Michael Bennet

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor today to share a few words about Regina Rodriguez, President Biden's nominee for the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. Gina's nomination comes to this floor with broad, well-earned support across the State of Colorado. My office has received a flood of letters on her behalf. All of them testify to her character, her hard work, and her commitment to service, justice, and the rule of law. She learned all of it from her family. Her mom's family knew injustice firsthand. During the Second World War, they were relocated from California to the Heart Mountain internment site in Wyoming, joining over 10,000 people whose loyalty was questioned by the U.S. Government based solely on their Japanese ancestry. Her mother Linda went on to become a teacher and administrator in the Denver public schools, my old school district. Her father Peter was a Mexican American who went from living in a railroad boxcar on the South Side of Chicago to earning a nomination for the NFL Hall of Fame. Education and hard work transformed her parents' lives, and Regina has always sought to live up to their example. Gina grew up in Gunnison, CO, but her family moved around the country because her dad coached football. She graduated with honors from the University of Iowa, which I know is not the only reason Chairman Grassley supported her nomination but probably was an important one, and then returned home to earn a J.D. from the University of Colorado Law School. After starting at a private firm in Denver, Gina joined the U.S. Attorney's Office. The Department of Justice noticed her talent, and she went to work for the Attorney General on alternative dispute resolution--a new approach at the time meant to avoid lengthy trials through arbitration and mediation. She helped to mainstream the approach for all U.S. attorneys, saving the government countless hours and taxpayers' countless dollars over the years. Gina's leadership in Washington earned her a promotion back in Denver, where she rose to become Chief of the Civil Division in the U.S. Attorney's Office. She was the first Latina to hold that position and quickly developed a stellar reputation among colleagues and judges. Today, she is one of the most respected trial lawyers in Colorado and has received reward after reward for her work. Her commitment to the community has been just as impressive. She is a founding board member of Colorado Youth at Risk, a nonprofit that helps kids stay on the right track. She served as one of Colorado's higher education commissioners and still serves on the board of Denver's highest performing charter school, the School of Science and Technology in my old district. Somehow, she finds time to mentor young lawyers from underrepresented communities. The evidence is overwhelming: Regina Rodriguez is an exceptional nominee with a distinguished career and commitment to service. She has blazed trails in Colorado and in Colorado law through the sheer force of her intellect, hard work, and character. Regina and her family are what we mean when we come to this floor and talk about the American dream. She has my full and enthusiastic support, and I want to thank my colleagues on the Judiciary Committee for advancing her nomination with overwhelming, bipartisan support. They saw what Colorado already knows, which is what an exceptional judge Gina would make, and I wholeheartedly agree. I urge my colleagues to come together and confirm this outstanding nominee in a big bipartisan vote. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNET

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

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to complete my remarks.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I am thrilled that we are passing this legislation. It is amazing to me--and I am sure the Presiding Officer would agree--that the Senate has actually returned to regular order. We are passing amendments on both sides of the aisle, and I think we are going to have a big bipartisan vote here in the Senate. In having been here for a number of years when the Senate didn't operate that way--it was incredibly dysfunctional--it is a great, great privilege to be here at a moment when it is working. So I want to express my sense of gratitude for that. January 6 Commission Mr. President, I also want to call the Presiding Officer's attention to news reports this afternoon that say that our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle have decided they are going to block this bipartisan Commission to examine what happened on January 6 and that they are going to use the filibuster here to block a Commission that some of them actually called for and a Commission that, I think, 35 Republican Members of the House of Representatives supported. I wanted to come to the floor to appeal to their conscience and to ask them to consider the damage that it will do to our democracy to not have this Commission, as we have done at other important moments in the country's history. And, Mr. President, you were here on January 6. I was here on January 6. We had been sent here--we came here--to accomplish the ministerial task that we are required after a Presidential election is concluded, to certify the results of that election, to certify the ballots of millions and millions and millions of Americans who voted in the last election. That is why we were here. Unfortunately, we had a President at that time who denied that the election had actually happened. The President will remember that we also had colleagues that came to this floor and said that we were disrespecting the President's base or their base because we were certifying the election, instead of having enough respect for their base to tell them the truth, which was that the election had been decided by millions of voters, and by every court that looked at it and by incredibly brave local officials, many of them Republicans, who wouldn't allow the President to push them around. The 6th was a terrible day here. The people who invaded this Capitol, the people who stormed the platform that had been set up for the peaceful transfer of power on January 20, when Joe Biden took the oath of office--the people who came here on January 6 cursed the Capitol Police. They bludgeoned the Capitol Police. They speared them. They hurled racial epithets, leading some of our African-American police officers here to ask what had happened to America. They broke windows in the Capitol. They looted the Parliamentarian's office--the people who would bravely carry the ballots out of this Chamber, when we were led to the Hart building, and protect those ballots that could have ended up getting burned out on the National Mall, if they hadn't had the presence of mind to do their job--just like the Capitol Police, who were in mortal danger that day doing their job. And I remember, when we were all together in one of the Senate office buildings, after they had rushed us out of here, we would later see that the mob was just a hallway away from here, and, actually, they were misdirected by another Capitol Police officer, who put his life in jeopardy to move them out of the way. We were taken to another building, a Senate office building, and it was in that room--we were crowded in that room. It was in that room that I saw a scene that I never thought I would ever see as an American, on the TV sets that were on the walls of that room. While we were inside the room, we were watching the scene that everyone else in the country and everyone else across the world was watching of the U.S. Capitol being invaded by our own people. I know the President will remember that when he was growing up, when I was growing up, that was not an uncommon sight to see in countries all over the world. There are a lot of countries that have had events like January 6 over the world, especially when there have been transitions of power or a tyrant unwilling to give up their power. But in a million years, I would never have imagined that it would happen here. And it did happen, and it sent a message all over the planet. While we were in that room, unable to certify this election, the Chinese Government had the greatest propaganda win that you could imagine, and in the weeks that followed, they have said democracy is in decline, democracy is failing. That is what the Russians are saying. That is what the Iranians are saying. And when I was there in that room that day, I thought a lot about my mom and her parents, who were Polish Jews, who survived the Holocaust. The whole family was killed except for them and an aunt, and they were lucky enough that, after the war was over, they went to Stockholm, Sweden, for a year. They went to Mexico City for a year, and then they came here to the only country in the world where they thought they could rebuild their shattered lives. And they did. And so even worse for me than the thought of our adversaries using this to undermine democracy was the understanding that people all over the world situated just like my mom and her parents would lose hope in the American ideal, would lose hope in democracy and in the rule of law. Now, the good news is we actually had a January 20. A lot of countries that go through January 6 never get to January 20, and we had that, and Joe Biden took the oath of office and he became President of the United States, and Kamala Harris became the Vice President of the United States. We had, notwithstanding all of the prior President's efforts to the contrary and the efforts of some of his allies in Congress to the contrary--we had--a peaceful transfer of power. But consider how close we came, not just on the 6th, but consider what would have happened if elected officials, many of them Republicans in Georgia and in Arizona and in Michigan hadn't fulfilled their obligations to the rule of law, hadn't lived up to their oath of office, bent to the will of a President who didn't want to relinquish power. Where would we be then? Imagine if the Democrats, instead of winning a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, had lost the majority in the House of Representatives, and 140 or more--148--Republican votes to decertify the election, to overturn the will of the voters, to disenfranchise millions and millions and millions of Americans all of a sudden was a majority doing that, as the former President would have wanted. Imagine if 60 judges, many of them Republicans, appointed by President Trump, who howled the President's lawyers out of courtroom after courtroom, after courtroom because, instead of doing what the President wanted them to do, instead of finding them ``a few more votes,'' as he said to the secretary of state in Georgia, recorded on the phone, they did their job as judges and they withstood the pressure. They swore an oath, and they fulfilled their oath, and that is the only way democracy can actually work. It is when elected officials and judicial officials apply the rule of law, fulfill their oath and their obligation. And what I want to say to my colleagues today, I want to implore them and appeal to their conscience, because the responsibility to the democracy is not over. The democracy is still at risk. We still have a President of the United States--a former President--who refuses to concede the election, who, on a daily basis almost, says that the election was stolen. We still have Members of Congress who are saying the election was stolen. We still have Members of Congress who won't face the facts and tell their constituents the truth. I want to say again: Respect your constituents enough that you are going to tell them the truth, and that is why, at difficult moments in our history, like after President Kennedy was killed or the Challenger exploded or 9/11 happened, we have had a bipartisan Commission to make sure we understood what led us here and how we can do better coming out of this. It has never been perfect, but it has worked pretty well, and that is what we need here. We need to understand what led millions of Americans to believe conspiracy theories about our own country and what led thousands of people to storm the Capitol of the United States, to attack police officers, to attack police officers, leading to their death. From all over the country, they came to invade this Capitol, and if we don't want it to happen again or we want to be able to protect ourselves, and I am not just talking about the poor Capitol Police, although that, at a bare minimum, ought to be enough to warrant a Commission. I am talking about the danger of political violence in this Nation going forward if we don't address this and the American people don't have the chance to understand what happened. As I mentioned, that night on January 6, standing at this desk on the floor, political violence is what brings these republics to an end. I am going to finish because I know there are others who want to speak, but let me just finish by saying how agonizing it was to watch Officer Sicknick's mom here today, going door to door to door, to ask people: Please vote for this Commission. I hope that people will reconsider. I hope they will search their conscience. The people around the world who watched January 6 are watching us today, and they want to know if democracy is up to the challenges of the 21st century. I believe it is. I believe it is. I think democracy is the highest expression of humanity on Earth, and we are being tested in all kinds of ways right now, externally and internally. This would give us the chance to at least deal with the internal question. And I think at a moment like this it is important for us not to stand for a party or for a President but for the truth and for common sense and for our exercise in self-government. For all of those reasons, I hope that when we have the vote tonight, that it will succeed and the American people will have the benefit of a bipartisan Commission to examine what happened on January 6 and help us understand how we can strengthen our democracy. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Madam President it is my honor to congratulate Gagliano's Italian Market & Deli on 100 years of successful entrepreneurship founded in culture, community, and family in Pueblo, CO. The Gagliano's story is one of multigenerational immigrant success and a heartening example of the American dream. Giuseppe Gagliano, known as Joe, left Italy in 1918. The promise of steel mill work and American opportunity drew him to Pueblo. Maria Carmella DeAngelo--his neighbor from the farmlands just outside of Palermo in Lucca, Sicily--followed him and they were married in 1920. Soon, they had their first child, Rose. In 1921, however, a catastrophic flood destroyed their first home. Later, they lost their second child, Francis, to illness. Despite these tragedies, the Gaglianos persisted in finding opportunity. Joe began the family's legacy of entrepreneurship by saving enough money selling milk from his cow before and after his shifts at the mill. Later that year, he used $300 in savings to buy the empty lot next to their new Elm Street home to build an attached store. Joe and Maria Gagliano's market stocked a wide variety of sought- after Italian foods and specialties that became popular with Pueblo's diverse immigrant community. Carmella soon developed the recipe for her classic Italian sausage that quickly became a mainstay of the business. While they nurtured their entrepreneurial success, they showed compassion to customers during the Great Depression by never pursuing unpaid debts under the interest free credit they offered. The Gaglianos and their extended family who helped to run the store also took pride in their hard work to become U.S. citizens. The Gagliano's story shows the great power of family bonds with four generations having owned and operated the store, cultivating both its historic identity and its business growth over the decades. Founders Joe and Carmella Gagliano passed away in 1966 and 1992, respectively. In 1994, Joe and Rose (Gagliano) Cortese retired from the business. Their successors in owning and operating the store are Tony Gagliano, the nephew of original founder Joe, along with his wife Josephine and children, Bonnie and Vince. I am grateful to commemorate this special moment that is a living reflection of the American dream. I wish for a pleasant community celebration of this milestone in Pueblo on June 26, 2021, as well. May the Gagaliano family and their Italian Market & Deli take pride in their century of success and find many more years of prosperity and health to come.

