Benjamin Cardin

Mr. CARDIN

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, today our colleague John Lewis will be laid to rest. What an incredible legacy he leaves behind. I was blessed to serve with him in the House of Representatives. The two of us were elected in the same class to start serving in the House of Representatives in 1987. We became friends, and he was certainly an inspiration to all of us. I particularly mention his name today because of the challenges we are finding to our First Amendment right to peacefully protest. John Lewis frequently talked about ``good trouble'' and that all of us have a responsibility to speak out when we see something that is wrong and to do it in a peaceful way. It is interesting that his last public appearance was with the protesters of Black Lives Matter here in DC, as he wanted to be there and was proud to see the diversity of the group who was there to protest the brutalities that we have seen in America and the systemic racism we see in our country. We not only have the right but the responsibility to speak out when we see these injustices. The First Amendment to our Nation's Constitution is key to the foundation of our country's democracy, including the right of people to peacefully assemble and petition for redress of grievances. The President of the United States ordering unidentified agents of the Department of Homeland Security to arrest and detain protesters is a flagrant breach of trust and potentially a violation of the law. Congress must speak up in a unified, bipartisan voice and tell the President that such an escalation and militarization of our city streets without provocation or invitation from local officials must stop and must stop now. I am gravely concerned that when Federal law enforcement agents are deployed in this manner, their presence has increased tensions and caused more confrontation between demonstrators and police. Indeed, local, State, and even Federal officials--including the U.S. Attorney-- have criticized the Federal agents' intervention and tactics in Portland. I share the concerns of many of my colleagues regarding the misuse of resources and personnel, particularly when Federal law enforcement officers are used for political purposes by the President to violate the civil rights of our constituents. We all should be concerned that both the Justice and Homeland Security Departments are misusing their emergency authorities and are actually aggravating the situation in Portland and elsewhere. I have cosponsored legislation that would place important limits and oversight on the use of Federal officers for enforcement operations and arrests relating to protests, including making sure that law enforcement officers are clearly identified. I recently voted in the Senate to place further limits on the transfer of excess military equipment to State and local law enforcement agencies, and I will continue to demand that America reform its Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies. After the shocking death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, Congress must address systemic racism and police brutality through passage of the Justice in Policing Act. While this legislation has passed the House, Senator McConnell has still refused to bring it up in the Senate, condemning it to his legislative graveyard. Now more than ever, we urgently need to rebuild trust with our communities and change the Trump administration's mentality from a warrior to a guardian approach for law enforcement. News reports indicate that Federal law enforcement officers have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protesters since at least mid-July. In some cases, citizens could not tell the difference between law enforcement and far-right extremists in the region who wore similar military gear. This reminds us of the most radical images that we have seen in authoritative, repressive regimes on how they violate the rights of their citizens. Federal officials have been reported as grabbing Americans in the dark, not providing any form of identification, and arresting, searching, and detaining individuals in cells before properly reading their Miranda rights. There are widespread reports of Federal agents not having any probable cause before making these arrests. Not only are these actions irresponsible and dangerous, it is a violation of our constitutional rights. America's strength is in the ideals that we believe in. We are the global leader in democratic values and the rule of law. These actions weaken our Nation, and these actions weaken America's credibility and global leadership on behalf of democratic values. I am pleased that last week the inspectors general of the Department of Homeland Security and Justice agreed to investigate how their agents used force, detained people, and conducted themselves in confrontations with protesters both in Portland, OR, and Washington, DC. Recall in Washington, DC, that Attorney General Barr used force to clear a peaceful protest at Lafayette Park just outside the White House. Attorney General Barr took this action so that the President could hold up a Bible for a photo-op outside of a church. This was an unacceptable breach of faith in the Constitution. It breaks the trust between our law enforcement and our citizens. Defending democracy and the rule of law--the very freedoms we as a nation hold so dear--is hard work. It is made harder when the very individuals sworn to uphold the law work so hard to undermine it. The Justice Department is the only Cabinet agency named after an ideal, and Mr. Barr has forfeited his ability to effectively lead it. In particular, the Justice Department inspector general will investigate how U.S. marshals have used force in Portland and how other parts of the Justice Department--such as the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives--were used in the Nation's Capital. The inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security has said he opened an investigation into allegations that Customs and Border Protection agents improperly detained and transported protesters in Portland and that he would review the deployment of DHS's personnel in recent weeks. America is not under siege, as the President would like citizens to believe--except by a President who freely uses aggressive law enforcement as a prop to distract the country from his flailing response to the pandemic that has crippled our Nation. Citizens are rightly concerned that the administration has deployed a secret police force, not to investigate crimes but to intimidate individuals it views as political adversaries. Several former Secretaries of Homeland Security have sounded the alarm as well. Michael Chertoff, a Secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush, wrote recently: The Trump administration's deliberate decision to intervene in the Portland protests with a heavy hand, unconventional means and inflammatory political rhetoric has contributed to growing public distrust--particularly of the Department of Homeland Security. Critics of the department are now rightly worried that its law enforcement agents might be increasingly deployed by President Trump to score political points, or even interfere with the November election. Secretary Chertoff concluded: These actions, now or into the future, endanger our democracy and undermine the nation's safety--by hurting the department's ability to carry out its core mission of protecting Americans from genuine threats to our security. Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security after its creation, said that the presence of Federal authorities in Portland, OR, as protests continue in the city, is not consistent with the Department of Homeland Security's mission. He noted that the first words of the Department's vision statement that he helped establish are ``preserving our freedoms.'' Secretary Ridge continued: When they appear to be quasi-military rather than law enforcement, I think it's like pouring a little bit of gasoline on the fire. . . . Preserving the right to dissent is something very important. Now, I know President Trump has threatened to send additional Federal officers to Baltimore and other cities to quell any further dissent or protests. Let me remind President Trump that the protests in Baltimore after the death of George Floyd in police custody have been peaceful, so we don't need additional Federal agents designed to crack down on free speech and peaceful protests, nor do we want Federal agents to come to Baltimore with the purpose of escalating tensions with the community or trying to provoke or incite violence or to discourage the lawful right of citizens exercising their First Amendment. Instead, in Baltimore, we want to continue working cooperatively with our Federal partners, like our U.S. attorney, to address the stubborn problems involving drug gangs and the high violent crime and murder rate. Ensuring the safety of our communities requires an all-hands-on- deck approach. In Baltimore, we are using a task force known as the Baltimore Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force Strike Force, which is made up of local, State, and Federal partners. This task force only works due to continued transparency, collaboration, and engagement with the community throughout this process. Together, the citizens of Baltimore will keep working with our law enforcement authorities to improve safety in our neighborhoods and on our streets. The city of Baltimore and the U.S. Department of Justice are continuing to work closely together, along with our U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, to fully implement a consent decree to bring constitutional policing to Baltimore residents so that the police adopt a guardian instead of a warrior approach. Instead of spreading divisive rhetoric and taking escalatory actions against our citizens--tactics recently employed by President Trump--we should focus on working constructively at the Federal, State, and local level to promote proven strategies and solutions--like the strike force--that effectively reduce crime and improve safety. I look forward to the findings and recommendations of the inspectors general of those two Departments to make clear what went wrong and to take steps to make sure this type of Federal law enforcement authority is never abused again in the future. I would hope that all my colleagues would recognize the threat of these actions to the protections in the First Amendment of our Constitution, and we will work together as one body to protect the lawful rights of our citizens to protest their disagreements with government in a peaceful way. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, we are in unprecedented times. Modem transportation and communication technology make our world more interconnected than it has ever been. These advancements, especially international travel, create risks, as we have seen through the devastating spread of the novel coronavirus all over the globe. But close global connections also strengthen our capacity to work collaboratively to tackle threats facing our communities. The COVID-19 pandemic is one such threat--it is a challenge that we will only be able to overcome together. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres put it best when he said, ``We are only as strong as the weakest health systems.'' President Trump's decision on July 6th to begin formally withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization, or the WHO, is irrational, reckless, and simply the wrong thing to do. While the WHO is not perfect, its technical capacities and relationship with nearly every country in the world make it the best organization to manage the response to a global pandemic like COVID-19. A few weeks ago, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard from a panel of public health experts who all spoke with one voice--leaving the WHO in the middle of a global pandemic will not only compromise the international response to COVID-19, it will put Americans' lives at risk. Today, I am introducing a resolution with 28 co-sponsors that expresses the sense of the Senate that withdrawing from the WHO undermines U.S. global health leadership and the international COVID-19 response. This resolution recognizes that since the WHO was founded in 1948--with help from the United States--it has relied on U.S. support to lead the world in disease detection and eradication and strengthening health systems. The resolution also highlights the significant benefit the U.S. gains by participating in the WHO, including the ability to improve public health in regions of the world that would be impossible to reach on our own. Finally, the resolution highlights the lifesaving work of the WHO in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. This work includes convening an unprecedented global clinical trial--the Solidarity Trial--to help find an effective treatment for COVID-19; coordinating global supply chains of personal protective equipment and other health commodities for more than 135 countries; and pre-positioning manufacturing capacity and distribution channels to ensure that all countries have access to future therapies and vaccines faster and at a fair price. Last month, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution urging U.S. participation in global efforts on therapeutics and vaccine development and delivery to address COVID-19. Leaving the WHO will make it drastically more difficult to accomplish those goals. The WHO has its flaws, but the United States is best positioned to effect positive changes by maintaining our seat at the table. Historically, we have been able to encourage the WHO to make important reforms, like improvements to the organization's health emergencies program that were undertaken following the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak. By withdrawing from the WHO, we are forfeiting our voice in these conversations and empowering countries that do not have our best interests in mind. The international community, and especially the American people, will suffer as a result. For these reasons, I hope that I can count on the Senate's support for this important resolution. If we are to be successful in the fight against COVID-19 and any other pandemic health challenges we may encounter, the U.S. cannot isolate itself from the rest of the world. An isolationist stance will only lead to domestic and global failure. With the pandemic raging in our own backyard, it is more important than ever before for the United States to continue to collaborate with countries around the world to end this global health emergency and prevent future ones from starting. If I may paraphrase John Donne, no nation--not even the United States--``is an island entire of itself.'' We are all ``part of the main'' and the bell tolls for all of us.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, July 4 is a day to recognize our Nation's Declaration of Independence 244 years ago. On this day, we collectively pause to honor the values that make this Nation great. July 4 is also a day of shared reflection to see how well we have made more tangible the ideals of our founders ``to create a more perfect union.'' As we look across the landscape of our country today, these words ring with even greater resonance. Our Nation and our people face a call to action to continue the fight against racial injustice, an injustice that has limited the freedom of too many for too long. The collective ideals to which Thomas Jefferson gave voice in the Declaration's promise of ``Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness'' still echo through the American experience--from Alexander Hamilton's immigrant dream, birthed before our Nation, to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s July 4, 1965, sermon at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church. As Dr. King said, ``If we are going to make the America Dream a reality, we are challenged to work in an action program to get rid of the last vestiges of segregation and discrimination.'' America has been and will be a leader in the world. The American people historically have cherished and spearheaded this role. Leadership at any level comes with responsibility, and, in this case, it means we must look to put our own house in order, where we must address domestic injustices. We must continue our tireless work to create a more perfect union. The struggle will not stop until all men, women, and children can live the American Dream as Dr. King envisioned. To do this, we must continue to assess the true meaning of liberty and freedom. As we begin to acknowledge fundamental elements of our Nation's history, we must recommit to ensuring freedom for all. Our country's strength lies in the diversity and equality of our people. Through this diversity and through this equality, today we may celebrate the unity described in the very declaration of our Nation's freedom and independence. On this historic day, we must also celebrate our country's capacity to change. We have overcome monumental challenges before. The majority of our Founders did not comprehend that Black Lives Matter. Today, we work to ensure actions that back up those important words. Still, as we reflect on the Nation's founding, we recall our past, honor that which is great, and effect the call we perpetually hear to make our Nation a more perfect union.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, let me thank my friend from Florida for allowing this to go forward. I think we do share the same objective. We want to make sure the money gets out, and we also want to make sure that those who really need it get the funds. I assure the Senator, I would be happy that we could bring up the second round this week, but let's make sure we work together with your colleague from Florida, Senator Rubio. We have been in constant contact, and we hope to have a bill ready. I want to acknowledge on the floor Senator Schumer, who has been our leader on our side to make sure that we really target the help for the small businesses that really need it. I see on the floor Senator Collins, who was part of the negotiating team that was able to come up with the PPP program--incredible contributions. Senator Shaheen was also part of that negotiating team-- with Senator Rubio--that came up with the PPP program, and I thank you for your support on this unanimous consent request. Senator Coons, as I have already mentioned earlier, is one of the key members of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, one of our cosponsors of round 2 of relief to small businesses. With that, I yield the floor to my colleague from New Hampshire.

