Michael Bennet

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, first of all, I would say, with respect to my colleague from Alabama, I appreciate his arguments here. He first says that he clearly doesn't have the ability to do this; that, somehow, this is up to Congress to pass a law to make sure that servicemembers who need to travel for reproductive healthcare have it paid for them, not the abortion, by the way, which is what the Senator from Alabama said--that is inaccurate--but the travel is his argument. The reality is that the DOD, it is clear, can pay for servicemembers' travel for LASIK eye surgery, but current law doesn't say that. It can pay to have a bunion removed, but current law doesn't say that either. All of that has happened without complaint from this body because it makes sense that the DOD has the discretion to provide the care it believes its servicemembers require. And they are making those regulations as part of the law that they have been granted from our branch of government to make sure they care for our servicemembers. I think that is point 1. Point 2, the Senator from Alabama talked about, you know, this being about who is paying for abortion. This is not about who is paying for abortion. This is about those three changes to the law I mentioned earlier. I won't go into them because I know my colleagues are going to lose their minds over my staying here. But those are the three things. One is travel. One is, you know, being able to take a little bit of a longer time to talk to your supervisor, and those kinds of things. So it is not about paying for abortions. Although, I will say that the Senator from Alabama has another piece of legislation that he has introduced that objects not to the DOD but to the VA. He says this is radical. The VA has said: We have noticed that our policies that allow us to pay for abortion when the life of the mother is at stake don't also include exceptions for rape and incest, and we are going to add those exceptions for rape and incest. The Senator from Alabama has brought that to the floor and said he wants to have a vote. I want to have a vote on that too. I can't wait to see how every single Senator in this Chamber stands on the Senator from Alabama's position that having the VA add cases of rape and incest to the exception to allow it to pay for abortion is not somehow abortion-on-demand or abortion--as some people say, abortion after people have already had the child but is simply adding two things that probably 80 percent of the American people agree with. On the last point, on Space Command's being decided on the facts, let me tell you something. Here are the facts as I understand them: The generals said they thought Space Command should stay in Colorado. The generals and the Secretary of the Air Force went to the White House with the recommendation of Colorado. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, overturned that recommendation on their advice. He went on the radio--the Rick & Bubba Show, I think it is called--in Alabama, where he said: Everybody was for Colorado, and everybody was against me on Alabama, but I made the decision to send it to Alabama. Those are the facts on Space Command. And it is not off-topic. You know, it is not off-topic. That was a political decision that should never have been made. If the politics had not entered into that decision, the generals would have gotten their way, and Space Command would be in Colorado, and we wouldn't be having the conversation we are having today because no one in Colorado would be having their abortion rights stripped from them and being sent to another State that has banned abortion, where doctors can go to jail for 99 years because they perform an abortion, where laws that are meant to bring down folks who traffic in methamphetamine are being threatened to be used against women who use a chemical version of abortion. This is not a complaint I have with the Senator from Alabama. This is my complaint with the White House. You should have dealt with this 2 years ago. And now I hope this administration will deal with, in the wake of Dobbs, this daily gray area that is tearing at the emotions and the well-being of members of our Armed Forces, who don't get to decide where they are stationed. Alabama can have whatever law it wants. That is not up for me to decide. I respect that there are differences in this country, but people in this body have a duty and a responsibility to the men and women of the armed services, and we have a duty and responsibility to fulfill our duty and responsibility, which is not to hold up the promotion of flag officers at the Department of Defense because I have a position that is different from what others may think. That is what I think. I yield to the Senator from Louisiana.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor and share a few words about an upcoming vote we are going to have this afternoon, I guess it will be now, on Gordon Gallagher, President Biden's nominee for the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. Judge Gallagher comes to this floor with a stellar reputation in Colorado and nearly 25 years in service to others, as a defense attorney for both indigent and paying defendants, a prosecutor in Mesa County, and as U.S. magistrate judge for the District of Colorado. The judge credits his devotion to public service to his grandfather, who served as an air navigator during the Second World War and was shot down over Eastern Europe on his 49th mission. After the war, Gordon's grandfather came home to continue the fight for America's highest ideals, working to integrate housing in his local community. And his example stuck with Gordon. So when he did a family trip to Colorado when Gordon was just 8 or 9, like everybody who comes to our State, he fell in love with it and fell in love with the Rocky Mountains. And years later, as a student at Macalester, he fell in love with a Coloradoan, his wife Christine. Gordon would eventually follow Christine back to Colorado, where he earned a law degree from the University of Denver. After graduating, Gordon practiced at a law firm representing small businesses and served for nearly 4 years as a deputy district attorney for Mesa County, CO. Later, Gordon launched his own firm as a defense practitioner and began working with the Office of the Alternate Defense Counsel, representing clients who couldn't afford their representation. He spent over a decade in this role, fighting for the American ideal that everyone, no matter what their means, deserves equal representation before the law. In 2012, Gordon was appointed as a part- time magistrate judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, a position he holds to this day. Senator Hickenlooper and I recommended Judge Gallagher to this position because, unlike anyone currently on the district court, he has spent the majority of his career on the Western Slope of Colorado, a rural, mountainous part of our State with a specific perspective on issues that range from public lands to natural resources, to Federal regulation. We need that perspective on the Federal bench. It has been too long. We haven't had an appointee from the Western Slope of Colorado in over 30 years, and Judge Gallagher is the perfect nominee to bring that perspective to the bench. Over his career on the Western Slope, Gordon's work ranged from representing a young man charged with the manslaughter of his best friend to securing rehabilitative services for members of the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute Tribes, to hearing traffic complaints in smalltown courts because sheepherders had blocked the local highway. I know I am not saying anything that the Presiding Officer hasn't seen in New Mexico. And, as a presiding judge, Gordon has presided over most stages of a felony docket, from substantive motions through pleas, postconviction proceedings, and sentencing--a level of participation in Federal criminal cases far beyond a typical magistrate judge. He has also worked on a vast array of issues including criminal, civil, patent, pro se, and environmental litigation, including many cases with difficult tradeoffs between natural resource extraction, conservation, and recreation. These issues are common for the U.S. District Court for Colorado, and they require someone with Judge Gallagher's deep and direct experience. More than that, everyone we have spoken with tells us how much Judge Gallagher enjoys being on the court and how he cherishes the opportunity to serve our country, just like his grandfather. Judge Gallagher's entire career has prepared him for this position. He has proven his character, his integrity, and his legal acumen over a distinguished 25-year career. He has my full and enthusiastic support. I want to thank my fellow colleagues on the Judiciary Committee for advancing his nomination with overwhelming bipartisan support. They saw what an exceptional judge he would make, and I wholeheartedly agree. I hope we will have a large bipartisan vote to support Judge Gallagher in his confirmation. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, before I speak on what brings me to the floor, let me thank Chair Murray for her incredible advocacy on behalf of not just the women of her State and not just the women of my State but of women and their families all across the United States of America. I want to say how grateful I am. Thank you.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I rise to honor the life and career of my dear friend Scott LaBarre on the sad occasion of his death after a battle with cancer. Scott passed away surrounded by his family on Saturday, December 10, 2022. From his days as a college student until a few months before his death, Scott, who went blind as a youth, fought tirelessly for the rights of blind people and other people with disabilities. Born and raised in Minnesota, Scott attended the Colorado Center for the Blind, a world-renowned rehabilitation training program for blind people, and ultimately established his law practice and his family in the Denver area. His legal work focused in the areas of employment law, disability rights, and international copyright policy. He held several leadership positions within the American Bar Association and the National Federation of the Blind--NFB--most recently as NFB's general counsel. He served as chair of the board of the Colorado Center for the Blind, led the National Association of Blind Lawyers, and helped establish and guide the Jacobus tenBroek Law Symposium, the premier conference for practitioners and students of disability law. His impact will continue to ripple across the world because of his leadership in securing the Marrakesh Treaty, an international agreement permitting the cross-border sharing of books in Braille and other accessible formats, which was ratified by this body. Scott conducted all of his work with confidence, humor, and a joyful spirit. Going forward, I will miss his presence in the halls of the Senate when the National Federation of the Blind visits Washington each year, as well as my many other interactions with him. I am sure that many of you also encountered Scott, and I know you will join me in lifting up his wife Anahit and their children, Alex and Carter, as they cope with this devastating loss. I take comfort in the knowledge that Scott leaves a legacy encompassing not only his many accomplishments, but his impact on the hundreds of blind people whom he personally mentored and the millions who will benefit from his efforts for generations to come.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, this weekend, families all across America will sit down in their dining rooms for a holiday meal, and they are going to have to pay more for that meal than they ever have before. They are going to have to pay more for bread and more for butter, potatoes, eggs, vegetables. Literally, almost everything that is going to be on America's tables this holiday season is going to be more expensive than it has ever been. Although there are several reasons for that phenomenon, somewhere at the very top is the profound labor shortage that exists in American agriculture. Today, America's farmers and ranchers are short more than 100,000 workers all across this country to plant seeds, to pick berries, to raise cattle, and to do the hard, essential work of feeding this country. It is why growers all across America are banging down the doors of this Capitol, pleading with us to fix the broken H-2A system for farmers. It is obvious to everybody who has had anything to do with this system that it is completely broken. There is no argument that can be made that it is not. To start, the H-2A program is not even open to year-round jobs. That is just the beginning of the trouble. That is every dairy in America who has to milk their cows two or three times a day, including the holidays. It is every mushroom grower, livestock producer, horse breeder that needs those year-round visas. The H-2A program is also hopelessly and embarrassingly outdated. To qualify for a visa, this ancient program requires farmers to put a physical advertisement in a local newspaper, if there is a local newspaper, if they can find one. They can't advertise online. That is prohibited in the year 2022. And you have to reapply for the H-2A visa every single year, which is an incredible burden on farmers and on farm workers. It is the last thing they need. And, finally, the existing program does nothing to protect farmers from dramatic spikes in labor costs from year to year. They can't plan for the future. They have no idea what kind of uncertainty they are going to have to deal with when it comes to wages. I am thinking of farmers like Bruce