Mr. BENNET

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

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor tonight to spend just a few minutes to speak about Amber McReynolds, President Biden's nominee to serve on the Board of Governors of the U.S. Postal Service. Everyone in America relies on the Postal Service, but hardly anyone knows about the Board of Governors and how much it matters to all of us. The Board sets the policies for the Postal Service. It directs its budget and reviews its practices. It also selects the Postmaster General. But the Board's most important job is to represent the public interest, not special interests, and to help manage the Postal Service in a way that is competent, professional, and completely nonpartisan. That matters for a lot of reasons, but one of the most important is the critical and growing role that the post office plays in our democracy. Over the past year, States all across the country followed our example in Colorado by giving people the freedom to vote by mail. As we have learned in my State, the case for voting by mail is overwhelming. It is more convenient. It is more accessible. It costs a lot less to administer and, during a pandemic, it is a lot safer than voting in person. But it only works if people have confidence that the post office can deliver their ballots in a way that is reliable, secure, and completely free of politics. That is why I can't think of anyone better to serve on the Board of Governors than Amber McReynolds, who is one of the most respected election officials not just in Colorado but all across the country. Ms. McReynolds spent 13 years serving in Denver's Elections Division, including for 7 years as the city's director of elections. Under her leadership, Denver became a national model for making it easier for people to vote while increasing election security She oversaw Denver's transition to a fully vote-by-mail system, where every active voter can receive and return their ballot by mail or by taking it to a drop box in their community. Last November, we saw images on television of people lining up in this country for hours and hours on election day to cast their ballots. In Colorado, I left my ballot in a secure drop box. There is no line. There is no wait. The whole process took 30 seconds, if that. It is like that all across Colorado. It is like that all across my State because we have made it incredibly easy and secure for Coloradoans to cast their ballots. Ms. McReynolds had a lot to do with that by introducing one popular reform after another. She helped to make Denver the first city in America to adopt a ballot tracking system, which notifies voters when their ballot is mailed, when it is delivered and counted so they can have transparency about the process every step of the way. I never have to wonder whether my ballot is in the mail or not or whether I sent it back or not because I get an email from the clerk telling me. You even get an email that tells you when your ballot has been counted. She had a lot to do with that. And after Denver put that system in place, cities across the country followed our example. Ms. McReynolds also led efforts to launch a new voting system that used touchscreen tablets and other technologies from Dominion, a fantastic Colorado company, that was much easier for voters to use and was just one-tenth the cost of typical voting machines. Under her leadership, Denver was also one of the earliest counties in Colorado to pioneer something called a risk-limiting audit, where election officials match a random sample of ballots against the official results to catch any discrepancies. It was a cost-effective way to reinforce the public's trust in local elections, and it set the stage for Colorado to become the first State in America to introduce risk-limiting audits statewide. The same thing happened with vote-by-mail. Ms. McReynolds' success in Denver helped pave the way for Colorado's transition to a fully vote- by-mail system in 2013--2013. That was 8 years ago. That is two Presidential elections ago that we went to vote-by-mail. And just like in Denver, when we did it in the State, none of those changes were partisan. We actually transitioned to vote-by-mail under a Republican secretary of state. In fact, there was a view at the time that moving to vote-by-mail would help Republicans because it made it a lot easier for Coloradoans in rural areas to vote. In reality, it has made it easier for everybody to vote--Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters, urban voters, suburban voters, busy voters, working people, students, everybody. And it is why we adopted vote-by-mail statewide, and turnout went up in every demographic group, seniors included. Costs went down, and people across the State cheered the new system. Today, I guarantee you, if a politician in Colorado tried to take away vote-by-mail, people would run them out of town. In my State, we are proud of the election model that we built in a collaborative, nonpartisan way, and Ms. McReynolds deserves a lot of credit for that. She is the right kind of leader who isn't satisfied with the status quo. She is constantly asking how to make things better, how to make things more efficient, and how to make complex systems simpler and more accessible and useful to people. That is exactly the kind of experience we need at the Postal Service, especially at a time when more Americans are voting by mail than ever before. The Postal Service needs someone with her expertise, her leadership, and her impatience, frankly, with the status quo, and that is why I urge my colleagues from both parties to come together and confirm this outstanding nominee from my home State of Colorado. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. BENNET

