Maria Cantwell

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about the nomination of the President's nominee to run the Department of Commerce, an Agency that is charged with a broad mission and a lot of complex issues that affect many sectors of our economy. The next Secretary of Commerce will have to deal with a wide-ranging, growing list of issues, from trade and export controls, expanding broadband, weather forecasting, patent issues, export controls on AI, and figuring out some of the most thorny issues related to how we move our country forward, generally, in commerce. So it is fair to say that if the Commerce Secretary doesn't get it right, the American people and our American economy pay the price. Unfortunately, I believe that Howard Lutnick, the President's nominee, isn't the right person for this job at this point in time. Now, Mr. Lutnick and the President have made it very clear that one of Mr. Lutnick's key responsibilities will be for trade policy and the tariff policies that the President supports. In my conversations with Mr. Lutnick and before his Commerce Committee hearing, he made it very clear that he intends to be very enthusiastic about the President's plans for tariffs. When he talked about tariffs, I don't know if he knew how much the U.S. economy was going to start paying the price. Talking to people throughout my State, I can tell you it is not lost on us, being a border State with Canada, how much this might affect us in oil and gas, in lumber, electric power, and many other issues of economic activity. Mr. Lutnick was for, as the President said, the expanded taxes on imported steel and aluminum and across the board tariffs on China. As a result, China announced retaliatory tariffs, and other countries also promised to retaliate, too. That is why, when the Seattle Times ran just recently this story about the tariffs, I really understood exactly how Washington businesses were feeling. That they know that one, this creates uncertainty, and they know that it raises costs. Now, I come from one of the most trade dependent States in the Nation. That is because we grow a lot of agriculture products that go to overseas markets, we make airplanes that go to a lot of overseas markets, we have a lot of software and software development. So the majority of companies and the majority of employees in our State basically are involved in things related to making and growing U.S. products that are shipped to overseas markets. My constituents want to see inflation come down, and they want us to lower costs, not increase them. Now that President Trump is teasing out even more tariffs in the coming days on autos, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors, it is going to drive up costs for consumers. Another newspaper in my State, the Spokesman-Review, hardly a liberal bastion in the State of Washington, also did a pretty big story about the trade and tariffs, and what they put in a headline: ``Trump and Inflation.'' I can tell you this, we can't afford inflation. We want prices to come down. Whether that is on housing or whether that is on pharmaceuticals or whether that is on food prices, we know that tariffs can increase prices. So the Commerce Secretary, who is going to be involved in driving and responsible for this tariff impact, is not someone I want to see in this job. The Secretary of Commerce's job is to expand exports. I think with 95 percent of consumers living outside the United States, it is time to try to reach a process where we can get more products into those markets. I am also very concerned about how America maintains our competitiveness in an international marketplace if things are more expensive, particularly manufacturing. My State has been a great beneficiary of a renaissance in manufacturing for a whole lot of reasons, but because of the CHIPS and Science Act, the infrastructure bill, and the IRA bill. And all of those gave people a chance to bring supply chains back to the United States, start growing middle-class jobs in the United States of America again, and lowering costs. That is why we worked so hard on the CHIPS and Science Act, something that was voted on here in a bipartisan fashion, led by then-Commerce Secretary Raimondo, in a process that ultimately awarded billions of dollars to advance the domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry here--in total, negotiating 32 deals across 22 States. So I know that the Presiding Officer knows all about this as a member of the Commerce Committee, but there are many States that were the beneficiaries of these investments and are helping us bring even more of the domestic supply chain back to the United States. We learned during the chips crisis that even the cost of a used car went up $2,000. That is because chips were at a shortage, car industries, trucking industries couldn't even get enough chips to make and ship cars, and then the consequence was even used cars went up $2,000. So we don't want to recreate that again. We want a Commerce Secretary who is going to fight for the CHIPS and Science investment that has already been made in the electronic manufacturing process in the United States and keep the semiconductor industry right here. But unfortunately, Mr. Lutnick, before the committee, would not commit to standing by the commitments of the term sheets the Department of Commerce has already signed. In fact, before he has even been confirmed, Reuters last week said the administration started telling companies that they might even revisit these agreements that have been signed. So let me be clear, these are awards to critical States like Texas, New York, Ohio, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, and now, the President is saying he is going to revisit those signed contracts. Delaying these projects also means we are delaying bringing the supply chain back to the United States, that we are making it harder for the United States to be competitive in an industry that is critical for us to lead, not just on the most advanced chips, but continuing in the manufacturing of semiconductors overall. In his Commerce Committee nomination, Mr. Lutnick also heard from members of both sides of the aisle about their support for the science part of the CHIPS and Science Act. These are amazing initiatives that brought coalitions of people together to catalyze new economic engines, in some cases in the most rural parts of the United States. Why? Because it is so expensive to do innovation in Silicon Valley, in Boston, and even in some parts of my State. So the whole point was to continue to make investments in test bedding and scaling technology, so the United States would not lose out. And these awards have been made, but Mr. Lutnick also refused to commit to honoring those agreements and putting many of those issues at question. I know my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will continue to push for these investments. But today's nominee, if he is confirmed, is also going to be overseeing the Bureau of Industry and Security, which implements export controls and dual-use technology, and have both commercial and military proliferation applications. That means you couldn't find a person whose day job is going to be more serious on export controls than Mr. Lutnick's. And yet, Mr. Lutnick, in the conversations that we had before the committee, I don't believe gave the committee a full understanding of what he was going to do to protect these interests. In fact, the administration has already almost abandoned something called the AI Safety Institute, which is widely supported, literally by practicably everybody in the AI sector, and would help us remain a leader. This is the kind of standards that we would expect to be set and the kind of controls that we would hope would help the United States not have some vital technology exported outside the United States. But we also questioned Mr. Lutnick on his background with stablecoin. Mr. Lutnick and the stablecoin that he has been involved in has been considered a very good tool for the cryptocurrency system, but a target of very illicit funds. Some estimates are that Tether accounts for as much as 60 percent of billions of dollars of illicit activities, by people like North Korea, Southeast Asia, Mexican fentanyl pushers, cybercriminals--and all because of stablecoin. Now, Mr. Lutnick has an incredible personal story, losing his parents at a very young age and also the tragedy that befell Cantor Fitzgerald when terrorists struck. So I know that Mr. Lutnick knows about terrorist organizations and has probably been affected for the rest of his life over that tragedy. But in the committee, when we were trying to get him to understand why we in the Federal Government put on sanctions against countries and we want to hear a Commerce Secretary say, ``We agree with those sanctions, we are going to fight for those sanctions, we are going to fight anybody who tries to get around those sanctions.'' We asked Mr. Lutnick about ways to address that fact that maybe some large amount, $19 billion of Tether's funds, might be illegal, illicit transactions, he said he thought that in the future, a software AI solution would help stop that. Well, I was hoping that Mr. Lutnick would be more aggressive than that. I would hope that he would help the United States in moving on something today that would help give more transparency in the cryptocurrency market. I support, as the Presiding Officer does, moving forward on cryptocurrencies. But I also believe that there should be some transparency and certainly should be a fight against people who use that for illicit activities. I also asked Mr. Lutnick something about the U.S. sovereign debt futures, something that I know that he was involved in as it related to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and putting up a competitive bid. It was a notion of, how do we settle futures? How do we in the United States--if Mr. Lutnick's future company was doing business with the London Exchange, settle any kind of--let's say we don't raise the debt ceiling and we had a crisis here, what would the United States do? Not unsimilar to what we did in 2009 after the 2008, basically, recession of our economy. These similar questions came up in the Finance Committee, and I found that the Treasury nominee before the committee answered those questions correctly. But Mr. Lutnick said that he still thought that his idea of settling with a foreign country, which I think puts the United States second, above England, is not something I would be willing to do, but I think he was willing to continue to move forward. So those things, an answer about how