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Coons for his comments and Senator Shaheen. Senator Coons is absolutely right. There are many reasons why we needed to bring up the next stimulus package before we go on recess. The issue of the State and local governments are real. I have heard from Governor Hogan of Maryland. I have heard from Mayor Young of Baltimore City. I have heard from our county execs. Their fiscal year begins at midnight tonight. They have hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue shortfalls that they have to make up because they have to have a balanced budget. That is going to mean they are going to have to consider layoffs. It means it will be difficult to open up schools in the fall. And the list goes on and on and on. They need help from us. The CARES Act was important. It did provide some meaningful help, but the CARES Act dealt with the direct cost to State and local government of taking care of COVID-19, not the revenue loss as a result of income tax revenues down, as a result of the special fees that local governments receive for parking or for rental cars or hotel taxes. We never made up any of that. They have to balance their budget. We needed to act on that. Senator Coons is absolutely right when he talks about the fact that in March, when we passed the CARES Act, we thought that the unemployed would have jobs available, certainly, by July, but that is not going to be the case for millions of Americans. We are going to have to do something about the expiring unemployment insurance, and we have to deal with election security. There are a lot of issues. We have to deal with pre-K through 12 and higher education. They have direct costs that have yet to be met. They are in danger of not being able to safely reopen in the fall, and we have to act to help them in that regard. I just really want to underscore the point that Senator Coons made. I want to thank Senator Coons, and I want to thank Senator Shaheen because we have put out there for the public to take a look at what the second round of help for small businesses will look like. We put a priority, as I think we should, on the smaller of the small businesses, first, by eligibility--100 employees or less--and, second, by guaranteed set-asides for those that are 10 employees or less. We have a needs-based approach, 50 percent loss in revenue as a result of COVID-19, and we make it easier for the smaller small businesses to be able to get loans by making it more financially rewarding for the financial institutions to make those loans. We have stepped up to say that this is what we need to look at. I must tell you that we are in a pretty good position in the Small Business Committee because we have open dialogue and negotiations. Today, on two occasions, I was in contact with the chairman of the committee, and we are negotiating this and we will be ready. We want you to know that we put out our proposal, and I want to thank Senator Coons and Senator Shaheen for joining me in that effort. I would hope lightning could strike and perhaps we could bring up the bill this week and get something done. I think that is highly unlikely, knowing the leader's schedule for this week. That is wrong. He should have acted before the July recess. Let's hope we can use the 2 weeks during the recess to put together a bill that cannot only pass the Senate and the House but be signed by the President, to help not just small businesses, not just State and local governments, but all the people in this country get through this horrible pandemic. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, shortly, I am going to make a UC request. I am not going to do it now because we are still working out some of the specific details, and Senator Scott will be on the floor when I do that, but let me just explain while I am on the floor. My colleague Senator Shaheen, a key member of the Small Business Committee and one of the negotiators on the small business package, is on the floor, and we are joined by Senator Schumer, who has been a real champion in making sure we get help to America's small businesses. I want to acknowledge the work of Senator Coons, who I expect will be on the floor a little later. One of our key cosponsors in the next round of aid is Senator Rosen. I want to acknowledge the cosponsors of the unanimous consent request legislation, including myself and Senator Schumer, Senator Shaheen, Senator Coons, Senator Rosen, and Senator Collins. I also want to acknowledge that this is bipartisan. I talked to Senator Rubio, and he has informed me that this has cleared the hotline, so we are hopeful that we will get this UC done today. As we are waiting for the paperwork to get to us, let me just explain what the UC does before I make the UC request. The authority of the Small Business Administration to approve any more Paycheck Protection Program loans expires at midnight tonight. With the deadline we established when we passed the CARES Act in March--that was a reasonable assumption in March. We thought that by the end of June, our economy would be back on track and we would not need to have additional applications after that date. Well, a lot has changed since March of this year, and we recognized that when we passed the bipartisan Flexibility Act. It changed the time period for use of PPP funds from 8 weeks to up to 24 weeks and changed the allocation that Treasury had established of using 75 percent of the funds for payroll to 60 percent of the funds for payroll. We recognize that times have changed. The PPP program is extremely popular. As of 5 o'clock tonight, $520.6 billion of forgivable loans have been issued under the PPP program to 4,856,647 small businesses. Quite frankly, these are small businesses that very well may not have been here today but for the PPP program. We kept them alive, and we have saved jobs. The Labor Department's May estimate of 2.5 million jobs added--a large number as a result of the PPP funds. Small businesses need additional help. They need additional help. Times have changed. We know, for example, that in the State of Texas and Florida, we are seeing a record number of infections just now. The need is still there. We have mandatory closures of bars in those States. We certainly didn't anticipate that when we passed the legislation last March. Small businesses need additional help. We don't want to close the door on the PPP program. The good news is that we have $130 billion remaining in the coffers for the PPP program. So the resources are there, the need is there, and we just need to change the date. So the UC I am going to be making in a few moments would change the deadline for filing for a PPP loan from June 30 to August 8. We picked August 8 because that is the end of the next work period. We certainly hope that by then, we are going to have the next stimulus package signed by the President of the United States. I must tell you, we need to do more than just extend this date; we need round two of help for small businesses. I am very pleased that I have had the help of Senator Shaheen and Senator Coons. We filed legislation that targets the next round. The first round was to get money out quicker to save small businesses. The second round needs to be targeted to those small businesses that really need the help. That is why our legislation targets it to small businesses under 100 workers and those that have economic needs that can be demonstrated and helping particularly the underserved, underbanked community. I was very pleased that this type of a second round was acknowledged by Secretary Mnuchin at an oversight hearing before the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee. There have been good-faith negotiations with Senator Rubio. We worked on this bipartisan issue. I think we can get it done today. I am disappointed, though, that we are going to go into the recess scheduled for the end of this week. We are not coming back until July 20, and small businesses are going to run out of money during that period of time. The small businesses that have used up their PPP money and need additional help are not going to get our attention until we come back July 20. That is wrong. We should have taken up this bill by now. The House passed the Heroes Act months ago. We should have been taking this up now. As I said, small businesses have exhausted a lot of their PPP funds, and we need to act. Tonight, we will have the opportunity to extend the June 30 deadline by the UC request. I am pleased that we are likely to be able to get that done. The last day that we anticipate, the end of the work period--the next work period--we will have time to work together, act together, and hopefully pass additional bipartisan help for small businesses in this country. Small businesses are the growth engine, job creator, innovator, and we need to act, and we need to act tonight. With that in mind, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 4116, introduced earlier today. I further 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.

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object to modifying the amendment, under my reservation, let me first thank the Senator from Florida. I agree with his concerns, and that is why we are looking at additional help for small businesses. The legislation that I filed with Senator Shaheen and Senator Coons includes a needs-based approach to the next round of PPP loans because we are going to need to do more. Secretary Mnuchin acknowledged that we are going to have to do more, but he also acknowledges that we can target that aid. The first round was aimed at getting money out quickly, and we could not have gotten money out quickly if we had underwriting standards that required the needs-based as in the Senator's amendment. So here is the dilemma that the Senator is offering. We are not looking at this PPP-2 program. This is the original program that we want to keep alive as we negotiate the next round. So if the Senator's amendment were adopted, you could have a bar owner in Maryland who has been closed, who has been able to get the PPP program, but now you have a bar owner in Florida who just recently got notice that they have to close and wants to apply for a PPP loan and is not going to be able to get it in a timely way because they are going to have to establish--maybe prospectively--the loss of revenue after guidelines are given, et cetera. That is not fair. It is not fair to treat one small business of one State differently than we treat a small business in another State. The second point I would point out to the Senator is this: As we have looked at the evolution of the PPP program, the late applications, those that are filing now, they are invariably the smallest of the small businesses, the ones in the greatest need. So why would we want to change the rules for those that had the greatest need when we didn't do it on the original round? So I would just urge my colleague: Let's work together. I assure you that we want to do this in the next round. I am disappointed we are not doing it this week before we adjourn, but that is a decision made not to bring up the next stimulus package at this point. I would urge my colleague to recognize that this would create an administrative burden, an inequity, and it is not really germane to what we are trying to do in moving forward with the second round of the PPP program. With that, I would object to modifying my unanimous consent request.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, as we grapple with the manifestations of racism and intolerance in our society here in the United States, it is important to remember that we have friends and allies across the globe who face similar challenges. They support U.S. leadership and seek our engagement on issues of common concern. Throughout my career in Congress in both the House and Senate, I have been fortunate to participate in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe--OSCE PA--a critical venue for international engagement. I have served as the OSCE PA Special Representative on Anti-Semitism, Racism, and Intolerance for the last 5 years, after serving as a committee officer and then a vice president of the assembly. It has been a rewarding experience working with like-minded parliamentarians from Canada and across Europe to advocate for human rights and to promote democratic development. Of course, as we engage on these issues, we must be candid about our own shortcomings, which I did in a recent web dialogue with dozens of parliamentarians from across the OSCE region on the impact of the current pandemic on diverse societies. I noted how minority and immigrant communities are more vulnerable to the harmful impacts of the pandemic, in part due to past inequalities that inadequate healthcare and economic responses are exacerbating. I also raised the efforts to respond to the killing of George Floyd, including reforms designed to rebuild trust between police officers and the communities they are sworn to protect and serve. Following this web event, Dr. Hedy Fry, the head of the Canadian Delegation to the OSCE PA, contacted me. She shared with me an opinion editorial she wrote which describes, in equally candid terms, how the events in the United States have made Canadians more aware of inequalities and injustices in their own country and the need for Canada to respond appropriately. Her remarks illustrate that the U.S. can exercise global leadership by serving as an example of self- examination followed by corrective action. If we do it, we can encourage other countries to do the same. I want to thank our friends in the Canadian Parliament for their collaboration in the OSCE PA and support for U.S. initiatives. I am grateful that we have worked so closely together over the years toward the common goal of making this world a better place, and I look forward to our continued collaboration. I would like to share Dr. Fry's remarks with my Senate colleagues; therefore, I ask unanimous consent to have her op-ed printed in the Record.