Maria Cantwell

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has adopted rules governing its procedures for the 117th Congress. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying rules for the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be printed in the Record.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to support the budget resolution and to underscore the need for us to keep moving forward on helping the American people during this pandemic. It is clear to me from the people of the Northwest that we have to do more to help them, whether it is vaccines, more PPE equipment, helping our small businesses continuing to move through this process. It means helping to also understand individuals most hard-hit by the pandemic and sectors of our economy most hard-hit. It means helping to put kids back into school. It means making sure that we fund the E-rate Program and do more on broadband. And it also means we have to avoid more layoffs, if possible, to help make sure Americans have jobs to pay the bills at home. I hope that we can find a bipartisan compromise and move forward on these. There are issues that we have been able to do in the past two COVID packages to get bipartisan support. I hope that our colleagues will continue to look for those paths, but we have to keep helping the American people within the Congress's jurisdiction. I know some of my colleagues from the committee are going to come out here and talk today. We have really focused on the issues of our transportation sector and how hard-hit our transportation sector has been. I know that people see today's headlines even about airlines that are issuing furlough notices as part of their requirement to do so. But when we have these furlough notices, basically, what you are doing is you are disrupting our transportation delivery system. People who end up getting furloughed end up having to set retraining and reestablish before they can go back to the sector. We want to keep our transportation sector moving because, obviously, the movement of goods and services of people is critical to delivering on the pandemic and to helping our economy not suffer even greater economic impact. We have seen how important the transportation sector is. We have seen even recently out in the West how our dockworkers, the ILWU and others, have suffered major infection rates of COVID, and this now starts to threaten our delivery of goods and products through those systems. We need to do more to get them vaccines and to make sure that we are moving Americans' products through our ports as well. I want to talk about the fact that the aviation sector represents 5 percent of our GDP. That is 11 million jobs and $1.6 trillion in economic activity. The aviation sector is important to us, overall, and continuing to maintain our competitiveness there and to grow the economy of the future is very critical. That is why we continue to work for and look for ways to keep the aviation system going during the pandemic and why we are continuing to move the support for airlines in this package. Congress has twice acted to provide critical relief to airline workers, pilots, mechanics, flight attendants, and we will continue to do so as part of this budget reconciliation. As I mentioned, avoiding furloughs keeps highly skilled pilots and crew members trained and ready to go as part of the transportation sector. As we have seen with this economy, we are now--I think the sector is back to almost 40 percent of where it was prior to the pandemic. Helping to preserve that commerce and trade has helped our economy and our U.S. airports, which also have been impacted by this and have had continued economic losses, and we want to help them with moving forward on this plan. We also want to work on a bipartisan basis to do more to help aviation manufacturing that has been greatly impacted by this. The aviation aerospace sector has lost so many jobs, and there are hundreds of thousands more at risk. I know my colleague from Kansas and my colleague from Virginia, Senators Moran and Warner, have been working on a proposal. We certainly want to continue to work on a bipartisan basis to make sure that as much of the aviation workforce can keep going, so as we return to the very competitive environment of aviation, we have a workforce that is skilled there to do it. We also have to do more to help Amtrak. The revenues of ridership dropped 97 percent compared to the 2019 ridership, and Amtrak has been forced to furlough over 2,000 employees. It has had to cut essential services on long-distance and State routes. Trust me. My colleagues from Montana, Senator Tester and Senator Daines, have brought these issues up. Without additional relief, essential services that connect rural communities will be cut further. I can tell you, in Montana, where people go to see Glacier National Park and the wonders of that great State, having this essential service is key. We don't want do more damage to the economy, as we continue to deal with the pandemic, by underinvesting in the infrastructure that has to keep operating to help our economy. So I am going to continue to work with our colleague Senator Wicker in his efforts on Amtrak and continue to move forward. Also, I know of the impact of transportation on the State budget that we have seen. In the State of Washington, for example, there is a whole list of projects that is now going to be delayed--projects that are not finished, are not done--just because of the loss of revenue from ridership and transportation. So our transportation infrastructure needs to be kept going, and the workforce that keeps it going needs to be supported. This is going to be a key aspect of the next budget reconciliation package and what we are going to work on. I hope our colleagues can understand how important this is to our economy and how important it is to the men and women who serve in the transportation sector. If I could just say, there are so many people in the transportation sector that just went and did their jobs. We have lost lives in aviation. We have lost lives in transit. We have lost lives with dockworkers. People have just showed up to continue to do their jobs, so we need to do better by passing this package and giving them support, more vaccines, more equipment, and more support in funding so we can keep Americans working in jobs but working safely. That is what this next package will be about. I yield to my colleagues who are going to talk about other priorities within this particular sector. I see my colleague from New Mexico on the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to support the nomination of Pete Buttigieg to be Secretary of Transportation. We all know the nominee as Mayor Pete--a man who basically came on to the national stage as a Midwest mayor who had lots of enthusiasm for making investments in America's future. So today we are considering his nomination to be Secretary of Transportation at a time when we need a lot of work done on transportation. In my opinion, he is a young, energetic mayor who is going to help us usher in a new era of transportation. That means there is going to be a lot of bipartisan dialogue about how we get there. But this job should not be underestimated in terms of the importance of the transportation sector and the investments for the future that we need. Our transportation system serves as a backbone of our economy, and when it is not doing well, the consequential impact of that affects our economy. It affects how our businesses compete in a global economy. It affects how people get to and from work, and it affects their home life as well. So it is a big job that we have, and I know that this mayor and future Secretary of Transportation understands how big this challenge is. We have underinvested in our infrastructure for decades. In the past 10 years alone, we have underfunded our infrastructure needs by $1.5 trillion. The American Society of Engineers estimates that we need to invest $5.6 trillion in our infrastructure over the next two decades, or the United States stands to lose about $10.3 trillion in GDP. I know this because my State knows this. I think the Presiding Officer knows this as well. If the transportation infrastructure doesn't work, goods and services don't get through your ports, they don't get to their destination, and businesses choose other vehicles or other avenues for the products to be delivered. America needs to be competitive. The American public also knows that poor infrastructure and the problems they see in their communities have to be addressed, whether that is concrete crumbling off of bridges, delayed trains, buses, congestion, railroads, or any of many issues. Just this week, a highway in California slid into the ocean, disrupting traffic along the famous Highway 1, and this could be a delay for months. I know, again, the Presiding Officer understands this as well as the State of Washington. Mother Nature doesn't always comply with our transportation needs. So while these investments and numbers may seem huge to people, it is what this investment will enable that we need to keep focused on. We need to focus on the fact that the United States makes and grows things, and we need to get them to their destinations. We need people be able to get to their places of employment. So we need someone at the Department of Transportation who is enthusiastic about taking on these challenges and helping President Biden administer a new era of transportation and the challenges that we face. Mayor Buttigieg--a Harvard graduate, Rhodes Scholar, former U.S. Reservist who I believe served in Afghanistan--also understands the challenges of smalltown mayors and the impacts that transportation systems can have. He knows the challenges we now face because of COVID- 19, that there is a new burden on our transportation system because of the impact of lost revenue. State departments of transportation estimate $50 billion in lost revenues over the next 5 years. Airports have lost $23 billion because of people no longer flying. Transit agencies will have lost an estimated $50 billion by the end of 2021. These losses will continue to compound until we find the best way to protect our transportation workers, our travelers, and to continue to help with personal protective equipment, testing, vaccines, and clear, health-based protocols to help return safety to our transportation system and to build public confidence. That is one of the reasons why we are fighting so hard for this next package of investments. President Biden took decisive action by mandating that people wear masks, which is a giant step forward in our transportation system. I think there is more we can do, and hopefully our colleagues can work together on that. The long-term revenue outlet for transportation also is changing, and so it will be a long time before its recovery. So I believe that Mayor Pete Buttigieg is the right choice for this job because he was mayor of South Bend. He dealt with infrastructure where the rubber meets the road--managing State, Federal, and local resources to help build infrastructure in his community. He also helped facilitate public-private partnerships to make the dollars go farther, an important model for future investments in transportation. One of those projects, the South Shore double-track project, whose full funding grant agreement was signed earlier this month, is like many other State and local projects. The South Shore double track demanded impressive coordination between Federal, State, and local governments to bring it to fruition. Mayor Buttigieg's Smart Streets Initiative also shows he knows how to operate and succeed in the current environment and will be able to help communities around the country replicate the success he had in South Bend. He won't be the first mayor to be the Secretary of Transportation, but I think we can say that when you have a mayor in that job, they are going to pay attention to local transportation infrastructure investments to help our communities continue to grow and be competitive. We have a major opportunity, I believe, to now deliver on the infrastructure needs of many of those communities. We should start immediately by talking about infrastructure packages and working on a transportation infrastructure plan for the 21st century because it is clear we have opportunities this year, with the surface transportation programs expiring in September. Communities everywhere are demanding that we help work on these important issues for their communities, but Mayor Buttigieg will also be called on to think about the new era of transportation and how we maintain ou competitiveness. He will have to think about issues of ensuring safety with new autonomous vehicle technologies and unmanned