we will catch up with the money laundering in the future with an AI solution, and how the settling on the foreign exchange, also left me with some concerns. But when we come to NOAA, which is 60 percent of the Commerce budget, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, when asked for the record, ``Should NOAA be dismantled, as called for in Project 2025?'' Mr. Lutnick would only say he will figure it out once he is confirmed. We needed a bigger commitment to NOAA. NOAA already supplies a big, important aspect of what we deal with, with weather forecasting, tracking extreme weather, hurricanes, wildfires, managing our fisheries, operating ships that conduct important charting for national security. Mr. Lutnick gave very tepid support for NOAA. With 60 percent of the budget and so much now at stake, as the White House every day says they are going to cut staffing and cut programs, Congress wants to be assured that a nominee is going to fight for the Agency that he is there to represent, that he is there to fight for their core mission that they provide in important services. So I am urging my colleagues to not support this nominee and hope that we all can work together to continue to say how important NOAA's management of our fisheries are, how important it is to protect U.S. fishermen from Russian and Chinese illegal fishing and deception and trade practices that are hurting our consumers, and protect accurate weather forecasting for all Americans. Now is our chance to stand up for these essential services; your constituents depend on it. I thank the President and--oh, I would, just one more thing. The aviation news that continues to roll out, I want to give my thoughts and prayers to those who have been affected by the Minneapolis to Canada flight for Delta Airlines. We have now had the DCA incident and this incident and obviously one in Philadelphia. I would just say this: Now is not the time to cut FAA staffing. Now is the time to ask questions about what can we do to further enhance aviation safety. What can we all do, knowing that we have suffered from a door plug accident and from two MAX plane crashes. And while we passed legislation to address those MAX crashes, we still have work to do. And we passed an FAA 5-year reauthorization that helped us get more air traffic controllers. It is critically clear to me that we need these air traffic controllers, and so we have to make these investments. We should be working together, right now, on aviation. The most important thing? Let's work together for the benefit of the flying public to come up with the best solutions that we can implement in aviation safety. Taking a broad brush and just cutting people out of the FAA, when oftentimes they are the people that are helping you get that safety, is not what we should be doing right now. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise to share my deep concerns about entrusting our Nation's ability to respond to another pandemic, our world leading medical innovation infrastructure, the ability of women in my State to choose a medical abortion, and continued research for healthcare of millions of Americans, putting that in the hands of the HHS Secretary nominee, Robert F. Kennedy. We all agree that our healthcare system could be reformed. It can be bloated; it can be maddening. Too many people have gotten the dreaded letter from an insurance company telling them: ``Sorry, your procedure isn't covered.'' And if you don't have insurance, you avoid that doctor visit, and you pay out of pocket, or maybe you wait until you end up in the emergency room and have to deal with medical debt. And we all know the cost of prescription drugs are too high. We agree that we are spending way too much and that we need better outcomes. So you only have to look at the health outcomes of virtually every other industrialized nation to know that they spend less and get better results. But rather than choose a new leader for the Health and Human Services Agency that would lead us down that better path, President Trump's nominee would get us stuck in conspiracy theories that would cost us lives. The nominee has been a purveyor of disinformation. As my colleague from Rhode Island just mentioned, sowing doubt about lifesaving vaccines, he said, ``[ . . . ] the COVID 19 was a bio-weapon that spared Jews and the Chinese [ . . . ].'' Achieving better health outcomes, both today and in the future, happens when we follow science--not conspiracy theories, but science. I happen to represent a very innovative science State, and right now, it is a choice about innovation versus the skepticism represented by this nominee. Instead of speeding up innovation, under Mr. Kennedy, we would be taking a risky step backwards. The COVID pandemic showed us, in my State, one of the first--actually, the first in the Nation known cases of a COVID-19 case. And 5 years ago this month, some of the first deaths occurred in my State. Sadly, there were many more. And trust me, I came back here to Washington, DC, and people talked as if business was usual, all the while it was spreading across my State. Ultimately, this pandemic killed more than 1.2 million people, and it devastated our economy, it had an impact on our children's education, and it has long term healthcare effects on millions of survivors. Now, we are at the possibility of the beginning of another crisis, the avian flu. This crisis is yet another reminder of the importance of medical research and collaboration. But these two stories were on the front page of the Seattle Times just yesterday, the cost of eggs skyrocketing, caused by the avian flu, and the proposed cuts to NIH. Now, what do people not understand? Does it make sense to cut science at the time we might have another pandemic? Does it make sense to continue to cut the collaborative efforts of research? This Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at Washington State University is on the frontlines of the avian flu. One of my institutions is on the frontline. They test animals from across the State so they can be identified and stop the flu from spreading. And we want to cut those dollars? Americans already see the impact of the avian flu every time they go to the grocery store, and now, people in Seattle and Spokane are saying it costs $7 for a dozen eggs. Some stores are limiting how many eggs you can buy. So, as you can see, this issue is on the top of mind of constituents, and they want to know what kind of leadership we are going to provide here in Washington, DC, to lower costs, particularly at the grocery store, but to also lower costs in healthcare. Putting someone in charge who is a skeptic of medical science in response to the avian flu is just wrong. It is a catastrophic mistake for America's healthcare. Now, I will admit my State is a global leader in medical innovation. From research, to biotech, to getting drugs to the market--in 2023, the National Institutes of Health awarded $1.2 billion in highly competitive grants to 65 different organizations in the State of Washington. This supported about 12,000 jobs and generated close to $3 billion in economic activity. So, yes, we know a little something about global health and innovation. But we know something else, Mr. President, the kind of research we are talking about here is the kind that saves lives, and this, ultimately, is about making an investment in saving the lives of people. Last Friday, when the Trump administration announced it was reducing crucial funding for NIH grants, you are talking about our medical institutions that need this to build services and equipment and train the next generation of researchers. For example, as I mentioned, Washington State University with avian flu, they actually help pay for backup generators. These generators keep the systems working in case of a power outage so the pathogens can't escape. So if you cut the institution and you cut the lab, who is going to pay for these overhead costs? Or will they have to cancel their research or stop training the PhD students? So, this week, a court stepped in and blocked the NIH head count cuts for now, but believe me, people are afraid that their life's work will be gone. At the University of Washington Medicine, they are testing treatments for kidney disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and pediatric cancer. So, if the so-called DOGE cap goes into place, these are programs that will see a shortfall. They tell me they have to stop admitting new patients to clinical trials, that they will have to scale back. And we can't just start and stop medical research like a faucet. Once these people leave, the programs are stopped. It takes a long time to get them started. Once halted, the research data, the clinical trial, the patients, the laboratory, the equipment that led to those innovations will be lost. Now, if you ask me, that is throwing taxpayer dollars away. When you have an opportunity to cure a disease that affects millions of people and can save taxpayers billions, but somebody is arbitrarily going to cut these NIH funds, thinking they are saving the American people? They are not saving them. They are causing harm. Cutting NIH and scientific research funding have consequences for every State in this Union. North Carolina is home of the famous research triangle and receives about $2.2 billion in NIH funding. Texas is home of Baylor College of Medicine and receives about $1.85 billion in NIH funding. As a country, we should be working together to do more research, create more jobs, and decide what are the lifesaving science and medical innovations that we want to invest in and are represented in a budget process here in the U.S. Senate--not the arbitrary decisions of someone who hasn't even been elected to make these decisions. But the risks don't stop at our medical labs. Republicans are proposing to cut $2.3 trillion in Federal Medicaid funding so the administration can afford to lower taxes on some of the most extreme wealthy Americans. More than 1.8 million Washingtonians are enrolled in Apple Health, Washington's Medicaid program. So that is one in six adults, two in five children, three in five nursing home residents, three in eight people with disabilities. I am not confident, Mr. President, that Mr. Kennedy understands how critical this process is and the provisions of Medicaid are to people in my State. We know that we had this debate before and only because a very small bipartisan group of Senators helped save Medicaid from a crazy block grant idea that would have taken a very big building block out of our healthcare delivery system. Thanks to all my colleagues on this side and those on that side who stood up for that and said block granting was the wrong idea. Well, believe me, they are at it again. There are those who think to give the tax break to corporations, somehow you are going to get it out of the hide of these very individuals that are counting on Medicaid. I do not believe Mr. Kennedy will stand up to President Trump and be an advocate for those who rely on Medicaid. I know my constituents know what is at stake with this vote, and they know that our healthcare delivery system is about science, it is about innovation, it is about making the investments to keep Americans healthy. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this nomination. I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I join my colleagues--I thank the Senator from Nevada for her great comments in articulating why we want to have a budget process here that recognizes the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, and to say that a budget process that tries to exclude us is not what our Forefathers had in mind. That is one of the reasons I strongly oppose this nomination to be the Director of the Office of Management and Budget for Russell Vought. The administration, like every one before it, has had the opportunity to propose a budget, set overall policy principles, and propose spending and policies. This administration does not have the power to wave a wand and erase legally authorized and appropriated funds. The Constitution is very clear here: Congress and the administration, together, agree on appropriations. They agree together when we pass laws and what we want to do to govern. And people should be able to rely on current laws until those laws are changed. That is how governing works, and we are here to represent the people who want to see the certainty and predictability of laws that we have passed. Regular review of programs and congressional oversight, as my colleague from Nevada just mentioned, those are valuable things, and we can continue to make reforms in thoughtful and transparent ways. We should not allow unaccountable political actors, though, to have unfettered access to our constituents' most sensitive data without safeguards on how that data is protected, their rights, and conflicts of interest, or how that data might even be used against them. I am for a very strong national privacy law to protect our consumers, and one person I don't want a spying on us is the U.S. Government. So I don't take lightly somebody getting access to accounts and information, storing it, moving it around, sharing it with other people. I don't care if they are 22 or 42, I am not for the government doing this kind of thing without oversight. Taxpayers--I am not even for the government spying on U.S. citizens, just to be clear, I am not for that. But this is just data collection. Data collection. Who is it going to? What are they doing with it? How much are they going to use it? So taxpayers, they rely on us for service, and they don't want to believe that somebody is looking around in these accounts. Even our own personnel management system got hacked by the Chinese. How do we know that there are safeguards for what these individuals are doing with our most personal information? But the havoc that has been caused by this nominee's strategy is just absurd. Today, I met with a group of farmers who were talking about how they grow and process export products. They told me, because USAID operations were shut down, their products were stuck on a dock in Houston, they don't think they are ever going to get delivered, and they sure as heck don't think they are going to get paid. Is that what we want to do? Tell our farmers that they have a contract to grow a product, to have them delivered, and the shipment is on its way, and now, you are going to leave it on a dock because you think you have a bright idea of way to shortcut Congress? Over 1.8 million Washingtonians rely on Medicare, and they shouldn't have to be worried at any moment of the day that somehow that that is not going to be paid for. But that is what happened when Washington State Health Care Authority was frozen out of the Medicaid portal and the healthcare payments were not being made. My colleague also just addressed that. The portal eventually got turned on after the huge volume and outrage. Really, outrage by the public forced the administration to say, ``Stop this silly attitude that you can stop payment yourself.'' They forced them to turn the portal back on and pay the Medicaid bills. But Washington State is also home to community health centers. They are nonprofit entities that serve the medically underserved population. Part of me is thinking, this is really an attempt to steal money from our constituents, just to pay for a tax bill. Literally, somebody thought they were going to come in here and make a very fast move and basically turn off payments to people who are really poor and in very challenging situations and turn off payments so they could take the money and put it into a tax break for the rich later on. That is absurd. It is absurd. It is not even legal. We were told by some of these healthcare centers that they were blocked from transferring Federal funds to those needed in their hospitals. In other words, cutting off funding that would be helpful to saving lives. These health centers provide care to more than 1 million people in our State, over 360,000 of them. And there are children, agriculture workers, and veterans, and the fact that these medical systems work to help all of us provide primary care is exactly why we shouldn't turn off a system. I got a call from someone in Pierce County to tell me about her son Tobias, who is 36 years old. He was recently diagnosed with multiple myeloma and is one of the youngest people who has gotten the diagnosis. They are absolutely terrified about the risk of losing cancer research dollars. She said she couldn't wrap her mind around it: This insane and cruel road that we are all on now with this new administration. These are the stories from my constituents, they want to know what is going on in their lives. It is not a parlor game, it is not a think tank exercise. It is their lives. For one of the hospitals in my State, Island Health in Anacortes, the funding freeze means they couldn't fill a contractual agreement to pay for surgical technology. They were under contract to pay no later than 30 days after the receipt of the equipment, which is currently being shipped to them. So the first time this community was going to realize the benefit of some technology that was going to help them provide better outcomes through less invasive procedures, lower the infection rate, and shorten their recovery time. But they don't know--the funds are frozen, the people of Anacortes could have to wait, and they may not even get the delivery of that care--because OMB created uncertainty. They created it about the funding, without thinking through the consequences. Multiple hospitals are worried about caring for their patients. Olympic Medical Center on the peninsula serves about 80,000 patients. They said to me, even small changes in the Federal grant spending will have detrimental impacts to their facility and to their community. A Federal funding freeze just exacerbates their ability to deliver care that has been authorized, appropriated and promised--promised to the operation of our healthcare system. How could people be so heartless to try to turn that off? Andrea Downs, the executive director for Citizens Against Domestic and Sexual Abuse, which is the only domestic violence and sexual assault agency for Whidbey Island, said they operate a center and a shelter. She said the funding freeze impacts about half of their funding. Portals, not getting paid, no processing, no time. She said ``not being able to access our grants for the remainder of this fiscal year would have a crippling impact on our organization.'' One, Walla Walla/Tri Cities based nonprofit, Blue Mountain Heart to Heart, is also concerned about Federal grants that they receive that support housing needs of people who live within the region. And they are also worried about the accountability of care that comes with the Medicaid funds. But probably nothing said it more clear to me than when I heard that Elon Musk and DOGE wanted to get their hands on the FAA. What should a man who is regulated by the FAA--his launch facilities are under the FAA's authority to keep us safe. They need to know and coordinate launch rocket times and to not have people just launch a rocket whenever they want. We already know the painful experience of these accidents on the Potomac, of not having a system overseen with enough input by air traffic controllers. But Mr. Musk was fined, and he didn't like the fine. He basically went after the FAA Administrator, who decided to step down instead of serving with this administration. Now, Mr. Musk wants his hands on the FAA to tell them what to do, probably in retribution for the fact that they said it wasn't safe to launch at that moment. This is a clear conflict of interest. We can do better than this. We are here to work together. We are here to work across the aisle. We are here to pass a budget. We are here to appropriate and, as an authorizer, to set those authorizations and work with our appropriators. It is not for a nominee to set a game plan of how to take money out of the lives of individual families that are counting on that payment or structural organizations that are charged with serving our communities on something as important as health or law enforcement, and it sure isn't turning the keys over to somebody who has already been fined by the Agency to try to then undo the Agency's oversight of his own personal business. There couldn't be a clearer answer here. Turn down this nomination. Let's get back to working together, working collaboratively. There are lots of ideas that we have to work on government efficiency, lots of ideas that could produce billions of dollars in savings, produce better care for our constituents, and move our country forward. And, oh, by the way, let's not also continue to cut funding for all the authorized programs that these nominees basically said that they supported. That is why we voted for some of them because they said they supported current funding, whether that is the Department of Transportation or other places. But now, the mastermind of how to short circuit, pull the plug out, pull out the safety blanket, give it to the rich is on the way for a vote here. Please vote no. I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. On behalf of farmers who deserve to be paid, I vote no.