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, this Sunday, we will mark a grim anniversary. On June 28, 2018, a 38-year-old man who held a longtime grudge against the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, MD, for reporting about him, made good on his sworn threats. He entered the newspaper's office, headed to the newsroom, and deliberately shot and killed five employees of this community newspaper. The Capital Gazette is the local paper of record in Annapolis. It is one of the oldest continuously published newspapers in the United States. It traces its roots back to the Maryland Gazette, which began publishing in 1727, and the Capital, which was founded in 1884. Two years later, the senseless loss of life remains so personal to so many people in Annapolis and around the State. You need to understand that the Capital Gazette is as much a part of the fabric of Annapolis as the State government that it covers better than anyone in the business. Today, it still carries out that mission better than anyone else, with an added priority of covering the gun violence that continues to plague this country and efforts to reduce gun violence and increase public safety. As I did 2 years ago, I want to take a moment to mourn those we lost and to thank the first responders who appeared on the scene literally 60 seconds after the 9-1-1 call. On this day 2 years ago, Anne Arundel County police officers happened to be down the street from the offices when the shooting started. Their location and fast response most definitely saved lives. According to Anne Arundel Police Chief Timothy Altomare, within 2 minutes, the Anne Arundel County Police Department, the Annapolis Police Department, and the Anne Arundel Sheriff's Office rushed into the offices and into the newsroom and apprehended the gunman. State and Federal law enforcement personnel from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms, and Explosives and many other agencies quickly arrived to support local officials in their efforts to clear the building and meticulously investigate the scene. I want to thank, again, Chief Altomare and every one of those law enforcement officers who did their job and contributed to the emergency response. I want to acknowledge, again, the victims. Gerald Fischman, 61, was an editor with more than 25 years of service with the Capital Gazette, well known at the newspaper and throughout the community for his brilliant mind and writing. Most often, it was his voice and his insightfulness that came through on the editorial pages of the Capital Gazette. Rick Hutzell, the Capital Gazette's editor, described Fischman as ``someone whose life was committed to protecting our community by telling hard truths.'' Rob Hiaasen, 59, was a columnist, editor, teacher, and storyteller who brought compassion and humor to his community-focused reporting. Rob was a coach and a mentor to many. According to the former Baltimore Sun columnist Susan Reimer, he was ``so happy working with young journalists. . . . He wanted to create a newsroom where everyone was growing.'' John McNamara, age 56, was a skilled writer and avid sports fan. He combined these passions in his 24-year career as a sports reporter at the Capital Gazette. Former Capital Gazette sports editor Gerry Jackson, when remembering ``Mac,'' said: He could write. He could edit. He could design pages. He was just a jack of all trades and a fantastic person. Rebecca Smith, age 34, was a newly hired sales assistant known for her kindness, compassion, and love for her family. A friend of her fiance described ``Becca'' as ``the absolute most beautiful person'' with the ``biggest heart'' and called her death ``a great loss to this world.'' Wendi Winters, age 65, was a talented writer, who built her career as a public relations professional and journalist, well known for her profound reporting on the lives and achievements of people within the community. She was a ``proud Navy Mom'' and Navy daughter. Wendi saved lives during the attack. She confronted and distracted the gunman, throwing whatever she could find around her at him. As the newspaper noted: Wendi died protecting her friends, but also in defense of her newsroom from a murderous assault. Wendi died protecting freedom of the press. My heartfelt condolences and prayers go out to the families of these five wonderful people. The surviving staff members also deserve our continued prayers and praise for their resilience and dedication to their mission as journalists. During and after the attack, staff continued to report by tweet, sharing information to those outside, taking photos and documenting information as they would any other crime scene. Despite their grief, shock, anger, and mourning, the surviving staff--with the help of their sister publication the Baltimore Sun, Capital Gazette alum, and other reporters who wanted to lend a hand to fellow journalists--put out a paper the next morning, as they have done every day since. The staff fittingly left the editorial page blank the day after the shooting, but for these few words: Today, we are speechless. This page is intentionally left blank to commemorate the victims of Thursday's shootings at our office. The staff promised that on Saturday, the page would ``return to its steady purpose of offering our readers informed opinion about the world around them, that they may be better citizens.'' And they carried that out. Our Constitution, which establishes the rule of law in this country, grants us certain rights and responsibilities. Freedom of the press, central to the very First Amendment of the Constitution, has often been under attack, figuratively speaking, since our Nation's founding. Today, those attacks have become more frequent, and they are not just figurative anymore. They are physical. These attacks are spurred on by dangerous rhetoric that has created an open season on the media for doing its job--asking questions that need to be asked, investigating stories that need to be investigated, and bringing needy transparency to the halls of power, whether they are in Annapolis, Washington, DC, or anywhere in this country. In 2018, after the shooting at the Capital Gazette, the United States was, for the first time, added to the list of ``the most deadly countries for journalists'' in an annual report by the group Reporters Without Borders. President Trump's rhetoric--calling the media ``a stain on America'' and the ``enemy of the American people''--certainly has been harmful. I have said this before and I will keep saying it: The President's language is dangerous. It has gone beyond the pale, and he needs to stop it. As Jason Rezaian wrote in the Washington Post after the Capital Gazette shooting, Donald Trump ``didn't create the problem of hostility to journalists, but he exploits and exacerbates it.'' He went on to say: That's true, too, of the leaders in other countries who routinely call reporters enemies of the state, terrorists and national security threats. And we must be vigilant to standing up to these empty accusations. In the United States, physical attacks on media have grown so troublesome that the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent nonprofit that promotes freedoms globally, actually started a U.S. freedom tracker to show the scope of the problem. So far, in 2020, there have been 107 journalists attacked and 36 arrested in the United States. Instead of attacking the free press, we need to be honoring it. Toward that end, I have introduced a bill, S. 1969, to establish the fallen journalists memorial here in Washington, DC. I am pleased that the Natural Resources Committee ordered the bill to be reported favorably by voice vote. The changes the committee made reflected input from stakeholders, including the National Park Service, which supports the bill. The legislation is bipartisan, noncontroversial, and does not impose any additional costs on taxpayers. The memorial will serve as a fitting tribute to the Capital Gazette staff and to all journalists who have died in the line of duty and to our Nation's commitment to the free press. My hope is that we will all agree that building a new memorial to honor the fallen victims is appropriate and should be done and should be passed. As Walter Cronkite remarked, ``Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.'' I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, over the weekend, I was reflecting on the times that our Nation finds itself in today. We are witnessing the rebirth of a new civil rights movement when it comes to reforming our police departments. Americans now know the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Freddie Gray, and so many others. The current protests we have seen throughout the Nation and throughout the world are a direct result of an incredible leap in technology, where individual citizens and officers themselves can record interactions between police officers and members of the community in real time. But these troubling interactions between the police and the citizens they are sworn to protect and serve that we saw on video is not new, but we now have the evidence. They just happened to be caught, creating stronger legal evidence of misconduct and abuse. Today, as our Nation experiences yet another civil rights movement, this time during a pandemic, I want to share with my colleagues some words of inspiration I often turn to in times of trouble. First, in the Constitution: ``We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice. . . . '' That is the first mention in the Constitution. Let us think how we in the United States can help to establish justice, as we are exhorted to do in the Constitution, which we are sworn to uphold and defend. The second set of words I would like to share with you are from my colleague and dear friend, the late Elijah Cummings, who represented Baltimore in the Congress for many years. Representative Cummings gave the eulogy for Freddie Gray in 2015, who died after being arrested and taken into police custody. During Freddie Gray's church service, Elijah closed with a quote from the Old Testament Book of Amos: I want justice--oceans of it. I want fairness--rivers of it. That is what I want. That is all I want. The third story I want to share with my colleagues is the inspiration I felt from reading Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s ``Letter from a Birmingham Jail,'' in April of 1963. Dr. King wrote: We know through painful experiences that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was ``well-timed,'' [in the view] of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the words ``Wait!'' It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This ``Wait'' has almost always meant ``Never.'' We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurors, that ``justice too long delayed is justice denied.'' We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights . . . Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, ``Wait.'' But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of affluent society . . . when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: ``Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?'' . . . when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of ``nobodiness''--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. So this weekend, as I was thinking about our charge to establish justice in the Constitution and the pleas from Elijah Cummings and Dr. King, I contemplated where we are today. We are at a point in our Nation that we need to make transformational change when it comes to our police officers and their fundamental relationships with our communities, in particular the African-American community and other communities of color. We can no longer wait. We must make bold changes now. I agree with Leader Schumer and Senators Booker and Harris, who are the authors of the Justice in Policing Act. My concern is that the legislation authored by Senator Scott, the JUSTICE Act, falls dangerously short for what we need for comprehensive, effective, and transformational police reform that our country and the American people are demanding. I, therefore, hope that Leader McConnell will negotiate with Leader Schumer so we can work on a bipartisan bill and establish a constructive starting point on policing reform. I listened to the debate with Senator Scott and Senator Kaine, and I have seen this before. When we bring a partisan bill to the floor where there is no prearranged opportunity to offer the types of amendments with simple majority votes so the rule of the Senate can prevail and when you start from a point that cannot lead to successful conclusion, you shouldn't start. You should go back to negotiate a truly bipartisan bill. We should use the model of the CARES Act legislation that was signed into law in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. That was a bipartisan bill that was brought to the floor. Let me just highlight a few of my concerns with the JUSTICE Act. This legislation does not contain any mechanisms to hold law enforcement officers accountable in court for their misconduct. For example, it makes no changes in the law when it comes to qualified immunity or criminal intent standards for law enforcement. Current legal standards have allowed law enforcement officers regularly to evade criminal liability for excessive use of force and have shielded officers from liability, even when they violate citizens' constitutional rights. The JUSTICE Act does not implement a public national misconduct registry necessary to ensure communities have information necessary to hold their law enforcement officers accountable. The JUSTICE Act fails to establish a collection of all use-of-force data, data related to religious and racial profiling, and it does nothing to end harmful policing practices like racial and religious profiling. By contrast, the Justice in Policing Act authored by Senators Booker and Harris does contain legislation I authored, the End Racial and Religious Profiling Act. Why do we need that? Studies have shown that Blacks are 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for selling drugs, despite the fact that Whites are more likely to sell drugs. Studies show that Blacks are 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for possessing drugs, despite using drugs at the same rate as Whites. This is just wrong, and Congress and even President Trump recognized this when we made some modest improvements to the FIRST STEP Act. That was a bipartisan bill and started as a bipartisan bill, and we were able to get it enacted. The End Racial and Religious Profiling Act is designed to enforce the constitutional rights to equal protections under law by eliminating racial- and religious-based discriminatory profiling at all levels of law enforcement by changing the policies and procedures. It allows police to focus their work more accurately, rather than wasting resources on blanket stereotypes. It requires enhanced data collection for the Department of Justice to track and monitor discriminatory profiling. It holds State and local enforcement agencies accountable by conditioning Federal funds on the adoption of policies and best practices to combat profiling by officers. It eliminates, once and for all, discriminatory profiling. It is in the Booker-Harris bill. It is not in the Scott bill. The underlying JUSTICE Act does not include any real national standards for law enforcement. By contrast, the Justice in Policing Act contains legislation I authored, the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act, which takes a comprehensive approach on how local police organizations can adopt performance-based standards to ensure that instances of misconduct will be minimized through training and oversight. That legislation takes steps to mitigate police violence by designating resources for community development and the transformation of public safety practices In Baltimore, we have ongoing Federal partnerships with city law enforcement and the Federal Justice Department following the tragic death of Freddie Gray, Jr. This is an example of continued efforts to rebuild trust between communities and police and encourages the establishment of more effective police models. The legislation I described provides public safety innovation grants to help communities reimagine and develop concrete, just, and equitable public safety approaches. This is in the Booker-Harris bill. It is not in the Scott bill. The JUSTICE Act does not adequately address the issue of no-knock warrants in drug cases, nor does it adequately address the use of choke holds. Finally, the legislation does not address the issue of establishing a national use-of-force standard. By contrast, the Justice in Policing Act changes the use-of-force standards for officers so that deadly force be used only as a last resort, while requiring officers to employ deescalation techniques. Let me bring to my colleagues' attention a letter dated June 23, 2020, from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. In the letter, the Leadership Conferences writes to Congress: We write to express our strong opposition to S. 3985, the . . . [JUSTICE Act]. The JUSTICE Act is an inadequate response to the decades of pain, hardship, and devastation that Black people have and continue to endure as a result of systemic racism and lax policies that fail to hold police accountable for misconduct. The letter goes on to say: Abusive policing practices, coupled with devastating state- sanctioned violence, have exacted systemic brutality and fatality upon Black people since our nation's founding. Police have shot and killed more than 1,000 people in the United States over the past year, and Black people are disproportionately more likely than white people to be killed by police. The current protests in our cities are a response not only to the unjust policing of Black people, but also calls for action to public officials to enact bold, comprehensive, and structural change. The letter concludes. . . . . Passing watered-down legislation that fails to remedy the actual harms resulting in the loss of life is a moral statement that is inconsistent with a genuine belief that black lives matter. Anything less than full support for comprehensive legislation that holds police accountable is inexcusable. Let me close my remarks once again by sharing some words from Dr. King, from the March on Washington in 1963. In his famous speech at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC, Dr. King said: In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men--yes, black men as well as white men--would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned . . . But we refused to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. Dr. King continued by saying: We have also come to this hollowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy . . . Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood . . . Now is the time to make justice a reality for all God's children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment . . . The House of Representatives is scheduled to pass their version of the Justice in Policing Act on Thursday. Let us take up meaningful legislation in the Senate as the base bill negotiated between Democrats and Republicans. Let us rise to the occasion and make the Founders of this Nation proud. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, this past Saturday, June 20, we marked the 20th commemoration of World Refugee Day. Since 2000, World Refugee Day annually shines a light on the struggles of displaced people all over the globe and encourages us all to redouble our efforts to help them. We are currently experiencing the most severe refugee crisis in recorded history. There are almost 80 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, of which more than 30 million are refugees and asylum- seekers. Every 2 seconds, someone is forced to leave his or her home because of conflict or persecution. That means that, since I began speaking, roughly 20 individuals have become newly displaced. These numbers are staggering and difficult to comprehend, but try to imagine for a moment what it means to be a refugee: to watch your home torn apart by conflict; to become the target of violence and oppression; to fear so greatly for your life and the lives of your loved ones that you choose to leave everything you know behind and take a dangerous journey to a place where the language and the culture are unfamiliar, where you have no support system, where you may struggle every day to make ends meet. This nightmare is the reality for almost 80 million human beings around the world. The situation has only worsened since the outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic. The majority of refugees are in low and middle-income countries, where weak health systems are already struggling to provide the basics of care. According to the International Rescue Committee, just 34 conflict-affected and fragile countries could see between 500 million and 1 billion COVID-19 infections, leading to between 1.7 million and 3.2 million deaths over the course of the pandemic. Furthermore, refugees and displaced persons tend to live in precarious conditions that make them even more vulnerable to the coronavirus. They often live in crowded housing situations with little access to basic hygiene services, the perfect breeding ground for infectious diseases to spread. For instance, there are about 850,000 Rohingya refugees living in congested camps in Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh. As the coronavirus began to take hold there in March, experts warned that the lack of sanitation and capacity for social distancing in these refugee camps would create the ``perfect storm'' for transmission of the disease. Additionally, many refugees are employed in informal industries with little to no options for sick leave, restricted access to public health services, and have few, if any, resources to weather the financial burden of quarantine measures. Many are forced to defy stay-at-home orders to find ways to support their families, risking their health and that of their loved ones to provide basic shelter and food. Take, for example, the story of Orlando, a member of an indigenous community in Venezuela who is among the 4.5 million Venezuelan migrants and refugees who have fled the country's hunger, violence, and insecurity since 2014. He now lives in Brazil with 18 other families from his indigenous group. He and his family make their living as artisans, but when lockdown orders prevented them from selling their crafts, they could no longer afford rent. All 120 of the individuals living in his house were expelled, sent to the street in the middle of a pandemic. Meanwhile, many of Orlando's family members became sick with the virus, and one sadly passed away, devastating the community. Unfortunately, stories like this one are common among refugees. The good news is that there are a number of incredible multilateral and nongovernmental organizations working tirelessly to ensure that displaced people are safe, healthy, supported, and treated with the dignity they deserve. These organizations deserve our gratitude and, more importantly, our assistance. In my home State of Maryland, organizations such as the IRC, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society--now HIAS--and World Relief are there to help refugees start a new life in the United States. Especially now, as the COVID-19 pandemic stretches resources and capacity of service providers around the world, it is critical that the United States do its part to help address the refugee crisis. That is why I joined all the other democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in introducing legislation to provide an additional $9 billion in funding for international efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and strengthen our refugee resettlement process to accommodate those affected by the global health crisis. I also urged Secretary of State Pompeo to contribute at least $500 million to the U.N. campaign to protect displaced and disadvantaged persons around the world from the coronavirus. Historically, the United States has prided itself on offering safe harbor to the world's refugees. This country, after all, was founded by a group of people fleeing religious persecution. The plaque on the Statute of Liberty, perhaps the most famous symbol of American freedom and democracy, reads, ``Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'' But we have not always lived up to the values on that inscription. When World War II displaced millions of Jews, many of them sought asylum in the United States. Thousands were turned away and sent back to their deaths in their home countries. The most infamous incident was a ship called the St. Louis that carried almost 1,000 Jewish refugees to a port in Miami. After being denied entry and forced to return to Europe, more than a quarter of those passengers perished in the Holocaust. It is important to acknowledge and learn from dark chapters in our history like this one, so that we can do a better job of respecting and protecting human life moving forwards. This is why I have been so troubled by President Trump's anti-refugee policies. Whether by making the lowest Presidential determination on refugee admissions in the program's history or by locking up asylum-seekers at our southern border, the Trump administration has turned our Nation's back on those fleeing violence and oppression and stained the U.S. reputation as a champion of human rights. We cannot allow these policies to continue. First and foremost, they are wrong. This sort of behavior violates the most basic tenets of our democracy: equality, freedom, and justice. But beyond that, it actively hurts our country to ignore the plight of refugees. When we shirk our responsibility as a global leader in humanitarian assistance, we exacerbate worldwide instability that will affect us, too. Moreover, by closing our doors to refugees, we miss out on the valuable contributions that they make to our society. Think of the contributions to science, art, and politics that refugees like Albert Einstein, Gloria Estefan, and Madeline Albright have made to the United States and to humanity. As I speak, think of all the displaced people around the world who are working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic to help keep their adopted communities, including ours, safe. To improve our country's treatment of refugees, I worked with Senators Leahy, Booker, and Harris and Representative Zoe Lofgren to introduce the Refugee Protection Act of 2019. This bill is a comprehensive blueprint for reinvigorating U.S. refugee and asylum systems. It bolsters the U.S. Refugee Admission Program and expands protections for refugees, and restores due process and dignity for asylum seekers. Broadly, it seeks to repair the U.S. role as a refuge for the persecuted. I urge all of my colleagues to support this crucial, lifesaving measure. The most important thing to remember is that refugees are our fellow human beings who have found themselves in the most difficult of circumstances. They are brothers, daughters, fathers, grandmothers, and friends. They have ideas, hopes, and aspirations and deserve the same respect, security, dignity, and opportunity we wish for ourselves and our families and friends. This World Refugee Day, let us recommit to providing safe harbor to the vulnerable, no matter where they are from. I always like to say that our values are our strength, so let us live by our values and help build a brighter future for all the world's peoples.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, tomorrow, we will commemorate the 155th Juneteenth, the celebration of the end of chattel slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger and Union soldiers delivered the news of liberation to one of the last remaining confederate outposts in Galveston, TX. The Civil War had ended, and the last remaining enslaved Black Americans were free. General Gordon's decree would arrive over 2 years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. For millions of Black Americans, Juneteenth traditionally has been a celebration of this freedom; it is also a day of reflection and education on a history that we all must confront. There is much to inform us about our present times that we can learn from the story of Juneteenth. It is the story of America, the story of my home State of Maryland. Each year, I aim to share these lessons and resources with my constituents through my office and in recognizing the continued work we must do to elevate Black history and create a more tolerant society. This year, my office will close to commemorate the holiday and allow staff the time to reflect on its important historical lessons. Juneteenth is a reminder that, even after the signing of Abraham Lincoln's seminal declaration, that even in a Nation whose founding documents should have enshrined liberty and justice for all of its inhabitants, freedom was a dream deferred for Black Americans. It is a reminder that liberation was hard fought by those who were denied it, including abolition leaders like Marylanders Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, who then passed the torch to civil rights leaders and social movements past and present who are still fighting to realize equal justice under law. Equal justice under law is a promise the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Emancipation Proclamation all made, but it remains elusive, so the struggle continues. In this way, Juneteenth is a quintessential American holiday. The institution of chattel slavery is interwoven throughout American history and would become the architecture for unjust systems that still stand today. The Juneteenth liberation would precede over a century of continued oppression, oppression through stigmatization, policymaking, voter disenfranchisement, and Jim Crow segregation laws, which continued to widen the gaps of social, economic, and political achievement for Black Americans in our society. Acknowledging its sinister legacy and the efforts to chip away at it are critical to understanding how to dismantle it from its core. Through the lens of recent tragedies--the police killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and, just this week, Rayshard Brooks--and the worldwide anti-racism protests they have sparked, this education is more important than ever. We are being called to connect the dots in our history and take action to bring about meaningful change, to save lives, and to right the wrongs of the past. We are being called, yet again, to answer in what ways are our constitutional promises still left unfulfilled for Black Americans? Answering this question is essential to addressing police and criminal justice reform. From the establishment of deputized slave patrols in the American South, to the enforcement of segregation laws through the 1960s, to mass incarceration and disproportionate police violence in our present day, Black Americans have often faced systemic racism that the law either required or permitted. The same 13th Amendment that abolished slavery did so in all forms except incarceration, shrouding the institution in a new light and enabling the continued suppression of freedom and rights. Today, Black Americans are still twice as likely to be killed by police as White Americans. And despite representing only 12 percent of the U.S. adult population, Black Americans make up 33 percent of the sentenced prison population. We have seen the brutal videos. We see the painful list of names of men and women killed at the hands of police brutality. We see the effects of this cyclical system on the health of our communities and families every day. We must act to stop it. The roots of systemic racism in law enforcement were planted centuries ago and can be unraveled with targeted and conscious action. This is why I have been proud to work with my colleagues Senators Booker and Harris on crafting police reform legislation that works toward justice and systemic change, the Justice in Policing Act. This broader legislation includes two bills I have introduced for several years, the End Racial and Religious Profiling Act and the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act. The Justice in Policing Act would prohibit racial profiling, improve officer training, and hold officers accountable for the misconduct that keeps alive the culture has reinforced centuries of oppression. I hope the Senate can pass this bill. Equal treatment of individuals under the law must not be a partisan issue. All Americans must recognize and celebrate Juneteenth so that we may face these harsh realities about our past and present and understand that the fight for freedom is ongoing. We cannot ignore our past, for it is with us here in the present in many forms. The wounds of our Nation will not heal until we identify and name their source and commit to doing the work in Congress and in our communities to mend them. Freedom has never been free, nor has it ever come easily. Let us celebrate liberation by doing everything we can to fight for it for generations to come.