Mike Braun

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, this is one of the more enjoyable things of being a Senator, especially when I have some friends in from Southern Indiana up in the Gallery to see what we do here. I rise today to offer a resolution expressing support for the Pledge of Allegiance as an expression of patriotism and honoring the 245th anniversary of the introduction of our United States flag. Today we celebrate Flag Day, which was first established over 100 years ago by President Woodrow Wilson. As we pause to recognize all that our flag represents, let us also honor those who have sacrificed everything to defend it. In 2002, Senator Tom Daschle raised a similar resolution with unanimous support from the Senate. It passed on the floor uneventfully. Today, I ask this body to reaffirm our support for the Pledge of Allegiance. I also rise to honor a fellow Hoosier who knew the innate value of the Pledge of Allegiance to civic education. In 1969, Red Skelton, the American entertainer who was well-known for the program ``The Red Skelton Hour,'' wrote a speech on the importance of the pledge. Reflecting on his time in Vincennes, IN, he spoke about the values instilled by one of his high school teachers. After the performance of the speech, CBS received 200,000 requests for copies. The speech would go on to be sold as a single by Columbia Records and performed at the White House for President Nixon. I think it would honor Mr. Skelton's memory and the importance of the Pledge of Allegiance if it were recited today on the Senate floor in the words of Mr. Red Skelton. I have done this 2 prior years too. This should never get old for anyone here or the American public in general. When I was a small boy in Vincennes, [Indiana,] I heard, I think, one of the most outstanding speeches I ever heard in my life. I think it compares with the Sermon on the Mount, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and Socrates' Speech to the Students. We had just finished reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and he [Mr. Lasswell, the Principal of Vincennes High School] called us all together, and he says, ``Uh, boys and girls, I have been listening to you recite the Pledge of Allegiance all semester, and it seems that it has become monotonous to you. Or, could it be, you do not understand the meaning of each word? If I may, I would like to recite the pledge, and give you a definition of each word: I--Me, an individual; a committee of one. Pledge--Dedicate all of my worldly good to give without self-pity. Allegiance--My love and my devotion. To the Flag--Our standard. ``Old Glory''; a symbol of courage. And wherever she waves, there is respect, because your loyalty has given her a dignity that shouts ``Freedom is everybody's job.'' Of the United--That means we have all come together. States--Individual communities that have united into 48 great states Remember the time when they didn't. Forty-eight individual communities with pride and dignity and purpose; all divided by imaginary boundaries, yet united to a common cause, and that's love of country-- Of America. And to the Republic--a Republic: A sovereign state in which power is invested into the representatives chosen by the people to govern; [us] and the government is the people; and it's from the people to the leaders, not from the leaders to the people. For which it Stands. One Nation--Meaning ``so blessed by God.'' [Under God] Indivisible--Incapable of being divided. With Liberty--Which is freedom; the right of power for one to live his own life without fears, threats, or any sort of retaliation. And Justice--The principle and qualities of dealing fairly with others. For All--For All. That means, boys and girls, it's as much your country as it is mine. Afterward, Mr. Lasswell asked the students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance together, with newfound appreciation for the words. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands; one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Mr. Skelton concluded his speech by saying: Since I was a small boy, two states have been added to our country, and two words have been added to the Pledge of Allegiance: ``Under God.'' Wouldn't it be a pity if someone said, ``That is a prayer''--and that it be eliminated from our schools, too? Just as those students that day, Mr. Red Skelton included, recommitted to the meaning of the words of the Pledge of Allegiance, I call upon the U.S. Senate to recommit to these words as well. There are times today that the words of the Pledge of Allegiance are tossed around without care. Other times, they are altered to remove what today is deemed offensive or antiquated. But Americans should not misuse or abuse our Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance is meant to remind Americans of our guiding principles and inspire adherence to those ideas which make our country great: equality under the law, recognized rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is why today, on National Flag Day, I am requesting unanimous consent from my colleagues that my resolution expressing support for the Pledge of Allegiance is passed. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 671, submitted earlier today; further, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BRAUN. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration of S. 1081 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the Braun substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President.