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 to talk about export strategies, collaboration, and American principles. Madam President, no one likes to be left behind. I know somewhere people think there is this, ``I win, you lose,'' mentality. But what happened to ``let's grow the pie'' instead of just hoarding a few pieces that are left. Growth, not contraction, is the right solution. The world is more connected, not necessarily just because of globalization. We are now more connected because of technology, and nothing we are doing is going to stop that. The speed of information is empowering anyone with an internet connection aided by the brain of an AI app to get answers and ideas hundreds of times faster than ever before. Do we need new principles for the information age? Rules the world and we should strive to adhere to? I definitely agree that the answer is yes. But, Madam President, I thought we were for capitalism. Yes, capitalism in the information age needs better rules so markets aren't distorted because markets need to be properly policed and they aren't right now. And I believe that the U.S. should aggressively define the rules in the information age. I believe in a technology NATO--a model of key democracies and key sophisticated technology countries, defining the rules of the information age and telling anybody who wants to follow that, we will give you a discount on our technology, instead of those who are advocating to buy from people who have a government backdoor. Or even in today's analogy, where you allow somebody to have a government backdoor to your technology. Madam President, capitalism is still the largest, smartest export America wants to export. We want open markets, and we want more people to sell to 95 percent of consumers who live outside the United States. Now, it is clear not all the world community is down with capitalism, especially places like China or North Korea. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't continue to advocate for it. What has U.S. advocacy for capitalism done to grow and stabilize the world? I would say immeasurable, immeasurable, immeasurable, immeasurable progress. In fact, the period from the end of World War II to the early 1970s is considered one of the greatest eras of economic expansion in world history. In the U.S., gross domestic product increased from $228 billion to just under $1.7 trillion in 1975. So whether it was Germany, Japan, South Korea--we have brought about a world economy because the shiny American dream was worth chasing. So whether it was setting market rules, growing exports, investing in innovation-- this is the poster child of what the United States of America has been about. It has not been a story about contraction; it has been a story about growth. The impacts of the U.S. economy can't be ignored, but to out compete our adversaries, we need coalitions, not go-it-alone strategies. Why do we fear this if we think our principles are correct? But somehow, the current administration thinks that we have been hurt more than we have been helped in this global equation, and they want us to believe that somehow there is a win-win situation on tariffs that they can deliver on. The American people are demanding leadership here in Washington. They want us to work together. They want us to have the best interest of the country at hand. My guess is they think that on a global basis, too. I know my farmers do. Farmers, always the big potential loser in a trade war, want us to work out better economic opportunities for their future. But there are those in this administration who think we can close our borders, chill trade with tariffs, and somehow make time stand still. Well, I got news for people, the information age has blown a hole in that theory, even if there was justification for the time stand still theory before the information age. You just cannot drop anchor in the middle of this storm. You need to get to a stable harbor and create an opportunity for the future. And trade, Madam President, not only grows economic opportunity, it helps change culture, and there are some cultures that are worth affecting. It is better to have a job than be attracted to join a terrorist organization. It is better to create economic stability than fueling poverty and migration. And tariffs are a distortion of markets. Tariffs mean we disagree. It very rarely means the disagreement will be resolved quickly. It usually means people will retaliate, and the escalation of that retaliation will hurt consumers so much so that eventually someone will blink. The payers in this dispute, though, are never the government leaders. No, it is the workers who lose their job. It is the family that pay higher costs. It is the community that loses their economic activity and tax revenue. And that is why it is so important in this day and age that we talk more about the three Cs: collaboration, coalitions, and capacity building. Capacity building gives us the ability to accelerate innovation. Trust me, one thing I know about traveling in my State--I am sure it is true in other places, too--innovation is not only in the DNA of Americans, it is the history of our country. Whether electricity, aviation, or the internet, credit goes to the United States of America for innovation and inventing future economic opportunities, not just for us, but for the entire world. But now, we are in an innovation race defined by AI and quantum. And according to the World Economic Forum, the U.S. generative AI may increase gross domestic product between $2 and $4 trillion per decade. Boston Consulting estimates that quantum computing could generate $850 billion in annual revenue by 2040. So are we going to focus on those things? Winning the races? Or are we going to allow a contraction that hurts everyone? Obviously, going all in on AI and quantum can help ensure that our country maintains both economic and military advantages, but we definitely have to collaborate with like-minded nations who also want to grow AI and set the rules, if you want to beat China's ultimate Belt and Road Initiative--DeepSeek. So what do we do about the domestic impacts of trade? Well, I can tell you some sure dont's right away. You don't abolish the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program, designed to protect impacted workers from trade, which is what has happened with the other side of the aisle. We need to be intentionally upskilling workers to help them in impacted sectors. I have met and talked to so many Americans. They are smart, talented, hard-working, striving, and they only ask for one thing: opportunity. If you bet on them, they will do the rest. I often think of two major shifts in workforce policy in the United States. World War II, where we didn't have a workforce, and the women showed up in the factories and delivered production. And when the men returned from World War II, and everybody wondered what the economy of the future would be, and we gave them the GI Bill, and they created it. So we don't cut workforce training. We invest in 2-year skill training programs at our high schools. We make sure that we turn to apprenticeships. We return to the skilling of the jobs that are needed today. You also don't cut export programs like the State Trade Expansion Program (STEP) or the Export-Import Bank. But what do you do? Well, let's go back to those three Cs: collaboration, coalition building, and capacity building. We will bring more high-wage manufacturing jobs back to the United States, fostering the investment landscape by continuing on the path of the CHIPS and Science Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, those have put real investments in the United States of America and have started us on the path towards growing the middle class again. But we need to continue to invest in science. We need a robust R&D tax policy for inventors and manufacturers, and we need to help our manufacturers with capital investment, equipment modernizations, to help them with their factories. I have seen this in places like Madison, ME, or Longview, WA, where we helped revitalize a longstanding paper industry into new opportunities for the future. So how do we deal with China? Well, they aren't playing by the rules. They are manipulating and flooding markets, but I guarantee you that just a fear of China is not the answer, and solutions like collaboration and coalition building are critical, particularly in the information age. China does have the largest gross domestic product, about 19 percent of global GDP. In the global economy, the U.S. represents about 15 percent. But if the United States works to create markets with like-minded partners like Japan, Europe, and the UK and builds a coalition of like-minded democracies grounded in the rule of law, we can flip the script and have a market representing 34 percent of global GDP. And if we take the next step and expand coalitions to include partners like Canada, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and India, then we are looking at a market that, instead of China's 19 percent accounts for almost half, 47 percent of global GDP. So why aren't we focusing on that economic opportunity? A lot of people say, Well, that is not the America of today, but I am pretty sure Ben Franklin, about the time he was focusing on electricity, also went to France and helped to build a coalition essential for the founding and continuation of our country. So don't tell me it is not in our DNA to do this. There is so much more we could and should do working with our allies. Obviously, I mentioned a few--research and development in artificial intelligence, commercializing quantum, scaling, safe, affordable fusion technology. And there are many Members of Congress who were working on these bipartisan ideas. But we have to remain competitive, and we cannot allow this debate about tariffs to take us off our historical course as a nation. As I mentioned, we mapped out how to get investment in the United States of America, and now, we need to follow that with the training and skilling of American workers. As the AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and Microsoft President Brad Smith at a recent meeting in Seattle agreed, we need to train and skill 500,000 electricians for the United States. Why can't we here agree and accelerate that? I am not even sure we can agree on the acceleration of air traffic controllers, and we have every reason to get that done. Last week, I spoke about additional investments the United States needs to make in Panama, Latin America, and others to link and modernize bilateral agreements that help us counter China. And as I mentioned, I believe in an aggressive EXIM Bank investment to counter China's Belt and Road Initiative. Free trade agreements are a way for us, not tariffs, to gain the leverage we want. South Asia could play an important role in this coalition building, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. But I want us to go further. I want us to understand that U.S.-led negotiations in a Middle East free trade agreement to build on the momentum of a cease-fire in Gaza could further stabilize that region, along with making investments in other programs. It is tragic that the administration fails to understand the important role USAID plays in global capacity building. How will we know that strategy works? Well, I suggest we will know when we are growing the middle class in the United States of America again. The bills we have passed in investing and allowing us to innovate faster are on their way to doing that. Let us not have a trade war disrupt that and dismantle what has been history after history lesson of economic success of this Nation, fighting for open markets, capital opportunities, and investing in the ingenuity of America. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. CANTWELL