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

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, in Colorado we have come out of one of the worst wildfire seasons that we have ever seen. In fact, you can't really call it a season, I think, when the fires are still going on when the snow falls, but that is what happened this year, incredibly. Three of the largest fires in our history all happened in the same year, and these fires displaced thousands of people in my State. They obscured the views of the mountains for weeks at a time. They forced families to pack their entire lives into duffle bags while their homes went up in flames. They shut down major highways for weeks and paralyzed local economies and blanketed our communities with smoke. If you ask anyone in Colorado why this is happening, they will tell you it is because our State is becoming hotter and drier each year. If you ask farmers and ranchers in Colorado--and a lot of them are Republican--they will tell you they are facing drought that is longer and more intense than their parents or grandparents ever had to deal with. Our mountain towns will tell you that they are struggling with ski seasons that are growing shorter each year. Our water officials will tell you that they are planning for a future with a lot less water to go around, and there wasn't enough water to begin with. And the reason for all of this is climate change. That is why in Colorado, a purple State, a swing State in the middle of the country, there is absolutely a consensus that we have a moral responsibility to deal with climate change as a threat to our economy, to our environment, and to our way of life. That responsibility extends to the U.S. Senate, but for most of the time I have been here, we have treated climate change like it was going to somehow solve itself or, in some cases, that it didn't even really exist. And nothing could be further from the truth. This is a problem for all 50 States and every American. It is a problem for humanity, and we can't deal with it in an enduring way unless the hundred people in this body take action, until a hundred people here are willing to lead on a challenge that is existential, yes, and also global, yes, and is crying out for the leadership of the Senate. There is nobody else to ride to the rescue. We have to do this, and we can start tomorrow by voting to reverse--and I hope it will be a big bipartisan vote tomorrow on voting to reverse--the last administration's terrible, counterproductive, self-destructive policy on methane pollution. Methane is not something people ever think about, and it is one of the most powerful greenhouse gases behind climate change. It can be over 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and it is responsible for a quarter of all the warming that the planet has seen since the Industrial Revolution. Today, one of the biggest sources of methane pollution is the oil and gas industry in my State and in the great State of Texas, where the senior Senator is from, and all across the country, where methane leaks into the atmosphere from old pipes, broken vents, and outdated practices like burning excess gas. Methane pollution is terrible for the environment because it accelerates climate change. It is terrible for our health because it puts toxins in the air we breathe, especially for the nearly 10 million Americans who live near oil and gas wells or go to school near oil and gas wells. It is also terrible for industry because it makes their fuel much dirtier and it cuts into their bottom line. That is why, years ago--I think it was 2014--in Colorado, under the leadership of then-Governor Hickenlooper, now Senator Hickenlooper, we adopted as a State the country's first-ever rules to limit methane pollution for oil and gas facilities. Governor Hickenlooper worked by bringing environmentalists and industry leaders together to craft a policy that reflected the consensus in my State around climate change and our economy. Our approach worked so well that the EPA and the Bureau of Land Management drew on it for methane rules at the Federal level. When the last administration went after the rules at BLM, our late friend Senator John McCain led a bipartisan majority in this body to keep them in place. At the time, the Trump administration claimed that the Federal methane rules destroyed energy production and killed jobs. That was never true, to be polite about it. In Colorado, our natural gas production has grown. Our oil production has nearly doubled. Our innovation and jobs have increased. Today, there are 52 different businesses in my State hiring people to repair pipes, to track pollution, and to develop new technologies to reduce pollution. This has strengthened our economy. Colorado's approach worked so well that we have gone back and strengthened--strengthened--our methane rules another three times in 2017, in 2019, and 2020, each time with support from both environmental groups and industry. But instead of learning from our example, the Trump administration went ahead with its plans to dismantle methane rules at the Federal level, and it did that over the objection of leading oil and gas operators in my State and across the country. And the result was a self-inflicted wound on our economy and our environment, and it compromised our leadership in the world. Now I hope we will pick up the pieces in a bipartisan way, because here is what I think: We are not going to solve climate change until we have an American climate policy, just like we once had something we called U.S. foreign policy, where every President who was elected, whether they were Republican or Democrat, they roughly knew what their job was with respect to the Soviet Union, with respect to the transatlantic alliance. There were differences, of course, and we made lots of mistakes with that organizing principle, but it was an important organizing principle--that thing we called American foreign policy. And we are going to need something called American climate policy. We didn't win the Cold War 2 years at a time, and we can't accept the politics in here, where I put in my ideas for healthcare and 2 years later they get ripped out, and we put in somebody's ideas for infrastructure and 2 years later they get ripped out. We can't tolerate it for those things--for education, for taxes. People want predictability. They don't want us to succumb to the political antics of Washington, DC, and this floor. But when it comes to climate change, that is really true, because we can't fix it 2 years at a time. I often hear people say that we have to act urgently on climate change. We do. It is true. But we also need a solution that is durable--one that will last through changes in the majorities in the Congress and changes with who is in the White House, so that we can actually pass off that durable solution to our kids and grandkids, who can then pick up the baton. So let me say this. You cannot accept, if you want to fix climate change, the broken politics that we have here. We can't accept the rubble that we sometimes have here. We have to do better, and I think we can. I think by starting with this methane rule--and hopefully doing it in a bipartisan way--it will be a great beginning. Coming together on methane pollution is the perfect place to start. In Colorado, 91 percent of the people support limits on methane pollution. It has the support of environmental groups and industry, as I said earlier, including America's largest natural gas producers. It has a record of bipartisan support in this body, and it has the potential to create thousands of jobs-- high-paying jobs--mostly in rural areas, where people are reasonably concerned about what this energy transition is going to mean for them. Let's pay people to capture methane, to make the industry viable, to make the product less harmful, and to create high-paying jobs in rural areas in America that need them. I know I don't have all the answers for how to build a durable climate policy in America, but I know that a sensible approach to methane has to be part of the solution, and that approach has to address not only new oil and gas facilities but existing ones like we have done in Colorado, and that is what this resolution will do. It will restore EPA's obligation to regulate all sources of methane emissions, including existing oil and gas operations, where there are hundreds of thousands of older wells that are responsible for 75 percent of methane emissions from the industry. It will help us protect the environment and create jobs, and it will show the world that America can come together and that this Senate can come together in a bipartisan way to deal with climate change because, when I think about it, I don't want any of us to come back to this floor 10 years from now or 20 years from now and describe how we have just gone through the worst wildfire season ever or the worst hurricane season ever--more likely in the Presiding Officer's State than in my State--or the worst drought in our history. I want them to come back and celebrate how America led the world to overcome the climate threat. I want them to praise the era of innovation and job creation unleashed across the country, and I want them to point out what we did in this Congress with this vote to put America on a path to protect our planet, grow our economy, and fulfill our responsibility to our kids and our grandkids. So I urge my colleagues, every single one of them, to cast a vote for this important methane policy and to set us on the bipartisan course we need to create if we are going to have durable climate change policy in this country and if America is going to lead the world. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I have 13 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Armed Services The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Armed Services The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, at time to be determined, to conduct a hearing on nominations. Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Energy and Natural Resources The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. committee on Finance The Committee on Finance is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Finance The Committee on Finance is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, at 3 p.m., to conduct a hearing. Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety and Security The Subcommittee the Constitution of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing. subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety The Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety of the Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing. Subcommittee on Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth The Subcommittee on Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth of the Committee on Finance is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing. Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management The Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor today to just say a brief word and maybe set the record straight a little bit about President Biden's nominee for Associate Attorney General of the United States, Vanita Gupta. Let's start with some facts about Ms. Gupta. She is the daughter of immigrants who worked hard to receive some of the best legal education this country has to offer. She spent 2 decades as a civil rights lawyer, where she has fought to defend Americans' individual rights and freedoms, often against abuses by the government, something you would think some of my colleagues on the other side would appreciate. When a small town in Texas wrongfully convicted 40 Americans of drug charges, based solely on the false testimony from an undercover police officer, she fought to have them exonerated, and she won them a $6 million settlement for that miscarriage of justice. She defended 25 children who had been separated from their parents and thrown into prison-like conditions at a private detention center in Texas. Her success in that case forced the center to improve its conditions and prevented more kids from being held there. President Obama recognized her leadership by making her the top civil rights official at the Department of Justice, where she protected servicemembers from eviction, cracked down on human smugglers and sex traffickers, defended religious freedom, and protected Americans' fundamental right to vote. Over the past 4 years, Ms. Gupta has led the largest civil rights organization in America, where she has been at the forefront of efforts to reform our criminal justice system, strengthen our democracy, and make sure COVID relief reaches those who need it most. That is her record. It is an outstanding record. I think my colleagues on the other side of the aisle know that it is an outstanding record because they don't want to contend with her record. They don't want to contest her record. They can't defeat her nomination with the truth. So they are just using talking points that aren't true. I heard the junior Senator from Texas say Ms. Gupta's record ``is that of an extreme partisan ideologue.'' He called her ``an extreme political activist,'' a ``radical,'' and a ``zealot,'' when all she has done her entire career is uphold the rule of law and defend our democracy, just like the 60 judges, many of them confirmed by Republican colleagues, who rejected President Trump's utterly unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the 2020 election; just like the election officials who stood up to conspiracy theories about the election at great risk to themselves and to their careers, who were all undermined by radical Members of Congress who sought to overturn the will of the voters for their own power. I also heard the junior Senator from Texas say Ms. Gupta's beliefs ``don't align with the majority of the American people.'' I am willing to bet every single dollar in my pocket that most Americans are quite aligned with Ms. Gupta's views. Most Americans are very interested in having a Department of Justice that protects their right to vote, that keeps families together and kids out of prison-like conditions, to make sure that LGBT sons and daughters and neighbors can live free from discrimination. I will tell you one other thing. Unlike some people around this place, Ms. Gupta actually has a record of reaching across the aisle to get things done. She worked with Grover Norquist and the top lawyer for the Koch brothers to pass criminal justice reform. It is why they both endorsed her, along with President Bush's former Secretary of Homeland Security, and virtually every major law enforcement organization in America, including the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Sheriffs' Association, the Major County Sheriffs of America, and the Major Cities Chiefs Association. So it is hard to take seriously all this talk on the other side about how Ms. Gupta wants to ``defund the police.'' She has never supported that. When someone asked the head of the Fraternal Order of Police what he thought about these attacks, he called it ``partisan demagoguery.'' And that is exactly what it is, and he is right. There isn't a serious debate about her record. It is a political campaign to defeat her nomination. The American people see through it, and I hope my colleagues will see through it as well. We would be lucky to have someone with Ms. Gupta's experience and leadership at the Department of Justice. Many years ago, I had the privilege to work at the Department, and I know how seriously the men and women there take their jobs, and I know how grateful they would be to serve alongside someone as talented and committed to the mission as Ms. Gupta. It is why I believe tomorrow we should come to this floor and give her a resounding bipartisan vote to confirm her as the next Associate Attorney General of the United States. I urge all of my colleagues to put aside the rhetoric and the false claims. Look at the record for what it is. The police organizations have supported her. And vote yes for her nomination. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Madam President, I rise on behalf of Senator Cardin, who is a Democrat from the State of Maryland and an original cosponsor of this bill with Senator Wicker, to say what he would have said if he had been here today, which is that Alexei Navalny is a Russian patriot, that he is a prisoner of conscience, and that we need to stand up to Russia's human rights violations. Thank you.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, thank you very much for being a part of this effort, and I want to thank my colleague from Ohio for his extraordinary leadership from the very beginning on both of these bills. He led on the EITC bill, and I was very grateful to have the chance to be with him on that, and I on the child tax credit, and he was my partner from the very beginning on that, as was Senator Booker and Senator Harris, before she became Vice President Harris. I have only been here for 11 years, Mr. President, and you have been here a shorter time than that, and I never thought this day would come. I never thought we would see this day. Before I came to the Senate, I was the superintendent of the Denver Public Schools. That is a large urban district in Colorado. Most of the kids are kids of color and most of the kids are kids living in poverty, and parents are working two and three jobs, many of them. No matter what they do, they can't get their kids out of poverty. No matter what they do, no matter how hard they work, they are not paid enough to get their kids out of poverty. Over the last 11 years, I have had the great privilege of traveling the State of Colorado, and it is a diverse State. Politically, it is a diverse State. We have urban areas and rural areas, and we have got some of the most dynamic economies and business environments in the country, and therefore on the planet. And yet, if I had to summarize those townhalls, it is really easy. It is people who are coming and saying: Michael, we are working really hard, but no matter what we do we can't afford housing, healthcare, higher education or early childhood education. We can't save. We think our kids are going to live a more diminished life than the life that we would, and we are already living less of a good life than our parents did. And that is the anecdotal reflection of an economy that, for the last 50 years, has worked really well for the top 10 percent of Americans but has not worked for the bottom 90 percent. The bottom 90 percent is all of America, and their wages have been flat. We have seen income inequality grow through two recessions, the great recession and now the COVID recession, and the gaps between more affluent families and poorer families have only grown as a result. And everywhere I went this year--I went to all 64 counties of Colorado during COVID--I heard the same thing: Give us a little bit of hope. That is what the American Rescue Plan is going to do. It is going to give people just a little bit of hope, make it a little bit easier for people to buy groceries for their families or to pay the rent at the end of the month, pay their mortgage, set up a savings fund for their kids' college education. That might sound like an obvious thing for us to want to do, but Washington, for years, has done exactly the opposite of what we are doing in this plan. Washington has passed one regressive tax cut after another saying they were cutting taxes for the middle class. That was a complete smokescreen. Since 2000, they have cut--listen to this--$5 trillion of taxes. Almost all of that has gone to the wealthiest people in the country, when we have got the worst income inequality that we have had since 1928. It doesn't make any sense. Can you imagine if the mayor of Atlanta went to his citizens and said: We are going to borrow a bunch of money from the Chinese. We are going to borrow more money than we ever have before. And you say: Well, that kind of worries me. What are you going to use that money for? Are you building infrastructure and roads and bridges? No. Are you going to invest in our schools? No. Our sewers? No. Mental health, something we need desperately across this country? No. Healthcare? No. What are you doing with the money? You are borrowing $5 trillion, what are you doing with the money? We are going to give it to the two wealthiest neighborhoods in Atlanta and hope that somehow it is going to trickle down to everybody else. That is how you write a bill, which is the Trump tax bill, where 42 percent of the benefit of that bill--it was a $2 trillion bill--42 percent went to the top 5 percent of Americans, to the people who needed it least. This is exactly the opposite of that. Sixty percent of our bill--I am not going to give you a lot of numbers, but 60 percent of our bill, the majority of our bill, goes to people making $50,000 or less. And as my colleagues have said, we are cutting childhood poverty in half this year as a result of what we are doing, and 90 percent of American children are going to benefit from what we are doing. That is about as broad-based as you can get. It is progressive in the sense that the greatest benefit is going to the poorest kids because the credit means the most to the people making the least, but if you are making u to $150,000 as a couple, you are going to have a benefit for your kids. You will get the full tax credit for your kids. So let me describe it a little bit, and then I will talk about the earned income tax credit, and then I am going to take over for the Presiding Officer, and I look forward to hearing what he has to say. Most families under this change to the law are going to receive $250 a month per child. That is $300 a month for kids under the age of 6. It is fully refundable. What does that mean? Well, there was a view about this tax credit before that said that you had to make a certain amount of money before you could be eligible for the tax credit because there was a theory that, you know, if you got the tax credit, you wouldn't work. That is not the problem. People are killing themselves. They are not getting paid. And so we say that you get the tax credit from dollar zero, which means, finally, millions of America's poorest children who have been completely overlooked--not just overlooked, ignored--are going to get the tax credit. So millions and millions and millions of children who were too poor to benefit from what was going on here while we were cutting taxes for the richest people in America are now going to benefit from this tax credit, and it will make the biggest difference for them. We are the wealthiest country in human history, and yet we have one of the largest, if not the largest, childhood poverty rates in America. As my colleague from New Jersey, Senator Booker, said--I lost my train of thought--wait until I get it back. I am so excited about what we are doing, I can't believe it. As Senator Booker said, the largest group of poor people in America are children. In other words, children have the highest percentage poverty rates in our country. How can that be? How can we accept that as a permanent state of things? Well, we are not. Because of Joe Biden's bill, we are cutting it in half. And we are