aircraft. He will have to promote stronger emission standards for automobiles, aviation, and the maritime industry. He will have to support the continued growth of electric vehicle infrastructure. He will have to make big investments in game-changing projects that will help us move freight more cost-effectively through our Nation. People will want to know and understand what our reliable passenger rail, transit systems, roads, and investments in bridges are going to be for the future. So all of this is a big challenge, but I know that this nominee is up to that challenge. He did well at the committee in making sure that people understood that he believes that those challenges need to be addressed in order for America to continue to move forward. From my perspective, just in the State of Washington, before COVID had really hit, we saw 78 hours per year of delayed traffic; that is, the average commuter spent 78 hours in delayed traffic. A recent study in my State estimated that Washingtonians lost more than $7.4 billion each year in lost time and wasted fuel due to congestion, deteriorated roads, and safety problems. As America starts to head back to the office, no one wants to spend time back in that world of congestion, and so we need to make critical investments. People in Puget Sound know that we need to fix the West Seattle Bridge. They know in Southwest Washington that the Columbia River needs a new bridge across I-5. In Eastern Washington, they know that we need a north-south corridor. In Everett, they know that the trestle needs replacement if goods from Eastern Washington are going to get to the Port of Everett and out the door. All of these things are investments, and with them come the structures of things like at-grade crossings, passenger rail systems, and safety that are huge, I believe, infrastructure investments that have not been quite appreciated. I was very pleased to get Mr. Buttigieg's commitment during our session with him that these things-- at-grade crossings, port competitiveness, and moving products safely-- should be a big priority for the future. The Lander Street project in Seattle, which was an investment of the new freight program, is just a few blocks, but literally, congestion for hours had stopped traffic from getting from I-5 to the Port of Seattle. The Lander Street project in a lot of ways represents what it really is: a bridge to the future, a bridge to get people moving where they need to go, and the right investment, being competitive for the future. We are going to face many more delays if America doesn't remain competitive. So I look forward to working with Mr. Buttigieg on all of these issues. He also, during the committee hearing process, committed that he will continue to work with Senator Wicker and me on important issues of aviation safety. He committed to us that he understood that aviation safety and the FAA need to continue to make reforms. I believe that if you want to be the leaders in aviation, you have to be the leaders in aviation safety. I think Mayor Buttigieg understands that will be a very big job of the Department of Transportation as well. I enthusiastically support this nominee. I look forward to the type of focus he can give to the Department of Transportation. This area of our government right now needs to address the COVID crisis. It needs to help us plan for a better transportation system of the future. It needs to understand that this transportation infrastructure and investment in these changes in these sectors--cars, planes, and passenger systems are all very dynamic, changing industries, and so our competitiveness will be at stake as well. So I encourage my colleagues to support this nominee. I am sure we will hear a lot of discussion from him and a lot of bipartisan effort to help get our transportation system fully funded. I yield the floor

Ms. CANTWELL. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Ms. CANTWELL

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

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor tonight to talk about many provisions that are currently moving their way through the House of Representatives and on our way to us. Obviously, our colleagues here are, I think, relieved that we have been able to give relief to the American people; that is, that we have been able to extend unemployment benefits and add bonuses to those unemployment benefits in the amount of 300 extra dollars per week, and we have been able to expand the COBRA tax credit programs to help people who have been unemployed and not been able to continue their insurance be able to continue health insurance. This is very important for laid-off workers in the State of Washington, like the aerospace workers. We are very glad that we were able to give a stimulus check of $600 per individual and $1,200 for married couples; that we were able to get the PPP program that helps small businesses so that they can continue to try to make ends meet as we continue to work our way through this pandemic; and that we have been able to give $9 billion to healthcare workers who are stretched so thin on these battle lines, who need every support that we can give them. I want to talk about the rental assistance. We are at a point where, if we didn't act tonight, if we didn't act before we left here, many more people were going to be without homes. It is so important for us to have these provisions and programs like SNAP, the additional money for broadband, for healthcare, and for other things that are essential in helping to communicate during this pandemic for both healthcare and for education. I also wanted to mention work that was done in tandem with this legislation, specifically on the affordable housing tax credit. The affordable housing tax credit was always important. Affordable housing was always important, but in a pandemic, in a COVID crisis, it becomes even more important. The affordable housing tax credit is something that Senator Young and I worked on with Senator Wyden and Senator Isakson, and we wanted to say that we needed to do more than what our current Tax Code could do in helping build more affordable housing. The affordable housing tax credit has provisions that have been in law since 1986, but, actually, using the tax credits and how they worked have been a fluctuating rate, so the consequence is that the historic rate of what people could get to use the tax credit has changed, and this legislation will put a floor of 4 percent in to give investors a bigger idea of what this investment can do for the market. We believe that it will add, in the State of Washington, more housing that is needed immediately, more housing that is needed on the national basis, and help us stabilize things in the near term so that we can work on affordable housing and how we can put more incentives for people to build affordable housing. People know affordable housing doesn't just get built. People don't just go out and say: I am going to build housing at this low rate. The tax credit is a tax credit that helps people do it by giving those borrowers the ability to work with the tax credit. But the American people have been greatly impacted by so many trends--baby boomers reaching retirement age, not being able to save, people being pushed out of the last economic crisis into a rate of unaffordability. It really has been a dramatic increase. According to the Hudson Institute, 60 percent of our affordable and low-cost housing was lost from the housing stock between 1985 and 2013. That is the housing that we had that was affordable. Basically, the time period ends, and they end up being swallowed up, like so many places in Puget Sound, into market-based rates. Literally, people are pushed out of their housing, and then there is no other affordable housing in the region. These tax credits can help us build more affordable housing for the long run. Over the next decade, nearly 500,000 low-income housing tax credit unions and 655 other subsidized units will reach the end of their affordability period. Just like I was saying, they are going to get to a point where they are no longer in a protection of affordable housing, and the consequence is that growth and demand are pushing us even higher. For example, seniors--10,000 baby boomers retire each day. That means that those low-income seniors, those woefully inadequate to pay for increasing housing costs, are going to be growing every single day and putting more demand on the system. For veterans, nearly 2.5 million older veteran households--almost a quarter of men and women who helped protect our country--are cost- burdened. That means they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. The lack of affordable housing in our country has been a longstanding crisis, but the COVID crisis has made it much worse. One in five renters is behind on their rent, and the eviction moratorium expires in less than 2 weeks. As I said, I am pleased that we are voting tonight, hopefully, on this legislation that includes a 1-month eviction moratorium and $25 billion for rental assistance and that we will continue to work on these issues. And I am glad that we are working on the passage of not just the low-income housing tax credit fix of a 4-percent floor but also that we will continue to work across the aisle on this legislation moving forward. At a minimum, the 4 percent could increase affordable housing production by at least 130,000 affordable homes over the next decade. That is critically important--130,000 more affordable homes over the next decade. It could generate and help us with job growth--162,000 jobs and about $18 billion in wages and impacts to the economy. Building more affordable housing helps us solve lots of problems. We have an increase in demand, as I just articulated, and a COVID crisis. Investing in affordable housing is very good for us in helping our economy grow and putting a roof over people's heads. I would also like to mention as part of the small business package, the Paycheck Protection package, a provision that was supported by so many of our colleagues to help make sure that we continue to get local news and information out to the public. People understand that local news has been threatened ever since the transition to an information age and has certainly been challenged by what I think are unfair practices by tech companies and the compensation for material and proper reimbursement on advertising. The issue for us is that COVID has created an environment where we absolutely need to get the news, and we absolutely need to get the local news. It is imperative that we do what we can in this legislation to help small newspapers, small broadcasters, small radio stations that didn't previously get helped in the last COVID package so they can continue to communicate important local news to people throughout the United States. I want to thank Senators Schumer, Cardin, and, obviously, I want to thank specifically Senator Boozman for working so hard on this legislation with me and introducing legislation. I want to thank Senators Klobuchar, Ernst, and many of our other colleagues who signed on to that legislation, as well as our House colleagues, Representatives Velazquez and Cicilline and Sensenbrenner, who also worked hard on getting this provision in, and Senators Rubio and McConnell for helping us in this process. These provisions are important to help make sure that large public institutions, like the University of Washington and others, continue to also get information out to the public. This news information and local information isn't going to go away with the help and support of this bill, but it may be a lifeline in helping us continue to make sure we have critical public health information available to the public at all times, and, hopefully, we will then go on to really understand what has happened to local news and information and do something in the future Congress to help fix the inequities that are existing today. If I could, I also just mention quickly the issue about broadband. This legislation that we are going to be voting on includes $7 billion for more broadband priorities, $1 billion for connectivity issues for Tribal country. I know, as the Presiding Officer knows, that Indian Country needs a lot of connectivity. So getting more broadband into those communities will be very helpful. The COVID package also contains money, additional funding, that I know Senator Wicker and others worked on for telehealth. Telehealth is a critical path during the COVID crisis to make sure communities have the ability to get expert advice into our homes, into our communities, to connect people with information. This telehealth grant is a very important program in the State of Washington. I think we probably got something like $8 million previously from telehealth, and this will help us continue. I am disappointed that we did not include priorities in here for the E-rate program to help close the homework gap. This is something Senator Markey and others worked on very hard, and it is very disappointing that we can't come to an agreement on something as important as E-rate. This legislation provides the ability for hotspots for people who may be going to college and not going to classes, but are in or around a university. I think that is a good idea, but we were prohibited from doing the same thing for students at the K-12 level. One thing the pandemic has shown us is that students are at home and need to be able to connect to stay connected to their education schedule, to do their homework, and to be part of the education system. I hope that we will address this inequity in the bill in the future. I am pleased that, working with Senator Wicker, we were able include language that gives the Federal Trade Commission new authority to seek civil penalties for scams and deceptive practices related to the COVID pandemic. You probably think this is already something that was on the books, but in reality, the way the Federal Trade Commission has operated, they had to give a warning first, almost like a cease and desist. The next thing you know, the same practice would pop up over here, with somebody making a claim about how safe their product was or how this would stop COVID or something of that nature. In my home State alone, the FTC reports that consumers have been scammed out of nearly $5 million since the pandemic and the number is over $200 million nationwide. These scams can range in everything from straightforward identity theft to making all sorts of accusations on people during the quarantine period. I want to thank Senator Wicker for working with us on this important legislation. Now the FTC will be able to go after and find these people on first- time offenses. I think this is so important to do to make sure that we are policing an environment where public health is so important. I also want to thank Representative Schakowsky for leading this effort on the other side of the Capitol. I also want to talk about very important aviation legislation that we were able to include as part of the larger omnibus package that is moving through the House, as I said, tonight. It is so important that we make safety a No. 1 priority in the United States. If we want to be No. 1 in aviation, we have to be No. 1 in aviation safety. Chairman Wicker and I worked with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to produce important legislation that improves the safety reforms needed at the FAA--the safety reforms of oversight of manufacturing and the certification process, and reforms that will help us here in Congress better stay on top of the information as far as the certification process. This is so critical after the crash of the Lion Air 610 and Ethiopian Flight 302, both involving Boeing 737 Max aircrafts and the loss of 346 lives. I can never say how painful this incident has been for those families. I can never say how much they have suffered in this horrific tragedy that has befallen them, but I know that these reforms are what are needed, and their help and support in passing this legislation has been critical. I want to thank all of the families who helped us in communicating why the safety reforms are important, but I want to thank, particularly, Michael Stumo and his wife, Nadia Milleron, who lost their daughter Samya Stumo in the Ethiopian air crash, and to let them know that, even though we are putting a big down payment on safety reforms in the U.S. Congress by passing this legislation, this process does not stop with the passage of this legislation. We need to continue to do more to improve aviation safety and to continue to act, even on a global basis, to be leaders--the United States leading the way on what aviation safety needs to be. I also want to thank our staff: Doug Anderson, Ronce Almond, David Martin, Laurence Wildgoose, Jonathan Hale, Melissa Porter, and David Strickland for their work. And on the other side of the aisle: Mike Reynolds, James Mazol, Simone Perez, MaryAsa England, and John Keyes. Many Members participated in the formation of this legislation. I want to thank Senator Duckworth for her work with us on the NTSB recommendations and flight deck alert system, which were part of this package of bills to reform the FAA and the FAA process. I want to thank Senator Moran for his focus on helping us build those standards that we are talking about as far as the FAA going to ICAO and saying: These are the continued standards for improvement in aviation safety. I want to thank Senator Blunt for his leadership on the Air Grants Program, a very important program that we think will help build up the expertise and knowledge of very, very technical subject certification for people here throughout the process of oversight and legislating and the executive branch. I want to thank Senators Cruz and Blumenthal for working on such critical elements in the legislation as to how the certification process itself works and what we needed to do to continue to bolster it. Tonight, we are sitting one step closer to reforms that really will be meaningful. It will return the FAA to being in charge of what are the oversight members of manufacturers who are doing the work of the certification process. It is clear that the individuals who are part of this unit report to the FAA. They are supervised by the FAA. You can no longer have incentives at the FAA for expediting work. You, basically, now have a new whistleblower protection, thanks to my colleague Senator Wicker and his incredible work on this legislation. You have better accountability on misconduct. You create new safety reporting standards for the FAA employees. We repeal authorities that would permit a certification by industry. That industry could continue to make recommendations about the certification process is something, in specific provisions, that are repealed here. We also prohibit interference with FAA designees. That is, no one can try to influence a manager or someone directly involved in the certification of the process. We also tried to make sure the process itself worked better. And, again, many of my colleagues played critical roles in this. On required safety system analysis on any plane coming through the process--whether it was new or a derivative--you still have to do a safety system analysis. You have to have regulations that are the most up-to-date as it relates to making sure you comply, as we said in this legislation, with the NTSB recommendations on flight crew alert systems and to mandate a safety management system for manufacturers. This is something that is long overdue. And in some instances, people said: Oh, the OMB and executive branch don't think we need to do these things. Oh, these things are cost prohibitive. These are regulations we don't need to put in place. Trust me, having a safety management system is essential, and we should make sure that this is in place as this legislation requires within the next few years. This legislation also requires disclosure of safety critical information. This was something, as I said, our colleagues, Senators Blumenthal and Cruz and many others, worked on as part of this legislation. It also provides expert teams of panels. At the beginning of any kind of certification process, the FAA will be assisted by the best experts in aviation, whether they come from NASA or the Air Force or outside individuals who understand the latest and greatest technology. Why do we have that? Because we know that we are in an era of unbelievable technological change in which now the human interface with technology is so critical. Whether you are going to be in driverless cars or whether you are in Amtrak with positive train control or you are in the flight deck of an airplane and the software that is working with it, we need to understand how people are going to respond to human factors. We all get frustrated with our own computers and our own software, but we need to put safety first when it comes to a pilot interacting with that software in the cockpit of an airplane. It also helps us make sure that the process for the certification appeals are strengthened and that we tighten the process. We need to listen to the engineers on the ground. The engineers are telling us what we need to do, and we need to listen to them. I hope that the leaders, both within manufacturing and the FAA, will do that. As I mentioned, this legislation establishes a National Air Grant Program. Some of you can think of it here on Capitol Hill as similar to the Sea Grant Program, a program that was long-established to give us technical expertise on OSHA and maritime issues here in Congress. We want the same thing for aviation to exist. It is too important of a sector and safety is too important to not have a technical skill set here that can stay on top and replace individuals as retirements happen throughout the aviation system. It requires disclosures to Congress of post-crash assessments. If the FAA goes and investigates a crash, you have to notify Congress of that information. Why? We want to stay more on top of that information. It requires an identification of safety trends. I have no doubt that we are going to hear--when it comes back as these annual reports for the next several years--that this issue of human interaction in a technology cockpit is going to continue to be the largest safety trend issue, just as it is going to be in the automotive area and just as it is going to be in transportation. Those are just some of the highlights of a very comprehensive safety reform legislation. I want to thank my colleague Senator Wicker for his help, his leadership, his most recent report on whistleblower activity, and helping us get this legislation over the goal line. I also, as I said, want to thank, again, those families. Our hearts and sympathies are still every day with you as you continue to face moving forward. We are not going to forget. We are going to continue to put safety as the biggest priority for us here in the U.S. Congress and continue to move forward on a process that puts the individual engineers on the line responsible for safety to make sure everyone continues to listen to their directives and their recommendations. I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, if I can just congratulate my colleague from Alaska and the ranking member, Senator Manchin, for their great work of getting these energy provisions that have been--I don't know how many Members, but I am sure just about every Member in our body has had something to do with it and a lot of actual individual legislation. So this was a long effort by our colleague, the chair of the committee, and I thank her for her diligence on this. She has had many of us up to Alaska to look at hydropower and alternative resources and how their grid needs better connectivity and products that can withstand and provide energy in subzero weather and all sorts of challenges that they face. But, clearly, these tools that will be in this legislation will move us forward. So thank you and thanks to Senator Manchin for working so diligently to get this finally over the goal line. It is a big moment. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute on the next vote and the nomination to be FCC IG.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, the FCC is one of the most important independent agencies that we are counting on for the future of the information age. When you think about the fact that they regulate interstate commerce, radio, television, wire, and satellite in all 50 States, it is imperative--imperative--that we have someone as the IG who understands these policies. I believe the next era of telecom is going to usher in 5G. I do think we are going to solve our rural IT problems. I do think we are going to connect schools. But if we have an IG who does not understand communication policy, has no experience in communication policy, has never had a role in that, I say we won't accomplish the mission of oversight or the mission, ultimately, at the FCC. It is clear we don't all agree. It is clear we don't all agree. You got a nominee last week; I didn't spend all my time talking about why we opposed them. There was no debate. But when it comes to an IG, we have to get on the same page. We need an IG we can believe in. So I ask my colleagues to turn down this nomination and get us someone who has a depth of experience we all can believe in.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. I would be delighted to yield to the senior Senator from Maryland and his colleague, Senator Van Hollen.