Mr. BRAUN. Reserving the right to object, I come from the business world and know firsthand that employers care about their employees. If you don't keep your workplace safe--we just discussed it today in the Budget hearing--they are not going to stick with you. I think the question is about how you address those issues. I am married to a lifelong business owner in our hometown downtown that would say the same thing. None of us who own businesses think--unless you get very, maybe large, where you think you don't need to pay attention to basic common sense and the rules--you need something, I think, that addresses the issue from here. You know, I think that so often when there is an issue, there is just a tendency to reflex to the Federal Government. What is not considered are the costs and how it might actually play out. In this case, I do acknowledge the issue, but I think the bill is in search of maybe a problem in the sense that we have got a mechanism that already works. I will talk about that here in a moment. OSHA is there to find these issues and adjudicate them accordingly, and I think what this would do is not lend the marginal benefit and would end up, like many bills, adding redtape and costs. It has two budget points of order as well. Those are complicated. I just believe there are better options. Let me talk about this: I introduced the Voluntary Protection Program Act that has the same approach in mind, aiming at the same problem. I did it with my colleague from Colorado, Senator Bennet. It allows OSHA to work alongside employers and workers to encourage businesses without going through the redtape or the dictate of the Federal Government, and it has been successful. It is not like we are trying to reinvent the wheel. It makes businesses exempt from bureaucratic requirements as long as, in good faith, they are trying to address the underlying issues. Look at this. In its current form, it safeguards nearly 1 million workers, 700 local unions, and 2,200 worksites. VPP sites have shown injury and illness rates 50 percent lower than their industry averages. This is something that we should be incorporating across the system because it is working, and it is working with an enforcement Agency and businesses solving the problem before we give an overall framework from here down. It has been around for over 40 years, demonstrated its success. I think it would be a better approach to a problem. I acknowledge it is just not being used broadly enough. After all, it is kind of the way I think things should work first before you create a law. I will ask for consent here shortly to pass the VPP Act. Let me add one important note that is personal to many in this Chamber. The 116th Congress was my first as a U.S. Senator, as a freshman. I was assigned to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and I had the great honor to serve alongside Senator Mike Enzi, who was the chair of the Budget Committee. This was his bill. Senator Enzi was known as one of the individuals here never to shirk an issue but come up with commonsense ways that wouldn't add further to our debt, add more bureaucracy, but still solve the issue. This bill addresses a program that he cared about deeply that needs to be put into statute, to where it is used more broadly, and I was honored to take the lead on this act, along with Senator Bennet. My bill is a no-brainer. Employers get the choice to participate. It has a proven track record, and it makes workplaces safer. It is a win- win for all involved. Therefore, I do object.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Reserving the right to object. Mr. President, Senator Murphy indicates there should be no discussion, really, because this is such a slam dunk. I am coming up to talk about it. We do not do regular order. Our job is to be there for advice and consent on any nominee. We have tried to shortcut the process, not only on nominations, but even things as important as our budgets. We don't do anything anymore with discussion that gets out maybe the rest of the story. I believe that on any of these, rather than proceeding to the floor, you ought to at least have a discussion in committee. That didn't happen. There was a vote, but not a discussion. And when you look at this noncontroversial nominee, I think there are at least some things to think about. Harry Katz, a professor at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said Mr. Ramirez could be open to expanding the range of disputes that the Agency will consider. So kind of hinting at some political enterprise that you would be doing more than just interpreting. He is not alone. Wilma Liebman, a former NLRB chair under President Obama, has told media that Mr. Ramirez should be ``open to creative expansion of what the mediators do.'' We need public servants who are going to strictly interpret the law, and this looks like if we don't at least have a recorded vote, it could slip through when it is not maybe as uncontroversial as Senator Murphy might indicate. I have reservations about the nominee, mostly about the process, very indicative of the way that things work here in general, not only for nominations, but critical policy. I think that has got to change. Therefore, I do object.