Talbott, who grows peaches in Palisade, CO. The labor shortage hurts Bruce in two ways: One, he doesn't have enough people to pick everything he grows, so he is forced to leave money on the table every single year; and, second, this labor shortage is driving up labor costs, which are now 80 percent of the total costs of his operation. And we are seeing this all over the country. You see it right here: H-2A wages up almost 50 percent in the last 10 years. By the way, this is all wages down here. And this is what has happened to wages in farming and ranching in this country. It has grown so much faster than the rest of the workforce, and it is pushing family farms and ranches to the edge of a cliff, and, sadly, a lot of them are going over that cliff or considering moving their operations from the United States to Mexico. Since 2007, America has lost 190,000 farms, almost all of them small family farms. That is nearly 10 percent of the farms in this country, and some industries, like dairy, have been hit even harder. Between 2003 and 2020, the number of dairy farms in America fell by over half, by 55 percent. That is not just bad for dairy farms. It is bad for the communities that they are in and that they support, and it is bad for this country. If we don't deal with this, this country is on track, believe it or not, to become dependent on foreign food imports. You can see it here. This is the export line, and here is the projected import line. We are right at the point where we could be a net importer of food for the first time in my lifetime, maybe the first time in forever. I don't know. I don't want us to rely on other nations to feed America. We have the most productive agriculture sector in the world. And yet, because of this labor problem, we are going to accept the idea that we should be a net importer of food from other countries? That is terrible for our economic security, for our food security, and, I would argue, for our national security as well. Just on the economic point, Colorado's agriculture generates over $40 billion a year for our State's economy. Nationwide, there are nearly 20 million jobs in food and agriculture-related industries. That is 1 in every 10 jobs in this country. And over $1 trillion of our GDP is agriculture. And I think people--especially people who don't work in agriculture, don't think about agriculture, don't live in maybe a rural area--they tend to forget that literally every single sector of our economy depends on agriculture. You can't have an economy without food. There has never been one. So when we talk about the crisis in American agriculture that I am here on this floor to address today, we have to understand that the stakes could not be higher. At the same time we have that issue, there are hundreds of thousands of undocumented farm workers living in the shadows in this country. These men and women are breaking their backs every single day to feed America--women like Lulu Guerrero, who lives in Weld County, CO. She gets up at 3 o'clock in the morning every single morning to plant crops like watermelons and tomatoes and pumpkins. She has been doing that for 20 years. I have met people in my State who have been doing it for 30 years, who have been doing it for 40 years--with no status, with no protections, with no legal recourse if somebody tries to take advantage of them--many of them with U.S. citizens who are their children, people who can't go back and forth to see their relatives south of the border when somebody dies. This has been going on for decades, and we have ignored this problem in part because the food keeps showing up somehow, miraculously, in our grocery stores, as if somebody waved a wand to put it there. These workers have broken their backs to support their families, to support the United States of America, to make sure that we are fed. The least we can do for our own country is to bring them out of the shadows of the law. The status quo is terrible for workers, it is terrible for businesses and farms, and it is terrible for American families who have seen their grocery bills go through the roof. Look at this. I am not saying all of that is the labor shortage, but a huge amount of that is the labor shortage. In the last year alone, grocery prices have shot up about 12 percent--faster than at any time in 40 years, as you can see from this slide. And it is everything. I won't read all of these, but it is everything. The price of apples is up 7 percent. The price of milk is up 15 percent. And I guarantee you that is as a result of people unable to find people to do that work. And eggs are up almost 50 percent. These aren't nice to have. None of these are nice to have for the American people. These are essential to a well-balanced meal to a family being able to feed itself in America. That is why Congress has to finally fix this H-2A program, and we have the opportunity to do it. There is good news. We have a plan to fix it, the Affordable and Secure Food Act. Our proposal builds on legislation. This is an important point. You know, sometimes people over here blame the House of Representatives for not getting done what needs to get done for this country. In this case, they have passed this bill twice--or a version of this bill twice--in a bipartisan fashion. There were Republican Members of Congress over here last week imploring Republican Members of the Senate to please pass this bill, which from the grower's perspective, by the way, is an improvement over the bill that passed in the House. The Farm Workers Union and many of the growers in this country have come together to support this legislation, and there is a good reason why it had bipartisan support in the House. And now, from the perspective of the other side of the aisle, in many ways, it is actually a better bill. Our bill opens the H-2A program to year-round jobs for the first time ever, and that is going to mean dairy farmers and mushroom growers can finally access the labor that they need, that they can't access today. It creates wage certainty for farmers, saving them $23 billion over the next 12 years. I want to say that again: $23 billion over the next 12 years, because now people are going to know what the wage increases are going to look like. They are going to be predictable. They have been agreed to. And that results in the savings of $23 billion. That is $2 billion more over that period of time than the savings that were achieved in the House bill for growers. It requires E-Verify for farm workers nationwide. That is going to help with the chaos at the border because people are now going to know that they are not going to be able to come here and work illegally or in an undocumented fashion in agriculture. So they will be less likely to want to come. And, finally, the bill establishes a pathway for undocumented farm workers to apply for a green card after they have worked in agriculture for at least a decade, passed a background check, and paid a penalty. That is not amnesty. It is a recognition that anybody who has spent a decade breaking their back to feed America should have the opportunity to apply for lawful status. Are we really going to accept as a definitional matter for this country that we want fields filled with indentured servants in the United States of America? Is that really where we are as a nation? I don't think so. That is not what people in Colorado believe. No matter what party they are in, they don't believe that. They think we should fix this problem. They know how hard- working the people are who are working in our fields and on our ranches and at our dairies. And that is why this bill is broadly supported not just in Colorado but all across the country--by farmers and labor, by immigration advocates, by businesses, by the American people. The vast majority of the American people know we need to fix this. And this morning--this isn't meant for anybody to read; I will get to that in a moment--but over 240 groups from all across America, including from New Mexico and from Colorado, sent a letter supporting this bill. And I am not going to read all--I am tempted to read all 240, and there isn't anybody here tonight. But let me just give you a sense of the breadth and the depth of the support of this bill. The signers of this bill include the International Fresh Produce Association, the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, the National Milk Producers Federation, the National Farmers Union, the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, the American Honey Producers Association, the American Mushroom Institute, the American Sugarbeet Growers Association, the California Apple Commission, the California Association of Winegrape Growers, the Colorado Potato Legislative Association. Let me just tell you how hard it is for our potato producers in Colorado to deliver that incredible crop when we finally have created a situation where Mexico has to import our potatoes and can't just keep them out, which is what they have been doing for years and years and years, but they can't find folks to do the work. With the rise in input costs that farmers and ranchers have to deal with, with the drought that the Colorado potato growers are dealing with in the San Luis Valley that I know the Presiding Officer knows so well--you know, you would think that the least we could do is solve a problem that could be solved. That is a major headache for them and for their colleagues all across the country--like the Food Producers of Idaho, the Georgia Blueberry Commission, the Idaho Hay and Forage Association, Land O'Lakes, the Lone Star Milk Producers, the Maine Potato Board, the Michigan Nursery & Landscape Association, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture. As I read this list, do you know the one thing these people don't have in common? They are not Democrats or Republicans. They are just trying to deliver agricultural products to the American people. That is all they are trying to do. And they live in red States, and they live in blue States. They live all over the United States of America. The National Pecan Federation, the New York Apple Association, the North Carolina Potato Association, the Ohio Dairy Producers Association, the Pennsylvania Vegetable Growers Association, Premium Peanut, the Society of American Florists, the National Asparagus Council, the United Dairy Farmers of Florida, the Utah Tart Cherry Marketing Board, the Virginia Apple Growers Association, the Washington State Tree Fruit Association, the Western Growers--and let me say something about the Western Growers. In 2013, I had the privilege of being part of the Gang of 8 that negotiated the comprehensive immigration reform bill that passed this floor with 68 votes. It was led on the Republican side by John McCain and by Jeff Flake and Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham. We had four Democrats on our side. And, I have to say, in the 14 years I have been in this place, that was the best work we have done as a body. We dealt with this tough issue of immigration, and we dealt with all aspects of it--11 million people who were undocumented had the chance to earn a tough but fair pathway to citizenship in this country and come out of the shadows. We dealt with all the visa issues that have been driving the country crazy all this year--business visas and agriculture visas. I negotiated the agriculture provisions of this bill with Senator Rubio and Senator Feinstein and Senator Hatch. And we had the most progressive Dream Act that had ever been conceived, much less voted on, as part of that bill. It also had $40 billion border security in it. People forget that part. Every single Democrat voted for a bill that had $40 billion of border security. That is a heck of a lot more money than Donald Trump ever spent to build his wall--that medieval device. That $40 billion, which was a bipartisan effort, again, was meant to spend--was meant to spend the money on 21st-century technology so we could see every inch of the border so border crossings could actually be much better policed than they are today. I will come back to this later in the speech, but I am not somebody who believes we should have a border that is not secure. I believe we should have a secure border. I think we should. I think the American people expect that we will. And I came to this floor--I think it was in May--to say that I thought it was wrong for the Biden administration to lift title 42 without a plan to address the border, and we are seeing the effects of that, I think, today. That shouldn't be an excuse for making lives more miserable for people working in American agriculture. It shouldn't be an excuse for driving food prices up for families. It shouldn't be an excuse for compromising our economic independence, our food security, and our national security. We have in front of us a negotiated agreement that passed the House of Representatives with a bipartisan vote. We have an agreement that has been negotiated over here that is more generous to producers than the one that passed the House of Representatives, and it has all this support from all these people all over the country. I am not going to read every single one of these names, but you get the idea. These are people who probably, I would guess--many of them probably agree on nothing politically, but they agree on this. They agree on this. Part of that is because the situation they are confronting is so dire, and part of it is because they have helped produce a good piece of legislation that should get its chance. (Mr. SCHATZ assumed the Chair.) (Mr. HEINRICH assumed the Chair.) Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter with all these names be printed in the Record so I can spare you listening to all the names.