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, today I rise to reflect on land conservation as the Senate is poised to make an historic commitment to our public lands and waters. S. 3422, the Great American Outdoors Act, contains two core components. The first establishes the National Park Service and Public Lands Legacy Restoration Fund to support deferred maintenance projects on Federal lands. The second makes funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund permanent. Taken together, these policies will conserve land for the enjoyment of the public for generations to come and ensure that we continue to protect our shared resources. The Restoration Fund must be used for priority deferred maintenance projects that are administered by the National Park Service, the Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Bureau of Indian Education. Our National Parks desperately need help, a situation President Trump's disastrous 2018- 2019 shutdown exacerbated. There is an estimated $11 billion maintenance backlog within the National Park System alone. Visitor numbers have increased in recent years and are likely to continue to do so, particularly as the public seeks respite at available units from the constraints that the novel coronavirus--COVID-19--pandemic has placed on daily life. Parks have been indispensable assets for communities during the ongoing public health emergency, allowing people to exercise and enjoy the outdoors safely with precautions, including staying local, practicing physical distancing, and using face coverings. The LWCF is one of our Nation's most successful conservation programs. Congress established the LWCF in 1964. Since then, it has protected nearly 5 million acres of Federal lands and supported over 41,000 State and local projects through matching grants. LWCF has enjoyed bipartisan support since its inception; however, permanent funding will provide the fund with the long-term security and stabilization it deserves. Maryland has benefited immensely from Federal investment in public land. Open spaces are particularly important to just over 6 million Marylanders who live and recreate in a highly developed State. Outdoor enthusiasts have a significant economic impact on the Maryland communities they visit. In 2019, nearly 7 million park visitors spent an estimated $233 million in local gateway regions while visiting National Park Service lands in Maryland. These expenditures supported 2,960 jobs, $117 million in labor income, and $313 million in economic output in the Maryland economy, according to the latest annual report, National Park Visitor Spending Effects. Consideration of this legislation coincides with Chesapeake Bay Awareness Week--June 6-14, 2020--leading up to the 6-year anniversary of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement. The agreement outlines five themes with 10 goals for the restoration and protection of the watershed region, including conserved lands, engaged communities, and climate change. On June 16, 2014, the Chesapeake Executive Council signed the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement. Signatories include representatives from the entire watershed, committing for the first time the seven headwater jurisdictions--Maryland, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia--to a full regional partnership with State, Federal, local, and academic watershed organizations in the Chesapeake Bay Program. Permanently funding the LWCF furthers the goals of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement--foremost, the land conservation goal: to conserve landscapes treasured by citizens in order to maintain water quality and habitat; sustain working forests, farms, and maritime communities; and conserve lands of cultural, indigenous, and community value. Stormwater runoff from urban and suburban areas is the fastest growing contributor of pollution to the Chesapeake Bay. While States have improved their urban and suburban stormwater regulatory programs, overall loads in the sector continue to increase due to population growth and development. Land conservation is a powerful tool for reducing this type of runoff. Protecting open spaces and sensitive natural areas reduces the water quality and flooding impacts of stormwater runoff, while providing recreational opportunities for residents. Public lands serve as essential cultural education centers, as is the case with the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park. Congress established this park in 2014 in Cambridge, MD, within the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, a LWCF beneficiary site. The park memorializes the life of American hero Harriet Tubman, known for her contributions as a Civil War spy and nurse, suffragist, abolitionist, and Underground Railroad agent. The park allows visitors to explore the landscape in Dorchester County where Harriet Tubman was born into slavery. This unit is crucial to understanding Maryland's history and celebrating the life of Harriet Tubman and complements the stewardship goal to increase the number and diversity of local citizen stewards and local governments that actively support and carry out the conservation and restoration activities that achieve healthy local streams, rivers, and a vibrant Chesapeake Bay. The LWCF advances the Climate Resiliency Goal to increase the capacity of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, including its living resources, habitats, public infrastructure and communities, to withstand adverse impacts from changing environmental and climate conditions. With more than 3,000 miles of coastline, Maryland is particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts related to sea level rise, increased flooding, and extreme weather events according to the Maryland Commission on Climate Change and numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies. While advanced technology is necessary to combat climate change, we must not forget nature's carbon sink: our wetlands and forests. Natural capital, also known as green infrastructure, is a cost-effective way to support sustainability, including by protecting water resources and enhancing resilience. LWCF funds, particularly grants through the Forest Legacy Program, have enormous dividends by protecting forests and wetlands that have the natural ability to store excess carbon via photosynthesis. Best management practices can help protect these stores of carbon and the ability of forests and wetlands to sequester it. While this legislation is not explicitly linked to climate change, it is an example of how we can find commonsense, bipartisan climate change solutions. LWCF programs are also terrific examples of successful partnering with State and local government and private partners. Broad Creek in Dublin, MD, is an excellent example of forest stewardship in a rapidly urbanizing landscape. The Baltimore Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America owns this 1,964-acre property located within the Chesapeake Bay watershed and uses it for national and regional Boy Scout events. Several Federal- and State-listed rare, threatened and endangered species exist on the property. LWCF supported this conservation effort while supporting Boy Scout and environmental education activities, in Harford County, MD, in line with the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement's environmental literacy goal: Enable students in the region to graduate with the knowledge and skills to act responsibly to protect and restore their local watershed. For Conquest Waterfront Preserve, $1,750,000 in LWCF resources helped protect Maryland's Eastern Shore. This 76-acre acquisition helped complete a 758-acre waterfront park in Queen Anne's County in partnership with the State, county, and the fund. Situated on a peninsula with 5 miles of shoreline along the Chester and Corsica Rivers, the project preserves important waterfowl habitat and wetland areas and expands public access to the Chesapeake Bay--another Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement goal: Expand public access to the Bay and its tributaries through existing and new local, State and Federal parks, refuges, reserves, trails, and partner sites. Communities across the globe are asking their leaders to consider how their policy decisions affect all of their constituents. The Great American Outdoors Act expands our opportunities for growth as a nation. This historic legislation represents the product of concerted bipartisan effort to invest in our Nation's future. By investing in our National Parks and other similar assets, we are helping to conserve our natural environment and create educational, accessible spaces for future generations of visitors. I am proud of what this body has accomplished and urge enactment of the Great American Outdoors Act into law. I do have one regret. I understand the legislation represents a carefully crafted compromise, but I think it is unfortunate that Senators have not been able to offer amendments to the bill. I filed an amendment, S. Amdt. 1636, to establish a Fallen Journalists Memorial here in Washington, DC. June 28 will mark the 2-year anniversary of the fatal shooting that occurred at the offices of the Capital Gazette, a newspaper serving Annapolis, MD. I based my amendment on legislation I introduced, S. 1969, the Fallen Journalists Memorial Act, which Senator Portman, Senator Manchin, and 10 other Senators have cosponsored. The amendment reflects changes the House Natural Resources Committee made when it marked up the bill and ordered it to be reported favorably by voice vote. The changes the committee made, in turn, reflect input from stakeholders including the National Park Service, which supports the bill. The legislation is bipartisan, noncontroversial, and does not impose any cost to taxpayers. The memorial would serve as a fitting tribute to the Gazette's staff and to all other journalists who have died in the line of duty and to our Nation's commitment to a free press. I hope that I can work with Senators Murkowski and Manchin, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, respectively, to secure this bill's passage as soon as possible.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, it was 2015, shortly after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in Baltimore, that I was in Sand Town, the community in which Freddie Gray grew up, meeting with community leaders, many of whom I had known for many, many years. We had an honest discussion about how policing in Baltimore had unfolded. I was surprised to hear that these community leaders who wanted safety in their community felt that they could not confide with the police because they did not want people from their communities subjected to the discriminatory policing of the Baltimore City police force. I had another meeting during that time with a group of African- American families. Everyone told me the story about how they feared particularly when their young African-American sons went into the community because of the fear that they would be discriminated against and hurt by the police. That fear was real. As a result of the Freddie Gray tragedy, we requested a pattern-and- practice investigation by the Department of Justice, and what was discovered during that investigation was that the policies of the Baltimore City Police Department's zero tolerance to crack down on crime were used to profile the African-American community. In many cases, the police presence in the community provoked the violence and added to the harm of the people in the community. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Senator Booker and Senator Harris for putting together a bill that we need to take up on the floor of the Senate as quickly as possible: the Justice in Policing Act. It contains many provisions that, quite frankly, should have been enacted well before now. The tragic deaths of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks just underscore the importance for us to act now. We need to debate these issues, and we need to pass legislation. I am grateful for Senator Booker including two provisions that I had filed as legislation in several Congresses. One is the End Racial and Religious Profiling Act, a bill I filed a while ago. I think many of us remember the Trayvon Martin tragic loss, profiled because of the color of his skin. Racial or religious profiling targets a class of Americans for discriminatory treatment. It is not when you have individual information about a specific crime and indicators; it is when you target a community for special treatment. It is wrong. It is wrong because it is against the values of America of equality and justice. It is wrong because it wastes resources which are so valuable to keep our communities safe. It is wrong because it turns communities against police. If we are going to have effective law enforcement, the community and police need to work together, not at odds. It is wrong because it becomes deadly. Too many innocent people have lost their lives because of discriminatory profiling. It is time for this practice to end in America. I want to applaud the Obama administration because they took action at the Federal law enforcement level to make racial profiling illegal, but it still takes place in local law enforcement. The legislation included in the Justice in Policing Act would make that illegal. It would prohibit it, and it provides for ways to enforce, to make sure that police departments comply with it. It also provides for training so law enforcement understands what racial profiling is all about. It also provides for us to get the data so we know exactly what is happening at all levels of policing, whether State, local, or auxiliary. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights testified on the issue of discriminatory profiling last week, and I want to share some of the testimony of Vanita Gupta. She testified: The equal treatment of all people, regardless of background, class, or characteristic, protects and preserves public safety and builds legitimacy in police. Discriminatory policing, which targets people of color more often than others, has serious consequences not only for individuals and communities but also for law enforcement and society, by fostering distrust in law enforcement. . . . Through policy, training, and practice, law enforcement agencies can work to prevent and hold officers accountable for discriminatory policing, and reduce and mitigate its disparate impact on marginal communities. I want to thank her for her testimony, and I want to thank Senator Booker for including those provisions that would end this practice in the Justice in Policing Act. There is a second bill that I have introduced for several Congresses: the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act. It provides for performance-based standards for police officers. It embraces accreditation standards based upon President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing. It does provide for training and oversight and proper investigations for those police officers who have crossed the line. It enhanced the pattern-and-practice discrimination cases so that consent decrees can be effective in ending these wrong practices. I am pleased that these two provisions are included in the Justice in Policing Act, as well as so many other important changes for reform and accountability in law enforcement: the no-knock warrants, the standard that we hold officers accountable who have lost the trust of the American people, the registry so that law enforcement can know by background checks whether particular applicants have been involved in instances in other jurisdictions. All these are very, very important provisions that we need to act on and we need to act on now. Let us work together to guarantee equal justice under law and fulfill the promise of our Constitution in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, and ensure domestic tranquility. Let this Nation finally guarantee equal justice under the law. I yield the floor