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, the majority leader referred to what we are doing this evening as ``awash with good news.'' Well, it is also awash with earmarks. They have not been around for over 10 years, and we are bringing them back. I am going to call up an amendment here in a bit that is going to talk about what to do about them, but I think you need to have a backdrop of what we are doing here this evening. I am on the Budget Committee, and we didn't report out a budget resolution, and I don't think we have done a budget consistently for over 10 years. This is the biggest business in the world that now is spending close to $5 trillion--only $1.5 trillion of it that is even subject to review because the one ingenious thing that we have done here is put most of our spending on autopilot. That is what drives the government currently, and that means that the Budget Committee is a useless appendage because we don't use it anymore. I got here a little over 3 years ago. We were $18 trillion in debt. Now we are over $30 trillion in debt, and everyone seems to shrug their shoulders. That is not a good business plan, for Americans to be borrowing money, even if it has good stuff in it, when it is for consumption. It will only end up in a hard reconciliation down the road. Now, let's talk about earmarks. It is kind of a gateway drug to more spending. There are 367 pages of earmarks. I just took a quick poll how much it weighs in paper--4 to 5 pounds. We haven't had them for over 10 years, and now they are back. In the House, they said they are OK with it. In the Senate, the other side of the aisle said they are OK with it. We said we are not OK with it in our Republican conference, but any Senator can do it anyway. Those are called gimmicks and loopholes, and that is the way the place works. None of us here are sure how much money is actually being devoted to these. It is a wasteful tool that was away for a long time, and it is on top of a budget that was never done, and what we are doing this evening was supposed to have been done by September 30 of last year. Too many people depend on this place to have a system that is run by the seat of its pants. You bring the earmarks back--well, there are supposed to be a few rules that go with them. You are supposed to make them public 2 days before you actually have to vote on them. Well, that didn't happen. The text was released at 1:30 a.m. yesterday--2,700 pages. The House passed it only after 20 hours of review. That is at the rate of about having to come up with finding out a billion dollars a minute of what is in it. Members are supposed to have a financial disclosure attached to any earmark. That hasn't happened either. It is just one of those simple details that seem to never get attended to in this place. Let's look at a few of the doozies. One earmark spends half a million dollars to promote health equity in Yonkers in New York. One spends $1.6 million for university research into equitable shellfish aquaculture. I don't know what that is, but it is in Rhode Island. One earmark spends $300,000 on the Alliance for Gun Responsibility Foundation, a leftwing lobbying group that claims that the Second Amendment has a history of being used as a tool of White supremacy. These are three samples of hundreds and hundreds of earmarks. It is not what the American public deserves. They expect more out of us. It should be a merit-based system on what we spend here. It should be going through regular order on the Budget Committee I am on, where you bring people in to testify. Do you actually need more money? What you did spend the year before, was it spent well? That is the way all other places in this country do it because it is the only thing that works. Here, the system has been so degraded, this is what we end up with. I will end with this: Most of my colleagues here, I think, view this place as a growth business, but a growth business is based on a few things. You generally make a profit. That is not what this is about. But you balance your budget, you do things that make sense year after year. And when you are spending money that constitutes almost 20 percent of our GDP, you would think you would put more into it than dropping 2,700 pages in our lap and thinking that you can get through it. For those who want more of this, for the sake of the institution, you ought to be concerned about what it is going to look like down the road when we add another $1.5 trillion in debt to our current $30 trillion, and there is no end in sight. A lot of stories have been written throughout history on where that ends up, and it is in the ditch. The Medicare trust fund will be completely exhausted in about 4\1/2\ years; 18 percent benefit cuts when that happens. Actuarially, we have known the Social Security fund is going to go broke in about 10 or 11 years. What will we do? We will probably wait until the year before it happens, not make any other reforms, and then borrow the money to backfill it and put more and more obligation on our kids and our grandkids. I am going to call up my amendment in a bit. I will yield the floor at this time.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, I call up my amendment, No. 4990, and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, this bill has 367 pages worth of earmarks, roughly 5 pounds of paper. Before it came to the Senate, dozens of House offices deleted their public disclosures. I think the swamp is rising again. Dr. Tom Coburn, he would be appalled by this. He called earmarks-- Madam President, I think it is clear that most aren't interested in talking about earmarks--something else. I believe they lead to waste and abuse. That is why Congress got rid of them 10 years ago. They should have never been allowed back. My amendment would cut every one of them from this bill that should have been run through regular process, through the Budget Committee, to where appropriators should have known what was in it until it landed in our laps last night. For anyone here that loves the institution, you ought to have enough common sense that $1.5 trillion deficits that are embedded in this bill aren't a good business plan for the institution. I ask you all here this evening: Make a statement--a symbolic one--to get rid of these earmarks.