Mr. BENNET. I will end with this. There is a vegetable farmer in Brighton, CO, whom I have known for many, many years. His name is Robert Sakata. His dad started Sakata Farms in 1944 after he was released from a Japanese-American internment camp, where he was interned during World War II. For almost 80 years, Sakata Farms has been a critical ingredient of our Colorado economy--a staple of Colorado, to put it in food terms, but when Robert visited my office in the last couple of years, he handed me fliers advertising his equipment for sale. I said: Robert, why are you selling your implements? Why are you doing that? He loves what he does. He is so passionate about what he does. He is so passionate about the people who work side by side with him to produce incredible fruits and vegetables in Colorado. But he told me that he was selling because he didn't have enough labor to harvest his vegetable crop. Today, they no longer grow vegetables at Sakata Farms; they only grow row crops. Is that the future we want for American agriculture? It is not what we want in Colorado. I have heard stories like that, like Robert Sakata's story, all over my State and all over this country for the last decade. We don't have to accept the loss of the next 10 percent of America's family farms. We don't have to accept hundreds of thousands of people living in the shadows when they work every single day. They are breaking their backs--I don't use that term lightly--working in some of the worst conditions that there are to work in to feed the American people, to give us economic security and food security and provide for our national security. We shouldn't accept crushing food prices for families just because this Congress can't reform an antiquated H-2A program. We can do something about it this week before we go home, with this proposal. Sometimes the politics of an issue like this seems so hard that you are defeated on it before you even get started. That has not been the case with this coalition of people from all over America. They have all they can contend with every single day. As I said, with rising input costs, with the trade issues that we have been dealing with, they have every reason in the world not to spend a moment trying to actually pass this piece of legislation, but it is so important because this labor issue is so critical to the future of American agriculture, and they know it, and they have a sense of urgency about it. They want us to overcome our fears and our political concerns, to come together and do what the House of Representatives did, which is pass a bipartisan bill. I guarantee you, if we do that, if we do that here in this Chamber, when people go home, what they are going to hear is this: Thank you. Thank you for listening to us. Thank you for respecting our work in American agriculture. And thank you for standing up for our country during a difficult economic moment in world history. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Madam President, before the Thanksgiving break, I planned to use my time today to talk about the Respect for Marriage Act, with which the Presiding Officer has had such an important role playing, and I want to congratulate her on the incredible work that she has done to get this over the finish line, because we are on the verge of passing the Respect for Marriage Act in the U.S. Senate. It is a historic piece of legislation to ensure that if a same-sex or interracial couple marries in one State, that every State has to honor that marriage. The Federal Government has to honor that marriage as well. There may be no right closer to the heart than marrying the one that you love, and Colorado understands that. And I was going to come down here to talk about how, over decades, my State has led the way on equality. We recognized civil unions in 2013. We banned conversion therapy in my State. We passed our own version of the Equality Act in Colorado. I was going to come down here and tell you about how Colorado understands what equality has come to mean in America in 2022, but in the last week, I have been reminded again just how far we have to go. Last Sunday, Coloradans woke up to the news that Club Q--a loving, accepting, 20-year old LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs--had been the target of a mass shooting. Five Coloradans were killed, and at least 22 were injured. In the days since, Coloradans have described Club Q as a center of community building, a place where everyone could be their true selves and live without fear. Club Q's owner, Nic Grzecka, said he founded the club to ``be that safe place for people to come and feel and understand that they are normal--that the way they feel is normal and there are people just like them.'' As a father, that is what I hope for my three daughters, and, as a former school superintendent, that is what I wish for the children that I worked for. We want our kids to feel normal and loved and like they belong. But on November 19, these feelings of safety and acceptance that Club Q had built over two decades were shattered. On the same day that we recognized Trans Day of Remembrance, we added more names to the solemn toll in this country, when a violent young man, radicalized by hateful and divisive rhetoric, killed five people and forever changed a community, forever changed my State. In minutes, he robbed from us brothers and sisters and daughters and sons, friends, and loved ones, who were there just being themselves, not bothering anybody. He took from us Derrick Rump, a 38-year-old bartender and co-owner of Club Q, who bought groceries for others during the hardest 2 months of the pandemic; Daniel David Aston, 28 years old, a bar supervisor known as the ``master of silliness'' because of his contagious happiness and joy; Kelly Loving, 40 years old, who had just moved to Colorado and was trying to enjoy a weekend trip to Colorado Springs; Ashley Paugh, 35 years old, a devoted mother and nonprofit worker, who loved hunting and fishing, like so many other Coloradans, and was there to support the community; and Raymond Green Vance, 22 years old--22 years old--who grew up in Colorado Springs and had just started a new job and was saving up for his own apartment. I am thinking of them and their families and all of those who survived this terrible tragedy in Colorado--people who imagined that there was one space that you could go to feel safe, and then this happens. It fills me with rage that it happened. It fills me with sadness. It should fill the entire Senate with rage and sadness. And if it weren't for the courage of people like Richard Fierro and Thomas James, the list of names I read, already too long, would have been longer. Thomas James, a petty officer second class in the Navy, used his military crisis training to help subdue the attacker. He said he jumped into action because he ``simply wanted to save the family [he] found'' at Club Q. And Richard Fierro. Richard Fierro, an Iraq and Afghanistan combat veteran, was watching a friend's performance with his wife, daughter, and friends inside the club when the gunfire started, and his protective instincts--Richard's protective instincts from four combat deployments--kicked in. He said he went ``into combat mode.'' No one enjoying a night with their friends and their family should have to go ``into combat mode'' in the United States of America. That is not the country that I grew up in. It is our country today. It is the country that the pages in this institution are inheriting from us. My daughter's generation and the children I used to work for in the Denver Public Schools, they bear a burden that I never bore growing up in the United States. They have grown up living with a reasonable fear that they could be shot in their classrooms or in their churches or in a grocery store or in a bar that is the one safe place in their community that they could go to. In 2020--the pages that are here may not know this. In 2020, the leading cause of death for kids in America was guns--guns--not car accidents, not drugs, but guns. In one study of 29 industrialized countries, the United States accounted for 97 percent of firearm deaths among children 4 years old and younger. That is almost 100 percent of the kids who are dying on planet Earth from gunfire who are 4 years old and younger. What a disgrace. What a disgrace. We shouldn't need to count on a stranger's bravery when we go to a birthday party. We shouldn't need to count on a stranger's bravery when we go to the grocery store. It was just last year when I spoke on this floor to remember the lives we lost in Colorado at a King Soopers in Boulder, and it is with unimaginable pain that I am here once again on this floor with a list of names of people who have lost their lives senselessly. Colorado is hurting. We are tired of this. For more than two decades, we have had to grieve over one incident after another. So while we stand here on the verge of taking a historic step toward equality--a vitally important step toward equality--we are reminded once again of just how much work is left to do to give our children the safe and accepting future that they deserve, that they want to have, that we are obligated to give them. We haven't finished that work in the U.S. Senate. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court stripped away the first fundamental right since Reconstruction by overturning a 50-year precedent in Roe v. Wade, and in that decision, the majority took aim at the fundamental right of privacy and, with it, the right of every single American to marry whom they love. It is a profound reminder--once again, a reminder--to everybody in this body and to the country, that our history has been from the very beginning a battle between the highest ideals that humans have ever written down on the page--the words in the Constitution of the United States--and the worst impulses in human history. And when a Justice of the Supreme Court writes that if it wasn't a freedom in 1868, it is not a freedom today, we are in that struggle today. When a 22-year-old can walk into a club and kill 5 people and wound more than 20 people, we are in that struggle today. The reason we are here today doing the important work that we are doing in the marriage act that we are passing today is that Americans understand that no good comes from hoarding freedoms and equality. They know that when we take the opposite view, we act against our best traditions, against our highest ideals. As a nation, we will never flourish if we choose to depend on a permanent underclass, deprived of some or all of the rights and freedoms others enjoy. Free people do not remain free by denying freedom to others. Today, the Senate of the United States stands on the precipice of advancing freedom, of advancing equality, of moving us closer to our highest ideals. But, tomorrow, we have more work to do to live up to the words of our Constitution and to realize the promise of equality for all of our citizens. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I rise to pay my respects to Phil Hanceford, a tireless and broadly respected advocate for public land conservation. Phil unexpectedly passed away on August 14, 2022. Phil served more than 15 years as an attorney, policy expert, and conservation director at The Wilderness Society--TWS--in Denver, CO. He began his career with an internship at TWS while a student at the University of Colorado School of Law. Across a distinguished, 15-year career, Phil played a significant role in protecting some of the most important public lands in the West, from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, to conservation areas in the Pacific Northwest, the Mojave Desert, Nevada, and Colorado. Phil was an expert in land management planning, specializing in the management of national monuments and other Bureau of Land Management-- BLM--conservation lands. He inspired and mentored countless individuals at TWS and across the conservation community, contributing his deep expertise and humble spirit to all who sought his advice or support. Over the years, his guidance helped shape a new cohort of effective advocates for America's public lands. Phil's greatest accomplishments include helping to create the National Landscape Conservation System; the adoption of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan that conserved wildlands and promoted renewable energy development across nearly 11 million acres in southern California; the restoration of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monuments that protects over 3 million acres of stunning desert wilderness in southern Utah; and the establishment of Browns Canyon National Monument in Colorado. Phil was a champion of the BLM and earned the lasting respect of Bureau staff across the country for his warmth and expertise. He often went out of his way to connect with employees across the organization and fiercely advocated for getting staff into the field to see firsthand the places they worked to protect. Phil grounded his work in humor, kindness, determination, and grace. He genuinely believed in the promise of public lands as a legacy for everyone--an issue that could bring Americans together regardless of where you lived or which political beliefs you held. Phil's distinguished career was cut too short, but he leaves behind a legacy that will endure for generations to come. I extend my deepest condolences to Phil's wife Keenan and their young daughter Hazel, along with the rest of Phil's family, friends, and colleagues.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Madam President, last year, we demonstrated to the American people that we don't have to accept this outrageous, shameful level of childhood poverty in our Nation. We have 38 out of 41 industrialized countries in the world in terms of childhood poverty. The poorest people in our country are our children. And because we passed this bill last year, we demonstrated that doesn't have to be a permanent feature of our economy or our democracy. We have to fight to make this enhanced child tax credit permanent, and that is what I will do with people on both sides of the aisle. But this does not advance that cause because we could lose the underlying bill. Therefore, we should vote against the amendment.