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

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about TikTok, which I think all people here know that we have been having a lot of attention about--a lot of debate, a lot of discussion, and a lot of action by the Supreme Court. But now I think people are getting a little clouded on the path forward. I want to be clear that, last year, the U.S. Congress passed a law requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok. The law requires that sale to shut down all government back doors by the Chinese or attempts by them to influence the algorithms that could affect U.S. citizens or the U.S. military. It requires that sale to end the Chinese Government's influence over TikTok's content recommendation algorithms. This law also requires that data sharing with the Chinese Government must end. I was glad to see that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld that law. Why? Because we asked them whether Congress had the ability to act in this national interest and to pass this law, and they upheld it. Congress and the courts acted for a reason--to address real national security threats to our country and to the American people. When President Trump issued his 2020 Executive order, he recognized that TikTok collected vast amounts of data on U.S. citizens. A House resolution, H. Res. 1051, introduced by the leadership of the House Select Committee on China and Congressman Gallagher and Congressman Krishnamoorthi sets out the threat citing from the U.S. Government agencies and from U.S. Government officials. It points out that in 2020, the Department of Commerce found out that China is building a massive database of American personal information to understand who to target for espionage. And that is of particular concern for us when it is about U.S. military personnel--where they might be, what they might be doing. It also found that ByteDance had very close ties to the Chinese Government. And in December of 2022, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Chris Wray, stated that TikTok's data repository on Americans was in the hands of the Chinese Government. Director Wray testified that China could use TikTok for the influence and operations to control software that could compromise Americans' personal devices. The Commander of U.S. Cyber Command and the Director of the National Security Agency testified that one-third of the adult population receives their news from TikTok and one-sixth of American children use it every day. He added that TikTok provides a national platform for information operations and for surveillance. In further information, the Director of the CIA, William Burns, indicated that ByteDance can use the private data of American TikTok users to shape TikTok content to suit the interests of the Chinese Government. Now, this was most important as it related to a 2023 Rutgers University report which found that TikTok amplifies and demotes content based on the interests of the Chinese Government. No surprise. If you could have influence, you demote or promote whatever you want to promote. The Rutgers report found--oh, surprisingly--that the issues of Hong Kong and Tiananmen Square didn't quite have the same level of oomph on TikTok as they did on Instagram, meaning that those posts about those subjects were somehow not as voluminous. It found foreign policy issues disfavored by China and Russia also had fewer hashtags on TikTok-- issues such as a pro-Ukraine stance or a pro-Israel stance. In fact, in one instance, there were 8,000 times more Tiananmen Square hashtags on Instagram than on TikTok. So if this was all supposed to be about just generous posting by individuals and posting content, why would one platform have, even with the volume of the different platforms, 8,000 times more hashtags? Well, I am sure the Chinese Government doesn't like to talk about Tiananmen Square. I am pretty sure they don't like to talk about the Uighurs, genocide, or other issues. There were 750 times more pro-Ukraine hashtags on Instagram than on TikTok. The Deputy National Security Adviser also pointed out that ByteDance has used TikTok to surveil U.S. journalists to identify and retaliate against potential sources. Now, this is a concern to us in the United States. We wouldn't let the Chinese Government own ABC or NBC. Why are we allowing them to influence a source of information about news, particularly when they are retaliating against journalists? Studies from Cornell University and the University of Vermont found that TikTok promotes a toxic diet culture among teens and young adults, including pro-anorexia content. I can't think of anything more disgusting: identifying teens--which you can see in the Rutgers report that if the teen is identified as at all concerned about these issues, the next thing they do is get a massive amount of data thrown onto them about being pro-anorexia, which, again, is just promoting younger people having less faith in themselves and their body image. Both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate received classified briefings on this national security threat and what we should do moving forward. Prominent leaders on both sides of the aisle have called out this threat, indicating we need to do something to move forward. One colleague, Senator Cotton, of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been quite clear and said on the floor last week: TikTok harvests a vast trove of user data, including name, age, email, address, phone number, credit card number, facial features, voiceprints, keystrokes, photos, videos, and viewing habits. This data can make users susceptible to manipulation and even blackmail, not only today, but also years from now when users may have become influential persons in the military, the intelligence community, business, media and other walks of life. I agree with Senator Cotton. This is an issue where this kind of collection of information on U.S. citizens drives opportunities for people to manipulate, particularly in the area of the military. So Senators and Members of Congress want to work with President Trump as he tries to end what is Chinese overinfluence on such an important national security threat. The good news is the technology is advancing and particularly advancing very rapidly right now. We are starting to see technology that I hope is finally giving us the ability to take some of this control back with algorithms ourselves--as individuals, as U.S. citizens. Maybe you have heard the buzz around agentic AI. Here is what it means in plain language. We now will control the algorithms that billionaires or foreign governments have been using to control us. Agentic AI lets us turn the tables on them. We will now use AI to take in massive amounts of information from the internet, from all sources, and then apply filters that we want to see, that we choose for ourselves, so that we only get the information we want to see and not what somebody else wants to do with our information. So I hope the President, as he is considering these issues, will look at this software solution. I don't know that a joint venture with the Chinese is going to rectify this issue about the algorithms. They can't continue to own and influence this process. But U.S. innovation and U.S. ownership can drive us forward and can drive a better experience for our young people. Believe me, this is an issue about young people. Our youngest citizens of America shouldn't be the source of information--targeted at them--to undermine them, to basically create insecurities in them, and to promote ideas that we do not believe in the United States. So I hope that the President and I hope our colleagues here will encourage us to resolve this issue. We have given every tool possible. Now, it is time to get this into the hands of U.S. innovators and move forward. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to this deceptively named Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. Tomorrow is the 52nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the decision that guaranteed fundamental rights to choose abortion before that right was stripped away. Now reproductive freedom is under attack in multiple States. Over a dozen States have passed abortion bans, and several pregnant women in Georgia and Texas have died because they could not access safe abortions. In some States, patients don't have access to legal abortion care even after they have been raped. Multiple States are currently suing to restrict access to even medication for abortion. We don't yet know how the new administration is going to handle Federal protections for pregnant women in medical emergencies. The new administration, yesterday, took down a government website that offered just information about reproductive care. This was one of the top priorities yesterday of this administration on day one--taking down that website. Instead of working to resolve any of the serious, real challenges, my colleagues are trying to force a vote on something that is completely unnecessary. It is already illegal to kill a child who is born alive in this country. I was a Member of the Senate when we passed, in 2002, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act to ensure that all infants have legal protections. The so-called Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Act, as my colleague from New Hampshire just said, is legislation in search of a problem. It is deliberately misleading and offensive to pregnant people and to their healthcare providers. It is incredibly heartbreaking--these scenarios--where a baby is born with a fatal diagnosis, and the baby's parents must want to spend those precious moments holding and saying goodbye to their child, but under these extreme ideas, doctors would have to perform aggressive medical care that would only prolong a family's suffering. We need to honor that these are medical decisions left to the woman, her physician, and to her family. We trust that doctors and nurses know how to carry this out. We want to honor these--not politicians, not lawyers--so I will be voting against this legislation, and I urge my colleagues to do so. We also need to make sure that here in the Senate, as my colleague said, we are working to lower costs. We need to make sure that they don't try to cut Medicare or food assistance or the neediest of issues for young families who are being impacted. Healthcare in the United States needs to be strengthened; drug costs need to be lowered; and we need to help and protect working families. I thank my colleagues for being here today. I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, for the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation I report favorably the following nomination lists which were printed in the Records on the dates indicated, and ask unanimous consent, to save the expense of reprinting on the Executive Calendar that these nominations lie at the Secretary's desk for the information of Senators.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. I rise to join my colleagues and want to thank my colleague, Senator Murray, for her leadership on this important issue over many, many years. I join my colleagues to say it is time to put partisan politics aside and stay out of family planning issues and leave that up to families in America. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle had an opportunity today to believe that women deserve the chance to start a family through IVF, the miracle for people who have been struggling with fertility challenges. In 2022, more than 2,000 new babies were born in the State of Washington thanks to IVF. This is something we would like to see every year. But as the Court has struck down important issues and States have gone on various efforts to try to restrict women's access to healthcare and full reproductive care, IVF has even been questioned. Practically everyone knows someone who overcame the challenge desperate to have a pregnancy and the sadness of infertility. And that is probably why 86 percent of Americans say that IVF should be legal. This afternoon, we voted on that right, the Right to IVF Act. That is what we were voting on, a straightforward vote. One of those that would just show the American people, the mainstream of America, that we agree with them. That is all we were trying to do, as people have punted around this very important right that now, because of actions by individual States, no longer seems to be guaranteed. Yet we all here could have cast a vote saying we wanted to protect it in voting for this act. It was an opportunity for us to ask our colleagues who previously voted against this measure to say that they actually agreed this time on IVF; to show that they mean what they say, not some version of a bill that basically curtails and makes it impossible for somebody to run an IVF organization. We have no time for that--no time for that. My colleagues' voting history shows that if you didn't support IVF before and you didn't support it today, I am not sure what it is you think you support. Democrats are trying to guarantee the access, and Republicans are blocking us. Democrats tried to guarantee the right to contraception, which 81 percent of Americans say should be protected, and Republicans blocked us. We tried to pass a law saying you can't put a woman in jail for trying to leave her State just to get abortion care, and that was blocked. And we tried to pass a law saying that you can't put a healthcare worker in jail for performing abortions in their State where the procedure is legal. Republicans blocked that, too. And today another block of just something very basic--the Right to IVF Act. So reproductive freedoms of all sorts and family planning is under attack. We had a chance to speak as one voice and to talk about fertility treatments in the United States of America. Instead, families will continue to wonder whether IVF is going to be available in the United States of America. Americans should have the access to these reproductive rights. Americans should have the freedom to decide for themselves when and how to have children. And they should have the freedom to use IVF for their families and to plan to start a family. This summer, I released a healthcare report, along with my colleagues, that talked about people who lived in red States where they were forcing people to travel to other States just to get healthcare. It was so sad and scary to find out that, basically, almost weekly, someone from Idaho was walking into a facility with a pregnancy complexity, only to be told: I am not going to see you. And then have them flown to a facility in Seattle. What kind of hardship are you putting on people? Then, with great sadness, I read this article that came out late last night about the death of a young woman from Georgia ``who died after waiting 20 hours for a hospital to treat her complications from an abortion pill shows the consequences of [the actions that we passed] Donald Trump's actions.'' This is what we are doing to America. We are leaving reproductive choice up in the air. We are making women travel all over just to get care. And now we are telling Americans we don't even know if we believe in IVF. This nonsense has to stop. This is about families planning. This is about families planning for their future. It is not about politicians putting hardships on patients seeking healthcare and then turning them away and affecting their lives. And in this case, the tragedy of this young woman. I thank my colleague, Senator Murray, for helping organize us. I ask our colleagues: We can do better than this. They need to do better than this for the American people. I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise today to wish a very happy birthday to Mary Louise Quinby, a wife, mother, grandmother, great- grandmother, and great-great-grandmother, from Ocosta, WA. Mrs. Quinby turned 100 years old on August 26, and she continues to be the driving force within her family, which now consists of 8 children, 30 grandchildren, 56 great-grandchildren, and 5 great-great-grandchildren. Born August 26, 1924, Mary grew up on a small family farm. In 1942, during World War II, she married her high school sweetheart Robert, and while he served in the Navy, Mary worked as a Rosie the Riveter in a local shop in Aberdeen. After the war, Mary and Bob settled in Bremerton, where Bob worked in the shipyards as a machinist. In 1948, Mary's uncle, a cranberry grower in Grayland, encouraged her husband and brother Jack to try their hand at farming cranberries. They bought their first bog of two acres from her uncle and moved their small family to Grayland. During the years after their first cranberry bog purchase and until the early 1970s, they bought about 23 acres of bogs. Mary supported her husband while he worked his second job as a machinist in a local plant by weeding, irrigating, and doing frost protection when necessary. In the early 1970s, Bob became ill, and they started selling portions of their bogs to their oldest son, Robert P. Quinby. During this time, Mary--mostly by herself--farmed about eight acres. She raised a bumper crop, and it topped the highest yield on that acreage. She never let her husband forget it. Her husband was the West Coast director for Ocean Spray for many years, during which time Mary played an instrumental role in teaching other farmers about Ocean Spray and cranberry farming. During all of that time, and through today, her family has remained her top priority, and the legacy of that 1948 decision to become a cranberry farmer has been passed down in her family. Today, two sons, one daughter, and eight grandchildren grow cranberries. From their first purchase in 1948 of two acres, Mary's descendants have amassed close to 275 acres in the Grayland area and are busy training the next generations of cranberry owners. Mary is a shining example of the American dream and beloved by all who know her. Her dedication to her family, her community, and her farms is obvious, and I wish her the happiest of birthdays.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor to join my colleague, the chair of the Finance Committee, and thank him for his incredible leadership on the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act. I can't think of a more critical effort than the leadership role he has played to negotiate legislation that passed the House 357 to 70. Now, when in this institution do you see such a big and tremendous vote across many different aspects of financial and tax policy that affect Americans? And yet the House has passed it 357 to 70, and somehow our colleagues here don't understand there is that much support behind that legislation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, on behalf of 140,000 members of the National Association of Home Builders, their very strong support for the Tax Relief for the American Families and Workers Act.

Ms. CANTWELL. I think that is an important organization that knows and understands how much affordable housing we need in America and how this underlying bill addresses that by building over 200,000 more affordable units in the next 2 years. It really is a shot in the arm at a time when Americans know that the cost of their housing has gone up because we haven't built enough supply. And as my colleagues know, especially since the downturn of the financial crisis in 2008, that from big cities to actually small towns, the crunch of a lack of a housing supply has meant an increase in costs. That means it hurts the economy overall. Last month, the skyrocketing costs were the largest contributor to the 3 percent rate of inflation. So that is why we have an opportunity to do something about that tomorrow. We have the opportunity to do something about the rising costs of housing and to pass this legislation that will build more supply and bring down those costs. Now, I know our colleagues--this is a very bipartisan aspect of the legislation. They know that expanding supply works. A 2019 study by the DC Office of Revenue Analysis found that renters basically saved $177 per month for every 2,100 units built in the city per year. So, literally, you can do the math. When you don't build supply, you are just making everybody else's expenses go up. So why aren't we building more supply? Well, I can tell you that the low-income housing tax credits are a real achievement in bipartisan efforts to build more supply. It basically is the best tool to build affordable housing. It expands and improves, just as I mentioned from the National Association of Home Builders--``LIHTC is the most successful affordable rental housing production program in U.S. history.'' That is why it is so important that we remember this analysis. A New York study found that for every 10 percent increase in housing supply, nearby rents decrease by 1 percent. Yet our colleagues don't want to build more supply. And for LIHTC properties specifically, new data from Moody's Analytics found that, with these low-income housing projects, the renters in the Seattle area saved a remarkable $957 per month compared to the average rents in the region. Now, I could go on and on with my colleagues about why we got into this position--certainly, the downturn of 2008 and when we stopped building more supply. We did have returning veterans who needed workforce housing. We had workforce housing overall in a community like Seattle, but it doesn't matter. Yakima or Spokane, it is the same dilemma. If you are not building affordable housing, people don't have places to live, and it stymies the economy moving forward. But we have had seniors living longer. We have had other issues that have made the need for housing a national priority. So we want to hear what our colleagues say about this very important attack on inflation--most of it derived from housing--and study and analysis that says we will lower costs if we just build supply. Tomorrow, we have a chance to build that supply. I hope my colleagues will join us in passing this legislation and driving down costs for Americans. I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, for the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation I report favorably the following nomination lists which were printed in the RECORDS on the dates indicated, and ask unanimous consent, to save the expense of reprinting on the Executive Calendar that these nominations lie at the Secretary's desk for the information of Senators.