted in the races that are generated for you to vote in. That is pretty innovative. I don't think we could probably have ever figured that out at the national level. But the point is, you are voting for the people who you are living in the district that person will represent, whether it is on the local school board or in the Congress or in the State legislature. That is a very complicated set of things that benefit totally from voter rolls and benefit from you voting where you live. This bill prohibits States from putting in place really just reasonable election security measures that have been upheld by court. It takes away the guardrails that prevent fraud from happening and ensures that when you do have fraud, you have ways to figure out that fraud occurred and what to do about it. You pile up all the ways this legislation actually increases the likelihood of fraud, and you think about whether you really need a strong reason to change the system when, as Senator Grassley said, the system appears to be working pretty well. Democracies benefits from local responsibility. One political party, however, thinks this bill will give it an electoral advantage. They have thought that for about 20 years. This is the compilation of 20 years of Democrats in the Congress thinking, what could we do to change the election law that would be helpful for us? That is where we are in this legislation. It was written by one party alone. It has been steered through Congress by one party alone. It has not actually been seen by anybody in the other party yet, and the majority leader says this bill, which probably still is going to be about 800 pages, will come to the floor next week. In both Chambers of Congress, there has been bipartisan opposition to the bill and no bipartisan support for this bill. The danger of those kinds of sweeping changes really can do a lot to negatively impact our election system, but it doesn't stop there. It would turn the Federal Election Commission into a partisan tool where the party of the President has a majority. There is a reason that six- member Commission was equally divided when it was set up, just like there is a reason the Senate Ethics Committee is equally divided. This bill would send Federal money to campaign coffers at the rate of $6 for every dollar raised for every contribution under $200. I think the number my friend Chairman Grassley was talking about was if you raised $5 million of under $200, you would get $30 million from the Federal Government--$30 million of government money that could clearly be used for something else. In fact, the current Members of the Senate would be eligible under the total restrictions of the bill to get $1.8 billion in Federal money. Talk about a conflict of interest when you vote for this bill. The bill also changes redistricting established in the Constitution for the States and basically ensures that all congressional redistricting would be done by Federal courts. That doesn't affect the Senate much, but it affects the government a lot. It places heavy burdens on free speech and impacts every branch of the Federal Government. I have heard proponents of this bill say that it is necessary to push back recently passed State voter laws and protect the voting rights of Americans. This bill has nothing to do with voting rights. It doesn't protect the right of a single American to cast a ballot. It doesn't bring new people into the system as the constitutional amendment did on women and other people who have been added, people who had been held in a terrible way in slavery, people who had been prevented from voting because of their sex or race, and people who were prevented because of age at one time. This bill does nothing of that. This is a Federal takeover of elections. It should be rejected by the Senate. I believe it will be rejected by the Senate. We look forward to seeing the other side defend this bill next week. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I was watching Senator Ernst give this speech. And as to that ``Help Wanted'' sign, I thought I was back in Springfield, MO, my hometown, where I was this weekend. There were occasions when I was driving down a block, and I started looking to see if there was a place that didn't have a ``Help Wanted'' sign up. They were everywhere--``Help Wanted'' signs, hiring bonuses, rates well above the minimum wage. Our minimum wage is $10.30 in our State. There were rates well above that being advertised on the ``Help Wanted'' signs. You know, we all were disappointed by the job numbers that were issued at the end of April. But, obviously, the job numbers didn't reflect the fact that there weren't jobs to be had. It was just that there weren't people taking the jobs to be had. We need to think about everything we can to create an environment where people want to go back to work, where people are encouraged to go back to work, and where people who can't go back to work have that basic unemployment benefit. Nobody is begrudging that, but I think it is clear that we have made some mistakes here. Now, many of us were concerned about this when it initially came up, and we were not able to turn back the additional bonus at the time, though the predictions were just too true about what might happen. What small businesses in Missouri are saying is pretty consistent all over the State. In St. Louis, the manager of Mary Ann's Tea Room said: ``It is heartbreaking that the business is there, but I can't hire anyone.'' And that restaurant was forced to just close down because they didn't have enough workers. In Kansas City, the president of the Big Biscuit restaurant said: ``We've never had a hiring drought like this before.'' And according to him, he said, there is ``no doubt we are up against unemployment that has been artificially increased and stimulus payments that give people the opportunity not to show up for work.'' In Branson, just as the busy summer season is getting underway, the general manager at Mel's Hard Luck Diner says he is so short-staffed that they have to close Sunday evenings now--a time when they would normally be open, just to compensate for the fact that they don't have enough people to do the 7 evenings and 7 days of business that they were used to doing. He says he can't even get people to show up for a job interview, let alone show up to work. Just down the street in Branson, at one of the great