John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, due to unforeseen circumstances I was unable to be present today for votes on amendment No. 5192 to the Resolution of Advice and Consent to Ratification for the Accession of the Republic of Finland and the Kingdom of Sweden to NATO. I offer this statement for the Record in support of amendment No. 5192 and in support of the underlying resolution. Amendment No. 5192, offered by my good friend from Alaska, Mr. Dan Sullivan, would amend existing language in the Resolution of Advice and Consent to say, ``the Senate declares that all NATO members should spend a minimum of 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense and 20 percent of their defense budgets on major equipment, including research and development, by 2024, as outlined in the 2014 Wales Summit Declaration.'' This language is stronger and clearer than the current resolution language, and it would deliver a clear message to the President that Congress expects him to engage our allies on alliance spending obligations. Finally, the Resolution of Advice and Consent to Ratification for the Accession of the Republic of Finland and the Kingdom of Sweden to NATO would add two excellent allies who will be significant contributors to the NATO Alliance. Finland and Sweden both possess fully funded, modern, self-sufficient, highly capable militaries. Their addition to the NATO alliance will help to share the burden of NATO defense obligations among NATO allies. This will enable the U.S. to focus its own forces where they are needed most, be that in Europe or in the Indo-Pacific.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, due to unforeseen circumstances I was unable to be present today for votes on amendment No. 5186 and 5187 to S. 3373, the Honoring our PACT Act, and to the underlying bill. I offer this statement in the Record in support of all three. Amendment No. 5186 to S. 3373, offered by my good friend from Pennsylvania, Mr. Pat Toomey, closes an important budgetary loophole by preventing $390 billion in baseline discretionary spending from being reclassified as mandatory spending under the legislation. I support this amendment, and I would encourage my colleagues to do the same. Amendment No. 5185 to S. 3373, offered by my good friend from Tennessee, Mrs. Marsha Blackburn, would expand care under the Veterans Community Care Program to include toxic-exposed veterans. This expanded care program is essential to ensure that toxic-exposed veterans receive the full range of support that they need. I would encourage my colleagues to join me in supporting this amendment. Finally, S. 3373, the Honoring our PACT Act, creates a presumption that veterans who suffer from certain health conditions, and who were exposed to toxic substances as part of their military service, are eligible to receive Veterans Administration healthcare. This important bill will provide much-needed care to our veterans, including lifesaving early detection and treatment of certain illnesses. I support the passage of the PACT Act.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, a few weeks ago, the fate of the CHIPS Act, our collective effort to shore up the vulnerable semiconductor supply chain, was in limbo. Republicans said we would not move forward with what was then known as USICA, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, while Democrats were crafting a partisan reckless massive tax and spending bill behind closed doors. Then Senator Manchin, the Senator from West Virginia, made a decision that angered most of his Democratic colleagues--he slammed the door on the climate and tax provisions and reconciliation. He said: Until we see the July inflation figures-- Which we haven't seen yet-- until we see the July Federal reserve interest rates, then let's wait. He noted that families were struggling to buy such essentials as gasoline and groceries and added: I can't make that decision basically on taxes of any type. That was what I will call the old Joe. After we received assurances privately from some Senate Democrats, including the staff of the Senate majority leader, that the tax and climate provisions were off the table, we were able to move forward with USICA and the funding of this vulnerable semiconductor supply chain that is an important part of the bill that the House is voting on today. So Republicans and Democrats went to work, negotiating in good faith to reach an agreement because we recognized that the vulnerability of our semiconductor supply chain was an economic and national security existential threat because 90 percent of the advanced semiconductors in the world that power everything from your cell phone to the F-35, to the Stinger or the Javelin missiles that are being used in Ukraine today--90 percent of those come from overseas, and the United States makes zero percent of them. That was the vulnerability and the risk we were exposed to, so that is why we worked so hard on a bipartisan basis to pass what used to be called Endless Frontier. I guess it has had about four or five different names so far, but it started, in my mind, with the CHIPS for America Act that Mr. Warner, the Senator from Virginia, and I introduced in June of 2020. So we all celebrated with a bipartisan press conference just in the LBJ Room over here, but then shortly after that bipartisan