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Madam President, I rise today to recognize Mile High Early Learning for 50 years of service in support of children and families in Colorado. Mile High Early Learning is Denver's largest and oldest provider of subsidized high quality early care and education and is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2022. Since the organization's founding, Mile High Early Learning has provided high quality early care and education to more than 50,000 children. Mile High Early Learning had its beginnings when community child care providers created a consortium, incorporated on January 19, 1972, to provide affordable, accessible quality early childhood education and care for children from working families with limited resources. Today, Mile High Early Learning serves more than 1,500 young children every year. As a Head Start and Early Head Start provider, Mile High Early Learning leverages these Federal resources to partner with numerous local early childhood providers to offer comprehensive health and family support services to families and expand access to high quality early education and care across Colorado. Mile High Early Learning incorporates cutting-edge knowledge in early childhood, using a Montessori inspired approach that supports a love of learning, social-emotional development, and critical skills that lead to lifelong success. As a leader in the field of early childhood, Mile High Early Learning has developed continuing education and professional learning programs designed to grow, strengthen, and sustain our early childhood workforce including family, friend, and neighbor caregivers who care for the majority of children under age 3 years. Mile High Early Learning has created a workforce pipeline with on-ramps through its professional learning center that includes a child development associate training program for teachers who are beginning their profession in early childhood. Mile High Early Learning's quality programming informs state and national leaders and continues to be at the forefront in advocating for children and families across Colorado and promoting systems-level impacts that support and improve the field of early childhood education. Mile High Early Learning is guided by a mission to enable all children to succeed in school by providing resources and education to inspire a lifetime of learning and a vision that all are joyfully welcomed into a learning community that prioritizes equity. I congratulate Mile High Early Learning on reaching this important milestone of 50 years of caring for our children and ensuring high- quality early care and education.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I wanted to come down here tonight to talk a little bit about the bill that we have in front of us this weekend, the Inflation Reduction Act. I have been in the Senate for 13 years, and I think this is one of the most important pieces of legislation that we have ever considered. Let me just say, also, that the Presiding Officer and I have been here for a long time, and there have been weeks and weeks and weeks, months, years that have gone by here where it felt like we haven't gotten anything done. What an amazing moment to be here when we have a bipartisan infrastructure bill that we passed with the biggest investment in our infrastructure since Eisenhower was President. We passed the first bipartisan bill to overcome the NRA just a few weeks ago. Last week, we were able to pass the CHIPS Act to bring back semiconductors to the U.S.A. and the PACT Act, the veterans bill last night. Today, we are here to talk about the Inflation Reduction Act. It is quite an amazing moment in our democracy and, I think, in the country's history. It is not the subject of my speech tonight, but I want to say, with the Presiding Officer on the floor, that there might be a reason to think that we are at a moment in our country's history when we are actually ready, finally, to turn the page on the trickle-down economics that have created such an unfair economy for so many families and so many young people in this country and create, once again, in the United States, an economy that, when it grows, it grows for everybody, not just the people at the very top. This bill fits into that. The bill on infrastructure fits into that. The bill on the semiconductors fits into that, as well. If you look at the agenda Washington has pursued for the last 40 years or so, it is pretty simple: Let the big corporations do whatever they want and call it ``freedom''; cut investments in working families and our future; and instead of grappling with the income inequality we have, instead of grappling with the economic mobility that we have, cut taxes for the wealthiest people in the country, cut taxes for the largest corporations in the country, hoping that those tax cuts will somehow magically trickle down to everyone else and pay for themselves. That has never happened. Here is what happened instead: 40 years of an economy that has worked really well for the wealthiest people and corporations but hasn't worked very well for anybody else; an economy with income inequality higher than at any time since the 1920s, where the top 0.1 percent of Americans, a mere 160,000 families, hold basically the same amount of wealth as the bottom 90 percent of Americans, nearly 145 million families--160,000 families, the top 0.1 percent, hold as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, 9 out of 10 Americans, nearly 145 million families--where kids--I am sad to say this in front of the kids here tonight--have a 50-50 shot of earning more than their parents, where that number used to be 90 percent; that charges families more for their healthcare than any other industrialized country in the world; that forces seniors in this country--and only in this country--to cut their pills in half or skip prescriptions or decide whether they are going to be able to eat or take their medicine; that is shackled to a global fossil fuel market dictated by tyrants like Vladimir Putin, despite our abundant resources at home and despite the urgent threat from climate change. That is the legacy of the past 40 years of trickle-down economics. As I have said many, many times on this floor, we can't survive another 40 years like the last 40 years and expect to hold onto this democracy. I don't think we can survive another 10 years like this and expect to hold on to this democracy with this failed agenda. Working families can't sustain it. Our democracy can't withstand it because, when people feel like they have lost the sense of opportunity for themselves and their families no matter how hard they work, that is when, you know, throughout human history, somebody shows up. Some self-interested politician shows up and says: I alone can fix it. You don't need a democracy. You don't need the rule of law. You should expect your public sector and your private sector to be hopelessly corrupt, and you are a sucker if you don't believe that because people are going to take advantage of you. We need a new agenda for America. I am pleased to say that we are closer, I think, tonight--this weekend--than we have been in a long time to pursuing one. It started with the American Rescue Plan. It continued, as I said earlier, with the bipartisan infrastructure law we passed this year to rebuild our country and the bipartisan innovation bill that we passed last week to help us compete with China and bring thousands of good- paying jobs back home. And, now, I hope we are close to passing the next part, the Inflation Reduction Act. This bill will lower costs for millions of families--at the pharmacy, at the pump, and on their monthly energy bills and insurance premiums. It will do more to achieve energy independence and fight climate change than anything that we have ever done as a nation. And unlike the Trump tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which added $1.9 trillion to the debt, notwithstanding the arguments that we have heard going back to Ronald Reagan--the false arguments that we have heard going back to Ronald Reagan--that these tax cuts will pay for themselves. Once again, of course, they didn't pay for themselves. And unlike that, a $1.9 trillion hole blasted into our deficit when unemployment was only at 3.5 percent. Every cent of that money was borrowed just for the privilege of giving tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. Fifty-two percent of that bill went to the top 5 percent of Americans. We borrowed every single cent to do that. That would be no different than when the Presiding Officer was the mayor of Richmond, VA, and if he said to the people of Richmond: I have a really good idea for how we could spend a lot of money, but we are going to have to borrow money to do it. And they said: Well, that sounds like a lot of money that you are borrowing. Tell us what you are spending it on. Are you using it for our roads and bridges? No. Are you using it for the parks? No. Are you using it for education, for mental health, which we desperately need in this country? Are you using it to transfer the local economy to greener energy? No. What are you using it for, Mr. Mayor, they would say. And the answer is: I am going to borrow this massive amount of money, and I am going to give it to the two wealthiest neighborhoods in Richmond and hope that it is just going to trickle down to everybody else. I am not making it up. That is the theory. That is the policy. And that was the theory and the policy when Ronald Reagan was President. That was the theory and policy when Donald Trump was President. And unlike those bills, every single cent in this bill is paid for. More than that, it cuts the deficit by over $300 billion. If you listen to my Republican colleagues, at least some of them and the way they complain about this bill, you would think it was some sort of Bolshevik takeover of the U.S.A. It is ridiculous. I think, sometimes, they just don't even want the public to know what is in this bill because what is in this bill is so popular with the American people. Let's start with healthcare. For the first time ever, this bill requires Medicare to negotiate drug prices on behalf of the American people. The Presiding Officer and I wrote a bill called Medicare-X. We introduced it, I think, in 2017, to create a public option so that everybody in America could have the benefit of choosing between their private insurance and public insurance. That is not in this bill. But in that bill, we said that Medicare ought to negotiate drug prices for seniors. This would allow Medicare to use its market power to drive down the costs of prescription drugs. That is going to save families thousands of dollars, and it is going to save our country billions of dollars. The only reason we have not passed that is because special interests have succeeded at tying Medicare's hands so that pharmaceutical companies could keep charging Americans prices that no other developed nation in the world would tolerate--Americans like Julia from Denver. Her dad has a heart condition. He pays $6,000 a month for medication. That is $72,000 a year for something he needs to take for the rest of his life. That is outrageous, but I hear stories like that every day all over Colorado. The Inflation Reduction Act also would cap out-of-pocket costs for seniors to $2,000 a year so they aren't spending down their retirement to buy medication. I know seniors in Colorado who literally spend their entire retirement trying to figure out how to get the medication they need, the medication they have been prescribed by a doctor. The choices they have to make look unlike any other choices any senior has to make in any other country in the world. I was with some people in Pueblo recently where one of the people said: I have three inhalers, but I can't afford the three inhalers. So I can only take one of them at a time, and I have been getting sicker and sicker as a result of that. Another person in the room had worked her entire life at the local newspaper, and she was telling me that she was having to cut her medications in order to make it through economically. On top of that, this bill has a 3-year extension for tax credits to help millions of Americans pay for their health insurance, including over 150,000 Coloradans who are going to be able to afford their health insurance in ways they couldn't. The second part of this bill closes tax loopholes for about 200 of the biggest corporations in America--those with over $1 billion in profit. This comes directly from a bill that I wrote with Senator Warren and with Senator King. Today, these corporations use armies of lawyers and accountants that no middle-class family has, no working family has, no small business has to pay almost nothing in classes. Last year, Chevron paid an effective rate of 1.8 percent. Bank of America paid 3.5 percent--3.5 percent. That is after the Trump tax cuts cut the corporate rate and took it down to, I think, it was 20 percent--which, by the way, there was no consensus to do. The consensus was at 25 percent. Here you have companies paying 1.8 percent, and 3.5 percent in the case of Bank of America. Amazon paid 6.1 percent. They might want to fire their CFO because they are paying a little more than the 1.8 and the 3.5. AT&T paid negative 4.1 percent. That means they got money back from the Treasury in tax credits. In Colorado, a typical firefighter, teacher, or police officer has an effective tax rate of somewhere around 16 to 22 percent. So, on the one hand, you have working Americans paying 20 percent of their income in an economy that has barely lifted their incomes in 40 years, while billion-dollar corporations are paying virtually nothing. I had a conversation the other day with a ``Teacher of the Year'' from Colorado. She is from Glenwood Springs. She said that she wasn't complaining, that she was just making an observation. She said 70 percent to 80 percent of her colleagues in the middle school in which she teaches and at the high school in Glenwood Springs have to work two and three jobs just so they can afford to live in Glenwood Springs. Do we think it is all right for her to have to pay 22 percent of her income in taxes and the biggest corporations in America that are making more than $1 billion in income don't have to at least pay 15 percent, much less the 20 percent gift that Donald Trump gave them when the number that everybody had basically agreed to was 25 percent? It is no wonder that Americans think this Tax Code is rigged against them. We start to fix that problem with this bill. It is not everything that I would have wanted. I think we have a lot more to do to make this Tax Code fairer, not the least of which is to make permanent the expanded child tax credit that I worked on with Sherrod Brown, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris; and the earned income tax credit that I worked on with Sherrod Brown to give working people the biggest tax cut they had in generations. That is one of the things that is not in this bill that I feel really terrible about. This bill also is limiting something called the carried interest loophole. Most Americans have no idea what that is because 99.9999999 percent of Americans are not hedge fund managers; they don't benefit from this loophole to lower their tax rate and pay less than their assistants or than their secretary. That hasn't stopped my Republican colleagues from telling the American public that this bill would tax working people--that is what they are saying. And I guess that is true if by ``working people'' they mean hedge fund managers. Over half of them base their business in the Cayman Islands or billion dollar corporations. We are increasing their taxes--that is true--but there is nothing in this bill that is raising taxes on American families--nothing. Nothing. It is amazing to me that people that I meet that simultaneously support the Trump tax cuts for the wealthiest people on the theory of trickle-down economics and are opposed to this bill on the theory that somehow the taxes that we are raising on, literally, the wealthiest humans in our country and the wealthiest corporations are somehow going to trickle down to people in the workplace. It is never going to happen. It never has. The last part of this bill contains energy. And, first, I think it is important for us to have some context. It has been nearly 50 years