theme parks in America, the Silver Dollar City Theme Park, they told me a couple of weeks ago that they could hire 150 people the next day--that would still be their view, by the way--if they could find 150 people. They have 150 jobs, and they have more customers than they have people, so not everybody could get in the park that would normally be able to come to the park. In Columbia, right in the middle of our State, the owner of Just Jeff's said: ``There's not a person that I come into contact with . . . as a businessowner or manager or something like that, that isn't in a terrible pinch right now for help.'' That is just a snapshot of all we are seeing. I talked to one person who runs a family hotel chain. It is a big family hotel chain based in St. Louis. He said: We have the customers now who are coming back, but we don't have the help. We could fill more rooms than we are filling if we had people who could clean the rooms and get them ready the next day. Businesses are ready to be back and be fully open, but they don't have the workers they need. We had an amendment in the CARES Act, one of the five bipartisan bills we passed last year, that would have prevented people from making more when they are unemployed than when they are working. I said at the time, when I voted for that amendment, that I was concerned that these enhanced unemployment benefits would really create a time when people didn't want to go back to work, and, unfortunately, that is exactly what happened in Missouri and around the country It has been a tough year, we all know that, for small business owners. We stepped up and tried to think of early ways to keep people on their payrolls rather than on the unemployment rolls. By the way, even at that time, many of those businesses were saying, well, that is a great idea. We would like to keep them on our payroll, but they can make more money on the unemployment rolls. Is that fair to them, to not let them go to this unemployment that the government and its policies made so appealing? They were trying to fight the worst public health crisis ever and trying to keep businesses afloat. Now they are trying to figure out: As we come out of the public health crisis, what do we do to keep that business going? You know, that misguided government policy--that comment Ronald Reagan used to make--is one of the scariest things you could hear: ``I am from the government, and I am here to help.'' This seems to be a case where that truly has been a scary thing: The government, trying to help, trying to reach out and do what at least a majority of our colleagues thought was the right thing, has created a situation that is different than it needs to be. Twenty-one States have now either decided to stop participating already or have announced that they are going to stop participating. Governor Parson in Missouri made that decision. As Senator Ernst mentioned, the Governor of Iowa has made and 19 other Governors have made that decision. The average unemployment benefit in the States in America right now is $618 a week. That is the average. That includes the $300 that the Federal Government has put into every one of those checks that are still going out at that level. That is $15.46 an hour. Certainly, one way to mandate a $15 hourly pay rate is just to decide that is what you are going to make if you are unemployed. Well, it hasn't worked. It won't work. Our State of Missouri and other States are moving away from this. In Washington, we make policies, and one of our responsibilities is to be sure that we are keeping an eye on unintended consequences. The law of unintended consequences is one of the great certainties of making law, and we need to watch out for that. We have a huge unintended consequence here. We saw what happened when now the Biden administration is trying to explain why it is not their policies that appear to be slowing the recovery down, but we all know that this is part of that problem. We have done something to cause this problem. We need to figure out how to solve this problem. This should not be something that States, one at a time, reject. We need to get our economy back on track as quickly as possible. There is virtue in work, and I hope we make work more appealing again than not working. Thank you.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis) and the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Thune). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I am saddened by the passing of Hal Sullivan. He had a unique ability to bring together organizations and private sector partners to make sure clients of the Fathers & Families Support Center had the tools they needed to be successful. I appreciated learning what he was seeing and hearing, and hearing his advice over the years. His work touched the lives of so many families throughout the St. Louis region, and his legacy of service will have a lasting impact throughout our State for generations to come.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I rise today to honor a Springfield, MO, resident who has dedicated 38 years of her life in service to the city of Springfield by helping facilitate economic development, creating and retaining thousands of jobs, and bringing life to the downtown area. Mary Lilly Smith started her career in 1983 as a city planner for downtown Springfield, where she helped create the city's initial neighborhood conservation office. During the next 38 years, Mary played an instrumental role in nearly 100 key economic initiatives. Mary is best known for her 17 years as the economic development director. Along with her commitment to the downtown area, she created the Economic Development Incentives Policy Manual, which became a template for other towns and cities across the State to implement development policies. In addition to her economic development initiatives, Mary made sure to preserve the city of Springfield's incredible history. Throughout her nearly four decades of service, Mary has developed many different approaches to preserving and honoring the history of the area. She also developed the city's first capital improvement program, which facilitated a change in the review process for protecting architecturally significant historical properties. Mary leaves behind a legacy for the city of Springfield to be enjoyed by all for years to come. For her many years of service, she has earned her retirement. As she enters this new chapter of her life, I offer Mary best wishes.