Ms. CANTWELL. The Senator from Maryland is correct. The Commerce Committee has no intention of trying to pressure NASA to establish a university affiliated research center unless NASA leadership identifies a technical need for a mission requirement that the agency cannot satisfy through the standard competitive processes. In addition, the intended results of the reports called for in sections 818 and 819 should not be viewed as seeking to avoid either peer review by the National Academy of Sciences or very broad consultation with the scientific and aerospace communities.

Ms. CANTWELL. The Senator has my assurance to work to accommodate his concerns and those of his colleague from Maryland before we proceed on any comparable legislation in the 117th Congress

Ms. CANTWELL

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

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I come to the floor today to urge my colleagues to vote against the nomination of Nathan Simington to be a member of the Federal Communications Commission. We definitely want the FCC to focus on commonsense consumer protections, universal broadband, and the survival of our news and local journalism industry as it faces unbelievable and unfair competition and practices by the tech sector, and we also want to make sure that the next President of the United States also gets to choose their member and representation to the FCC. The Senate has a tradition of confirming Commission nominees in pairs to ensure equality on both sides of the aisle. I think moving this nominee without that democratic paring is contrary to what we have usually operated under in good governance. Every Member of this body should be concerned about setting a precedent and what it will mean in the future if we don't have essential consumer protections and oversight in this important institution. We need high-quality, affordable broadband for the underserved and the unserved. That includes Tribal country. We need to make sure that we are working hard as a result of the pandemic and for people to understand that broadband is now essential to our healthcare, to being able to work, and certainly to the education of our children. According to the AP, 16 percent of families with children have no access to broadband, and we need to make sure that all students have the tools for distance learning. We need to make sure that Washingtonians have access to broadband for healthcare centers and clinics and to make sure that their initial contacts can be done online, just to help us in fighting the pandemic. Especially, we need to preserve a free and open internet that is not divided into haves and have-nots. The innovation economy is so important to my State, but it is important to the entire United States, and we need to have nominees who will fight for these policies, to get them implemented. That is why it is important that we look at FCC Commissioners. Mr. Simington was before our Commerce Committee. We had another nominee whom the White House abruptly, unexpectedly pulled from its renomination--Commissioner O'Rielly--just days after the committee reported that nomination to the Senate, allegedly because he spoke his mind and because he did not agree with the President of the United States. Mr. Simington was nominated instead just a few weeks later, coming from NTIA, which asks the FCC to issue rules. It raises questions in my mind about the White House's choice in Mr. Simington, particularly given these issues as it relates to the FCC and key responsibilities. I have questions about his neutrality and independence on issues before the Commission and about whether he aggressively and actively sought the media attention to personally and explicitly direct pressure onto the FCC. This involvement might sound insignificant or just partisan to some, but it is so important for the FCC to continue to play an important and independent role from the President of the United States. So I hope we will not pass the Simington nomination. But I am emphasizing to my colleagues that the President will deserve his nominee as well, and I hope our colleagues will move quickly to confirm them once they are nominated.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor, too, to thank the Senator from Tennessee for his service to our Nation and for his work here in the U.S. Senate. Some of my colleagues have already mentioned the brevity of words with which Senator Alexander can deliver a message. I, too, remember his comments as a Rules Committee member, on the inaugural address, and really capturing the moment of why a transition of power is so important to our Nation. And it struck me that we really had a poet or a writer among us, someone who could sense and feel the moment of what we were going through and express it in words. So I have no doubt that some writing is in Lamar's future here, and I look forward to seeing that. But I wanted to rise today to thank him for his service and what it has meant to my State and to our Nation. My colleague from Washington talked about their work together on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. I, too, want to thank you for the CARES Act, and I remember your recognition on FOX News about stem cell research and the great work that that has led to. So we are appreciative of those research dollars, but I want to focus on a role that maybe has not gotten as much attention--the historic role you have played on our energy budget and our National Laboratory budget. I so appreciate the background of your State and the background of focus on energy funding, from the National Laboratory perspective, which has had to have a constant flow and constantly it has been challenged. Yet it has put every step forward because of the level of investment in helping us make our Nation more secure, create more innovation, and create more jobs. So thank you for holding steadfast on the National Laboratory budget. I also want to thank you for your work on the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, which we worked together on, which, both, commemorated the history of our Nation and our Manhattan Project at, both, Oak Ridge and at Richland, WA, and Hanford, and to just thank you for the constant focus on the cleanup budget that we have had to have in the Energy Department, as it related to Hanford. There was a time when we had many cleanup projects around the Nation, and it was very easy to come together and say that we had to get Savannah River, we had to get Oak Ridge, we had to get Colorado, we had to get Idaho, and we had to get Hanford. But as those projects made progress, a lot of people forgot about what it took to clean up Hanford. So I appreciate your constant focus on helping us to get the dollars necessary for cleanup at Hanford. I also appreciate, recently, your help on making sure that people didn't overstep on the National Nuclear Security Administration and turn that over to a Defense oversight of people but kept it within the Department of Energy. I so appreciate that. But I will be forever grateful for your focus on public lands. We have a saying in my State: Environmentalists make great ancestors. So I don't know if you want that environmentalist term associated with your name, but I am pretty sure you do want the stewardship. And the man from the Great Smoky Mountains helped us deliver a monumental piece of legislation by convincing the President of the United States to support the budgetary impact of combining both the national parks enhancement program, which is basically taking care of the national parks backlog, which was in the billions of dollars, and also fully funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a battle that had been going on for more than a decade. So I want to thank you for that, Lamar. I want to thank you on behalf of the Washingtonians who will go to so many special places, who will get to visit and commune with their families, who will be able to have outdoor experiences, who will be able to really understand the grandeur of Mother Earth. So thank you for pulling off what seemed to be like an impossible effort to convince people to make that level of investment. We are going to miss the harmony of your voice and the harmony of your legislative skills, but we are not going to say permanently good- bye to you because we hope that you will be sending us messages just like the one you sent today and reminding us that we can do better. So thank you, Lamar, for your contribution, in a lot of your life, to these very important issues that affect so many of us. Thank you

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor to defend a woman's right to choose. I am beyond frustrated that this debate is even happening tonight. According to statistics from the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, there are over 433,000 victims of rape and sexual assault on average each year in the United States of America. They have found that every 73 seconds an American is sexually assaulted. When someone wants to chip away at the rights of American women to have access to healthcare, my State is going to take it personally. My State has codified Roe v. Wade into law. They have fought for these rights in a vote by the people of our State in the 1990s. So with a process today that is unfolding here in the Senate where someone wants to roll back those rights and propose a different way of life in the United States of America, we women are going to fight back. The truth is, the majority of Americans support a woman's right to choose. The majority of States support a woman's right to choose, in what their public believes. It is a minority and a minority on this floor who does not support that and would love to have a judicial process that shortcuts active debate about the issues that are in the mainstream views of Americans. These statistics and these issues are almost 50 years of law about a healthcare delivery system that allows a woman to make this choice. It is from those statistics I just read you. There are darn good reasons they want to make those choices. The fact that people have been out here characterizing this debate and going back in history and talking about all of these things that have happened to previous judicial nominees--yes. Yes, there has been a lot of back-and-forth. But the main point is, the other side of the aisle wants to nominate people who are out of the mainstream view of America. Any of my colleagues who came here and tried to argue that Judge Barrett and her views are in the mainstream, I guarantee you, the judiciary process that we had with the Senate Judiciary Committee definitely did not prove that. In fact, the President's words and the actions of this body in nominating people whose views are out of the mainstream--because this is 50 years of settled law, and you are trying to override it by putting somebody on the Supreme Court who will say otherwise. Adding insult to injury to this whole process is the fact that we are not really doing our day job. We are not dealing with the economic crisis that is facing America. I am a little tired of that too. I am a little tired of every time we have a debate about our economy--whether it was the fiscal cliff or the big budget deal or last year's budget deal or any budget deal--we never can deal with our economy because the other side of the aisle wants an amendment to take away a woman's right to choose and limit it. I couldn't even get language in the last COVID package to get Boeing workers more training programs because the Republicans were so concerned that the definition of a new healthcare proposal had to have a Hyde amendment attached to it because otherwise they couldn't support it because it is so Richter scale on our side of