announcement, we learned some astonishing news: The climate and tax provisions apparently were never off the table despite what we had been told. Apparently, Democrats--specifically, the majority leader and Senator Manchin--just moved those discussions out of the public eye, into a secret back room. And I pretty much believe that other Democratic colleagues were not clued in on those negotiations. That is my impression. It was a secret deal between the majority leader and Senator Manchin. Well, as I said, the CHIPS Act was part of this larger China competitiveness bill passed around 1 o'clock, and it was just 4 hours later that Senator Manchin sent out a press release that ``Build Back Broke'' was now on track. After saying repeatedly he would not support such reckless policies, he has done an Olympic-worthy flip-flop, and there is simply no denying it. Let me talk about the new Joe. It simply can't be overstated how dramatic this reversal is. Democratic Senators called me and texted me yesterday after Senator Manchin's announcement. One said: I am so shocked and upset. Another said: I am appalled. A member of the President's Cabinet said: I hope you know and trust that I had absolutely no idea this was going on. Just 2 weeks ago, Senator Manchin said he wouldn't support the climate policies and tax increases out of fear that it would fan the flames of inflation. Last month, as we will recall, inflation hit a new four-decade high. Everyday expenses for food, groceries, and other necessities of life were up more than 9 percent from just a year ago. Our colleague from West Virginia said he told the Democratic leader it would be ``wrong'' and ``not prudent'' to move forward while inflation was at a record high. Unfortunately, it didn't take long for that sense of fiscal responsibility to fade. I don't know the details about the secret deal between Senator Manchin and Senator Schumer that resulted in this reversal, but I have to say, it was ugly. Now Senator Manchin not only supports the ``Build Back Broke'' bill, he now said it is his proposal--he, in effect, wrote it--and it includes the same policies that he previously opposed. Tax hikes on working families and small businesses, Green New Deal climate policies, socialist price controls on prescription drugs, things like subsidies for wealthy purchasers of electric vehicles-- forget the fact that somebody who can't afford an electric vehicle, who has to drive an old clunker, perhaps, or buy a used car--they are the ones subsidizing wealthy people buying electric vehicles--it is all in there. Democrats could not have picked a worse time to push this reckless, irresponsible bill. This morning's news on the state of the economy confirms what millions of Americans have known for months: that the Biden recession is officially here. Our economy is not just stuck in the mud; it is sinking. Families and small businesses deserve better than a toxic combination of higher prices and feeble economic growth. Instead of helping the people survive this recession, our Democratic colleagues want to push them even deeper into the hole. In 2008, Senator Schumer himself, the majority leader, said that raising taxes during a recession was a bad idea. President Obama said exactly the same thing. In 2009, President Obama--in the aftermath of the great recession due to the financial crisis in 2008--President Obama said virtually the same thing that Senator Schumer said: The last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of a recession. And that is exactly where we are. The following year, in 2010, Senator Manchin agreed with Senator Schumer and President Obama. He said: I don't think during a time of recession you mess with any of the taxes or increase any taxes. That is the old Joe. That is the same Senator who is now proposing to raise taxes on families in the middle of a recession. Now, here is the real joke, but I guess the joke is on all of us: They are calling it the Inflation Reduction Act. What an insult to the intelligence of the American people. Do they think anybody will be fooled? Do they think the American people are so stupid that they will believe this is an honest attempt to address inflation? There is not a chance. This proposal is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Our Democratic colleagues can try to rebrand the ``Build Back Broke'' bill that they tried to pass earlier this year all they want, but it is filled with the same rotten policies that will hurt families, small businesses, and energy producers, while the President, by the way, goes to Saudi Arabia hat in hand, asking the leader of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to produce more oil overseas rather than encourage domestic production here in America. If this bill were to pass, it would eliminate any chance we had of escaping the recession policies that Democrats have landed us in. Families are being crushed by the worst inflation in four decades. For every dollar you have, it is worth 91 cents in purchasing power because of the broken policies of the Biden administration. But it is not the politicians who pay the price; we are doing just fine. It is the working families all across this country who are paying the price for Democrats' war on American energy, for example. And they are sick and tired of being told by Washington Democrats that you can tax and spend