since the 1973 oil crisis spurred America to seek ``energy independence.'' It has been more than 30 years since NASA scientist James Hansen urged Congress to fight climate change, I think at a hearing held by my predecessor Tim Wirth. And until now we haven't had a plan, we have had no plan to accomplish either. We haven't just stalled--in some cases, we have actually gone backward. At home, right now, our use of coal has increased during the Biden administration. Abroad, Germany has been forced to reactivate coal plants after Putin's attack on Ukraine, while other EU nations plan on rationing natural gas or turning on their coal plants. Instead of leading the world with a coherent approach on these issues, Washington has been deadlocked in the same old, tired politics around climate and energy. And as usual, the American people have paid the price. They have paid it at the pump with incomes that have barely budged in this economy. In Colorado, we have paid for it in homes incinerated by record wildfires, mountain passes washed out by mudslides, fields withering in extreme drought that nobody has seen for 800 years, the Colorado River in crisis, and a galloping fear that the American West will somehow be unrecognizable to our grandchildren. When this deal fell apart 10 days ago or so, whenever it was, my heart was broken as a result of it, because I thought about what Colorado has been going through. And I thought about--I had to call and explain to my 22-year-old and 21-year-old and 17-year-old daughters that once again we had failed. And their sense of disbelief, of incredulity--which, by the way, I think is shared with every single member of their generation in this country, whether they are Democrats or whether they are Republicans or independents or if they don't even know what political party they are in. How can you not deal with this? How can you place this burden on us? And if we pass this bill, we are going to be able to look the next generation straight in the eye and say: We are actually living up to our responsibility to you, at least with respect to climate. And that fills me with joy. And that is the reason to support this bill and feel good about it. We can't afford another 10 years of dysfunction on these issues. This transition should have started 25 years ago--25 years ago. And in my opinion, we urgently need a plan, an energy policy that secures the energy our economy needs and relentlessly lowers climate pollution. In other words, we need a plan for clean energy independence. And we can start by being honest about where we are; I think that is really important. Today, 60 percent of our power generation comes from fossil fuel; only 20 percent comes from renewables. Over 90 percent--90 percent of our transportation relies on fossil fuels, and less than 3 percent uses electricity. Across the economy, 80 percent of primary energy consumption still comes from fossil fuel. Renewables are just 12 percent. We have made some progress, but to hit our emissions targets, renewables have to scale from 12 percent today to at least 60 percent by 2050. That is why, even under the most ambitious projections, some fossil fuels will likely remain in our energy mix for decades, even through 2050. Don't take my word for it; that is not me saying it. These projections are from the National Academy of Sciences, the International Energy Agency, and Princeton. And that is the reality that they confront us with. So when I hear politicians and others whip up Twitter with promises to reject every permit for new infrastructure, they ignore this reality. And I worry that we cede the scientific high ground to critics of climate action, who then paint climate advocates as disconnected or deluded or even dangerous to the economy. And the only thing that wins is our fossil fuels. The only thing that wins is coal. And I worry sometimes that these claims also repel the very Americans we need to support our energy transition. If our position in the short term is to oppose every new piece of infrastructure, we are essentially forcing America to choose between scarcity and higher prices, to choose between either less energy or higher prices. I was in Belgium and, with our colleague Chris Coons, met with the deputy prime minister there who said--we were on our way to Scotland for the climate conference, and he said: We have to meet these climate targets. We have to meet these climate targets in 2050. And then he said: But I don't know how we are going to meet them and not lose the middle class. And I said: What do you mean by that? And he said: I don't know how we are going to meet them and not have yellow vests break out all over Europe. And we are seeing that now. We are seeing where Putin has cut off Russian oil and Russian gas because of his invasion of Ukraine--the challenges that it creates in democratic societies when it comes to energy. There is no country in the world better positioned on this question, better positioned to lead this transition to clean energy than the United States of America. There is not a country in Europe; there is not a country in the Middle East. China is not better positioned than we are on this. We are the best positioned country in the world to lead this transition. In fact, I think we are the only country in the world that can lead this transition--which, by the way, is why it was such a tragedy when it looked 10 days ago like this bill wasn't going anywhere, because then the rest of the world looks at us and says: Why should we do anything if the country that is most capable of being able to do this can't do it? And what I want to assure you is that these outcomes of scarcity or higher prices, neither of those outcomes are going to support the broad and durable support that we need to be able to not just pass climate policy but keep it the law of the land and make sure that it lasts until the next generation of Americans can pick it up from us and say: Thank you for putting us in a decent position; we are going to finish the job. And then if we can't pass this bill and we can't make progress on climate change, then what we have, instead, is our current policy, which is the status quo, which drives up prices, is bad for our national security, and is terrible at reducing emissions. That is where we are today. That is why coal is up, as I said, during the Biden administration. For a successful transition, we have got to smooth the path with domestic energy production now to stabilize prices and bridge our way to a clean energy economy tomorrow. And to do that, we need every tool on the table. This means deploying renewables like wind and solar, which my State has led in. We need to do it at record rates. We need to invest in next-generation technology from carbon capture to hydrogen to advanced nuclear. That means we need to recognize the role that natural gas has played in our transition. Over the last 15 years, replacing coal with natural gas has accounted for 60 percent of our national carbon reductions, and that is really good. But we need to do a lot better because the time is ticking. And now we have the opportunity, because of this bill, to secure America's position as the global standard for production-- modeled on our example in Colorado, where we passed the first law to capture fugitive methane when Senator Hickenlooper was our Governor--by driving down methane pollution and strengthening cleanup and monitoring across the supply chain. The last thing we should accept is the leaking pipes that the status quo allows when we have tools available to do better. And we can't accept the painful price shocks that the American people have to bear because of our lack of a coherent energy policy. Fortunately, this bill lays the foundation for a responsible energy policy for the country, and it has the largest investment to fight climate change in the Nation's history. And it is full of proposals I have worked on for years, proposals to rapidly deploy clean energy and to provide industry the long-term certainty it needs, to boost American manufacturing for wind and solar and batteries to power electric vehicles and our energy grid, to invest $14 billion to help rural communities transition from fossil fuels, along with over $25 billion for environmentally friendly farming, conservation, and forest health. We also have an opportunity in this bill to address the drought that is ravaging the American West and to do it in a way that measurably improves the situation of the Colorado River Basin, reflects the interest of the people of my State and other States in the Upper Basin, and actually deals, finally, with the long-term causes of the crisis that we face. When you add it all up, this bill would put us on track to reduce carbon pollution 40 percent by the end of the decade. That is light years ahead of where we would be without it. But even if you don't care about climate change, you should still like this bill because it lowers costs for families. How does it do that? By increasing the supply of American energy with a responsible approach while reducing demand for oil and gas by putting more renewables and electric vehicles on the market. According to a recent study, this bill would reduce the average family's electricity bill by hundreds of dollars a year. From my perspective, as I said, this transition should have started 25 years ago, and we can't wait any longer. Now is the moment to act. Russia's invasion of Ukraine should finally rid America and our allies of the delusion that we can continue to rely on foreign dictators for our energy needs. It should remind us how foolish we have been to surrender the lifeblood of our economy to the whims of tyrants. So nearly 50 years after the 1973 oil crisis, let's make this the year that we finally pass a coherent plan for America's energy independence. Let's finally organize our thinking and advance a plan that liberates us from foreign energy and tackles the threat of climate change head-on. And while we are at it, let's reforge the engine of American manufacturing to produce the clean energy we need and to create thousands of good-paying jobs along the way. Let's support our European allies by exporting cleaner American energy so they don't have to rely on coal or Russian gas to heat their homes through the winter. There is no country in the world better prepared than the United States to lead this effort. And this bill will do more than anything we have ever done to strengthen our hand in this regard. In another era, a proposal like this would have received 70 votes on the Senate floor. Every provision in here is a victory for common sense and a victory for the American people over special interests and the status quo. Frankly, I don't know how many people can go home and say they voted against a balanced approach to achieve energy independence, fight climate change, and lower costs for families at this moment in our history. I don't know how you would go home and say they voted to preserve tax loopholes for hedge fund managers and billion-dollar corporations that no American family can even imagine as they are paying the rates of taxation that they are paying or how they voted to let pharmaceutical companies continue to gouge the American people instead of letting Medicare negotiate on their behalf; how they voted against reducing our deficit by $300 billion. But that is the choice we have in front of us. To me, it is a choice that is obvious. We have got to pass this bill. We need to seize the moment to lower costs for the American people, to make our Tax Code a little fairer, to secure our energy independence, and spark a new era of clean energy manufacturing and innovation to support our allies and lead the world in a fight against climate change and, hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, leave something a little bit better for the next generation of Americans. I thank my colleague from New Jersey for his patience. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, on July 20, 2012, Colorado suffered a horrific mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora. A gunman took 12 innocent lives from us, each of them full of aspirations for a future that was tragically and senselessly cut short. They leave behind family, friends, and a community in Aurora that still carries the pain of their loss a decade later. Colorado will never forget and forever honor the 12 victims of the Aurora shooting. Today, I ask to read their names into the Congressional Record. Jonathan Blunk was 26 years old. He was a father of two who moved to Colorado in 2009 after three tours in the Persian Gulf and North Arabian Sea for the U.S. Navy. He was a certified firefighter and EMT. Jon lost his life protecting his friend Jansen Young from the gunman's line of fire. Jon shielded her from gunfire by pushing her to the ground while shots were fired. He was supposed to fly that Saturday to Nevada to see his wife Chantel Blunk and his 4-year-old daughter and 2- year-old son. Instead, his wife had to put up the dress her daughter had picked out to wear to the airport. She told her daughter that they would not see their dad anymore, but that he would still love them and look over them. Alexander Jonathan Boik was 18 years old. His friends and family called him A.J. He had just graduated from Gateway High School. He enjoyed baseball, music, and making pottery. A.J. was supposed to start art classes at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design that fall. He was described ``as being the life of the party,'' who could bring a smile to anybody's face.'' He was a young man with a warm and loving heart. Jesse Childress was 29 years old. He was an Air Force cyber systems operator based at Buckley Air Force Base. He loved to play flag football, softball, and bowl. He was a devoted fan of the Denver Broncos and held season tickets. His superior officer described him as an invaluable part of the 310th family who touched everyone with whom he worked. Gordon Cowden was 51 years old. He was originally from Texas and lived in Aurora with his family. He was ``a quick witted world traveler with a keen sense of humor, he will be remembered for his devotion to his children and for always trying to do the right thing, no matter the obstacle.'' Gordon took his two teenage children to the theater the night of the shooting. Both of them, thankfully, made it out unharmed. Jessica Ghawi was 24 years old. She was an aspiring journalist, most recently interning with Mile High Sports Radio in Denver, and went by the nickname ``Redfield.''' She was hard-working, ambitious, and had a generous spirit and kind heart. When several homes were destroyed by Colorado wildfires, Jessica collected hockey equipment to donate to the kids affected because she wanted to help. That was who she was. John Thomas Larimer was 27 years old. He was a cryptologic technician with the Navy based also at Buckley Air Force Base, a job that requires ``exceptionally good character and skills.''' Originally from Chicago, John was the youngest of five siblings and had joined the service just over a year before the shooting. Like his father and grandfather, John chose to serve in the U.S. Navy. John's superior officer called him ``an outstanding shipmate, a valued member of the Navy and an extremely dedicated sailor.'' Colleagues praised his calming demeanor