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to talk also about infrastructure and associate myself with the interest that the country has in infrastructure. In fact, one of the things that the government has done the longest has been roads and bridges and canals. I think, initially, the term ``internal improvements'' was, in the early 19th century, what they would have talked about when they talked about what we began to talk about later as ``infrastructure.'' During almost the entire history of the country, there was an understanding of what ``infrastructure'' meant in America. Infrastructure is pretty popular, and infrastructure is definitely something that you generally can't do for yourself. You can't, on your own, provide the waterline that connects your house to the next house. On your own, you can't provide the road that gets you from home to work. On your own, you can't do a lot of things that we did early on and up until right now and call them infrastructure. Normally, they were seen as things like roads and bridges and dams--big projects that sometimes crossed State lines--or big projects that sometimes were just too big for a State or a town to handle, like water systems that needed to be improved. When we did that--and I will talk later about the way we did that-- the bipartisan agreement also largely led to figuring out ways that infrastructure would pay for itself, in that the people who used the infrastructure would pay for the infrastructure, and we looked at that in a number of different ways. Now, in the package that the administration has proposed, the $2.3 trillion package, there are lots of things in there that I don't disagree that the Senate should debate or I don't even rule out of hand that the country might want to do. Yet I think they are not infrastructure, and the funding way to get to them makes it harder to have the kind of bipartisan agreement that, I think, we could have in an infrastructure bill. The Republicans are for it, and the Democrats are for it in the House, in the Senate. Let's talk about how to get there. Let's also make the point, of the $213 billion in this plan that is for Green New Deal building makeovers, there may be a place to do that, and it is something that we could clearly debate, but it is not the same thing as infrastructure. I was, at one time, the chairman of the Missouri Housing Development Commission. We did a lot of things to make it possible for people to have houses or for people to have buildings that they could have an opportunity to be a part of, but we never really called it infrastructure, and we did it in a different way. On surface transportation, generally, for decades, that was paid by the highway trust fund. How did you fund the highway trust fund? You funded the highway trust fund by people pulling up to service stations and putting fuel in their cars, and when they did that, they paid into the highway trust fund. The more miles you drove, the more you paid into the highway trust fund, and Americans thought that was fair. We haven't raised the highway gas tax since 1993, and that could very well be a debate we should have as part of an infrastructure package. If not the gas tax, what other kind of user fee could there be? Lots of people use the highways, the roads, the bridges, and the Interstate Highway System who don't pay a gas tax now because they are transitioning to vehicles like electric vehicles that don't fill up at that gas pump. That is a debate I think we should have as part of an infrastructure debate. Just last year, it was predicted that the highway trust fund would run out of money before the year was over, and it did. Because we collect less money every year than we spend every year, we decided to subsidize that out of general revenue, but nobody in that debate ever thought that it should be the permanent solution. For other kinds of projects, we look for ways to help the end user make a project possible both in urban communities and rural communities. There are programs in which you can replace your water system or your stormwater system with something that works and price it appropriately. What we have done there is say: Well, we are going to figure out how we can either guarantee your bonds or write down your loans or both so that the users in those systems over, maybe, 30 years would pay back in amounts they could afford--what happened when you turned the lead water pipe into an appropriate water pipe. I am in favor of replacing every lead water pipe in America, but I think you can do that in a way that the users of those systems pay for those systems just like all of their neighbors in neighboring communities are paying for their systems. We could help them do that, and we have proven we can help them do that. We could also create an infrastructure bank. Senator Warner and I have worked on that for years. I think we are going to reintroduce the REPAIR Act, which would really be a nonpartisan financing authority whereby the government guarantees a certain amount of that money, and maybe government assistance in putting together a public-private partnership creates another way that a little bit of Federal money creates a lot more infrastructure activity. You could look at these and other issues like asset recycling, where the government leases or sells some existing public infrastructure and uses the proceeds of that to fund new projects. In Australia, they used that system to help pay for an expansion of subway systems and other things. In fact, the Federal Government would encourage local governments to privatize one of their local government assets that had customers. Then they would take that money, maybe, and build sidewalks that don't have customers, and the water systems that would have customers would have helped to build the sidewalks as it would be managed by a private company, but all of those private companies would be regulated in a way that people who would be customers would know they were protected. We have had a lot of bipartisan infrastructure bills over the last decades and more than decades. Infrastructure bills are not new to America. Figuring out how you have an infrastructure bill that meets the definition of ``infrastructure'' and a system where the infrastructure goes as far as it possibly can to pay for itself by those people who use it has always involved Republicans and Democrats reaching an agreement. I don't know that there has ever been a partisan infrastructure bill. It has always involved reaching agreement on what would be in the bill and reaching agreement on finding ways to pay for it. New definitions can really confuse ideas that the American people think they understand. People are for infrastructure. They think that it is something the government should do. They can pass a test on what they believe ``infrastructure'' means if they have ever watched an infrastructure debate before. Let's find a way that we can move forward in a bipartisan way with an infrastructure bill that meets the standards of infrastructure and meets the standards of doing everything we can to be sure the system is fairly paid for by the people who use it and can afford to pay for it. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Braun), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from Montana (Mr. Daines), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul), and the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Portman). Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall) would have voted ``nay.''-

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to join my fellow Senators in remembering Senator Manchin's family, his sister, and the rest of his family as they deal with the loss of his brother-in-law. I want to talk today about a draft I just received--a bill we are actually going to have a hearing on next week--S. 1, the so-called For the People Act. This bill is the companion act to the House version of H.R. 1. I actually think it is even longer than H.R. 1, which I would have thought impossible. It is over 800 pages. I think they will be introducing the final version in the next day or so, and that is a good thing, since we are supposed to have a hearing on it in the middle of next week. It packs a lot of what I consider bad changes relating to election administration, campaign finance, redistricting, and so much more into those 800 pages, but there is a lot of space there to pack things in. I would have to take a lot more time than I have got today to talk about all the things in the bill that I have had concerns about, but I would say, to start with, this idea that one size fits all, this Federal takeover of elections, can't be in the interest of voters in our country. It would force a single and, I believe, a partisan view of elections and how they should be run in 10,000 different jurisdictions in the country. I don't know how you do that. I don't know how you take 10,000 jurisdictions and try, at the Washington, DC, level in legislation, to determine changes like how they would register voters. Every State, under this bill, would do it exactly the same way--which voting systems they would use; how they would handle early voting and absentee ballots, no matter how long they had been doing it one way that worked for voters in their State; and how they maintain their voter list, whether you can go in and verify whether people on the voter list were still there. We used to think that was a critically important protection in the election system; that you knew that the voters that had registered to vote in a jurisdiction actually were still in that jurisdiction. It was actually, in every State, a bragging point of responsible election administration. That would largely go away in this bill. This bill would require States to make ballot drop boxes available for 45 days prior to the Federal election. Those are boxes that--it even designates the locations and tells the local jurisdiction how they need to handle those ballots as they come out of the boxes and would be processed. Remember, these are not mailboxes. They would be the ballot drop boxes all over the jurisdiction, if you could find one. It would mandate unlimited ballot harvesting. That is a process where one person could collect and submit as many ballots as they could collect and submit. You know, in recent elections, we have seen ballot harvesting as a real problem in these elections. Not only does one person have your ballot and get that ballot to where it should be, frankly, one of the problems always with ballot harvesting is maybe a person who knows voters pretty well would collect 20 and put 18 in the mailbox or take 18 to the vote counting area and the other two just somehow don't get there. Unlimited ballot harvesting, prohibited in many States--and, in fact, in recent years the Democratic House of Representatives failed to seat an elected Representative in North Carolina because that person had used ballot harvesting. The bill would require States to allow felons to vote in Federal elections. If you didn't like that, in this case, you could have two sets of voter registrations, one for Federal elections and one for all other elections. And, by the way, if you did that, you would also have to have two different sets of ballots for an election day that had both local and State and Federal issues on the ballot. And this bill would require that all of these changes be made quickly. Even jurisdictions that recently have changed their processes and spent a lot of time talking to people about those changes over maybe 2 years or 4 years would suddenly be told, no, you have to change them one more time. And maybe it is a day here or a day there, but that makes a big difference if you have already got in your mind how far before an election you have to register to vote or transfer your address or things that election administrators work on all the time. You know, my first elected job was as the county clerk in Greene County, Springfield, MO, where I was the chief election authority. We had a county of about 180,000 people in it, lots of registered voters, but you had to take that very seriously. And later I was the chief election authority in our State for 8 years as the secretary of state, and I know how much planning goes into the elections. I know how seriously local officials take it. I also know how difficult it could be if every change you made had to be cleared some way with somebody in Washington, DC. You know, States can often take years to transition to a new ballot system or transition to a new way they do things. They also can do it very quickly if they need to, and we saw that happen in a number of States last year. I think this