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of the Justice in Policing Act, introduced yesterday by my colleagues Senator Harris from California and Senator Booker from New Jersey. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of this legislation. This legislation is urgently needed after the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minnesota, which has sent shock waves through the Nation and the world. I am pleased that the protests have been largely peaceful, and that where the Senate sits in Washington, our local leaders have moved to deescalate tensions. I was pleased on Monday to hold a Facebook Live session with Hillary Shelton, the director of the NAACP's Washington bureau and senior vice president for advocacy and policy, as well as Marc Morial, the president and chief executive officer of the National Urban League and the former mayor of New Orleans. We talked about this legislation in some detail. I received feedback from several of my constituents at my Facebook Live event on how to improve relations between police and the communities they serve and how to rebuild trust between them. Before they first put on a badge, a police officer takes an oath to uphold the law. Most do so with the best intentions and carry out their duties with a willingness to help communities. But in far too many communities around the country, the system in which they work has been failing. People are dying at the hands of police, predominantly people of color. Accountability has been tied to public videos rather than doing the right thing. Incremental reform is no longer an option when it comes to police reform. We have been patient, but we must do better to protect the civil rights, human rights, and lives of men, women, and children of this country. Congress must finally pass a comprehensive plan to improve training and community relations, hold police accountable, and rebuild trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve. To that end, I have been proud to work with my colleagues Senator Booker and Senator Harris in creating a package of reforms and accountability measures that shows where we need to be as a nation with a fair and just system of laws. The package focuses on three major pillars: accountability, data collection, and training policies. I was proud that two major pieces included in the Justice in Policing Act are from bills that I have introduced for many Congresses: the End Racial and Religious Profiling Act and the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act. The End Racial and Religious Profiling Act is designed to enforce the constitutional right to equal protection under the law by eliminating racial- and religious-based discriminatory profiling at all levels of law enforcement by changing the policies and procedures. It allows police to focus their work more accurately rather than wasting resources on blanket stereotypes. It requires enhanced data collection for DOJ to track and monitor discriminatory profiling. It holds State and local enforcement agencies accountable by conditioning Federal funds on their adoption of policies and best practices to combat profiling by officers. The Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act takes a comprehensive approach on how local police organizations can adopt performance-based standards to ensure that instances of misconduct will be minimized through training and oversight. The bill provides that, if such instances do occur, they be properly investigated. It requires the creation of law enforcement accreditation standards and recommendations based on President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing. This bill also enhances funding for so-called pattern and practice discrimination cases. In Baltimore City, for example, the police department voluntarily entered into a consent decree in 2017 with the U.S. Department of Justice to overhaul the police department after the tragic death of Freddie Gray in police custody in 2015, which led to civil unrest in Baltimore. I might add, I am very pleased that we have seen progress in Baltimore, as evidenced by the types of protests after the Floyd tragedy. They have been almost all peaceful. In Baltimore, the Department of Justice report had found a widespread pattern and practice of illegal and unconstitutional conduct by the Baltimore Police Department through targeting African-American residents for disproportionate and disparate treatment. The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland is now overseeing a complete overhaul of the Baltimore Police Department. We have made progress. Other important provisions of the Justice in Policing Act will save lives. The bill bans choke holds at the Federal level and conditions law enforcement funding on State and local governments banning choke holds. It bans no-knock warrants in drug cases at the Federal level and conditions law enforcement funding on State and local governments banning no-knock warrants. It requires that deadly force be used only as a last resort and requires officers to employ deescalation techniques first. It requires better data collection on how and under what circumstances police officers use force. We need these standards. We have seen too many tragedies on the misuse of power and force by law enforcement. The bill takes important steps to demilitarize our police forces--we are a civilian society; we are not run as a military state--and encourage more professionalism, consistent with changing our police officers' mentality from a warrior mindset to a guardian mindset. The legislation limits the transfer of military-grade equipment to State and local law enforcement. It requires Federal uniformed police officers to wear body cameras and requires State and local law enforcement to use existing Federal funds to ensure the use of police body cameras. This comprehensive legislation takes several important steps to hold police accountable in courts. It makes it consistent with standard practice to prosecute offending officers and enables individuals to recover damages in civil courts when law enforcement officers violate their constitutional rights by changing qualified immunity for law enforcement. Finally, the legislation gives better tools to the Department of Justice and State attorneys general to investigate and prosecute police misconduct. It reinvests in our communities by supporting critical community-based programs to change the culture of law enforcement and empower our communities to reimagine public safety in an equitable and just way. As I mentioned earlier, in Baltimore, after the Freddie Gray tragedy, we recognized that we needed to do a better job in working with communities and police, and we reached out. Part of our consent decree is to improve that relationship, that direct relationship between police and community. The legislation that I have mentioned on the floor here establishes public safety innovation grants for community-based organizations to create local commissions and task forces to help communities to reimagine and develop concrete, just, and equitable public safety approaches. Let me share with you two stories. I do this because there are so many people who have come forward and shared their experiences growing up and living in a society of discrimination. I remember very vividly, after the Freddie Gray episode in Baltimore, I met with a group of community leaders in Sandtown, where the tragedy occurred, and listened to their accounts of how they grew up with the fear of police and the stories of how they were singled out or discriminated against by traffic stops and by other harassment just because of the color of their skin. So let me share with you two stories that were reported recently in the paper. One is the story of Michael Turner, his encounter years ago with the Montgomery County police. Turner was only 18 years of age when this encounter occurred. Officers had come to break up a party in the suburban county and quickly focused on Turner and his fellow African American friends. They checked IDs. No one was drunk. The cops asked them to move along. ``One officer looks at us,'' Turner recounted, ``and says, `Now go back to your projects.' '' The broader context of the email, written eight days ago, was Turner's effort to explain why he wanted a protest in downtown Silver Spring. ``We come in peace, commander,'' wrote Turner, 36. ``March with us. It's time for a change. I'm ready to help, are you?'' The email set off six days of written and phone dialogue between Turner and Captain Darren Francke, who commands the Silver Spring police district for the Montgomery County department. It culminated Sunday afternoon when Turner, Francke and three other Montgomery County police officers took a knee in front of more than 200 protesters facing them and stretching half a block down Georgia Avenue. Everyone sat still for 2 minutes 53 seconds, the estimated time George Floyd lay unconscious with his neck pinned below the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. . . . . Turner's protest in the sprawling suburb just miles north of the District had a different twist: It was a demonstration put together with the active help of the police. To Captain Francke, it all made sense. He had served in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard and joined the Montgomery police in 1996. A father of three, including a daughter who also came to the protest, he previously commanded the department's major crimes division--supervising murder investigations throughout the county. ``Thank you for sharing your story,'' Francke wrote. ``I don't blame you for having a chip on your shoulder. I am not proud of some things that a few officers did before and now. . . . I am saddened and angered by what happened to George Floyd, and a number of other events over many years that were clearly violations of the values that the vast majority of officers have. My officers and I will march with you. With your assistance, we will also help to keep the event safe from those that would want to turn your message into something else. We want your message to be heard.'' By 1 p.m. Sunday, more than 200 people had gathered at Veterans Plaza in downtown Silver Spring. They marched 3 blocks to the corner of Colesville Road and Georgia Avenue, halted, and waited for Turner to lead everyone to one knee. He swayed back and forth, his head buried in a towel weeping as he thought of Floyd's family. Francke stood next to him, clapping. Next a quick prayer. Then the kneel. The crowd erupted with applause at the 2 minute 53 seconds mark as the group marched back to Veterans Plaza. A series of speakers addressed the crowd. . . . About 3:30 p.m., Turner handed the microphone back to Francke. The commander told the crowd about Turner's encounter with the police 18 years earlier. And then the captain turned toward him. ``I'm sorry,'' he said. That sorry, I think, underscores the importance that what happened in Minneapolis affects everybody in our country, not just the African- American community. Let me close with one additional story that was also reported and brings out a very familiar challenge for African-American families. As the day drew to a close, DeShawn Rasberry, age 6, and his younger brother, Davian, age 4, were already tired. They had been at Pennsylvania Avenue and 13th Street since noon with their mother, Janessa Smith, age 28, handing out water, Gatorade, and granola bars as people were passing. The brothers had never seen so many people before, and neither had Ms. Smith. It was the family's first protest. ``Do you know why all these people are here?'' the mother asked her younger son. He stared at the crowd, munching on his granola bar that had crumbled to pieces in his hands. The mother said, ``They're out here for you.'' Davian was dressed in a Superman cap and a matching T-shirt and smiled and nodded. Ms. Smith had explained to her sons that they were here to ``protest,'' which means standing up for something, she said, and to help others. She hadn't told them that the protest was against police brutality, spurred by the killing of a man with their same skin color in police custody. ``They're so young now, still so young,'' Ms. Smith said. ``And right now they're in love with law enforcement. . . . I don't want to spoil that. Not yet.'' She pointed out that neither of her children were afraid of police. Ms. Smith looked at her sons, both just barely coming up to her waist, gripping cold water bottles. One day she will have to give them ``the talk'' about police officers, she thought to herself, but not today. Let's rise to the occasion so that Janessa Smith never has to give that heartbreaking talk to her boys in Prince George's County, MD. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to focus on our common humanity and respect for the rule of law. There are examples of best practices in community policing that should be a guide nationwide. Let us work together to guarantee equal justice under the law and fulfill the promise of our Constitution in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, and ensure domestic tranquility. Let this Nation finally guarantee ``Equal Justice Under Law,'' which is carved in the marble of the entrance to the Supreme Court, which is just across the street from our Senate Chamber. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, as the ranking Democrat on the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee of the U.S. Senate, I take this time to update my colleagues on the implementation of the CARES Act. I think all of us know that the CARES Act contained major, new provisions to help small businesses, and I was proud to be part of a bipartisan working group, with Senator Rubio, Senator Shaheen, and Senator Collins, that helped to craft three new programs to help small businesses as a result of COVID-19. We recognize the importance of small businesses to our economy, to job growth, to innovation, but we also recognize that small businesses are more vulnerable to an economic downturn. They don't have the resiliency. They don't have the deep pockets. They don't have the liquidity that larger companies have. If we are going to get our economy back on track, we have to preserve small businesses and their workforces. We suggested and the Congress passed three new programs to help small businesses--the Paycheck Protection Program, the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Grant Program, and a loan forgiveness program for existing and new loans taken out under 7(a), 504, or microloans. We recognize that all three of these tools were important. They were not exclusive. They worked together. PPP provides help to keep payrolls together. It buys 8 weeks of payroll. The EIDL Loan Program provides working capital for small businesses. The grant program provides immediate cash, and the forgiveness program allows a business to be able to get through these next 6 months without the burdens of having to pay their loans. All of that works together to keep small businesses viable in our community. Let me first talk about the Paycheck Protection Program because that has certainly gotten the most attention. It provided 8 weeks of payroll relief, plus other expenses, for small businesses in this country. It has been very, very popular. In fact, the original amount of money that we authorized for loans--about $349 billion--was quickly used up, and we authorized an additional $310 billion of loan authority. There have been 4.4 million loans issued under the PPP program for a total of $510 billion. These loans were issued rather quickly considering the standing up of a new program and the volume of interest. I acknowledge the hard work of the Small Business Administration and its workers, as well as of the Treasury, in standing up this program and getting the money out quickly to save many, many small businesses in our communities. When we passed the PPP program, we would have hoped that 8 weeks later our economy would have been in a position in which small businesses, in large number, would not have needed additional help or that the program's parameters would have been adequate. That was not the case. Yesterday, this Chamber acted in a responsible way with legislation that Senator Rubio and I and others recommended, along with our House colleagues who had recommended this to our colleagues, that would give small businesses that have existing PPP loans the discretion to use those funds over a 24-week period rather than an 8-week period, recognizing that many of these businesses could not get up to full payroll during this 8-week period. We also gave greater flexibility on the allocation of the funds. Even with these changes, there have been major challenges in bringing forward the PPP program. First and foremost, we found--as we had, unfortunately, thought might happen--that the underserved and underbanked communities would have a much more difficult time in getting access to 7(a) loans under the PPP program. Quite frankly, we put language in the CARES Act so that the SBA would give special attention to the underserved and underbanked communities. Quite frankly, the SBA did not follow our direction. The SBA's IG said that the Small Business Administration did not fully align with the congressional intent to help the underserved and rural markets. So we responded. We replenished the PPP funds, and we allocated a certain amount of those funds directly to smaller lending institutions, recognizing that they have greater contact with the underserved communities, and it did help. Now, at our request, the Treasury has allocated an additional $10 billion to the CDFIs, the community development financial institutions, that have better ties to the underserved community. Each one of these steps helped. Allocating funds to smaller lenders and allocating funds to the CDFI will help us get to minority small businesses. It will help us get to women-owned small businesses. It will help us get to veteran- owned small businesses. It will help us get to the smaller of the small businesses. It will also help us get to rural small businesses, but we need to do more. That is why I have authored legislation with Senator Booker. We have put out a plan on what needs to be done through a discussion document, and it recognizes that we have to provide greater help for businesses in underserved communities for startup capital, for technical training, and for mentorship. All that will help so that, when we come out of COVID-19 and when we have the next economic downturn, we will have the financial institutions and knowledge in all of our