saying, in the richest country in the world, it is unacceptable for us to have one of the highest poverty rates. Other countries have cut their poverty rates by half, why can't we? Well, today we are. We also have some of the worst economic mobility rates in the industrialized world as well, meaning it is hard to move up on the economic ladder. We used to say we are the land of opportunity. Unfortunately, there are a lot of other countries where people are able to get ahead by working hard. We want that to be our country again, and we want to give poor children a chance here. There is not a single child who chooses to be born poor. The Senator from New Jersey quoted James Baldwin. He is one of my favorite authors, too, about how expensive it is to be poor. The other thing that we have done in America is we have made it incredibly hard to be poor, incredibly hard to be poor. And that is one of the interesting things about this bill. In countries that have child benefits like this child benefit, they actually have a higher percentage of people in the workforce than we do. And why is that? It makes total sense. It makes total sense because if you have got a little bit of breathing room at the end of every month, you can fix a car that breaks down, and you can stay on your job. If you can afford to pay for a little bit of childcare for a few hours in the afternoon, maybe that lets you stay on the job. For working moms in particular, I think it is going to really create the opportunity for them to earn income over the long haul because it will be easier for them to stay in their jobs than not. As I mentioned, nationwide over 90 percent of children are going to benefit. So, over many nights, late nights often, on this floor, I have come here with one complaint or another about how we have turned our back on America's children. I have come here and I have said over and over again that we are treating America's children like they are someone else's children, not like they are America's children. And you know what? In this bill, we treated America's children like they are America's children, like they really matter to us, like we believe in their future and the future of our country; that they are filled with promise. No matter how poor they are, no matter what ZIP Code they live in, rural or urban, they matter to us. They are visible to us, and we are going to make them a priority. This is the biggest reduction in childhood poverty in the history of our country, and we need to make it permanent. Today, 40 of us sent a letter to President Biden saying that we are going to work with him to find a way to make this permanent. My goal is to end childhood poverty in this country. That is where I really want to be because then I will know we really are not going to hold some child's economic circumstances against them, but we are going to give every child in America the chance to run the footrace with each other. But 50 percent is pretty good. It is the best thing we have seen out of Washington in generations. I want to just mention a few words also about the other bill that Senator Brown led on the earned income tax credit, which triples that credit for low-income workers who don't have kids. So these are workers who don't have kids, who won't benefit from what we are doing in the child tax credit but will benefit from what we are doing on the earned income tax credit. Believe it or not, until now, until we passed this bill, Washington, DC, was actually taxing people into poverty. In other words, people were working; they were earning a living; and then they had to pay their taxes. And then they were in poverty because we were tripling the tax credit from about $500 to $1,500. That no longer will be true. We also bring the minimum age down from 25 down to 17, and we lift the cap for seniors so more people can benefit from this tax credit. In fact, 17 million people in this country are going to benefit from this change. There are 300,000 workers in my home State of Colorado. And these changes are going to transform lives. They are going to give folks a chance to breathe. Just like all of you, I want an economy that when the economy grows, it grows for everybody. It doesn't grow just for the people at the very top. That is the economy we have had for the last 50 years. Such an economy is a threat to democracy. You cannot have a democracy if you don't have an economy where everybody feels like they get ahead. It won't work. It has never worked in human history, and I think it would be unreasonable for us to expect it would work here. It has created a lot of uncertainty and, in many places, a lot of anger about whether the American Dream still exists for most Americans. I believe we will be able to dream again here, and we are going to need, as I said, an economy that works for everybody. That means investing in our infrastructure. That means having an approach, you know, to the competition from the Chinese Government that doesn't just leave us and our industries as collateral damage but creates thriving supply chains here, high-paying jobs here, and making sure that we own auto manufacturing here and other kind of manufacturing. It means having an education system that can prepare people to do the jobs of the 21st century. That is work we still have to do. It means making sure that every single high school kid or every single kid that graduates from high school graduates knowing they can earn not just a minimum wage but a living wage the day they walk out of their high school. That is what we need to do. But, in the meantime, this tax cut for working people and for low- income people means that people are going to be able to put food on the table, save a little bit of money, get through this pandemic, make their lives a little bit better, and give their kids a little bit more hope. I am really grateful. I am really grateful that we elected a President and a Vice President who is not treating America's children like they are someone else's children but treating them like they are our children. That is not only the right thing to do for them. That is the essential thing to do if this democracy is going to survive. I want to thank the Presiding Officer for all his efforts on this bill as well since you joined the Senate. I am going to stop there, and I will come replace you. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, it is hard to believe that I am on this floor again after losing 10 more people, this time in Boulder, CO, to another horrible mass shooting in our State. I am sure the Presiding Officer doesn't remember that last week, after the events in Atlanta, I went over to his desk, and I said that we were so sorry in Colorado for what had happened in Atlanta, and then, just 3 or 4 days later, it happened again in Colorado. I have spent the last day learning about the victims of this terrible crime, and I want America to know what extraordinary human beings we have lost in my State. Here they are. Denny Stong, age 20. Denny was a graduate of Fairview High School, an introverted, smart kid who loved history and model airplanes. He had been covering shifts at the King Soopers and took enormous pride in his role as an essential worker during this pandemic. He once posted on Facebook, ``I can't stay home. I am a Grocery Store Worker.'' Neven Stanisic, age 23. Neven's dad said he was, ``a really good boy, a good kid . . . a hard-working boy.'' His parents are refugees from Bosnia, who left in the 1990s to escape the war. The reverend at their local church said: ``His family fled the war . . . and everything they had was either left behind or destroyed. ``They left everything to save their lives, and came here to have a new start,'' said the pastor. They came to America to have a new start, only to have their son's life ended by this senseless act of violence. Rikki Olds was 25 years old. Rikki had been working as a manager at King Soopers for 6 years. Her family described her as a ``firecracker'' who lit up a room with her infectious giggle. Her Aunt Lori said: ``She had a beautiful way of just being her. . . . When you're down, she just wanted to cheer you up, just by being around.'' Tralona Bartkowaik, age 49. She co-owned a clothing and accessory store, Umba Love, with her sister, and was a frequent presence in the Boulder arts and music scene. She had a deep curiosity about the world that took her on travel from Nepal to Costa Rica. Her younger brother remembers her as ``a beam of light.'' Teri Leiker, age 51. She was a huge fan of the Buffalos at CU, a regular face at the Pearl Street Stampede. A friend called Teri ``the most selfless, innocent, amazing person I have had the honor of meeting.'' Suzanne Fountain, 59 years old. She worked for 15 years in the Boulder Community Hospital. She loved gardening and was passionate about music and theater. A friend described her as ``the cream of the crop and a good person, a good soul.'' Kevin Mahoney, age 61. Kevin had worked in the hotel business but retired early to spend more time traveling, skiing, and visiting his daughter Erika. After learning of her father's death, Erica wrote: ``My dad represents all things Love. I am so thankful he could walk me down the aisle last summer.'' Lynn Murray, age 62. Lynn was a mother of two and a retired photo director for prominent national magazines. Her husband John said: ``I just want her to be remembered as this amazing, amazing comet, spending 62 years flying across the sky.'' Jody Waters, 65 years old. Jody owned a boutique clothing store named Applause on Pearl Street Mall, where she remembered all her customers and their favorite brands. She was a mother of two and a grandmother who loved horses and hiking. A friend said: When Jody walked into the room, ``she was a breath of fresh air, a light.'' Finally, Officer Eric Talley. He is 51 years old. He is a man of deep faith and a devoted father of seven. After losing a close friend to a DUI, he joined the police academy at age 40, just 11 years ago, to give back to the community. In 2013, he made headlines when he helped rescue 11 ducklings from a drainage ditch. Eric's father said: He ``loved his kids and family more than anything.'' For their sake he was hoping to stay off the frontlines by learning to become a drone operator. But when the bullets rang out, he rushed into action, first on the scene, saving countless lives at the cost of his own. Officer Talley and these other folks represent the best of Colorado, and we certainly owe Officer Talley a debt of gratitude that we will never be able to repay. My heart goes out to all the families and the entire community of Boulder. We have endured too many tragedies in this State. So many other States are the same here. The shootings at Columbine High School happened right before my oldest daughter was born, Caroline. She is 21 years old, and her entire generation has grown up in the shadow of gun violence--something none of us had to do. I remember after a gunman in Las Vegas took the lives of 59 Americans. That Monday I came to work and realized during the course of the day that I was having meeting after meeting after meeting, and nobody was mentioning the massacre of 59 Americans. I don't know if it was two or three or four of these events before that that we began to somehow accept this as normal--that we can lose that many people and not have a conversation about what had happened, the headlines all moving on to the next thing. We can't allow this to become normal, and it is not just the mass shootings. It is the daily shootings. The Presiding Officer and I talked about it last week, what happened in Atlanta over the last couple