and exceptional work ethic. Matthew McQuinn was 27 years old. Matt died while protecting his girlfriend Samantha Yowler by jumping in front of her during the shooting. Matt and Samantha moved to Colorado from Ohio last fall and worked at Target. He and Samantha were in love and planning their future life together. Matt's bravery saved Samantha's life. Micayla ``Cayla'' Medek was 23 years old. Cayla was a graduate of William C. Hinkley High School in Aurora and a resident of Westminster. She worked at Subway and was a huge Green Bay Packers fan. Cayla would plan weekend activities around watching the games with her brother and father. She is remembered as a loving and gentle young woman. Veronica Moser-Sullivan was 6 years old. She had just learned to swim and attended Holly Ridge Elementary School in Denver. She was a good student who loved to play dress-up and read. Alex Sullivan was 27 years old. He was at the movie celebrating his 27th birthday and first wedding anniversary. He loved comic books, the New York Mets, and movies. Alex was such a big movie fan that he took jobs at theaters just to see the movies. Alex stood 6 feet, 4 inches, and weighed about 280 pounds. He played football and wrestled before graduating high school in 2003 and later went to culinary school. Alex was known as a gentle giant and was loved by many. Alexander C. Teves was 24 years old. Alex received an M.A. in counseling psychology from the University of Denver and was planning on becoming a psychiatrist. He also competed in the Tough Mudder, an intense endurance challenge, and helped students with special needs. Alex was at the theater on the night of the shooting with his girlfriend Amanda Lindgren. When the gunman opened fire, Alex immediately lunged to block Amanda from the gunfire, held her down, and covered her head. Rebecca Wingo was 32 years old. Originally from Texas, Rebecca joined the Air Force after high school, where she became fluent in Mandarin Chinese and served as a translator. She was a single mother of two girls and worked as a customer relations representative at a mobile medical imaging company. Rebecca was also enrolled at the Community College of Aurora and had been working toward an associate of arts degree. She was known to family and friends as a ``gentle, sweet, beautiful soul.'' When I came to the floor a decade ago, I said that scripture tells us ``not to be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.'' That is what the people of Aurora have done for the past 10 years. Today, we recommit to not remember July 20 for the evil act that day. We choose to remember the beautiful lives lost and the loved ones they left behind. We choose to remember the 70 wounded survivors, whose resilience in the years since is a testament to humanity's resolve. We choose to remember the heroic acts of everyday citizens, our first responders, and medical personnel who saved lives that otherwise surely would have been lost. And we choose to remember the profound generosity of the Coloradans and Americans who donated blood in record numbers and raised funds to support the survivors. A decade later, Colorado and the country continue to draw strength from the example set by the people of Aurora. And we recommit to ending the American scourge of gun violence--unique among industrialized nations--that has cut short too many innocent lives in our communities.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Madam President, I wanted to share a few words about Nina Wang, President Biden's nominee for the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. Judge Wang comes to this floor with a commitment to the law rooted in her earliest moments as a child, her earliest memories as a child. Nina's family emigrated from Taiwan to Kansas City when she was just 2 years old. Like my grandparents who emigrated from Poland, Nina's parents had very strong accents. They knew English, but people in their Kansas suburb couldn't always understand what they were saying. Some of Nina's first memories were ordering pizza for the family or speaking to store clerks on behalf of her parents. Her family applied to become permanent residents, but the INS lost their application. Then, once they resolved that issue, the law had changed, and their pathway to legalization was gone. Their family spent years in legal limbo, ricocheting from one court to another. And if not for an intervention by late Senator Robert Dole, Nina's family would have fallen through the cracks. At the time, Nina made a promise: If I can stay in America, I am going to give back to America. This experience gave Nina firsthand knowledge of the legal system's power to change lives because it changed her own. It made her cherish America's legal system, where even noncitizens have their day in court, and it inspired her to pursue a career in law. She graduated from Washington University summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School and served as editor- in-chief of the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. After graduating, Nina worked as an associate at an international law firm and clerked in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Colorado recognized Nina's talents and hired her as an AUSA in the Civil Division, where she managed Federal cases ranging from employment discrimination to bankruptcy, to civil rights. Nina then went into the private sector, where, over the next decade, she rose from associate to partner at Faegre Drinker, a top firm in Denver. In 2015, Nina began serving as a magistrate judge for the U.S. district court in Colorado. Judge Wang now comes to the committee and this floor with 25 years of legal experience and exposure to virtually every issue that might come before the court. She also comes with a reputation for fairness and impartiality. Her colleagues tell me she doesn't grandstand. She takes the time to listen to every litigant, whether they have representation or not. She has remained committed to the American ideal that everyone deserves their day in court, just like her parents. And I, for one, am deeply grateful that she has devoted her talent to realizing that ideal in our legal system. Judge Wang is an exceptional nominee, with unimpeachable character, intellect, and experience. Our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee appreciated that about her. That is why they sent her to this floor with a strong bipartisan vote of 14 to 8. I enthusiastically endorse her nomination and urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to confirm this outstanding Colorado nominee for our district court. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET

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

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Madam President, I thank the senior Senator from Minnesota for her remarks and for what brings us to the floor today. This is the first time in American history that a fundamental constitutional right has been stripped away from the American people-- and especially American women--by the Supreme Court of the United States. In Dobbs, the U.S. Supreme Court demolished 50 years of precedent-- half a century of Democratic- and Republican-appointed Justices upholding a constitutional right to privacy that has now been obliterated by the U.S. Supreme Court, a fundamental right that has been upheld over and over again by Justices appointed, as I said, by Presidents of both sides of the aisle. Madam President, if you had said to me when I was in law school in the early nineties that this day would ever come, that the U.S. Supreme Court, using a radical--a radical--method of constitutional interpretation called originalism that was invented basically when I was in law school--if you had told me that there would be a President of the United States who would appoint a majority of the Supreme Court with that radical interpretation, I would never have believed it. I would never have believed it. And that is what happened because of the Justices Donald Trump put on the Supreme Court. I want people to hear me who are Republicans in this country and this Chamber. Look it up. I know it is called originalism, but it started in the 1980s and started in the 1990s. It is not the way our Constitution has been interpreted all these years. This is radical. It is not conservative. In no sense is this a conservative decision. And it has happened, and now Americans no longer have a constitutional right to privacy to make their own health and reproductive choices. I can tell you, I read every one of these opinions. In Justice Alito's opinion for the majority, he never even had the courage to grapple with the nature of this fundamental right, what stripping it away would mean for millions of Americans and especially millions of American women, like my three daughters. Instead, what he said was-- what he wrote was: If it wasn't a right in 1868, it is not a right today. That was the depth of his analysis--an opinion dripping with hostility and a cavalier attitude toward what he was stripping away from the American people. I know. I live in a State where there are people who hold very sincere beliefs on both sides of this question. This is a question that is hard for many Americans. That is why I have always believed the right place for this decision to be made is by a woman with her doctor, not by the State, not by a State saying that you have to carry your pregnancy to term without any regard for the individual circumstances that you might face. Instead, as a result of this Court's decision, State laws to ban abortion that are literally from the 1800s are coming back into being. Politicians are writing new State laws to force a woman to carry a pregnancy to term, as I said, without exception. Think about that. Even for women and children who have been raped, like that 10-year-old girl in Ohio who had to travel to Indiana for an abortion-- she is living in a State where they are talking about passing a personhood bill. Soldiers serving--and I have heard in my own State from women who have served in the Armed Forces who are worried about women who are serving in the Armed Forces today on U.S. military bases in States like Mississippi that have banned abortion. What is supposed to happen to them? What has happened to their right to privacy? Even if we paid for them to travel, everybody is going to know what is going on. Pregnant women could easily find themselves in America today in an emergency room with life-threatening complications--it happens literally every single day, every day--with doctors unable to help because somebody has to go and consult a lawyer. Doctors are afraid to prescribe medications for their patients or even have a conversation about their reproductive health for fear of prosecution. All over the country, there are elected leaders--so-called leaders-- politicians who are putting themselves between a woman and her right to choose. Nothing I am saying here is fantastic. Everything I am saying here is being talked about, contemplated, legislated in America today all across this country as a result of what the Supreme Court has done. A woman with cancer could learn she is pregnant--it happens every day, every day--and learn she can't get the treatment she needs for her cancer. This is literally crazy--it is literally crazy--but, as you have heard on the floor today, this isn't even crazy enough for some of these elected politicians around the country. Now they are threatening to use the law to prevent women, American citizens, from exercising their right to travel across State lines to access reproductive healthcare in the United States of America. It wasn't enough to strip women of this fundamental right and have the State force them to bring a pregnancy to term. That is not enough. Now they want to use the law to prevent her from traveling from one State to another in the United States of America. I see the pages sitting here today who are the age of my daughter-- one of them--who is 17 years old. I can't believe this is what we are handing over to the next generation of Americans. I can't believe it. I cannot believe it. This is despicable, especially coming from the same people who can never stop telling us how devoted they are to freedom and liberty. What a lie that is. What a lie that is. I am coming to the end. I know that my colleague from Oregon is next. But I just want to say one last thing. I am so grateful to live in a State like Colorado, a western purple State, where we have already codified a woman's right to an abortion, a woman's right to choose. We understand and we have always as a State understood that protecting a woman's personal liberty to make these decisions is fundamental to her freedom to participate in our society. If people from other States need to come to Colorado to access the care they need, Congress has the obligation to shield them from prosecution. We need to make sure that healthcare providers, no matter where they are--Colorado and other States--are safe from prosecution, to say nothing of the women themselves, to say nothing of teenage girls themselves. I can't believe we are even having this conversation on the floor of the U.S. Senate. I can't believe it. But that is the America we live in now because of this Supreme Court, because of this radical ideology they have perpetrated. That is why I strongly, strongly support this bill from my colleague from Nevada, Catherine Cortez Masto. On behalf of my three daughters, I want to thank her for her invaluable leadership on this issue. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, a few years ago, a police officer in Pueblo, CO, was kind enough to let me join him in a squad car for a few hours to get a sense of what his daily beat was like. It was in the middle of the night. It didn't take very long to appreciate that our country asks law enforcement to do a lot more than simply enforce the law. Washington has underinvested in the American people year after year after year in areas like housing, education, and mental health. It has left law enforcement to pick up the pieces. It has put them in a position wherein they are not only having to serve as law enforcement officers but also as social workers, as mental health professionals, and as responders for issues like homelessness or drug addiction, even though nobody has trained them for it necessarily. That result has been really tough for officers on the ground in Colorado and across the country. It strains their resources, adds to the workload, and accelerates burnout. It has also been hard for communities. It diverts law enforcement from violent crime, and it means we are forcing officers to address mental health issues and problems instead of dealing with the underlying issues that produce many 9-1-1 calls in the first place. I am sad to say that all of these underlying issues that everybody is familiar with have gotten worse during the pandemic. It is one reason there has been a spike in crime that started in 2020, before the current administration, and it has continued ever since. In 2020, murders rose nearly 30 percent. Aggravated assault was up 12 percent. Motor vehicle theft was up 12 percent. Again, this was in 2020, before the current administration, but, sadly, many of these trends have continued. In a survey of small businesses, 54 percent of American small businesses reported an increase in shoplifting last year. To deal with this rise in crime, we need to increase funding for the COPS Program, which I strongly support, so we can hire more officers and strengthen community police. I think we should pass a bill that I am introducing today, called the SMART Community Policing Act. The bill is based on 28 highly successful programs across Colorado, in places like Denver and Grand Junction. As I mentioned, you know, a lot of 9-1-1 calls involve lower risk situations that don't always require a police officer, but some combination of an EMT, a mental health specialist, or a social worker can get the job done, allowing law enforcement to focus on violent crime, but in most of the country, law enforcement has to answer every one of those 9-1-1 calls. The SMART Community Policing Act creates resources for law enforcement to partner with local organizations and service providers so they send the right responder depending on what the problem actually is. That lets law enforcement focus on violent crime and lets other responders with the right training deal with lower risk situations, like when someone is experiencing a mental health crisis or a severe drug withdrawal. These trained professionals can deescalate the situation. They can connect people with the right resources and do the comprehensive followup to keep them from requiring emergency services again and again and again. Grand Junction's Co-Responder Unit has answered over 3,200 calls since the program began in 2018. Denver's STAR Program has responded to almost 4,600 calls since 2020. I had a chance to hear about the STAR Program from Denver's police chief, Paul Pazen, 2 years ago. He told me about a mom who had called 9-1-1 because she was having a lot of trouble with her child. You don't need a police officer for that, so they sent responders from STAR, who deescalated the situation and saved law enforcement precious time. If you add it all up, those are thousands of hours that officers in Denver and Grand Junction and across Colorado could spend focusing on violent crime instead of on issues that other people might have greater expertise to deal with, people with the right training in nonviolent situations. It allows us to reduce the strain on the system. None of this is speculation. When Stanford University studied Denver's program, they found that in neighborhoods patrolled by STAR, reports of less serious crimes dropped by more than a third and that the program saved a lot of money, a ton of money. It cost about $150 when STAR responded to an offense compared to nearly $650 when the Denver PD responded on their own. I can appreciate what these savings would mean for a local police department. My colleagues may remember that before I was in the Senate, one of my jobs was serving as chief of staff to John Hickenlooper, who was then the mayor of Denver. I don't know what became of him, but he was a very good mayor for the city and county of Denver. In that job, I heard all the time from community leaders as to how they wished there were resources beyond law enforcement for situations that were better suited for a social worker or a mental health expert. I would have loved to have had the STAR Program when I was working for the city and county of Denver, and I would have loved it when I was the superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, where a lot of my job was working with the Denver Police Department to keep our schools safe and to reduce the ticketing of kids so they weren't cycling through the criminal justice system prematurely. All of this experience led me to write this bill, and I view this as one more area wherein Colorado offers a model for the country to take on the rise in crime in a smart and thoughtful way. Americans have a reasonable expectation--a reasonable expectation-- that Washington cares as much about their safety as they do, and they expect the people they send to Washington to actually come up with useful solutions. I think this bill meets that test. It responds to the needs of law enforcement and to the needs of communities. I don't know how anybody here could object to it. If you want to reduce violent crime, you should support this bill. If you want trained experts responding to nonviolent 9-1-1 calls instead of police officers, you should support this bill. If you want to save taxpayers money, you should support this bill. So I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will take a look at this proposal, and I gladly welcome their support.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, a few years ago, a police officer in Pueblo, CO, was kind enough to let me join him in a squad car for a few hours to get a sense of what his daily beat was like. It was in the middle of the night. It didn't take very long to appreciate that our country asks law enforcement to do a lot more than simply enforce the law. Washington has underinvested in the American people year after year after year in areas like housing, education, and mental health. It has left law enforcement to pick up the pieces. It has put them in a position wherein they are not only having to serve as law enforcement officers but also as social workers, as mental health professionals, and as responders for issues like homelessness or drug addiction, even though nobody has trained them for it necessarily. That result has been really tough for officers on the ground in Colorado and across the country. It strains their resources, adds to the workload, and accelerates burnout. It has also been hard for communities. It diverts law enforcement from violent crime, and it means we are forcing officers to address mental health issues and problems instead of dealing with the underlying issues that produce many 9-1-1 calls in the first place. I am sad to say that all of these underlying issues that everybody is familiar with have gotten worse during the pandemic. It is one reason there has been a spike in crime that started in 2020, before the current administration, and it has continued ever since. In 2020, murders rose nearly 30 percent. Aggravated assault was up 12 percent. Motor vehicle theft was up 12 percent. Again, this was in 2020, before the current administration, but, sadly, many of these trends have continued. In a survey of small businesses, 54 percent of American small businesses reported an increase in shoplifting last year. To deal with this rise in crime, we need to increase funding for the COPS Program, which I strongly support, so we can hire more officers and strengthen community police. I think we should pass a bill that I am introducing today, called the SMART Community Policing Act. The bill is based on 28 highly successful programs across Colorado, in places like Denver and Grand Junction. As I mentioned, you know, a lot of 9-1-1 calls involve lower risk situations that don't always require a police officer, but some combination of an EMT, a mental health specialist, or a social worker can get the job done, allowing law enforcement to focus on violent crime, but in most of the country, law enforcement has to answer every one of those 9-1-1 calls. The SMART Community Policing Act creates resources for law enforcement to partner with local organizations and service providers so they send the right responder depending on what the problem actually is. That lets law enforcement focus on violent crime and lets other responders with the right training deal with lower risk situations, like when someone is experiencing a mental health crisis or a severe drug withdrawal. These trained professionals can deescalate the situation. They can connect people with the right resources and do the comprehensive followup to keep them from requiring emergency services again and again and again. Grand Junction's Co-Responder Unit has answered over 3,200 calls since the program began in 2018. Denver's STAR Program has responded to almost 4,600 calls since 2020. I had a chance to hear about the STAR Program from Denver's police chief, Paul Pazen, 2 years ago. He told me about a mom who had called 9-1-1 because she was having a lot of trouble with her child. You don't need a police officer for that, so they sent responders from STAR, who deescalated the situation and saved law enforcement precious time. If you add it all up, those are thousands of hours that officers in Denver and Grand Junction and across Colorado could spend focusing on violent crime instead of on issues that other people might have greater expertise to deal with, people with the right training in nonviolent situations. It allows us to reduce the strain on the system. None of this is speculation. When Stanford University studied Denver's program, they found that in neighborhoods patrolled by STAR, reports of less serious crimes dropped by more than a third and that the program saved a lot of money, a ton of money. It cost about $150 when STAR responded to an offense compared to nearly $650 when the Denver PD responded on their own. I can appreciate what these savings would mean for a local police department. My colleagues may remember that before I was in the Senate, one of my jobs was serving as chief of staff to John Hickenlooper, who was then the mayor of Denver. I don't know what became of him, but he was a very good mayor for the city and county of Denver. In that job, I heard all the time from community leaders as to how they wished there were resources beyond law enforcement for situations that were better suited for a social worker or a mental health expert. I would have loved to have had the STAR Program when I was working for the city and county of Denver, and I would have loved it when I was the superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, where a lot of my job was working with the Denver Police Department to keep our schools safe and to reduce the ticketing of kids so they weren't cycling through the criminal justice system prematurely. All of this experience led me to write this bill, and I view this as one more area wherein Colorado offers a model for the country to take on the rise in crime in a smart and thoughtful way. Americans have a reasonable expectation--a reasonable expectation-- that Washington cares as much about their safety as they do, and they expect the people they send to Washington to actually come up with useful solutions. I think this bill meets that test. It responds to the needs of law enforcement and to the needs of communities. I don't know how anybody here could object to it. If you want to reduce violent crime, you should support this bill. If you want trained experts responding to nonviolent 9-1-1 calls instead of police officers, you should support this bill. If you want to save taxpayers money, you should support this bill. So I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will take a look at this proposal, and I gladly welcome their support.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, this morning, the Supreme Court weakened gun safety laws in America for the first time in over a decade. It gutted a century's-old law to make sure that people carrying concealed weapons actually needed them. The Court is taking us backward at a time when the American people are demanding that we do more, not less, to protect our communities. The shooting at Columbine High School happened the year before my oldest daughter was born. She is now 22 years old. We have raised three daughters, and their entire generation has grown up in the shadow of gun violence. Since Columbine, my State has endured one tragedy after another. In 2012, a gunman killed 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora. In 2019, a shooter injured eight students at a STEM high school in Highlands Ranch. Last March, a shooter killed 10 people at the King Soopers grocery store in Boulder. That was almost a year to the day, really, of the shootings in Buffalo, which took another 10 lives of people who had just gone to shop for their families. Two months after that grocery store shooting in Colorado, a gunman killed six people at a birthday party in Colorado Springs. Now, I remember back--it is hard because, over time, you lose track of things--in 2017, after a gunman in Las Vegas killed 58 Americans after shooting across the street from a hotel room. I came to work the following Monday, and I realized at about three-quarters of the way through the day that nobody had talked to me about the shooting. I don't know whether it was the shooting before that or the two or three or four before that when we became so desensitized that 58 people could be killed in Las Vegas, and it wasn't even mentioned the following Monday. We cannot allow this to become normal in this country, and the people of Colorado have refused for this to become normal in this country. It is not just mass shootings; it is the daily shootings that stalk our communities like the West Side of Chicago, where I have spent time with my friend Arne Duncan who, after being the Secretary of Education, has gone back to his hometown to try to keep young men from killing. They can't afford for us to continue to just move on and forget that it ever happened. Communities, once they have been savaged by something like the Aurora movie theater shooting or the Columbine shooting, never move on. The pages here are a little bit younger than my daughters are, but I can tell you that there is a whole generation of Americans that has grown up in this country savaged by gun violence and the prospect that it could happen to them when they go to school the next day or the next week. You can see it. You can see kids sitting on the couch, cringing, when they are watching the television reports, wondering whether that is going to be them or their classmates. They have carried a burden that no generation of Americans has ever had to carry. No generation of humans living in the industrialized world has had to carry this particular burden. Today, our kids are growing up with a reasonable fear that they could get shot in their schools or in their temples or in their churches. I didn't grow up in a country with more gun-related deaths than in virtually any country in the industrialized world. That was not the country I grew up in. I grew up in a country with a Second Amendment but not a country with more shootings than anyplace else in the industrialized world. Our attitude about this has changed. It is different from what our parents and grandparents believed, no matter what party they were in. After a shooting, I heard somebody on the radio--some well-known talk show host--say that this was just the price of freedom, that being victimized in a mass shooting or being worried that your family members could be killed in a mass shooting was just the price of freedom. That is not what freedom meant to America when I was growing up. Partly what freedom means is being free from the fear that you are going to get gunned down. That is a freedom, and we have denied that freedom to the next generation of Americans. What a shame that somebody would say something like that after a mass shooting. What a limited view of what freedom is. What a surrender that represents to our children and the victims of these crimes. In 2020, the leading cause of death for kids in America was guns-- guns--not car accidents, not drugs but guns. There was a study that looked