Mr. BRAUN. And let's quit shoving all this debt onto the next generation and on our kids.

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

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Reserving the right to object, the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs works closely with congressional leaders and staff on a variety of issues, including legislative proposals, hearings, briefings, requests for information, and general topics. It is essential that the nominee is willing to work with both Democrats and Republicans in a bipartisan fashion. Elizabeth Watson is currently the executive director of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center--director of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center--hardly a springboard of bipartisanship. During the previous administration, Ms. Watson retweeted posts such as ``White supremacists don't belong in the White House,'' referring to President Trump. Her past actions have cast doubt on her ability to be impartial and her willingness to work in a bipartisan manner. My concerns with this nominee are not unique, and there are many other Members that have concerns as well. There should be a vote on this nominee. Therefore, I object.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I rise here today--we are going to be voting here later on. In a recent Monmouth poll in January, respondents were asked if they agreed with this statement: ``COVID is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives [and live with it].'' Seventy percent said they did agree with this, including half of all Democrats. We have been through 2 years where we have been from here to there on it--if an early believer, take it seriously. We didn't know what it was going to have in store for us, but I think we do now. So often you hear: Listen to the data; look at the science. Too often, it has kind of been the political science of it. Vaccinations and natural immunity mean that a large majority of our country is already protected. Hospitalizations, serious illness, and even death from COVID we can see are really going in the right direction, thank goodness. As therapeutics continue to improve, it is clear that most Americans are right--COVID is here to stay. It is endemic. We can't marinate in fear. We can't have lockdowns. We can't have one-size-fits-all for across the country. We have got to get on with our lives. President Biden recently extended the Federal state of emergency under the National Emergencies Act indefinitely. I would like to point out, he is not alone there in the sense that most of our Governors have done the same. I only think in Florida and in Iowa--I would say that I am guessing most citizens living in a lot of these places would like their Governors to do likewise. This state of emergency makes robust powers available to the President during a crisis. It includes forgiving student loans, imposing travel restrictions, capital investments in neighborhoods deemed to be disproportionately affected by COVID. When this emergency was first declared 2 years ago this week, it was needed. It was uncertain. It was gratifying to see that, in a bipartisan way, in March of 2020, we came together. But we have learned so much since then. Now, I think it has become a burden. I cite 3 weeks ago--it was in a classroom in Las Vegas. You ought to look it up. It was announced there--this is different, but it was a mandate. It was that you had to wear a mask in the classroom. The kids, I think, embodied what this whole process has been about and that we are at a different place. It looked like they won the State championship in something. We are there. Congress has a responsibility to vote on whether to approve these emergency declarations, as we will today. Every State and community is easing COVID restrictions, and many of them have eliminated them entirely. Ideally, you fight something like this with maybe general guidance from here, but you let government where it is closest to the people dictate how this stuff should happen and how long it should be there. It is past time for the President and Governors across the country to give up the extra powers granted to them under the COVID emergency declarations. If we are going to live with this virus and move forward as a country, we must end the national emergency authorization, and other Governors across the country should follow suit. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. I am here today to talk about vaccine mandates. Of course, I led the effort on the vaccine mandate that was preposterous when our administration said ``Either take a vaccine or lose your job,'' impacting down to 100 employees. Thank goodness the Supreme Court weighed in, citing that Congressional Review Act as one of the reasons it did it, taking that cue from here in Congress. But there still are mandates remaining, and it has to do with the Biden administration's pandemic policies that have just gone too far, and millions of workers are dealing with the consequences. You cannot make these arbitrary decisions, especially when it was clear we were coming to some type of resolution, some type of different dynamic with the COVID saga, and then drop these kinds of mandates upon any entity at the worst possible time. In this case, we are talking about the CMS vaccine mandate on healthcare workers--10 million of them affected. The very same frontline workers who have been heroes and served their fellow Americans during the pandemic were given a choice: your careers or a vaccine. With all of the logic that went into the Supreme Court's ruling on employers with employees down to 100, it should apply to healthcare entities as well. It is no surprise that you see healthcare workers leaving at the highest rate--leaving their profession--in over 20 years. It is worse in rural areas, like the State of Indiana, and that compounds other problems that rural places are contending with. It also fails to acknowledge evidence-based science that clearly tells us stuff now that we didn't know before, like natural infection has a much better defense against COVID and it has more durability. Common sense doesn't make any difference, and now we have got this. He has robbed these healthcare workers of the freedom to make their own choices and added to the challenges patients have had to access the healthcare system. Today, the Senate can overturn this mandate--another example of government in overdrive, getting into individual decisions it was never intended to. I urge my colleagues to correct this later today, and let's base this on science, not political science, which seems to drive so many of the decisions here. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

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

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, over the next couple hours, we are going to have another CR vote, and we are going to get some votes on amendments. When I came to the Senate 3 years ago, a little over that, one of my main goals--I always respected the Senator from Oklahoma, Dr. Tom Coburn. I first saw him when he was actually on one of the shows talking about the same subject that I harp on all the time. The difference is, by standards of indebtedness, we had no real worries other than he was one that could see into the future. I come from the world of running a business, was on a school board, State legislature. You couldn't get by with what we get by with here. You had a budgeting process. When I was a State legislator, you took it through committees. You brought in witnesses, you fleshed it out. Maybe you didn't need more money. Generally, even at the statehouse, they would ask for more. It wasn't necessarily the case. You did the hard work, rolling up your sleeves, which Hoosiers appreciated. Do you know what it has given us back in the State of Indiana? The highest credit rating you can have as a State. It has given us rainy day funds. When COVID came along, we could have gotten by without a dollar from the Federal Government. That is what happens when you live your everyday life with responsibility, just like every American has to, just like you have to do in any other level of government. Think about running a business. Imagine, up until the recent spending spree, we were only borrowing roughly 23 percent of every dollar that we spend here--and this isn't on tangible investments; this is on consumption. There is nothing to show for it. A lot of the things we do, a lot of the things that people look to us to do, we need; but we are doing a disservice to our kids and our grandkids--by the way, who we are actually borrowing the money from-- when we run the biggest business in the world by the seat of its pants. I am going to tell you just generally how this all plays out. In 4\1/ 2\ years, we are going to completely go through the Medicare trust fund. And by the way, healthcare expenses based upon a broken healthcare industry that is not transparent does not deliver the consumer good value, something that all of us that own businesses other than the healthcare business have to grapple with every year. They need to reform themselves, and that would bring Medicare and Medicaid into where it wasn't costing us so much. But still then, even