communities to be able to take advantage of the tools that we make available in a timely way. Yesterday, we had our first oversight hearing with regard to COVID-19 and the tools of the Small Business Administration. That hearing was outside of private sector witnesses. Next week, we will have the Secretary of the Treasury as well as the SBA Administrator before us. What we heard from one of our witnesses yesterday, Connie Evans, of the Association for Enterprise Opportunity, was about COVID-19. Its economic consequences are projected to erase decades of minority enterprise growth in underserved markets. She continued: To prevent this, we believe policymakers must acknowledge the existing disparities in our small business ecosystem and take the necessary steps to create equitable legislation to ensure that vulnerable businesses survive and thrive in the years ahead. I couldn't agree more. That is why Senator Booker and I have issued our discussion document that includes many ways in which we can bring about systematic changes to really help in the underserved communities. We saw, tragically, 2 weeks ago or close to 2 weeks ago, the tragic death in Minnesota. We have all talked about how we are going to help to make sure this country gives equal opportunity to all of our citizens, including under our criminal justice system. We also need to recognize that, if we are going to deal with the wealth gap in America, we have to deal with entrepreneurship, and this is one way we can do it--by building up these types of opportunities. Now, there is some good news in my State of Maryland that I want to share with my colleagues. Maryland had a very active women's business center. As you know, our resource partners are critically important in helping underserved and underbanked communities. Women-owned businesses are clearly in that category. We have a very effective women's business center that is headquartered in Rockville that helps serve Montgomery and Prince George's Counties and Frederick. It is doing a great job on behalf of women-owned businesses. Maryland, though, is a big State, and we needed more help. So I thank the Small Business Administration in its announcement of two additional small business centers in the State of Maryland. One will be in Baltimore. It will be housed at Morgan State University, a historic HBCU. That will provide, I think, tremendous help for women-owned businesses and minority women-owned businesses. We are also opening up a center in Salisbury, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland--rural Maryland--to help women's businesses. This is critically important in dealing with the gap in our communities. Resource partners are of critical need. So, as we applaud the work we have done with the PPP program and as we recognize we need to improve it, let's also recognize we need to deal with making sure there is a fair opportunity for all businesses to qualify. We are also going to need additional help for small businesses in addition to the PPP initial grant. There needs to be a second round, and let me tell you why. We thought 8 weeks would be enough with the PPP program, but we know that for some of the original small business loans that were taken out under the PPP program that, within the next 2 weeks, the 8-week period will expire, but we know that businesses are not yet open at full capacity. Restaurants cannot open at full capacity. Catering establishments cannot open at full capacity. Health clubs cannot open at full capacity. Entertainment centers cannot open at full capacity. We know that museums are still very much hurt, so we are going to need additional help. Yesterday, we heard from a small business owner whose company was helped by the PPP loan. He told us there will be additional need for bridge funding for small businesses experiencing unanticipated costs during the phased-in reopening. I agree with him. I think we are going to have to do more to help the small businesses in our communities. I have been working with Senator Shaheen and Senator Coons and others to say, on the second round, let's try to target the relief to those companies that really need it. The first round--get the money out quickly. We were very successful in doing that. There was a minimal amount of underwriting requirements by the small businesses or the banks. We got the money out quickly. On the second round, we need to be more discerning. We need to focus those funds on those small businesses that really need it, those in the underserved communities--the smaller of the small businesses. We heard that yesterday during our oversight hearings. Those businesses have had a dramatic loss of revenue. If we do that, the resources are there; we can help those small businesses survive, and we can do it in a way that will keep our economy going. We need to do that immediately. We shouldn't wait 2 more weeks after the program for many small businesses has already ended. We need to provide the help as soon as possible. That is another reason it is important that we take up the next stimulus package during this work period and not wait until businesses have to lay off their workers and may not be able to reopen. The PPP was only one of three tools. The second tool we provided was a new initiative under the EIDL Program, the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, for grants. It provides for immediate cash, which is what businesses need during a disaster--cash. The proposal allowed for a $10,000 grant to be made. We anticipated that grant would be made within 3 days. We put that in the statute. As complimentary as I have been about the SBA starting up the PPP program, I am extremely disappointed in the manner in which the EIDL Program has been handled. They did not get the money out quickly. They did not get $10,000 out; instead, the average grant was between $4,000 and $5,000. And there is $10 billion still left in the coffers that could have gotten out to small businesses that desperately needed the cash, and they didn't do it in the timeframe Congress anticipated. The existing loan program, which existed before COVID-19, where SBA issues loans during a disaster, called the Economic Injury Disaster Loans, provides working capital. It works with PPP. PPP is not enough help for a small business to get the working capital and inventory they need. That is why we have the EIDL loans. The SBA has been very slow in getting the loans out. The numbers are extremely disappointing. Now they have set up new rules. They closed the window for nonagricultural small businesses. Why? I have no idea. They seem to be limiting loans to $150,000, although the loan provides for a $2 million cap. Why are they doing that? If the programs are going to work together, they have to implement this program. Congress specifically intended COVID-19 to be a disaster covered by EIDL. We did that in our earlier stimulus package. Well, we are disappointed that we haven't had greater success in the EIDL Program, because we know it works so much closer with the PPP program, and it is particularly useful for smaller small businesses and those that are more vulnerable. We had a witness yesterday, Nick Rudolph of Maryland Capital Enterprises, who testified and said: The EIDL loan is a particularly impactful product . . . because of its low interest, long terms, eased credit requirements and the fact that collateral is not required. In a perfect world, all approved applicants would receive the full grant portion regardless of number of employees. What Mr. Rudolph is saying is they limited the grant to $1,000 per worker, and, therefore, if you had 10 or fewer workers, the most vulnerable of small businesses, you were not able to take advantage of the $10,000. We hope that will be corrected. There is a third tool. That is loan forgiveness for existing 7(a) and 504 loans and microloans and for loans taken out during the 6-month period after the adoption of the bill through the end of the year. This gives 6 months of debt relief for loans that can really help small businesses. I would like to report on how that is working, but I don't have a lot of numbers on that, which leads me to the need for data. If we are going to carry out our oversight function, if we are going to be able to enact legislation going forward, we need to know how the programs are working today, and we haven't gotten the information we need. Earlier I authored a letter to Senators Schumer and Wyden, asking the SBA to make that information available. Most recently, I joined Senator Rubio in a similar request asking the Small Business Administration to make this information available. I introduced legislation with Senator Shaheen on this issue. We need to get that data if we are going to do our oversight. This week we had the private sector witnesses; next week we have Administrator Carranza, Administrator of the SBA, and Secretary Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury, to ask specifically about these points. It will be a very, very important hearing. In closing, let me say that we have to continue to work together as we have in the past to help America's small businesses. They are literally the growth engine of our economy. They are the innovators of our economy, and they are the most vulnerable. The CARES Act provided incredibly important help, but we are going to have to pay additional attention to help our small businesses. So let's continue this bipartisan effort not only to help small businesses but to help our economy and to help our country. In doing that we will truly perform as we should during this national emergency. So I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pay attention to what we have already done for small businesses and give them the additional attention that they need.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, in this time of renewed interest for fairness and equality for all men and women and nationwide and worldwide protests, I urge my colleagues to think about what we can do to create a more just society. Indeed, one of the founding documents of our country, the Declaration of Independence, provides that ``all men are created equal,'' in the famous words of Thomas Jefferson. But let me remind my colleagues about our history here as the Continental Congress met to debate independence of the United States from Great Britain. In a letter dated March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, the future President John Adams, urging him and the other Members of the Continental Congress not to forget about the Nation's women when fighting for America's freedom. The future First Lady wrote in part, ``I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than our ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.'' Well, women of the United States would indeed have to wait a long time just to get the right to vote in America. Indeed, even after the Civil War, which almost tore this country apart over slavery, the Fifteenth Amendment ratified by Congress and the States in 1870 provided that ``the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.'' Women had tried again to include the right to vote in the Constitution but were rebuffed. But the women of this country did not give up. So they kept agitating and lobbying for the right to vote, and they were ultimately successful, when Congress and the States ratified the 19th Amendment in 1920, which states: ``The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.'' However, while women in American gained the right to vote in 1920, we all know that women are still not treated equally under the law and that civil rights are the great unfinished business of America. Our fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, ERA, officially began shortly after passage of the 19th Amendment, the culmination of the long-running women's suffrage movement that guaranteed women the right to vote. Alice Paul, leader of the National Women's Party, recognized the need for further laws in order to provide full legal equality to women in all activities, not just voting. Her proposal for an amendment for equal treatment under the law regardless of sex marked the first iteration of the ERA. U.S. Senator Charles Curtis would introduce this proposal for the first time in October 1921. Over the years, both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party would include the ERA in their platforms. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy both indicated their support for the ERA. Needless to say, the ERA has a long history, and throughout that time, it enjoyed the notable bipartisan support. The ERA has been able to count on such support precisely because of the widespread need recognized by both sides of the aisle for equal treatment under the law. What is at stake here is simply the issue of putting women on an even playing field with men. This is not about empowering one demographic group over another, but ensuring that discrimination on the basis of sex is no longer an obstacle to prevent women from enjoying the same rights and protections that men enjoy. As the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia articulated: ``Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't.'' The fight for the ERA aims to fill this gap in the law. When Congresswoman Martha Griffiths introduced her ERA in Congress in the 92nd Congress, the House of Representatives passed the measure by a vote of 354 yeas to 24 nays. Five months later, the Senate passed it by a vote of 84 yeas to 8 nays. It received an immediate endorsement from President Richard Nixon upon its passage. While the ERA would in time become ratified by most States, it fell just three short of the three- fourths requirement of 38 by the measure's deadline of March 22, 1979. When Senator Murkowski and I came together to introduce S.J. Res. 6 on January 26, 2019, we committed ourselves to advancing this nearly century-long fight for equality between men and women. Our measure would remove the deadline for ratification. Remember that the Constitution contains no deadline for the ratification of constitutional amendments, and in 1992 Congress declared the 27th Amendment ratified after more than 200 years, which prohibits Congress from changing its own pay before an intervening election. And the States have recently woken up when it comes to the ERA, with Illinois, Nevada, and, most recently, Virginia ratifying the ERA, reaching the number of 38 State ratifications, or three-quarters of the States. I would note that our companion House resolution introduced by Congresswoman Jackie Speier was passed by the House earlier this year, and so this issue is awaiting final action in the Senate. As Congress looks to what it can do to create a more just society, ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, ERA, would finally give women the legal protection consistent with ideals of our Nation. I am therefore proud to have partnered with Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in introducing a joint resolution that would remove the deadline for ratification of this crucial amendment. And we picked this historic day to discuss it, as the Senate approved the women's suffrage amendment--the 19th Amendment to our Constitution--on June 4, 1919. I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record a joint editorial that I wrote with my colleague and friend, Senator Murkowski of Alaska, talking about why it is time to finally ratify the ERA.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. If the Senator would yield, he has mentioned several different issues. I appreciate the fact that we are trying to get this done today and that he is indicating we have a path forward to get this completed this afternoon and the House bill to the President, which is our objective, so that small business owners understand--24 weeks before their loans expire and understand the additional flexibility on how they can spend the money because they are making those decisions, literally, today. The Senator mentioned several different issues that he is concerned about, but it appears that the one area in which he is seeking consensus here deals with the authority to issue a loan under the PPP program through June of this year, which is what the law is, and I don't believe it is changed by the House bill. Is that the issue for which you are seeking to get consensus from the ranking member and chairman?