of weekends, or on the West Side of Chicago. So we can't move on. Boulder will heal, but this scar will always be there. My daughter's generation will always bear the burden of a national government that did nothing to protect them. They and the children that I used to work for in the Denver Public Schools carry a burden that we didn't carry. They have grown up with a reasonable fear that they will be shot in their classrooms or in their schools or at a movie theater or in any public place. I didn't grow up in an America with more gun-related deaths than virtually any country in this world, and we can't accept it for their America. I am not asking anybody here to show the courage that Officer Talley showed or the other men and women of law enforcement who constantly have to deal with the inability of this place's capacity to deal with these issues. I am just asking us to show an ounce of their courage by doing whatever we can to keep weapons of war out of our community, to pass universal background checks, to limit the size of magazines, and to address the epidemic crisis of mental health in this country. It seems like that would be the least that we could do. In the wake of one of these incidents, I heard somebody say on a radio program that this is just the price of freedom, that these murders are the price of freedom. What a shame that somebody would say that and mean it. What a surrender that represents to our children and to the victims of these crimes. What a sacrifice of their right to be free from fear Who are we to insist that they live terrified in their own country? Nobody insisted that we live that way. But our failure to act has helped create these conditions, and we can't wait any longer. The Senate needs to act. There is nobody else to act but the U.S. Senate. I want to end by thanking my colleagues from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal and Senator Murphy, for their incredibly steadfast leadership for long before they came to the Senate. But I remember one of the darkest moments of my Senate career, the votes that we took after Newtown, when that elementary school, Sandy Hook, was shot up and 20 students were killed, and this Senate couldn't even pass universal background checks. They are here tonight to continue to make the case that we need to act, and I want to again thank them for their resilience and for caring about the people who lived and died in Colorado. I am extremely grateful for their example. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, on Monday, March 15, due to a snowstorm in Denver, I was unable to travel to Washington in time for the vote to confirm Deb Haaland to serve as Secretary of Interior. Had I been present, I would have voted to confirm her to serve in this important position.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, for the second time in over a year, events compelled the Senate to hold an impeachment trial for President Donald Trump. By once more acquitting the President despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt, the Senate has again abdicated its responsibility to the American people and our democratic Republic. The Founders fashioned our constitutional system to at once defy history and reflect its enduring lessons. They understood that since the first human societies, rule of the strong had prevailed across ages of warlords, monarchs, emperors, and tyrants. From the examples of ancient Greece and Rome, they also knew that rule by the people was the fragile, flickering exception. To ignite America's experiment in self-government, the Founders handed us a constitutional system unique in human history, with inalienable rights for the people, free and fair democratic elections, the rule of law, and coequal branches of government to check the unbridled ambitions that risked dragging us into tyranny. Our system was never perfect--far from it-- but over 234 years, Americans have fought and sacrificed to make it more democratic, more fair, and more free. The Founders also understood that, however well-crafted the Constitution may be, its fate would inevitably depend on the public officials sworn to protect it. They could give the Senate the unique power to convict a President, but they could not guarantee Senators would exercise that power when the moment required it. Their fears were realized on February 13, 2021, when the Senate failed to convict President Trump, a man who defied every standard of conduct and decency the Founders expected of public officials. Months before Americans cast their ballots, Donald Trump made our democracy his enemy--manufacturing false claim after false claim to undermine the 2020 election. He warned the election would be stolen or rigged, dead people would vote, and voting machines were not trustworthy. He repeated these claims incessantly on social media, at his rallies, and in interview after interview on cable news. He repeats these lies to this day. When Donald Trump lost the election by over 7 million votes, he refused to concede. Instead, he waged a months-long war against the peaceful transition of power. First, he challenged the election results in court. He lost 61 out of the 62 cases, often being howled out of court by Federal judges, many appointed by the President, for failing to produce any evidence of widespread fraud. Former Attorney General William Barr, one of the President's most steadfast allies, confirmed that there was no such evidence. So the President changed course. He threw the weight of his office against State and local officials hoping he could coerce them into overturning their States' lawfully conducted election. He called election officials in Wayne County, MI. He summoned State senators from Michigan and Pennsylvania to the White House to urge the legislature to intervene. His aides hounded the Governor of Arizona to echo the President's baseless claims about the election. Most notoriously, he browbeat Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a recorded phone call to ``find'' another 11,780 Trump votes and badgered the Vice President to reject the certification of the electoral results. In my view, these actions alone warranted impeachment. But he didn't stop there. In the end, President Trump stopped at nothing. As Congress gathered on January 6 to certify the electoral college results, he incited a mob to invade the Capitol and ``stop the steal.'' They scaled, as if it were an enemy rampart, the platform built for President-elect Biden's inauguration and the peaceful transition of power. They chanted President Trump's name as they smashed doors, broke windows, and looted private offices. They repeated the President's lies as they cursed, speared, and bludgeoned the men and women of law enforcement who defended our democracy. At virtually every step of the way, our constitutional system held its ground because patriotic Americans fulfilled their obligation to our Republic. From the Capitol Police to the nonpartisan election officials, to the State and Federal judges, to the Vice President of the United States--all refused to bend to the President's lawless demands. We should shudder to think how events would have unfolded if these Americans had made a different choice. Yet somehow, confronted with these examples of individual patriotism and the overwhelming evidence of the President's impeachable offenses, 43 Senators still voted to acquit, including the Senator minority leader, Mitch McConnell. The minority leader refused to contest the case laid out by the House managers. He conceded that President Trump was ``practically and morally responsible for provoking the events'' of January 6, committing what he called ``a disgraceful dereliction of duty.'' Instead, the Senator hid behind a strained reading of history and dodged his duty to hold President Trump accountable on the feeble ground that the Senate lacked jurisdiction. Through this sophist sleight of hand, the minority leader tried to place one foot on the right side of history without taking the hard vote it actually required. In doing so, he provided cover to every Republican Senator who joined him to acquit President Trump, including many who have failed to denounce the former President for anything he has done to undermine American democracy. The Constitution grants the legislative branch authority to hold accountable any President who would seek to undo our democratic system of government. This Senate's refusal to exercise this authority and convict Donald Trump is a stain on this body. We had the responsibility to serve as a check on his anti-American actions and reassert the standard of government our Founders imagined. We chose otherwise. With the permission of the Senate's acquittal, Donald Trump refuses to admit his defeat and continues to mislead his supporters that the election was stolen. In so doing, he continues to perpetuate, in another form, the insurrection he unleashed on January 6. Our democracy stands today, not as a result of our actions, but those of law enforcement officials at the Capitol and State and local officials in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin-- men and women who didn't surrender to President Trump's tyrannical demands. Nearly 2 months later, the U.S. Capitol remains ringed with razor- wire. As I have walked through the perimeter each morning, I have reflected on those who kept us safe from the President's anti- democratic mob--the law enforcement officials, the people who maintain and clean the Capitol, congressional staff. They risked life and limb, not only to defend Senators and Representatives but to defend basic American principles of our constitutional order: free elections, the peaceful transition of power, the rule of law, and the separation of coequal branches of government. And then I think about the State and local officials, many Republicans, who held their ground under pressure from the President of the United States, often accompanied by threats from angry citizens caught up in his ``Big Lie'' that an election he lost by over 7 million votes was somehow stolen from him. These brave men and women did their duty to protect our constitutional system. They are true patriots no different than the millions of other citizens who have done their part to defend the way of life we share under our Constitution. They join the African-American regiments who defended the Union in the Civil War, the code talkers in World War II, and the sons and daughters of immigrants who have defended our country from Yorktown to Normandy to Kandahar. The Constitution of the United States is not a machine that runs itself; it is an exercise in self-government. American citizens-- including those elected to serve them in the Senate--must keep it working and always ensure that it becomes more democratic, more fair, and more free. As Americans, we should take comfort that there have been many, from Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony to the other courageous citizens who rose to moments far more difficult than our own to protect the Republic and push it closer still to our highest ideals. They are why the United States remains, for now, the longest lasting government by the people in human history. But as the Founders understood, democracy will always be vulnerable to demagogues who stop at nothing to hold on to power. History will record the names of those who stood on the side of the Constitution, passing down to the next generation the high standard of citizenship our democracy demands. Hopefully, a future Senate will meet that standard.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I send a question to the desk.