if you save there, we probably would find a way to spend the savings. We are currently, basically the only reserve currency. That is what keeps our interest rates so low. Historically, they have been three to four times what they are now. And you cannot run now probably close to $1.5 trillion deficits on to the $30 trillion we are already in debt and think that is a good business plan for the biggest business in the world. So especially for the folks on the other side of the aisle, but I am going to say we have been complicit as Republicans. We roll over to give them what they want on domestic spending, and they do the same on defense spending, which I think is probably the most important thing we do. And all of a sudden, everybody is happy. It is called bipartisan, but it is not honest to the American public. So, here, we are going to do what we have been doing for years. We are going to vote on a CR later. But if we are ever going to get this place back in good shape, we have to have the political will and the discipline to get back to budgeting and not spend beyond our means because, some day, we may not be the reserve currency. And after we go through the Medicare trust fund, which will probably replenish by borrowing more money, Social Security depletes in about 11 years. I say that because nobody here talks about it, and it wouldn't be that difficult to solve. In the real world, you make the tough decisions, you get through it, and you are better off for it when you get that behind you. So I am going to leave it there this evening. I am going to ask all of my colleagues to please vote on a balanced budget amendment that makes it so easy that it just says your resolution that you bring up each year--you have got to do it, you have got to do it on time--has to balance the budget in 10 years. That even gives a lot more latitude than what I really thought was necessary, but I also want to make it to where every one of us can say yes to a balanced budget amendment like this because we owe it to our kids and our grandkids. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 4930 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. BRAUN. I came here 3 years ago with a mission to rein in debt and deficits. I think few of us actually care much about that here, in my observation. If we did, we wouldn't be passing our third short-term spending measure in 5 months. It should have been done last year. In a few weeks, we will pass an Omnibus bill that we will all say was bipartisan, and we will go on down the road. Meanwhile, inflation will be surging ahead--7 percent, 8 percent--the highest since 1982. The last time we voted on a balanced budget amendment was in 2011. By the way, both Democrats and Republicans supported it back then. I am proposing something very simple, very low-threshold. It creates a point of order against any budget resolution that doesn't reach a balanced budget in 10 years. That is so simple, everyone, including the Presiding Officer banging the gavel, ought to be for it for the sake of our kids and our grandkids.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, as ranking member of the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee, I rise today in support of the Senator from Tennessee's resolution to reopen the Capitol and the Senate office buildings. As he said, for nearly 2 years, we have not been operating from what I was used to for the short time I had been here prior to that. Governors across the country finally are beginning to do the same thing, even in places where they were almost in lockstep with the way we were doing things here. Today, you can only enter the Capitol Complex with an escort by a staff member. One of the things constituents from back in Indiana enjoyed most--the senior Senator from Indiana, Todd Young, started it before I got here--was the Hoosier Huddle. From 9 to 10 every Tuesday, every Wednesday, we had folks from all over our State coming into the Capitol so we could have that conversation on issues that were important. Now we do it by Zoom. The rest of the country is saying: Enough is enough; we want to get back to at least some of the ways that were in place prior to COVID. Now, Washington lobbyists are allowed in because of their close connections with congressional staff, but the American people don't have that same access, and that is just wrong. The legislative branch Agencies have continued to provide support to Congress throughout the pandemic. It is time that Congress reopens the Capitol to the American public, including Hoosiers from my home State. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President.