the aisle. I will give my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--there are about 10 States that basically have a population that only 40 percent or maybe even less support a woman's right to choose. I get it. That is a hard State to come and represent here if the courts have already determined that this is settled law. It might be hard for you. But the majority of Americans and the majority of the States and the courts have already decided this. Yes, you are going to continue to pursue judicial nominees who are out of the mainstream of the American people, and you are doing so instead of your day job--focusing on the economy of the United States during a COVID pandemic. It wasn't surprising that this summer, as we were on recess, the Seattle Times said: What is happening? Wall Street is flourishing, but Main Street is struggling. Basically, they raised a question while everyone was at home: What are we going to come do about the economic situation? We know we have had tremendous loss. Forty percent of restaurants are at risk of remaining closed and remaining closed permanently. We know that one in five small businesses could be closed by 2021--a devastating impact to our economy--and we know that 25 percent of those businesses need additional resources to survive. All of those things were known, and they were known all summer long, and nobody wanted to discuss them because the other side didn't want to get serious about a robust package. The package they put on the floor so they could go home and say a week before the election ``Here is what we tried to vote on'' did not take care of small businesses that got left out. It certainly didn't talk about the minority businesses that needed access to capital. The last bill did a decent job of helping businesses that had a connection to a banker, but if you didn't have a connection to a banker, you didn't get as much help. We should have sat down and fixed this. We should have sat down and made sure that we were fixing what needed to be fixed to help our economy in the midst of a COVID pandemic, but, no, true to form to the other side of the aisle, it is way more important to go after a woman's right to choose. That is way more important than these economic issues I am going to tell you that we are not going to lower our voices on the importance of our economy or how important it is to help women. We are not going to sit silently and talk about a minimal economic package to help American businesses. We are going to talk about what American businesses need, and we are going to talk about how we can help protect a woman's right to choose. The nominee before us--I have listened to many speeches today. She has tremendous intellect. She does have tremendous intellect. Apparently, that is a strong suit of the President of the United States. He has strong intellect. Yet I have seen the most major assault on the rule of law by anybody in an administration in my time in the U.S. Senate--throwing out fact-based decisions, not guaranteeing due process, not making sure that we have freedom of the press, corrupt government officials whom they won't even get rid of, not supporting civil rights that should be enforced at the Federal level. It is not an issue to be left to the States. The Attorney General of the United States and the Members of this body should enforce the civil liberties of Americans. It is not an issue to ignore, and you certainly don't call out the military when they want to express their opinion and concern about this issue. The President of the United States has a long record. He has great intellect, but he has run over the rule of law, and he has set a precedent for other people in his administration also not to follow the rule of law. What I find so challenging about Judge Barrett's record and the issues before us is that women's issues and these issues that we face that are so important for us to get done are about a woman's access to healthcare. I can't even imagine going back to Griswold v. Connecticut--a time when we had to fight just to have contraception. That is what the privacy rights were all about. It was about a Court that decided and found in our Constitution that in multiple places, there are a penumbra of rights that give a privacy right to a woman to control her own body. Those privacy rights are about my constitutional rights. They are about what is guaranteed to me in the Constitution. It is about our finding out whether a nominee is going to hold them up, particularly at a time when we have had almost 50 years of laws that have protected those rights. People want to have a rushed 30-day session--beginning to end--speed- court nominating in the Mansfield Room instead of hearing from groups and organizations about their concerns on this nominee. That is just not good for our overall system, it is not good for the issues that we face moving forward, and it is certainly not good for women in the United States of America. I do not appreciate the rush to confirm Judge Barrett. Given my State--yes, my State codifying Roe v. Wade into statute in 1990 makes me a pretty active person who wants to see a judiciary that upholds that. I want to see and understand where this nominee is. But anyone who comes to the floor and says that she is in the mainstream views Americans when we know what her views have been in opposition to Roe v. Wade and, as I said, having Griswold v. Connecticut be a correctly decided decision--even Justices Thomas, Alito, and Roberts have said it was correctly decided. Judge Barrett is out of the mainstream by not saying that. She has been critical of the Affordable Care Act and its issues that we want so much to cover preexisting conditions. She refused to say whether Medicare and Social Security were constitutional; this issue of same-sex marriage, where two in three Americans support this; and refusing to say whether she thinks the Lawrence v. Texas decision, which struck down a law criminalizing consensual gay sex, was correctly decided. These are issues about whether we are going to move forward as a nation with laws that people have come to expect and that they planned their lives around. There are healthcare institutions all across the United States--even in States that don't fully support a woman's right to choose--that are delivering healthcare to women, and we are going to start down a process of taking those away? Then there are some people who represent, on the other side of the aisle, States that are at 50 percent or 60 percent in support of a woman's right to choose. They are going to rationalize in their head that, oh, well, somehow I don't know where exactly Judge Barrett is going to be on these issues, or, I didn't get a confirmation that she truly believes that they are settled law, and I believe in the penumbra of rights in the Constitution. When you say you believe in the penumbra of rights in the Constitution, you are saying you believe in my constitutional right to privacy. You say you believe that I have the right to make my own healthcare decisions. With a few days before the election and a Supreme Court case in California v. Texas, where the ACA and other healthcare decisions are going to be on the table, it is not good enough to not understand the judicial philosophy of this nominee and whether that is in the mainstream views of people in the United States of America. Too much is at risk--too much that we deserve to know the answers to. I am glad my colleague from Delaware brought up Justice Ginsburg's quote because that says it all. Everybody keeps saying that she didn't have to say anything, that she didn't take notes, that she is all good, that she didn't have to say anything. That is not what it is all about. That is not what Judge Ginsburg said. Judge Ginsburg told people exactly what she believed. She told people that she believed in a woman's right to choose. As my colleague from Delaware said, she told people that these issues were too important to a woman. So I don't understand, when Justice Ginsburg basically clarified what she believed, why Judge Barrett wouldn't clarify what her judicial philosophy is. It is worth reading again. Justice Ginsburg said that the decision of whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman's life, to her well-being, to her dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself, and when government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full human who is responsible for her own choices. These women who have been the subject of the most heinous acts--and all women--deserve to make their own healthcare choices. We in this body should not be making this decision at this moment. We should be taking care of our COVID problem, moving forward with solutions that will help the American people, and letting them respond to this issue. This issue will continue. I just ask my colleagues to think about what has already happened with the Affordable Care Act. Those States that didn't want to support the Affordable Care Act and didn't support the Affordable Care Act later, after it passed, then implemented it. A few States, just recently, made the switch and covered more people under Medicaid. What you are really doing is holding your States back from having access to healthcare. Eventually, as I said, the general public in the majority of States will support a woman's right to choose. Eventually, this will be settled, with every State supporting this. The question is, How long are you going to hold up the healthcare choices of people in the United States? I ask my colleagues to turn down this nomination. I ask my colleagues to stop nominating people who are out of the mainstream of the American view on healthcare, which is so important to their daily lives. I yield my remaining postcloture time to the Democratic leader.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I come to the floor tonight to join my colleagues to honor the life of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Before I do, though, I would like to first of all thank my colleague from Massachusetts for reviewing the many legal decisions that Justice Ginsburg had been involved in and their significance. I am so glad to be out here tonight as you took time in your perspective on the importance of those cases. We definitely need to remember that these decisions, these words, set the stage for so many things to come before the American people and for working families. Thank you for that.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, before I do, I wanted to say just a word about Savanna's Act, which, I can tell you, Justice Ginsburg would probably be happy that the House has now passed and, previously, the Senate had passed Savanna's Act, legislation that would help protect the rights and help move forward on changes to law enforcement that would better protect missing and murdered indigenous women. This legislation--originally sponsored by my colleagues Heidi Heitkamp and Lisa Murkowski, and most recently cosponsored by Senator Murkowski, Senator Cortez Masto, and myself--I believe is on its way to the President's desk, and I am hoping that the President will sign this important legislation as soon as possible. Indigenous women deserve to have the same rights and same protections under the law, but they need to have people who are tracking these heinous crimes that are happening because they are the victims of these crimes at a much higher rate than the general population. You ask yourself: Well, how can that be? When you think about these women being abducted and murdered and missing, you have to have law enforcement who are going to follow these cases, track individuals, track the court process, and this is what better protocols, better statistics, and a better system is going to do with the passage of Savanna's Act. It will give us those tools that we need for indigenous women. So I thank all of my colleagues for helping with the passage of that important legislation. It is on its way to the President's desk, and, again, I hope he will sign it as soon as possible.