Mr. BENNET

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

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I want to say what a pleasure it is to see the Presiding Officer in the Chair and to know that, together, we have the opportunity, the great privilege, to represent the greatest State in America--the State of Colorado. And welcome to the Chamber. It is great to have you here. S. Con. Res. 5 Mr. President, I want to talk a little bit about our State. The last time I was running for office, 2016, I remember I went to Rifle, CO, which the Presiding Officer knows well, and I met there with a group of moms who were showing off the early childhood center that was there. It was newly created, and they were extremely happy to have it because before that early childhood center was there, in order to get childcare or early childhood education for their kids, these moms were having to drive through the canyon to Glenwood Springs--about 35 miles away, I guess, or so--and then go to work and then go back and pick their kid up and bring them back. So they were very, very happy that it was there. But at a certain point during the conversation, one of the moms looked at me, and she said: Michael, I work so I can have health insurance. And every single dollar I make goes to pay for this early childhood center so I can work--that triangle that she is trapped in because of the compression of wages in this country that is a story that millions of American families can tell about an economy that, for 50 years, has worked really well for the people at the very top but not for anybody else. Ninety percent of the American people, basically, for 50 years, have not seen a pay increase in this country in real terms. That is terrible for them, obviously, because they can't afford health care, housing, higher education, or early childhood education. They feel like they can't live a middle-class life or, if their kids are living in poverty, they can't get their kids out of poverty. It is a danger to our democracy because democracies do not do well when prosperity is not shared and when you have one group of people at the very top who are doing extremely well and everybody else is struggling to get by, everybody else is struggling to get into the middle class or stay in the middle class or lift their kids out of poverty. That is where we have been as a country for a long time. We have some of the lowest mobility rates of any industrialized economy in the world, and it is taking its toll. It is taking its toll on the American dream, and that is before COVID. COVID has made matters much, much worse for families in our State--for families in urban parts of the State and rural parts of the State. Even before COVID hit, when people would ask me--I used to be the superintendent of the Denver Public Schools--people would say: What has changed in education since you were superintendent until now, what I would tell people is mental health, mental health, mental health. That is what teachers talk about in the meetings that I have with them--the mental health of their students, the mental health of their families, and their own mental health. It comes up in every single conversation before class size, before how pitifully we pay teachers in this country. We have to confront that as a country now, too, on to of everything else. And the economic inequality is greater. The folks who have been on the frontlines during this pandemic have had the toughest time economically of everybody. That is why I am so glad that the administration has come with the package that they have to this floor, $1.9 trillion--$1 trillion of which is direct aid to families and another big piece of which is to support the public health infrastructure in this country so that we can actually vaccinate people in a timely way, so we can test people in a timely way, so we can distribute PPE. It has been shocking to see how poor the response has been from the United States, a developed country unable to contend effectively with this pandemic, and we have lost almost half a million Americans as a result. So that investment in our public health infrastructure--in effect, the health force, like the one that Kirsten Gillibrand and I have proposed--is something we desperately need if we are going to reopen this economy quickly and if we are going to reopen schools and keep them open. There is one other piece of this I wanted to mention this morning on the floor, and that is the provision in this bill that is based on the work that I have done for many, many years with Senator Sherrod Brown from Ohio. One bill is Bennet-Brown, and the other one is Brown-Bennet. I love both of them the same, even though the order is different. But the President has decided to include these bills in his package. It is a dramatic increase to the child tax credit, a substantial increase to what is called the childless earned-income tax credit, so we will stop taxing working people into poverty, which is what we are doing in this country today. With the passage of the American Family Act, this child tax credit alone, we will cut childhood poverty in the United States of America by almost 50 percent. We will cut childhood poverty for Latino kids by 60 percent, for Black kids by more than 50 percent, for kids living in Tribes by more than 60 percent without adding one bureaucrat to the Federal Government, without creating one more program. Just by taking the tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000, $3,600 for kids under the age of 6, by making it fully refundable, which means that the poorest people in America who have been left out of this tax credit--23 or 25 million children--now will have the benefit of the tax credit for the first time, we will cut childhood poverty in this country by almost 50 percent. I can't think of anything that we could do that would better recognize the structural nature of the challenges that the American people are facing in this economy before COVID but, certainly, in the wake of COVID. I hope the proposal will be able to attract bipartisan support in this Chamber, and that once we have done it, that we will make it permanent, we will make it last, and that we will imagine that we could live in a country in the United States of America that actually has eradicated childhood poverty because it is no American's choice to be born poor. It is no child's choice to be born poor. There are many things we can do to improve economic mobility in this country, and I think that this new administration is going to create the beginning of an era that is going to lead us to a place that, when the economy grows, it grows for everybody--not just for people at the very top--and that families can move themselves up through hard work, save something for retirement, and leave something for the next generation. That is all anybody in this country has ever really wanted, and that hasn't been true for most Americans for a very long time. This is the beginning of change in that, and that is why this bill has my enthusiastic support. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, yesterday, I voted for H.R. 335, which waived the requirement that a commissioned officer be retired from the military for at least 7 years before serving as Secretary of Defense. I believe civilian control and strong civilian-military relations strengthens our democracy. Congress designed the waiver process to guarantee that someone dedicated to the principle of civilian control can lead our military and to prevent the politicization of the officer corps. I continue to believe that the waiver should only be granted in unique cases. Secretary Austin is uniquely qualified to lead at this moment in our country's history, which is why I voted for his waiver. I believe Secretary Austin will work to maintain the safety and integrity of our institutions and further our Nation's interests at home and abroad. In the future, I will review any waiver that comes before this body with the care and consideration befitting this process and subject.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Colleagues, it has been a terrible day for everybody here and for our country. One of the things I was thinking about today is something I often think about when I am on this floor, which is that the Founders of this country, the people who wrote our Constitution, actually knew our history better than we know our history. I was thinking about that history today, as we saw the mob riot in Washington, DC--thinking about what the Founders were thinking about when they wrote our Constitution, which was what happened to the Roman Republic when armed gangs, doing the work for politicians, prevented Rome from casting their ballots for consuls, for praetors, for senators. These were the officers in Rome, and these armed gangs ran through the streets of Rome, keeping elections from being started, keeping elections from ever being called. In the end, because of that, the Roman Republic fell, and a dictator took its place, and that was the end of the Roman Republic--or any republic, for that matter--until this beautiful Constitution was written in the United States of America. So it is my fervent hope that the way we respond to this today, my dear colleagues, is that we give the biggest bipartisan vote we can in support of our democracy and in support of our Constitution and in rejection of what we saw today and what the Roman Republic saw in its own time. There is a tendency around this place, I think, to always believe that we are the first people to confront something when that is seldom the case and to underappreciate what the effect of our actions will be. We need to deeply appreciate, in this moment, our obligation to the Constitution, our obligation to democracy, and our obligation to the Republic. There are people in this Chamber who have twisted the words--twisted the words--of a statute written in the 19th century that was meant to actually settle our electoral disputes, to leave them with the States, as the Senator from Utah was saying, to give us a ministerial role, except in very rare circumstances. That is what that law is about that the Senator of Texas was talking about today. And that is the law that is leading us to be asked to overturn the judgments of 60 courts in America, many of the courts in Arizona, some of whom have howled the President's lawyers out of the courtrooms because there is no evidence of fraud. By the way, the fact that 37 percent or 39 percent of Americans think there is evidence of fraud does not mean there is fraud. If you have turned a blind eye to a conspiracy theory, you can't now come to the floor of the Senate and say you are ignoring the people who believe that the election was stolen. Go out there and tell them the truth, which is that every single Member of this Senate knows this election wasn't stolen and that we, just as in the Roman Republic, have a responsibility to protect the independence of the judiciary from politicians who will stop at nothing to hold on to power. There is nothing new about that either. That has been true since the first republic was founded. So now we find ourselves in the position, just days after many Senators here swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution-- every single Member of the House of Representatives swore the same oath, as well, and I think we have a solemn obligation and responsibility here to prove, once again, that this country is a nation of laws and not of men, and the only result that we can reach together is one that rejects the claim of the Senator from Texas and the other Members of the House and Senate who seek to overturn the decisions that have been made by the States, by the voters in these States, and by the courts. If we follow what they have proposed, we will be the ones who will have disenfranchised every single person who cast a vote in this election, whether they voted for the President or they didn't. I urge you to reject this, and I deeply appreciate the opportunity to serve with every single one of you. Thank you. (Applause.