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, last year, I introduced a handful of bills that would help the IRS do its job better. One of those bills is called the IRS Customer Service Improvement Act. This bill simply says that IRS staffers cannot perform any union tasks during the tax season, which seems to make sense. It doesn't keep them from doing it through the rest of the year. It is just not during the busy tax season. According to the Treasury, in fiscal year 2019, 1,400 Treasury employees used over 350,000 hours of taxpayer-funded union time. It cost $17 million. Of course, that is kind of like chump change in this day and age. Back in Indiana, $17 million is a lot of money. It should be everywhere. Of these employees, 350 of the jobs were IRS customer service representatives and 204 were IRS agents. The American public deserves out of our Agencies, I think, service better than that. We can debate how much money the IRS needs to do its job, but we need commonsense policies like this to where we are not trying to restrict what already, to many, would seem unusual--that when you are on the dime, when you are being paid by the Federal Government, you maybe shouldn't be able to do union activities at the same time. Anyway, a lot of things don't make sense here. This will immediately add value to the American taxpayer. The IRS is warning Americans to prepare for delays and long hold times when filing their taxes this year. I would say that most folks would say that you need improvement. Here are a couple of other particulars: They received more than 100 million calls but only answer 1 out of 4. Calls averaged 18 minutes of hold time. In my own business, if you add 18 minutes of hold time, you just gave the order to one of your four or five competitors. None of us likes that. Face-to-face assistance declined from 4.4 million in fiscal 2016 to only 1 million in 2020. The IRS is now telling us to buckle up for service even to get worse. Let's use some common sense. Before you raise prices in a business or you ask your customers to even be more forbearing when you are delivering bad service, your competitors would take you out. Here, in the Federal Government, you don't have that kind of inherent competition, and, sadly, the public--American taxpayers--have to put up with it. And when your default position is always to spend more money, I know the American public is interested in something better than this. Sadly, for whatever we do that is above and beyond the ordinary, we were borrowing 23 cents of every dollar we spend here. Now it is up closer to 30 cents, and it is in the context that we are $30 trillion in debt to boot. This is something, what I am proposing here, since it doesn't eliminate your ability to do it, let's just take it out of the tax season. Madam President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. 2132, and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. BRAUN. Briefly, respecting what the Senator says about wealthy tax cheats, I agree with him 100 percent. Everybody should pay their fair share. But I guarantee you, there wasn't one wealthy tax cheat that was on hold for 18 minutes. They are not calling in. They hired a lawyer or somebody to do it. This is impacting Americans, mom-and-pop business owners, folks who just need to talk to someone. It is not a wealthy tax cheat who would have made 1 of 100 million calls. They don't do that. There is another way to go after that. All I am saying is, during the busiest time of the year, let's take the resources that we have got, whether they need to be enhanced or not, and let's let them focus on the job of answering the phone and not making a small taxpayer suffer. They are the ones wrestling with the IRS by numbers, not wealthy tax cheats. I yield the floor.

Mr. BRAUN

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, on January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court handed down their decision in Roe v. Wade, homogenizing an approach to abortion across the country. It is estimated that over 60 million lives have been lost to abortion since this decision. This resolution recognizes January 22, into the future, as the Day of Tears. It encourages Americans to lower their flags to halfstaff to mourn the lives lost to abortion. I am joined on this resolution by Senators Daines, Inhofe, Blackburn, Hagerty, Lankford, Hawley, and Rounds. Similar resolutions have passed in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, and West Virginia. Representative Jody Hice is leading a similar measure in the House. It has 51 cosponsors from 26 States. Two weeks ago, thousands of Americans joined the March for Life to stand up for the unborn. Later this year, the Supreme Court will issue a decision on a case which strikes at the heart of Roe v. Wade. Our current abortion guidelines, we only have five other countries that would be similar. Two of those countries are China and North Korea. What does that say about abortion in America? Minimally, the Court needs to return this to the States so that we don't have this policy put upon all of the States, at least half of which disagree with it. Whatever that decision may be, we must remember the millions of lives lost to the tragedy of abortion. Madam President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and that the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 494. I further ask that the resolution be agreed to, that the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, the Senator from Washington makes the point that this is Republicans. This is not Republicans. Of course, they are for doing what needs to be done, and that is returning this to the States, minimally, taking a decision that was out of context back in 1973, when it was made. And the opposite of the argument she made would be, Why should the Federal Government, based upon the judiciary ruling that was out of context, force this on the entirety of the country? When it comes to what it allows now--abortions late into a pregnancy--that is not supported by most of the country. So, minimally, this ought to be returned to the States to reflect the views of the different States in this country--50 of them. Over half disagree with it, and over half of our citizens would say that it makes more sense than what we have now. I yield the floor.