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor today, and I congratulate the chairman of the Judiciary Committee for this important legislation that has been passed out of the Judiciary Committee. I encourage him to continue their efforts to hold large social media companies accountable for the way that information is used against American citizens, and I thank him for his good work. I, too, want to come to the floor today and talk about the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act that I hope my colleagues will advance today on a cloture motion so we can get on this legislation and hopefully speedily pass it through the U.S. Senate. It has been more than 3 years now where families from all across America have come to the Nation's Capital and said that they have lost children to suicide; they have had children harassed and bullied and had to leave school and move to a different location. They have had the safety and security of their children threatened, as my colleague just mentioned, some of the bullying and activities that take place. So today is about advancing forward on privacy legislation aimed at protecting our children by giving new tools to the Federal Trade Commission, with new authority to take up this cause and to clearly outline what we in the U.S. Senate think needs to be done today to better protect children. I mentioned the 3 years and the number of families that have come to the Nation's Capital because they have been here many times and walked away many times discouraged because the same big media platforms have then, after they have left, come here and tried to lobby Members on the fact that they can't accept these ideas. But today, hopefully we will be victorious in giving a few very particular tools to help us, to help our families, and to help children try to address this growing crisis. As we have met with many of these families, it was very clear that we needed to give them something that they can fight back with. So two pieces of the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act include two important pieces of legislation from the Commerce Committee. The first is Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act, led by my colleagues Senator Markey and Senator Cassidy. I want to thank them for their leadership on this important issue. It has really been a long time in coming, particularly with Senator Markey who led on original legislation to protect children under the age of 13 from targeted advertising. Many people will remember when we tried to say we were going to ban advertising on TV specifically to kids; we have tried to follow that up with the internet. And today, we are taking another step. The three things that this important legislation does is that it raises that age from 12 to 16 of those kids who will be protected so that they cannot be targeted for advertising and it creates a new knowledge standard. So many of these companies got away with saying, ``Well, you can't prove I knew they were kids. So, I could just keep doing what I'm doing.'' We need more responsibility from the social media companies. And so, we are changing that knowledge standard from actual knowledge, which meant you had to prove--the FTC had to prove--that the company knew that it was actually targeting kids. Monitoring their kids' privacy is a tough task for parents who are trying to raise families, juggle jobs, do all of these things. So that knowledge standard now has changed to fairly implied based on objective circumstances. So basically, it is saying to these social media companies, you cannot get away with just saying, ``I didn't know.'' You have to do a better job of understanding exactly where these advertisers are coming from, who they are targeting, and if you are helping to target these kids, but we are not going to let you target kids 16 and under. This is such an important issue because spending on digital advertising in the United States is expected to reach $740 billion this year--$740 billion. It is a massive change in what has been revenue for our newspapers, our broadcasters, media, and news organizations that have all had to live by in a community, making sure that information was accurate, making sure that it was not abusive, or basically trying to increase a response by using more hate speech. No, no, no. So all that advertising that went to our newspapers and TV stations and it is basically pulling the plug out from under them, is now in this massive online advertising world, in which, yes, there can be a lot of misinformation and a lot of using your own information to target you and to try to increase price. Hopefully, we will get to legislation--comprehensive privacy legislation--with my colleague Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers at some point in time on this. But what we are seeing is that public health showed that social media platforms earned nearly $11 billion of that $740 billion, $11 billion targeting children. We know that we don't like this. We know there is no reason for them to do this. We know that it creates perplexing challenges, and that is a staggering amount of money. So, I so appreciate Senators Markey and Cassidy, for basically giving us a new way to hold these social media companies accountable, saying that you do know that you are targeting these kids and also to basically raise the age to 16 and then allowing both attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission to enforce this legislation. The second piece that is included here, and both of these bills were passed out of the Commerce Committee, I think almost 2 years ago now. So we are glad and we appreciate Senator Schumer bringing them to the floor. So, we are glad that they are finally seeing floor action. The kids' online safety bills, by Senators Blumenthal and Blackburn, also very focused on giving parents tools to help fight back from social media companies or just change things that their young teens or parents want to change. One of my constituents, a young girl from Bellingham, tried to set up her TikTok account to stop showing her videos about eating disorders. They find out, now, derived information about all of us, and if you clicked on anything, they can just take that information and constantly send you data. In this case, she must have said something, did something, but all they wanted to do was basically continue to harass her with eating disorder videos. Now, the Presiding Officer, the President, probably remembers we took action in getting a better resolution. We don't want any foreign actors creating malign actions against the United States through a platform, and our Department of Justice has shown that is exactly what is happening in some instances. Those foreign actors could be pushing, or bots taking over, once that foreign actor has put information out there, basically saying, yes, let's just pummel the heck out of these teenagers with videos that will make them doubt themselves, make them basically second-guess or feel under the scrutiny of their colleagues and friends at school. This legislation by Senators Blackburn and Blumenthal will hold social media accountable for prioritizing their engagement in keeping kids safe. It requires platforms to use tools so that parents can control features. This helps either the parent or the child go in and change that and say: I don't want to have any of these ads placed towards my children. And it ensures that parents can report harms, and it requires companies to respond to those harms. Now, my frustration with where we are with the FTC is I am sure the FTC has a big, fat file that has a lot of complaints about what has been done to 12-year-olds online. We are now increasing this to a higher age of up to 16 years old, but we need better enforcement by the FTC to look at these accounts, and hold these companies accountable, and call them when they have data and information from parents about their not responding to help set up and change these social media accounts so they can better protect their children. This is such an important piece of legislation before us today. It can't save the lives of people we have already lost, but it can help parents, and it can help all of us as a society rein in some of these controls. The final piece I want to mention, Mr. President, is Senator Thune's Filter Bubble Transparency Act, which is also included. This is Senator Thune's attempt to try to get at what we call a blackbox algorithm where you don't even know what the algorithm is and what it is doing. We had testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee by a Facebook whistleblower who basically said that the algorithm that the company chose to use was actually increasing hate speech online. And the reason why is because then it got more viewers and then it sold more advertising. That was an important witness and whistleblower to come before the committee because it told us that we have to now understand, in a more important way, how much these kinds of ill effects can be targeted toward individuals without us knowing exactly what is going on. So I think this is an important step, including Senator Thune's language in here on filter bubbles. As I mentioned earlier, we have to do more, we have got to get a national privacy piece of legislation to protect all of us against the misuse of our own personal data by businesses and others who want to do us harm and put a stop to this acceleration at all costs of using our data for some juggernaut industry that probably hopes to reach $1 trillion. But what will it do to us Americans in the meantime? So I urge my colleagues to take these very prudent steps today to pass these kids' online privacy bills, give parents better tools, give all of us better protection, and upgrade these important aspects to the Federal Trade Commission and to attorneys general so they can be good policemen on the beat. I thank the President, and I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I understand we have colleagues here and we have a vote, but I wanted to ask unanimous consent for 2 minutes prior to the vote.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, yesterday the FTC, in a 4-to-1 decision, took action in a report, an interim staff report, that show that we should all be very concerned about the activities of PBM middlemen. These are the basic people who are supposedly getting discounts for us on drug prices but then actually pocket those discounts. The final report, which we should be receiving--this interim report we should be receiving today basically says that market concentration and vertical integration are just giving these PBMs too much market power. The point is, are we going to do anything to stop that market power and to help the public who need better transparency on price? It also says that PBMs are engaging in self-preferencing, meaning that they are steering those rebates back to themselves, and it is affecting pharmacies. It is affecting pharmacies in my State where now in downtown Seattle, you don't have any 24-hour pharmacies anymore, and pharmacy deserts are starting to happen. The report also shows that PBMs may be using their market shares to force independent pharmacies into unfair contracts--that is what you get when you get a concentration of a market, and then you can basically push other people out of the market--and that PBMs and manufacturers are entering into rebate agreements that may impair or block access to lower cost drugs. I urge my colleagues to get this report, to review it. I urge our colleagues here to take action on these PBM middlemen. This is a bipartisan effort. My colleague Senator Grassley and I have legislation outlawing some of these practices at the FTC; and our colleagues Senator Crapo and Senator Wyden also have legislation that would help us on PBMs. So I thank my colleagues.