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I join my colleagues tonight to come here and honor the life of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. As many people have said tonight already, what an unbelievable hero she was--a trailblazer, a deep thinker. And there are the things she did on the Court to do so many important things for the rights of Americans. When I first met her in 2001, I had just come to Washington, DC, in my first year here in the U.S. Senate, and I just happened to go to a play at the Shakespeare Theatre, here near the Capitol, and had seats right next to her in the theater. I had probably already heard about her and knew of her, of course. That was of great significance even in 2001. But during the play, I noticed, just as I do in a dark situation, oftentimes falling asleep a little bit, and I thought, wow, I don't know, this woman is so petite and so tiny. And I had heard that she had been sick. I literally sat there in the dark concerned for her future. What a lesson about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, because that was 2001. And in 2020, she was going strong. This is not a woman to ever, ever, ever underestimate. She took her tools and applied them for the betterment of American women and American society overall. People across the United States of America are reeling from her passing because they want to know who is going to stand up for their rights now that she is gone. There is something about that diminutive figure with so much might and wisdom that succeeded on that groove of a Court with all those men and had the courage and the tenacity to read her dissent in the Lilly Ledbetter legislation from the bench--the unusual move of saying: I might not have the decision I want today, but, by God, you are going to listen to what is wrong with gender inequality in America, and we are going to get on a path to fix it. When I think about that unbelievable moment that in her quiet, soft voice set the stage that we heard our colleague Senator Warren talk about tonight, it is pretty amazing. That is why we need to have women in these places. We need to have them so you have the voice of diversity there to tell you what it is like. And I guarantee you--when she said that statement, ``I don't ask anything from my brother other than to get your foot off my neck,'' I guarantee you, she knew what that was like, and that is why she says it with such conviction. That is what she represented. That is what she represented as an icon to so many people, and now they are mourning. I have had 2,000 calls in just a few days to our office about her passing. One constituent, Lynn from Shelton, WA, said: I am old enough to have grown up experiencing the subtle and not so subtle discrimination aimed at girls and women that have limited our self-expression, our participation in sports, in politics, college accessibility and workplace, and even in my family life and reproduction. She continues: It has been slow progress for each of us to achieve increased equality. And so we have so much to thank Ruth Bader Ginsburg for. I am deeply saddened and frightened--frightened by her passing. As you know, our democracies, freedom, integrity and the rule of law are threatened and are even at greater risk. Eileen, from Issaquah, wrote: Justice Ginsburg fought so valiantly for our rights as women. As women, we provide so much for the Washington economy. I agree with her. Women provide a lot for our economy in the State of Washington. She continues: I am a business owner myself, and I am terrified that gender protections are in grave danger. Ensuring civil liberties is not just the moral thing to do, but it makes sound economic policy as well. Allowing more people more opportunities does not take away from those with power, but it grows our economy as a State and as a country and allows all of us to be more prosperous together. That includes reproductive rights, which is the keystone to allowing women full economic opportunity as men. I have to say that letter basically sums it all up. That is what the fight with Lilly Ledbetter was. I thank Lilly Ledbetter. I thank Lilly Ledbetter for having the courage to file that case and stand up to that discrimination and basically fight a long process that people still don't understand. We do not have pay equity in America yet. We still are not making the same amount as men. Ruth Ginsburg made a decision that set the course for the Lilly Ledbetter law, which basically says that instead of saying our time to file a case for discrimination runs out after a year when we don't even know we have been discriminated against, we should have a longer period of time to file that case. All we are going to get is our day in court. I thank both Lilly Ledbetter and Justice Ginsburg for that because they were women standing up in an incredible environment, with men surrounding them, and speaking truth to power about what needed to happen, as my constituent says here, for full economic opportunities for all people. I can't tell you how many men I have heard say: I want equal pay for women. I want equal pay for women because I want my wife to make a decent salary. I want her to bring home as much as she can bring home. I don't want her discriminated against. Yet when Justice Ginsburg set us up for the Lilly Ledbetter legislation and we came here to the Senate floor, I heard the most unbelievable speeches here on the Senate floor. Colleagues of ours basically said things like: Well, if you would just be as qualified as a man, we will pay you as much as a man. The disconnect still exists. The pay inequity still exists. But the course of action has been set by Justice Ginsburg, and we just have to pick up the torch and carry this to the finish line because it is good for our economy. It is good for our society. It is good for women to have the type of participation that--when you are paid equally to a man, you can continue to contribute in society. Already, 2,000 people have written to me. It is unbelievable what she has done to touch the hearts of Americans. A father from Bellingham wrote: Mostly, I mourn for the future of my 4-year-old daughter. The prospects of women losing their right to choose and an erosion of gender equality is frightening. Another constituent, Katie, wrote: Even though the air this morning looks relatively clear again in Seattle--a little reference to all our fire and smoke--our future is foggier than ever. While I mourn the death of Justice Ginsburg, I cannot help but feel tremendous anxiety about the future of existing laws in effect that protect all people's rights, from legal abortions to access to healthcare, to laws that protect our votes and our freedom of speech and laws that Justice Ginsburg protected. That is really what is going on here in America. This movement about RBG is saying: You stood up to protect us, and now you are gone, and what is going to happen? I definitely pause in this for a little comment about our Senate schedule. I don't get it. We can sit here and argue back and forth about what people said when and how and all of that. What I don't understand is this: It takes time to review the record of someone for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court in which these important issues to working families and whether they have as much power and as much clout and as much standing as a corporation in America--people want to know where they stand. Somehow, people are already talking about schedules. I don't understand. How can you decide what the schedule is when you haven't even heard the name of a person? How do you move forward with a schedule when you don't even know--maybe this person is going to end up being Harriet Miers. Maybe you are going to look at their record and say: It is Harriet Miers, and I don't want to move forward because I looked at her record, and I decided maybe this is not the jurist I want at this point in time. All I am saying is, I don't understand how somebody can set a course of action in a schedule when you don't even know who the person is, what the process is going to be, or the length of time. You are setting a horrible precedent. You are saying to people that it doesn't even matter what the name is; you already have a schedule. It doesn't matter how long it is going to take to review. It is very hard here to not have frustration when my citizens have fought so hard for these rights, and Justice Ginsburg's passing has upset them so much that they need to hear from us about how a fair and deliberative process--the last wishes of Justice Ginsburg--is going to be honored. I would like to add in the Record the full dissent that was read from the bench from Justice Ginsburg in the Lilly Ledbetter case

Ms. CANTWELL. In that dissent, Justice Ginsburg said: The problem of concealed pay discrimination is particularly acute where the disparity arises not because the female employee is flatly denied a raise but because male counterparts are given larger raises. Having received a pay increase, the female employee is unlikely to discern at once that she has experienced an adverse employment decision. She may have little reason to suspect discrimination until a pattern develops incrementally and she ultimately becomes aware of the disparity. Again, I think of what bravery Justice Ginsburg showed in saying to our colleagues that this dissent was so important, to read it from the bench. Not everything in the legislative or legal process is easy. It takes bringing awareness to our colleagues, and clearly there is a lot of awareness that needs to continue to happen here. This is about working families and their desire to have healthcare coverage for preexisting conditions, protection of reproductive rights, hundreds of thousands of Dreamers wanting to know what the future looks like, and obviously LGBTQ rights and whether they are going to be set back. I think of the other time that I had a great interaction with Justice Ginsburg. When I also first got here, we had this dinner every year. The Senator from Hawaii will find this interesting. We in the Senate would be invited--Democrats and Republicans--to have dinner with the Supreme Court. It was a great night. We would go over to the Court, and we would have dinner. Actually, the Justices would open up their offices, and we could tour around. I thought it was really interesting. If you know anything about people, you can almost see how their mind works by the desk they keep. Some people keep a messy desk, but they know where every piece of paper is on the desk. Other people have a very neat desk. The whole thing--letting us into their Chambers, talking about the decorum of the Supreme Court, how they shook hands every day, how they all worked with each other to try to keep comity among the decisions when you are going to disagree every day--was very interesting. We usually had some entertainment. But it was kind of a moment where we all said: We are in this together, and we are going to keep moving forward. Several years later--I am not sure whose decision it was--I think maybe around--I am not sure what year they disbanded that. They decided: We are not doing that anymore. I asked: Why aren't we doing this? This is one of the greatest things we have done around here because Democrats and Republicans would get together with the members of the Court and other people relevant to our associations, and we would share a meal and talk and