Mr. CARDIN. I am just trying to figure out what I am supposed to be signing as ranking member of the committee. If I understand--because the Senator had mentioned problems with the 60 percent----

Mr. CARDIN. I just want to make sure we have----

Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I rise today as the United States of America, again, faces the enormous challenge and responsibility of striving to live up to the preamble of the Constitution of the United States. The preamble provides: ``We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.'' I note that our Founders, who were far from perfect when it came to racial issues, thought that justice was more important than domestic tranquility. They listed justice first. Today, America is grieving over the brutal and unnecessary death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25. Both State and Federal law enforcement officers are moving quickly to bring the police officers in this case to justice and hold them accountable for their actions, as Mr. Floyd's cries of ``I can't breathe'' went unanswered as the life drained out of him. Video taken by several witnesses show that George Floyd--who was Black and was unarmed--was handcuffed and pinned to the ground by a police officer who held his knee against Mr. Floyd's neck as he pleaded for his life. Mr. Floyd was on the ground, repeatedly telling the officer that he could not breathe. And despite the fact that bystanders are all heard on video begging the officer to relent, he did not remove his knee from Mr. Floyd's neck until after an ambulance arrived. Eventually Mr. Floyd lost consciousness. He was pronounced dead after being transported to a local hospital. As leaders, regardless of party, we cannot stay silent about George Floyd's death. Black lives matter. George Floyd was a father, a son, and a brother. His life mattered. He did not need to die. He and his family deserve justice. How many other Black men and women have died at the hands of law enforcement or vigilante civilians due to the color of their skin but have not been caught on video? Those victims deserve justice too. We must act, working together, to fundamentally reform the ways police across this Nation interact with the communities they serve. On Monday night, President Trump once again failed to lead this Nation in a time of crisis, and he has forfeited his moral authority as President. Spraying tear gas at peaceful protesters to clear a path for a photo op is opposite of American values and basic human rights. It violates civil and human rights under any circumstances. President Trump fans the flames of racism and seeks to divide Americans for political purposes, just as he did in Charlottesville and far too many places since. He seems willfully blind to the reason people are protesting in the first place--to end systematic racism in the repeated and tragic targeting of Blacks by law enforcement. Congress, finally, must act to pass a comprehensive plan to reform police community relations, improve training and hiring of police officers, and hold police accountable for misconduct and use of excessive force. We must rebuild trust between the police and the communities they serve. For those who are asking ``Why did it take so long?'' the answer is ``We have been trying.'' It should not have taken so long, but year after year too many of my colleagues have put partisanship before justice and equality. As both the House and Senate prepare to hold hearings on police reform and racial profiling issues, I want to bring to my colleagues' attention two pieces of legislation that I have filed: The End Racial and Religious Profiling Act and the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act. If enacted, these two bills could make an enormous difference and constitute a giant step forward in reforming police departments in America and rebuilding trust between police officers and the communities they are sworn to protect and serve. The End Racial and Religious Profiling Act is designed to enforce the constitutional right to equal protection under the law by eliminating racial profiling at all levels of law enforcement by changing the policies and procedures underlying the practice. First, the bill provides a prohibition on racial profiling, enforceable by declaratory or injunctive relief. It creates a standard definition of racial profiling, which now includes religion, gender, and other protected categories for Federal, State, and local law enforcement, enforcing criminal, civil, and immigration laws. Can law enforcement still provide a detailed description of a suspect that includes race? The answer is yes. But the bill prohibits blanket targeting solely based on race or one of the other protected categories. This bill also mandates training on racial profiling issues as part of Federal law enforcement training, the collection of data on all routine and spontaneous investigatory activities, and the creation of procedures for receiving, investigating, and responding meaningfully to complaints alleging racial profiling by law enforcement. Systematic racism will not disappear overnight. We must engage all law enforcement in aggressive training and then have data to show where there is progress and where challenges remain. Our bill authorizes the Department of Justice grants for the development and implementation of best policing practices. The second bill is the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act that I have filed. The Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act takes a comprehensive approach at addressing the issue of police accountability and building trust between police departments and their communities. This legislation provides incentives for local police organizations to voluntarily adopt performance-based standards to ensure that instances of misconduct will be minimized through appropriate management, training, and oversight protocols. The bill provides that if such incidents do occur, they will be properly investigated. The bill provides police officers--the vast majority of whom perform their job professionally, putting their lives on the line daily, protecting their communities--with the tools necessary to improve community relations and enhance their professional growth and education. It authorizes $25 million for additional expenses related to the enforcement of civil rights statutes, including compliance with consent decrees or judgments regarding police misconduct brought by the Department of Justice. In Baltimore City, for example, the Baltimore Police Department voluntarily entered into a consent decree in 2017 with the U.S. Department of Justice to overhaul the police department. An earlier Department of Justice report had found a widespread pattern and practice of illegal and unconstitutional conduct by the Baltimore Police Department through targeting African-American residents for disproportionate and disparate treatment. The legislation I have authored also authorizes appropriations for additional expenses related to conflict resolution, including programs managed by the Department of Justice's Community Relations Services within the Civil Rights Division. I am pleased that, to date, the protests in Baltimore have been largely peaceful, especially compared to 2015 after the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore Police Department custody. I do hope my fellow Americans look to Baltimore in 2020 as an example for how to peacefully protest and petition the government for redress of grievances, as Baltimore has willingly agreed to work with the U.S. Department of Justice to overhaul its entire police force so that policing its citizens is both fair and effective. As many of my colleagues have said before, ``Civil Rights is still the unfinished business of America.'' Prejudice, discrimination, and outright racism continues to limit the lives of the large number of our people. We must continue the struggle today in order to make urgent progress. As I close, I am reminded of my dear friend, the late Representative Elijah Cummings, who died last year. He was a fellow Baltimorean and fellow graduate of the University of Maryland Law School. He gave the eulogy for Freddie Gray in 2015, who died after being arrested and taken into police department custody. During the church service, he closed with a quote from the Book of Amos: I want justice, oceans of it. I want fairness, rivers of it. That's what I want. That's all I want. Elijah also asked a pointed question of those of us at the funeral that day, as well as to the news cameras that were broadcasting the event nationally and around the world. Elijah asked: ``Did anyone recognize Freddie when he was alive . . . did anyone see him?'' Elijah asked whether society had done all that it could have done when Gray was ``struggling to simply be all God meant for him to be?'' Today, I ask my fellow Americans to ask that question when it comes to the lives of not only George Floyd but Tony McDade, Sean Reed, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. I say here today to Black Americans: I see you. I hear you. You are men and women. You have families. You have the same rights as every other individual in this country. In a 2019 interview with ``60 Minutes,'' Steve Kroft noted as follows: Cummings is not a patient man. It's a lesson he learned from his late grandmother, who imparted her mindset shortly before she died. White people, she told him, had been telling African Americans to wait--and he shouldn't. She says, ``Your daddy, he been waiting and waiting and waiting for a better day,'' Cummings recalled. She said, ``He's going to wait, and he's going to die.'' She said, ``Don't you wait.'' Then, in his late sixties, Elijah Cummings said that when he looks into the future, he also reflects on his life. ``I realized that with African American people, where we've been blocked from being all that God meant for us to be, I don't have time to be patient.'' Yes, Elijah often said of America that ``we are better than this.'' Let's prove Elijah right. I urge the Senate not to be patient any longer and wait for the next death of an African American in police custody before taking action. Let us hold our hearings and then expeditiously take up and pass legislation, including the two bills I have explained on the floor today, as the next steps in establishing justice in our still imperfect Union. I yield the floor.

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, first, let me thank Senator Schumer for bringing this issue to the floor at this time. Senator Schumer has been a great leader on what we need to do to help respond to COVID-19. He recognized from the beginning that we needed a balanced program to deal with the health pandemic, with the Marshall Plan, to deal with the help to our State and local governments, and to deal with the economic consequences of COVID-19. Senator Schumer helped us develop a balanced approach to deal with the economic challenges while, yes, helping the individual through unemployment insurance and direct checks from the IRS but also helping our businesses. For small businesses we created new tools; for larger businesses we had loans. I was proud to be part of a task force that was charged with developing the tools for small business. I want to thank my partner Senator Shaheen for her incredible help and leadership in crafting the programs of the Paycheck Protection Program while also dealing with the economic disaster loan program, which was new and a loan forgiveness program. We did this working with Senators Rubio and Collins. It was truly bipartisan. We did it in a matter of literally a few days--a week or so, and we were able to get this program crafted in a way that it provided incredible relief to the small businesses of our country. So today, what is the record? There are 4.4 million loans that have been issued under the Paycheck Protection Program, and $510 billion has been made available to small businesses in this country. It literally has been a lifeline allowing small companies to continue to exist. You see, with small companies, we get more job growth than bigger companies. We get ideas on how to deal with economic challenges. But in economic downturns they don't have the liquidity and resilience that larger companies have. That is why we had to pass this type of help. We did that in March, and when we passed those bills in March, quite frankly we thought that by now the economy would be in a much better shape than it is and that small businesses would be able to return to somewhat of a normal economy. Well, that is not the case. We recognize that certain businesses--such as those in the hospitality field, health clubs, caterers, museums, and the list goes on and on--have virtually not been able to open at all yet, and they are going to need more help than just the 8 weeks that was planned in the Paycheck Protection Program. That is why the legislation that passed the House was part of this bipartisan, bicameral effort to give additional flexibility for those who had the paycheck protection plan loans. We recognize now that 8 weeks is not long enough, and that is why this legislation would change that 8 weeks to 24 weeks, giving small businesses a greater opportunity to qualify for a maximum amount of loan forgiveness and giving small businesses more flexibility on how they allocate those funds between payroll and nonpayroll expenses. As we heard today in our first oversight hearing in the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, small businesses are different. Maybe 8 weeks works for some, but maybe it doesn't work for others. Maybe 75 percent of payroll works for one but doesn't work for another. We need a program that can fit the vast majority of small businesses, and the changes represented in the House bill represents those changes that if we had recognized in March that this pandemic would have continuing impact on our economy well beyond 8 weeks, would have certainly been considered during that period of time. Now is the time to pass this. I just want to underscore this point. The 8 weeks will expire for the first loans that were issued under the PPP program next week. Small businesses need predictability. They need to know whether this is going to be the law or not before they apply for their forgiveness. So we don't have any extra time. We need to pass this right now. It is a bipartisan effort and is a bipartisan bill. What Senator Schumer said is absolutely correct. We will have other opportunities to deal with other provisions to help small businesses. We are not finished. We recognize that there are small businesses that may need additional help, particularly those who have seen dramatic reductions in their revenues and the smaller of the small businesses and those underserved communities. We need to pay attention to do something about that. But let's get this program working right today. Let's give the notices to small businesses and get this passed through the Senate today so that small businesses can plan on how to deal with the next several months. I yield the floor.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, today I rise to mark the start of LGBT Pride Month with reflections on the recent International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia--IDAHOBIT. For more than 50 years, Pride Month has been a reminder that, despite recent progress, every day, millions of people around the world face social stigmatization, legal prosecution, and even violence based on their sexual orientation or because of their gender identity. COVID-19 is necessitating adjustments to how this month is celebrated, with organizers moving large-scale parades from the streets of towns and cities to the internet, where a 24-hour online Global Pride celebration is planned for later this month. Two short weeks ago was the annual commemoration of the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia--IDAHOBIT. Started on May 17, 2004, IDAHOBIT was established by LGBTQ activists in 2004 to commemorate the World Health Organization's historic decision in 1990 to remove homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases. As in the United States, despite the progress we have made since 1990, around the world, homophobia, transphobia, and biphobia continue to flourish in many parts of the world. The theme of this year's International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia was ``Breaking the Silence.'' Millions of LGBTQ individuals around the world continue to be forced to hide their identities because of who they are or whom they love. They struggle to achieve the most basic of human rights, let alone respect and visibility. The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association--ILGA--lists 70 countries in which same-sex activities are outlawed, and penalties range from 8 years' imprisonment to the death penalty. Even in countries that do not criminalize homosexuality, many still have laws on the books that make living openly next to impossible. Only five countries, of which the United States is not one, ban the damaging practice of conversion therapy. This type of discrimination has only been compounded by the global outbreak of COVID-19. In addition to the widespread health and economic hardship that this pandemic is creating, it is producing new risks and forms of persecution for the LGBTQ community. In Uganda, security forces stormed an LGBTQ shelter, binding the occupants' hands with rope before marching them to a nearby police station on charges of disobeying social distancing rules. In Latin America, transgender, nonbinary, and queer people who present as gender-nonconforming are being detained or fined for going to the grocery store on days designated by the government as ``men-only'' or ``women-only.'' Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has used the pandemic as an excuse to move legislation that will ban the legal recognition of transgender citizens. Meanwhile, in South Korea, there is a disturbing rise in online hate speech blaming the LGBTQ community for spreading the coronavirus. A number of religious leaders around the world have cruelly attributed the spread of COVID-19 to divine retribution for recognition of same-sex marriages. The COVID-19 pandemic will eventually fade, but the abuse of LGBTQ people will continue unless we come together as a global community to put an end to it. Historically, the United States has been a strong international leader on issues of human rights like this one. However, the current administration's neglect of LGBTQ rights, both at home and abroad, has hurt our credibility and diminished our power to make positive change. Within the United States, the Trump administration has issued rules sanctioning employment, housing, medical, and other forms of discrimination based on gender identity. It has also repeatedly used religious liberty as a shield to enable discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. On a global scale, the administration has attempted to undermine internationally recognized definitions of human rights through the U.S. State Department's Commission on Inalienable Rights and turned a blind eye to the persecution of LGBTQ people in other countries. It is said that you can measure the strength of a democracy by the rights it affords to marginalized communities, these actions do not reflect the strong democracy that we strive to be. Looking at the state of the world today, it is clear that we need more champions for LGBTQ rights on the international stage. We need more leaders to break the silence and speak up for everyone's right to live truly as themselves. This Pride Month, I am hopeful that the United States will once again be one of those voices. For my part, I will keep fighting to protect LGBTQ rights at home and around the globe, so that all people can pursue happiness and love without fear.