Ms. CANTWELL

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

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Rhode Island for his dedication and perseverance on these important issues, and I also appreciate his mentioning the dividend concept because, obviously, we want consumers to be kept whole here and to make a transformation that they too want to make. So I thank him for his leadership. Madam President, I come to the floor today to call attention to the high prices Americans are paying for their prescription medication and the urgent need to pass what is called the Pharmacy Benefit Manager Transparency Act in the Senate that I have cosponsored along with my colleague from Iowa Senator Grassley. At the beginning of this decade, the United States spent more on prescription drugs than any other country in the world, reaching an average of $1,432 per person per year. So 6 out of every 10 adults are currently taking at least one prescription drug. More than a quarter of us take four or more prescriptions. So when drug prices go up, it really does stretch the family budget, cuts into our savings, and it puts us into health challenges if we can't afford those prescriptions. About one in four residents in my State--the State of Washington-- have either rationed or stopped taking prescription drugs because of costs. Families should not have to make this choice. One of the factors driving up the price of prescription drugs is pharmacy benefit managers and their profit-driven business model that is not transparent as to the price-setting and is causing pharmacies great harm. Pharmacy benefit managers operate behind the scenes but have a stake in just about every part of the drug distribution chain and exert extraordinary influence in the prices that Americans are paying for their medication. PBMs decide which lifesaving medications most Americans will have access to through their insurance plans. They decide how much copay will be for prescriptions. They decide how much a pharmacy will be reimbursed for dispensing these drugs and whether the pharmacy will lose money when they fill a prescription. PBMs don't actually handle or distribute the drugs, but they siphon off the profit at every step in the process, from the drug manufacturers and all the way up to the pharmacy counter. That is because the PBM market, these pharmacy benefit manager middlemen--think of them almost as the insurance company that is setting the price--are extremely consolidated, giving consumers no choice in which PBM they use. Just three PBMs control 80 percent of the market. Can you imagine anybody controlling 80 percent of the market? But just three of these companies control 80 percent of the market. And, effectively, they have unchecked power on their ability to distort the market and engage in unfair and abusive practices. So what are we trying to do, Senator Grassley and myself? We are trying to stop those unfair and manipulative practices. Not only is the PBM market consolidated, but the vertical integration of PBMs, pharmacies, and insurers is worrisome. The three largest PBMs are each part of companies that include insurers and large pharmacies. So this gives them the opportunity to increase their profits by companies steering patients to pharmacies they own and then lowering the reimbursement rates to competing pharmacies. Americans are feeling this pinch. They are seeing that they have higher drug costs, and they are seeing that PBMs are thriving. The three biggest PBMs are astoundingly profitable. Last year, Optum Rx raked in $116 billion for its owner, United Healthcare Group, contributing about 30 percent of the company's total revenue. PBMs have leveraged their market power and lack of transparency to benefit themselves at the expense of patients and certainly-- certainly--at the expense of independent pharmacies. They are happy to try to help the pharmacies in their vertical integration but certainly not the independent pharmacies, if you will, trying to put them out of business. PBMs enrich themselves by manipulating the market for prescription drugs at every turn. We cannot be fooled when the PBM claims to reduce the cost of drugs by negotiating rebates from the drugmakers in charge in exchange for favorable insurance coverage through an insurance company they probably own. I have been so frustrated by this in the past. It is like our organization--take, for example, King County. Someone comes to them and says: We will negotiate for King County employees a drug benefit, and we will give you a discount. But then they pocket two-thirds of the discount themselves--the PBM. That is what is going on here. These rebates are part of their manipulative scheme to inflate and extract the value from the prescription drug market. In a market that is free of this kind of manipulation or competition, you would have drugmakers, and they would be setting the formulary cost. They would help drive down price by having competition. But we know the market isn't working right when the least expensive version of a drug is the least dispensed. That is right. You can tell how a market functions or if it is a great functioning market because-- why?--when prices are too high and there is supply, people put more supply in the market. But if the least expensive drug isn't being dispensed, that means somebody is trying to artificially keep those costs high. This happens because PBMs control which drugs are included on a formulary, and they get a bigger cut through a larger rebate and higher copays when more expensive drugs are put on the list. This incentivizes drugmakers to inflate the prices of their drugs to appeal to the PBMs. Who bears the brunt of all these inflated costs? The American consumer. Another way PBMs manipulate the market is through abusive practices like spread pricing or clawbacks. Spread pricing is when a PBM reimburses a pharmacy one amount for filling a prescription and then charges the health plan a higher price and keeps the difference. That is the scheme. That is the scheme of how they are making money. They basically say: Oh, this is the price. And they then charge the plan a higher amount. This creates two problems: One, neither the pharmacy nor the plan knows what the other paid or was charged. So both parties lack the data on what a true price for the drug is. Second, this practice allows PBMs to squeeze more money out of the supply chain without anyone knowing how much. They also claw back reimbursements from pharmacies after a claim is settled through direct and indirect remuneration fees, or what I call DIR fees, which have generic effective rates, or GER. So, for example, an independent pharmacy in Seattle actually had to close because the PBMs said that this independent pharmacy owed $538,000 in reimbursements in a single year from these PBMs. They just came up with a number and said this is how much you owe us. So it is not surprising that independent pharmacies can't stay open with these kinds of tactics. In just the last 18 months, 83 pharmacies in the State of Washington have closed. These practices have contributed to the creation of pharmacy deserts. In fact, Fortune magazine just wrote a story about this particular problem in the State of Washington. There are now 86 towns in my State that are more than 10 miles from the nearest pharmacy. That means that roughly 450,000 people in my State live in an area where they have to drive 10 miles just to go to a pharmacy. And we now rank sixth among all States for poor access to pharmacies. According to the Washington State Pharmacy Association, there are no more 24-hour pharmacies left in the city of Seattle. So I am very concerned about the number of independent and community pharmacy closures in my State. I am also concerned about how insurance company middlemen and their unfair business practices have contributed to these closures. Some might ask why hasn't anyone discovered these schemes or done something about it. Well, that is because PBMs shield their practices and profits by claiming that their data that they have is considered proprietary information. But we must have laws on the books that make sure that the legal, manipulative schemes can help stop these players in the marketplace who have too much of a concentrated power. PBMs cannot continue to operate in the dark while Americans see their prescription drugs rise and rise year after year. And that is why Senator Grassley and I introduced the Pharmacy Benefit Manager Transparency Act, to shine light on these harmful practices, increase the transparency, and increase the accountability for pharmacy benefit managers. The Pharmacy Benefit Manager Transparency Act directs the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on unfair and abusive schemes, such as the spread pricing or reimbursement clawbacks. It also mandates transparency for these PBMs and that they submit a report about these activities so that we can understand how they are basically moving other products that are not on the formulary placements. That is exactly how some of these schemes have operated. It is important to have this help from the Federal Trade Commission. It is their job to stop these unfair practices. It is their job to hold PBMS accountable for manipulation of practices or prices and give the Agency more insight into this marketplace. We cannot wait any longer to get this legislation passed. My bill has come out of the Commerce Committee with good bipartisan support, and it has bicameral support as well. So we must keep the momentum going. I hope my colleagues here in the Senate will bring this Pharmacy Benefit Manager Transparency Act to the Senate floor when we return. Americans are hurting, and so are our pharmacists. Our pharmacies themselves are places where information about our prescriptions are held to a high standard. I would hate to see Americans in such a concentrated market that all of our prescription drugs are bought online from one or two big suppliers, and that somehow is our delivery system. I think pharmacists are a key part of our delivery system. Pharmacies are a key part of communities. And we shouldn't have big, concentrated players manipulating the prices of drugs and putting pharmacies out of business and raising these unbelievable prices on our consumers. So I thank the President, and I hope our colleagues will consider getting this legislation in front of the Senate when we return.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 3960 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Ms. CANTWELL. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 747, submitted earlier today.

Ms. CANTWELL. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.