say that this was about civility and working together--obviously a very divided branch as it relates to the Senate and the judiciary. But nonetheless I so appreciated the fact that even though that was disbanded, Justice Ginsburg invited the women for dinner. She invited the women Senators to come over for dinner. I think we might have invited a few of our ex-colleagues. I think Olympia Snowe, the former Congresswoman from Maine, might have been there. So we invited some of our old colleagues. It might have been a dinner for a newly added Justice to the Court. Nonetheless, guess what we got with dinner. Great opera. Great opera. In fact, she had I think two singers there that evening and entertained us. It is that kind of spirit of people working together and showing that. I think that was probably what her relationship was with Antonin Scalia. It was probably, yes, we are not always going to agree, but we are going to work together, and we are going to figure out how to make the best of this situation and move forward. I remember that. Even though this thing had been disbanded, she still took the time--at least with the women--to say: Do you know what? We can all still work together. Whoever said the statement ``Good things come in small packages'' had it down when it came to Justice Ginsburg because in that very small package came a lot of wisdom that got applied to the rights particularly of women in the United States of America with a calm but forceful voice that has moved this ball down the road. It is up to all of us to continue her legacy and get equal pay for equal work and continue to protect these rights that are well established in the United States of America. My thoughts and prayers are with the Ginsburg family. I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I come to the floor this afternoon to talk about the importance of aviation and continuing to focus on the workforce employed in aviation. I want to speak about the importance of the thousands of workers, including pilots, flight attendants, gate agents, baggage handlers, mechanics, catering workers, and many others, who are feeling the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. I believe we should continue to address the very important issues of the health aspects of the pandemic and the economic impact of the pandemic, but while we are working on developing a vaccine and developing better therapeutics and testing and stopping the spread of this virus, we also need to keep in mind that we do need transportation. Prior to the pandemic, the aviation industry supported nearly 11 million American jobs, put $1.8 trillion to work in our economy, and contributed to about 5.2 percent of our GDP. In fact, civilian aviation is the seventh leading contributor of overall productivity. These are skilled, high-wage jobs that are critical to our economy that cannot be easily replaced. Maintaining our aviation sector is vital to the long- term economic success of our country. When the pandemic hit, we saw a 96-percent drop in air travel, which instantly jeopardized thousands of jobs in this sector. We worked very hard in the CARES Act to create the right balance of capital for the aviation sector to continue because it is essential. We also have workers who are essential to their jobs, so we must keep moving to solve these problems from the pandemic. The Payroll Support Program, which was created in the CARES Act and is being administered through the Department of the Treasury, was designed to compensate aviation industry workers and preserve jobs in order to help protect the essential aspects of aviation and airline services. The program continues to cover the costs of keeping people employed and keeping this vital piece of transportation moving. This is critically important because, in just a very short period of time, September 30, this program is going to expire. Congress needs to act to extend the program. It is important that we provide this support through the PSP program for the aviation workers who are so essential to continuing to deliver these services. Aviation not only helps people move around the country for personal reasons and essential business reasons, but it also delivers good medicine and essential mail services. The fact is that most people probably have forgotten how important airlines are to delivering the U.S. mail, but they are important. The CARES Act included requirements to ensure that smaller markets continue to receive air service and its associated benefits. As you can see, many of the airlines, in the uncertainty of what is happening with the CARES Act extension, are now cutting services to those communities. Doing another CARES Act bill would help us to keep those services in these smaller communities. It was announced that as many as 50,000 airline jobs will be at risk if we don't continue the Payroll Support Program. Now is not the time to be uncertain. Now is the time to give the airline sector the importance that it deserves by having airline workers continue to do their jobs. Every job lost means a worker earns less. It means the slowdown of the economy as a whole. It means that consumer spending, which is a big engine of our economy, will slow down, and 70 percent of our GDP comes from that consumer spending. So these programs are important. If the Payroll Support Program is not extended, the cost for workers who will lose their jobs will simply be shifted to the States in the form of unemployment benefits, and since we aren't solving the problems of the States, the States also add to the GDP, so we are not helping the GDP unless we come to a resolution within the CARES Act. Unemployment doesn't cover the cost of a full salary. Each worker would have less to spend on gas and groceries, on a mortgage, and on medicine. In the downturn of the economy that we have been facing, we can't afford more loss. Our economy is showing some signs of modest recovery as the result of the economic stimulus from the CARES Act, but many of those benefits are expiring. I can tell you, as a Member from the Pacific Northwest, I hear a lot from businesses that didn't get help and support in the PPP program and want it to continue so that they, too, can be on par with some of their friends and neighbors who have been able to succeed economically. Right now, we are at a turning point at which we need the PSP program to continue and to help give certainty about transportation. Nationally, on average, we know an aviation mechanic takes home about $1,600 per week in pay, but when these jobs are cut, the weekly incomes are cut. Let's look at a few States and a few examples. Right now, in North Carolina, the weekly income for a mechanic is only $350 a week in unemployment benefits, and that worker is facing a 79-percent cut in weekly income. So I ask our colleagues to consider, as you think about shifting these transportation workers from these salaries that they are getting now to unemployment benefits, how dramatic these cuts will be in some of these States. I am proud that I come from a State in which we have a pretty robust unemployment benefit. I thank our State and the people who vote for and support a robust unemployment benefit, but if we continue to not act on the CARES Act and the PPP, we will be sending people home to States with unemployment benefits that will be much less robust than in my State. Right now, to face a 79-percent cut in one's weekly income I don't think is good for the aviation sector. On average, when you look at the weekly income for ramp agents in Georgia, it is about $850, but now that any additional weekly benefits have run out, these workers face a 57-percent income cut. In State after State, we see these cuts in these weekly incomes. This means, as I said, less money to spend on groceries and less money to spend on essentials at home. Without any additional weekly benefits, in Florida, pilots will see a 92-percent drop in income, flight attendants a 75- percent drop, mechanics an 83-percent drop, and ramp agents a 68- percent drop. In Texas, pilots will see an 85-percent drop in weekly income, flight attendants a 52-percent drop, mechanics a 68-percent drop, and ramp agents a 48-percent drop. My point here is to think about the need for us to continue this program in that not all States are going to be treated equally in how aviation workers will be affected. We have to think about how we are going to keep that important air travel moving for our economy. Without the extension, flight crews, flight attendants, and others will be impacted in another way, in that, when you stop air transportation services, people, after a period of time, will have to come back and be retrained and recertified. Many times here, I have participated in debates about tax credits or tax policy. Oftentimes, we go past our deadline of December 31 and into the new year. Even though we can't reach a conclusion, most people think: Well, that is OK. We will make it retroactive, so going past our deadline doesn't impact anything. In this case, it does impact something because, once we hit the October 1 deadline and we start seeing these people in unemployment situations, the time starts ticking for the cost of recertifying them to be in that cockpit or to be of service. For example, pilots have to meet certain flying requirements to maintain currency in their pilot licenses. So, without an extension of the PSP, flight crews and flight attendants would need to be retrained at the cost of starting up again. A PSP extension also means supporting their wages and making sure that they have available healthcare during this time period. I don't want to see one more American lose one's healthcare benefits because of COVID. We are in a COVID crisis. We want people to be covered with healthcare so that we can help to fight this pandemic. I know people here in Congress are looking at the very short time period that we have left before September 30. I call on my colleagues to set aside our differences and come back to the table and make sure that we address these issues before this major layoff. This is important because, as I said, this affects the GDP of our country. We still have an opportunity to sustain 950,000 frontline aviation workers, which is important to helping our economy recover. As I said, it is important because aviation helps to grow opportunities for the future. My colleague Senator Scott and I will tomorrow be announcing other aviation legislation that we, too, think will help the aviation sector. For every 10 percent of travel that returns to aviation, it drives more than $1.5 billion into our economy. Those are salaries and wages and other aspects of this sector. That is the economic impact that we will have by returning flight service. The original premise around the COVID bill was for us not to decimate the airline industry so much, because of the COVID impact, that it wouldn't recover and so that we wouldn't be there to retrain and take advantage of the upside as the public responds. We have now gone from that 95-percent loss of travel to, right before the Labor Day weekend, about 40 percent of airline capacity and travel. We want to continue being ready to serve the public who has to fly, and we want to make sure it is safe for the public to fly. Getting this extension of the COVID bill done before September 30 still remains a key priority. On the point of aviation, I would say to my colleagues, besides the Cantwell-Scott bill we will be dropping tomorrow to help focus on more aviation safety, my colleague Senator Wicker and I remain committed to continuing to work on aviation safety as it relates to certification legislation. I hope all of our colleagues on the Commerce Committee will continue to focus on that as well.