bill, if it did pass, really doesn't allow the time you need for planning. The diversity of our election system is one of the great strengths of our system. There is bipartisan agreement on that. I have quoted President Obama on this before, but he said in 2016: ``There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you can even rig America's elections, in part, because they are so decentralized and the numbers of votes involved.'' This bill would undo that decentralized strength. It would undo that local and State responsibility for having laws that voters who vote for you understand you need to apply in the fairest and best way you can. The bill would make our system less diverse, less secure. Unfortunately, this bill doesn't just stop at election administration. It takes the campaign finance system and changes it dramatically. You know, when the Federal Elections Commission was created in the early 1970s, it was a six-member Commission. It was to be bipartisan. This turns it into a five-member Commission, with whoever is the President being able to appoint the third member on one side to always outvote, if they need to, the two members on the other side. There have been many times, obviously, in the history of the Federal Election Commission when the vote has been 3 to 3 or 2 to 2, whatever the makeup was at the time. This would do away with that and basically turn the Commission from a bipartisan Commission into a prosecutorial body, where one side always has the majority if they want it. I think voters should and would be very concerned about that. It would allow the Chair of the FEC to make key staffing changes. It would allow judges to review cases, even when the Commission found no violation of the law. In addition, the bill would create a system of public financing for political campaigns by matching certain contributions with Federal dollars. The match would be 6 to 1. So in the matchable, low-dollar-- whatever you define that to be--contributions, if you raise $100,000 of those contributions, you would have $700,000. Six hundred thousand of those dollars could have been used by the Federal Government for other things rather than to finance politicians in a campaign. Now, I understand why politicians would like that. I have raised as much money as most people in this body have raised, and, you know, the idea that just the Federal Government would come in at some point and give me $6 for some percentage of those that I raised might be pretty appealing, but I think it would be wrong. It takes jurisdiction away from the States into how to draw congressional districts. Now, this is going to be inconvenient if it passes because the Constitution specifically says the State legislatures decide how to draw a congressional district. It doesn't say the Congress of the United States tells the State legislatures how to draw congressional districts, but this bill would do that. The bill requires redistricting commissions. It dictates who would serve on the commissions. It sets the criteria and the procedures for how you draw the maps. It lays out how the commissions have to take public input. And if that weren't bad enough--it doesn't stop there--it even determines which courts act on all redistricting cases. And this would be a dramatic change where, again, you have a one-size-fits-all system in a country that clearly is not a one-size-fits-all country. Since very few States currently have commissions like that, it would set a lot of deadlines that we don't currently have. Districts drawn using 2020 census data would all but be guaranteed to be drawn by Federal courts just because of the time that this bill sets out. But the Federal court drawing the district isn't the big problem. The big problem is forever you have changed this and forever you have put the DC Circuit as the ultimate circuit to determine all redistricting cases. We have never thought that power belonged in Washington, DC, before, but this bill does. It is an unprecedented power grab by the Federal Government at the expense of the States. I think it is a transparent attempt to stack elections in favor of one party. Election law should not be about a single party. If this bill were to pass, it would do nothing, in my view, to bolster public confidence in elections. In fact, I suspect most election officials around the country would begin to say: I would like to be able to do something about that problem, but we will have to clear that with Washington, DC, first. I think the divisions in the country would be worse, not better. Successful election laws are passed on a bipartisan basis. We did that with the Help America Vote Act after 2000. We provided assistance and some direction with the finances, but we didn't change a single State law after 2016. We left that up to the States. We created bipartisan impact when we did that. We should continue to put the strength and the security of the country's elections before party. We should continue to oppose the efforts of a single party to make sweeping partisan changes in our election system. I don't talk to anybody who doesn't think that this bill, as a similar bill passed the House, would pass the House on a purely partisan basis. That would be a bad idea. I encourage my colleagues to look carefully at S. 1, and I think if you do, a majority of the Senate will not support this bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, last year Congress provided nearly $68 billion in emergency funding for schools. About 10 percent of that has been used. This bill provides another $126 billion, with no requirement that we get kids back to school. We know they need to be back in school. I think this amendment actually, if applied, almost ensures we won't get back to school this year. Thirty days to come up with a plan; public comment on that plan. It is the middle of March before anybody even begins to make--have the 30 days to make that plan. We need to get kids back to school. The New York Times understands that. Many States are saying the suicide rates, the emergency room mental health concerns demand that kids get back to school, and not next year but they get back to school as quickly as they can this year. I think this amendment, while I am sure offered in good intention, works against that, not for it, and I would urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment. Vote on Amendment No. 1344