at how many kids, ages 4 or younger, had been killed by guns across 29 industrialized countries. This was of kids 4 or younger in 29 industrialized countries. The United States accounted for 97 percent of the deaths. This country accounted for 97 percent of the deaths of kids who were 4 years old and under. What a disgrace. What an indictment. The entire rest of the industrialized world accounted for 3 percent. We accounted for 97 percent. We have nearly 200 times the rate of violent gun deaths as Japan or South Korea and nearly 100 times what they experience in the United Kingdom. I can tell you, speaking as a father, it is not because we love our children any less or because we are uniquely violent or that somehow we have got a mental health problem that other countries don't have or that we are mentally more unwell, which I hear some people say. It is because we have a U.S. Senate, year after year after year, that has been paralyzed by the National Rifle Association, by the NRA. We have a Senate that has allowed our kids to get shot in schools, in movie theaters, in grocery stores, and at concerts but has offered nothing but thoughts and prayers. We have a Senate that, until now, has failed to respond to the overwhelming demand of the American people to protect our communities. That is what I hear when I go home. I live in a Western State. As you will hear, we have been able to enact meaningful gun reforms in my State. If we can make progress in a Western State like Colorado, where people are demanding it--Democrats, Independents, Republicans, and most importantly, all of our children are demanding it--we can do it here. I have said it over and over and over again on this floor after we have had mass shooting after mass shooting across our country. Finally, for the first time in a decade, we have the chance to make progress. I want to thank my colleagues. I really do. I don't mean that in the usual way that people do when they come out here and say, you know, ``I thank my colleagues.'' I want to thank my colleagues Chris Murphy and John Cornyn for leading this really important bipartisan effort. I strongly support what they have put forward, which would strengthen background checks for young people buying firearms, so we are checking their mental health and juvenile records. It would help States strengthen their red flag laws, which would help keep guns out of the hands of people who are a threat to themselves or others. We passed a bill like that already in Colorado. It would make a historic investment in mental health and school security. I said a minute ago that sometimes you just hear people talking about how we have mental health, and I pointed out that we probably have got the same mental health that other countries in the world have, but that doesn't mean that it is not an issue. It is an issue. We are having an epidemic of mental health and behavioral health on the back end of this pandemic, especially among adolescents in this country and in the State of Colorado. There is $15 billion in this bill for mental health, and I am proud that that is in there. That is a historic investment, and it is both sides that are making it. We are going to close the boyfriend loophole, which allows abusive partners to buy a gun. We are going to crack down on straw purchases, where people illegally buy guns on behalf of someone else. That is a big problem we are going to address in this bill. Frankly, I don't know how anybody on this floor could object to any of those ideas. I don't know how anyone could go home and say they opposed investing in mental health or making sure they are not letting a troubled 18-year-old have access to an AR-15 or some other weapon. On that point, this can't be the end of our work. There is more for us to do. We should raise the age for buying a semiautomatic weapon from 18 to 21. We should pass universal background checks. In Colorado, after Columbine, we passed universal background checks. I have said it over and over again on this floor. Every year, somewhere around 3 percent of the people who try to buy a gun can't buy a gun in Colorado. Do you know why they can't buy a gun? Because they are convicted felons, because they are murderers, because they are domestic abusers. In the 10, 12 years that I have been coming down here talking about this, I have challenged people. I have said: Come tell me why Colorado is not safer with that law in place. There is nobody who has ever come here and said, ``Here is why you are not safer,'' because obviously we are safe. The country would be safer and Colorado would be safer if we pass background checks at the national level. We should close the gun show loophole. We should limit the size of magazines, which we also have done in my Western State of Colorado. We should ban bump stocks. People in Colorado and across the country overwhelmingly support these steps. But in the meantime, let's pass this bipartisan proposal. A few weekends ago--it was actually over the Memorial Day weekend--I had high school kids--not in the same place and not just one--literally coming up to me in tears out of desperation that we were not responding to what had happened in Texas and we hadn't done anything in this country about guns. I think we need to show them and the young people who are here today, the young people who are living all over America, that we aren't so broken that we can't respond to one more massacre of kids at a school. We need to show them when we have this opportunity to demonstrate that we are not going to fail again and that we can succeed in passing this bipartisan bill and that, after all these years, we can meet the American people's reasonable expectation to begin to protect our communities against gun violence that happens in the United States of America and only in the United States of America. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I have five 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:

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, following the remarks of Senator Portman.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I am grateful to be recognized, especially with the Presiding Officer in the Chair for the beginning of this talk, because I just wanted to come out here and mention that the last time I spoke on the floor, I spoke about the Department of Commerce's investigation on solar tariffs and the ways in which it was destroying Colorado's solar industry. And I am very pleased to report, because of the efforts of the Presiding Officer and others, that President Biden announced today that he is going to waive any solar tariffs from that investigation for 2 years. That is great news for Colorado and New Mexico. It will give Colorado solar companies the certainty they need to advance new projects, expand their businesses, and help us meet our climate goals. So I just want to say a word of gratitude to the Biden administration for listening and for making adjustments to what they were doing that I think are going to benefit American workers and American jobs.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session and be in a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. on Tuesday, June 7; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that upon the conclusion of morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the Wagner nomination postcloture; further, that all postcloture time on the Wagner nomination be considered expired at 11:30 a.m. and the Senate recess following the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3967 until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus meeting; further, that notwithstanding rule XXII, at 4 p.m., the Senate vote on confirmation of the Jacobs-Young, Wainstein, and Baker nominations as provided under the previous order; finally, that if any nominations are confirmed during Tuesday's session, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's actions.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I am here today to spend a few minutes on an issue that is profoundly important to Colorado and, I would say, to the Presiding Officer's State, as well, without being presumptuous, New Mexico, our neighbor to the south. In March, the Biden administration launched an investigation into whether China is evading solar tariffs. That may seem fine on its face, but, in reality, it has taken a sledge hammer to the solar industry in Colorado and all across the country. There are over 330 solar companies in my State. They have created nearly 7,000 jobs and driven close to $5 billion of investment. Our companies are leading the Nation. Last year, we nearly quadrupled our deployment of solar capacity compared to 2017, and before the Biden administration's investigation, we were projected to double or even triple that capacity. Washington should be lifting up Colorado's success as exactly the kind of progress we need to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, which we have to do. Instead, the Commerce Department's investigation is driving our solar industry out of business, because it could end with a massive expansion of tariffs that could drive up costs and cripple that sector. Worse, the administration has said they might even apply these tariffs retroactively. Think about that. If you are a solar company in Colorado, you are already dealing with supply chain delays, you are already dealing with labor issues, and you are already dealing with rising prices and continued uncertainty over the clean energy tax credit, because this place can't get its act together to pass legislation that can give certainty to American business. And now, on top of all of that, you face the prospect of your own government sending the price of your supplies through the roof when you need that least. Businesses can't make decisions with that kind of uncertainty. Investors hate that level of uncertainty. And these aren't talking points. This is the reality on the ground. In Colorado, the price of solar panels is already up 30 to 50 percent, and we know Colorado families are ultimately going to bear that cost, and that it is going to slow our energy transition. Many of our solar companies have begun hiring freezes. Some are considering major layoffs. Construction workers are losing hundreds of thousands of hours. Investors are pulling out of major projects. It has put hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs at risk, which is why I am here to ring this alarm. More than 90 percent of solar companies surveyed in Colorado report ``severe'' or ``devastating'' harms to their businesses from this investigation by the Commerce Department. In my State, we have major solar projects that are frozen in place, and if this continues, they may never move forward at all. A lot of these projects are in rural counties that are counting on the projects being built for jobs and tax revenue. This is the last thing they need from Washington. A 200-megawatt solar project in Pueblo was just canceled since the developer can't get the components they need. Another 150-megawatt project in northern Colorado has been delayed. A community solar developer told me they have canceled all of their new construction for the rest of the year. Utilities in my State, like United Power and Tri-State, are ready to support hundreds of megawatts in new projects, but our solar companies can't submit bids because they don't have the certainty to do it. One 80-megawatt project in Watkins is demobilized as they wait for solar panels. A project at Denver International Airport is indefinitely delayed, and I have heard story after story like this since this Commerce Department decision to have this investigation was made. If you add it all up, this investigation has put at least 870 megawatts of new solar capacity at risk in Colorado, and it has put more than 50 gigawatts at risk across the entire country. That is enough to power nearly 10 million homes. I cannot understand why the Biden administration is doing this. You can't say, on the one hand, we want to rapidly deploy clean energy and then use the other hand to stick a dagger in American solar. You can't say we are going to fight climate change and then punch American solar in the gut. Last year, electricity generation from coal increased--increased--in this country for the first time since 2014. And at the same time that is happening, now what we are going to say is that we are going to cut the deployment of solar panels by a third or by half, as a result of this? It is crazy. The administration should have viewed that alone--the fact that coal is up for the first time since 2014--they should have viewed that alone as a reason to increase our investments in clean energy, not pursue an investigation that is sabotaging one of the fastest growing sectors in Colorado and across the country. I also don't understand why the administration would do this at this time when we have to find a way to replace Russian oil because of what Putin has done in Ukraine, and we should be replacing that with our own oil production and with our reserves in this country. But you would think that supporting American solar would be on the top of the list as one of the best things we can do to diversify our energy and protect our security. Instead, the administration has paralyzed the industry with this investigation. It is a self-inflicted wound on America's clean energy leadership, our energy security, and our economy at the worst possible moment. I have said this before, and I will say it again. I deeply believe that we need to restore critical supply chains, not just for solar but for so many areas that are critical to our economy. I think the era where we told ourselves the story about why we were privileging people who wanted to make stuff as cheaply as possible in China instead of privileging other important things, like protecting our supply chains, like protecting our national security, like having an economy that, when it grows, grows for everybody, not just the people at the very top--we have an incredible opportunity to bring these supply chains home in order to do that. I think reshoring is an essential part of an economy, as I say, that works for everybody, not just those at the top, but that is going to take time, and we can't drive people out of business today when we don't have that supply chain in place. Until then, until we do have it in place, we can't cripple America's solar industry. That can't be our policy. That can't be the right answer. I am sure if the Biden administration understood the facts on the ground, it wouldn't be doing what it is doing. The least the administration could do is lift the uncertainty off the solar industry by coming out and saying: We are dropping this investigation. In fact, they should have said: We are going to boost American solar--that is what we should be doing--by extending the clean energy tax credits and giving businesses certainty over the long term. On top of that, what we should be doing is strengthening the credits. And then we are going to do everything we can to take every action that we can to clear the path for American solar deployment--wind and other types of clean energy--to accelerate our transition. That is what they should say. Unlike this investigation, that would be welcome news in Colorado and, I would say, almost everywhere across the country.