Mr. BENNET

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

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, before I give my remarks, I would like to say that I hope the rumors are true that we are getting close to a deal here. The country needs us to reach a bipartisan deal, as we did in March, unanimously, when we passed the CARES Act here. It is time for us to do that again. In Colorado and all across the country cases are spiking and the economy is slowing down. People need relief. They need help. I hope we will come together in a bipartisan way and do that. I hope that the deal is not going to come crashing down because of a disagreement about what the Federal Reserve's authority ought to be under the 13(3) program. That is an important program for the Federal Reserve to help when things are really distressed in our economy--to help our small businesses, our State and local governments, and working families all over this country. It is an authority that Donald Trump used--or that the Fed used while Donald Trump was President. People on both sides of the aisle said it was an effective authority, and if it is an effective authority for President Trump, it should not be taken away from the Federal Reserve just because Joe Biden is becoming President of the United States. So I hope that we will come to an agreement. I expect that we will. I hope it is soon. People need the help

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I rise to commend a great educator, Susana Cordova, for her service to Denver, our schools, and our children. As Susana steps down as superintendent of Denver Public Schools, it is the right time to say thank you and, more, to say how much we love and respect her for her dedication. She has done so much more than give 30 years to the Denver Public Schools. At every moment of her DPS career, Susana has been an educator's educator--committed to each student, able to see their unique gifts and envision their individual success, and willing to meet them where they are so she could walk alongside them as they learned. She began as a teacher, first at Denver's Horace Mann Middle School and West High School. There, she taught language arts to students who mostly spoke Spanish at home. She became an assistant principal at Bryant-Webster Elementary School and then a principal at Remington Elementary School, two more schools that served Spanish-speaking families. In her 4 years at Remington, the school saw gains of 33 percent in reading. In 2002, she joined district leadership and again worked tirelessly to improve outcomes for students. Susana knew that the way to do this was to challenge students academically--to read the poem and write a clear argument about it, to think like a mathematician and show your work, to take courses that earned college credit or offered real workplace experience. Her approach placed high expectations on teachers and principals, not just students. But because she had done the work herself, she was compassionate and always joined with her colleagues learning how to meet those expectations. In nearly all of these years, DPS improved graduation, literacy, and math rates faster than the State of Colorado. Just as important, achievement gaps narrowed. Throughout Susana's tenure as an instructional leader, DPS focused on improving the academic outcomes of students of color and students from families who qualify for free lunch. She would be the first to say that Denver, like other big-city school systems, has plenty of work left to do. There are still Denver children who might have even greater opportunity when they graduated if they were challenged to read ``Bless Me, Ultima,'' if they had a few more chances to learn how to balance a chemical equation, or if they graduated with a little college credit to help them along the way to earning a college degree. Susana's commitment to DPS is more than professional. As a student, she attended kindergarten at Denver's Barnum Elementary School. She went on to Kepner Middle School and graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School. She became the first in her family to go to college. Her roots in DPS span three generations. Her mother, Rita Cordova, attended Denver's Franklin and Greenlee elementary schools, Baker Junior High School, and West High School, before beginning a career as an office professional at Denver's Lake Junior High and then her alma mater, West. Both of Susana and Eric's children, Alex and Carmen, are DPS graduates. Public education is one generation's commitment of equity, freedom, and prosperity to the generation that follows. Susana's story teaches us what happens when we follow through. Mothers and fathers pass the benefits forward to their daughters and sons. At a community meeting held before she was selected by the Denver Board of Education to become superintendent, she described the promise of public education like this: It gave me access and opportunity to a world that didn't exist in my neighborhood. My mother grew up in Denver and went to the Denver public schools, as well. She didn't have access to the kinds of classes I had access to. It leveled the playing field for minority kids like me. Public education is not a promise that keeps itself. Susana's career in DPS teaches us how much work is needed to make sure we don't drop the ball. We keep the promise one student and one classroom at a time. It takes teachers, principals and district leaders, families, and community members, each willing, like Susana, to do their part with the patience and diligence they would wish for their own child.