Ms. CANTWELL

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

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, while I come to the floor this afternoon, I am kind of questioning whether the heat of Washington, DC, has gotten to people. Clearly, it has been a record July here, with 90- plus degree temperatures every day. But the notion that we should somehow cancel the election in the fall, I think, is either the heat of the moment or just clear wrongheadedness. I have been waiting for some time to come to floor to talk about our voting system and why it is so important to protect it and why now we should recognize that Americans, in having to deal with the coronavirus, have had the ability to vote and the ability to get there and the ability to be protected while they are voting. It has occurred in several elections that we need to be doing more. That is why I continue to support the efforts of our colleagues to make sure that we are doing everything we can to protect elections. I know that Leader McConnell has proposed the HEALS Act, but it doesn't contain any money for helping safe and secure elections in November. I know that the House bill, the Heroes Act, does help put money in place to keep polling workers safe during the pandemic. I know that we have other legislation, whether it is Senator Wyden's bill, which I am on, the Vote By Mail Act, which would help eligible U.S. voters vote by mail, or whether it is other legislation, like that of my colleague Senator Klobuchar, to help back up paper ballots and create election security grants to help States improve their cybersecurity. I have talked many times at many hearings about our challenges with cybersecurity, and I know that all this legislation--my colleagues have been out here on the floor, and they have tried to bring them up, but to no avail. Well, I think instead of suggesting that the election be canceled, the President should be advocating that Congress pass aid and assistance to States to make sure that, during the COVID pandemic, things are in place so that poll workers can get to their jobs on time, that they can work effectively in doing that and protect their health and security and protect the health and security of the public. What I don't think he should do is to diminish the very important role that mail-in ballot voting has had in the United States of America. I say that coming from a State where we have mail-in ballots. The mail-in ballot system has grown over time to be the primary way in which we vote in the State of Washington. I say it is the primary way because I am sure there are ways that people can show up and vote at particular election offices, and there are probably other things. But, no, we don't have an election site. For those who love going to the polling places as a way to exercise their democracy and their rights, I appreciate that too. There is nothing better than participating in the democracy of an election by going there and casting a vote. But you also can increase the participation of the American public to vote by mail if you give them that opportunity. So it just happened to occur that on my way in today, I was actually trying to cast my own ballot; that is, I have my mail-in ballot for the August 4 election that is going to happen next week, and I want to make sure I fulfill my constitutional duty to vote in the next election. So I think it is a great opportunity to come to the Senate floor and put stock really to the myth that I think the President is continuing to create that you cannot vote by mail. Here is my mail-in ballot. Here is the ballot that is sent to my home address in Edmonds, WA. It basically has the date of the election on it and requires me to fill it out and return it. What is great about this ballot is this. First of all, I love mail-in voting. Even if I liked going to the polling place, what you now get enclosed, in addition to your ballot, is a voters' guide, which is sent by the secretary of State. It is pretty thick because candidates also give a statement about why they are running. Literally, the citizens of Washington, weeks in advance before getting this ballot, can sit and leaf through the various positions of candidates, and they also include websites. If you want to go to the candidate's website and look up more information about a candidate or see where they stand on an issue, it is a guide that helps you understand what your ballot is and who is on it. Who doesn't think that is a great way to inform the American people about voting? We have one of the highest voting rates in the Nation. As I say that, I know that there are States that are not mail-in ballot States that also have high numbers in Presidential election years, but the great thing about our vote-by-mail system is we have a pretty good participation by our public in off-year elections. The school board election or local county election or even a regional election gets the attention that I believe is important for democracy and for voter participation. I actually happened to start filling out my ballot this morning. I am not going to show everybody whom I voted for, but I will just show you what the front of the ballot looks like. I did vote already in the Governor's race. No doubt I voted for a Democrat. I am a Democrat. At the top of this ballot, once I am done, I get to tear off this device right here. It says: I voted. So there I go. I got a little boost to my democracy gene. I am so glad I participated. Here is the actual number of this ballot and an ID, and I tear that off. I tear that off and keep it. I keep this, and this is proof that I mailed this ballot. That is the great part of our system. Just for those who are really curious about this, I now have a privacy envelope. Now that I am done filling out my ballot, I stick it in this privacy envelope. Why do I do that? If somebody thinks that my privacy is violated because on the outside of this envelope I sign this signature, they separate these two things. This privacy envelope separates this and throws the ballots that are legitimate to be counted, and now no one knows exactly how I voted. I take this privacy envelope, and I stick it in the official document envelope that I am going to mail back. So I stick it in there, and guess what I have to do? I have to sign and date it. That signature is the validation of this system. It is the validation by my signature, the same as when I went into a voting booth, as we used to do, and signed my name. It is a validation against someone who is trying to create mischief with this system. It is what makes the vote-by-mail system work effectively in our State. I say that because our State has had many close elections, and yet no one has ever contested the outcome of the final election because we go through this system. Yes, we have had some very interesting incidents. We had a very close Governor's race once, where as they were recounting the ballots and counting through the official system, a gentleman owned up that he had voted for his wife who had died. He was so worried that he was going to get caught in this system that he owned up in advance and said: I am sorry. I might be one of the seven final votes in this decision, and I want to tell people I made a mistake. I know that she was so enthusiastic, but she passed away, and it was just a few days ago. So I went ahead and voted for her. So, no, that is not allowed under this system. This system works because we know who people are, and we have a validation of this system. This system allows us to participate and understand the election process. So I don't know why the President will not let America vote, only if they vote in a way that he thinks is--well, I am not sure, because now he is saying we should delay the election. He is saying it should be delayed. I am saying what the President should be doing to help the constitutional rights of American citizens is protecting their right to vote by helping to secure our election sites with enough workers, people working at the polls if they choose to go and do that, and also protecting our mail-in ballot system by allowing those States that want to pursue a mail-in ballot to make sure that those ballots work and are delivered on time so that they can be counted. I don't expect every State in the Union to adopt the same philosophy as the State of Washington, but clearly our State allows enough time for those ballots to get there. They allow so many days after the election. Why? Because we have a lot of military. We have 10 military bases, and we have a lot of people from Washington who are stationed overseas, and their ballots should not be made invalid just because they mailed them before the election but somehow, because of the travel time, they didn't get there in a timely fashion. So our State considers 7 days, the postmark after 7 days if it is delivered. I know that for some people this is all new. They don't want to move to this. I guarantee you, in 25 years we will all be voting by mail. This system will be in place, and we will be asking ourselves: Why did we drag our feet? I am at least heartened to hear that my Republican colleagues in the Senate have squashed the President's idea of canceling the election. Now what I want to hear is, Are they going to help us get the dollars and the systems in place to allow America to vote, to allow them to vote with confidence, not to constantly hear an undermining of that process but a support of that process, and not to undermine vote-by- mail, because it has worked in Washington? It has worked. I was elected in the year 2000 and only won by 2,229 votes--not a lot--cast out of the huge number of voters in our State. Yet people had confidence in that system. It is not as if the numbers didn't change in a recount here or there or somebody found a mistake here or there. It was that we had a system where you can find a mistake. So stop trying to cancel the election based on the success of what has empowered more Americans to vote and be involved and be educated in our democracy. Let America vote, and let's get on with putting the securities in place that will help America get to the polling places in a secure fashion and get their ballots to the election officials in a timely manner. I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about the NDAA, but before I do, I want to join my colleagues and share their great enthusiasm tonight out here on the Senate floor in talking about the Senate-crafted bill, the Great American Outdoors Act, that took a step closer to getting to the President's desk today. That is the investment that we believe we should be making in open space and public lands passed the House of Representatives and we hope will be signed by the President very shortly. This investment, as my colleagues were talking about tonight, has been a long time in coming on two fronts--obviously, coming from a State that represents a lot of National Parks and areas that need the investment in deferred maintenance projects--everything from Olympic National Park that will get an upgrade for some aging water systems to new trails at Mt. Rainier, to other projects at Lake Roosevelt and even Fort Vancouver. I want to thank all my colleagues, Senators Gardner, Manchin, Portman, King, Burr, Warner, Alexander, Daines, and Heinrich, who made up the coalition who have been working on this issue in the more recent days to make sure that we got it out of the Senate and got it over to the House of Representatives. The important thing is that it has been a bipartisan coalition of people who believe in public lands and open space that has brought us to this point. The Land and Water Conservation Fund was something that Scoop Jackson led the charge on in the 1960s, based on the fact that he thought America was urbanizing and, with our highway system, he thought we would need open space and, boy, was he right. So everything from Gas Works Park in downtown Seattle that gives families a great view of Lake Union to the impressive things that have been done all over the State, being able to say now that the Land and Water Conservation Fund will receive $900 million permanently means two to three times more money than we previously had to make investments in open space. And we know that investments in open space are not only restorative to all of us who enjoy the outdoors, whether it is hunting or fishing or hiking, but it also is a big juggernaut for our economy. That over $800 billion in revenue is generated from this industry, and it is an industry that is well worth putting more investment in. So I thank all my colleagues that were here tonight and for their hard work. Particularly, I want to thank Senator Manchin. Senator Manchin has done an incredible job taking this issue as the ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and understanding how important it was to get it over the goal line. So I tell the Senator that I am going to give him a picture of myself hiking in the Dolly Sods in West Virginia as a great thank you for his perseverance of moving this effort to the final goal line. So I just want to thank Senator Manchin and, obviously, all my colleagues.