our way out of this mess. I have some bad news: If the Democratic leader can manage to keep all 50 Democrats on board, it is going to get worse. Our only hope is that a single Democratic Senator will oppose this massive, irresponsible bill, and it only takes one in a 50-50 Senate. Not only will this bill have a devastating impact on the American people, it will absolutely paralyze this Chamber. There have been recent discussions about, well, amidst polarization, there is possibility for bipartisan cooperation, and I have been proud to be a part of some of that bipartisan cooperation. I think we have done some important things for the American people. But the Senate functions on trust. There are only 100 of us, and the relationships and the confidence that we have that when somebody looks you in the eye and tells you something, that they are going to stick with it, is important to negotiating in good faith and building consensus that is necessary to pass legislation. That is the only way we can pass legislation--work in a bipartisan, candid, good-faith way to get things done, like our mental health and school safety bill recently. That trust was eviscerated yesterday. Senators Manchin and Schumer did not draft this 725-page bill in the 4 hours between the passage of the CHIPS Act and Senator Manchin's press release. They have been working on this the entire time, when they told us it was off the table. How is this Chamber supposed to function if we don't have at least some modicum of trust in what our colleagues tell us? How can we negotiate in good faith, compromise where necessary, and get things done together after the majority leader and the Senator from West Virginia pull a stunt like this? The American people are sometimes left to wonder whether our institutions, including this one, can work anymore. Well, I can only speak for this Senator when I say: This betrayal is an absolute declaration of political warfare. For years, many of our Democratic colleagues have claimed that the Senate is broken because of the filibuster. They act as though a procedural vote with the 60-vote threshold is an end of democracy as we know it. But look where we are now. The Democratic leader is crafting secret deals in back rooms. He is keeping members of his own political party in the dark, such that they have to apologize to people like me who have been willing to trust that what people say--that their word is their bond. Look, if somebody can't agree with me, I would prefer they tell me outright, and then we can figure out where we can agree if we can't agree in some areas. But to look you in the eye and tell you one thing and then to do another is absolutely unforgiveable. Now the majority leader is trying to abuse the rules of the Senate to pass a $700 billion partisan spending bill in the next week, in the next matter of days--a bill that was only announced in a press release yesterday. The Senate is not broken, but I am afraid, if this stunt pays off, Democrats are about to break it.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be permitted to speak prior to the scheduled rollcall vote: myself for up to 15 minutes, Senator Blackburn for up to 10 minutes, and Senator Tester for up to 5 minutes.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, coming to the floor and listening to some of my colleagues talk about their concern for lack of access to contraception--and some have said we need to pass a bill codifying same-sex marriage when that is currently the law of the land by virtue of a Supreme Court decision, the Obergefell case--reminds me of the old story about the little boy who cried wolf. He cried wolf when there wasn't any danger; and then, once there was danger, people didn't come to his aid because they thought it was another phony crying wolf. I can understand our colleagues--given inflation, given crime, given the broken borders--wanting to change the subject to something else, but that is all this is. This is mere posturing pre-November, pre- midterm elections. This isn't about changing the law because the law already permits ready access to contraceptives. The law already permits same-sex marriage. So this idea that we ought to spend scarce time here in the Congress, which we have in limited supply, reaffirming rights that already exist, is a clear political narrative designed to divert the American people's attention from things that really are at risk--that is, the paychecks of every American family because of inflation, because of failed energy policies. We know that the price of gasoline and diesel and fuel to fill up your car so you can go to work or take your child to school or summer camp has increased. We know that our cities are on fire due to spiking crime waves connected to drugs that are coming across the southern border. And, of course, we know that the southern border is completely open with a big red carpet and a welcome mat out for anybody who wants to come to the United States illegally. And the cartels that are rich and getting richer because of the flow of their human traffic are also getting rich because of the flow of illegal drugs that took the lives of 108,000 Americans last year alone. We know where those drugs are coming from and that the Biden administration is doing absolutely nothing to stop them. I would want to change the topic too. CHIPS Act of 2022 Mr. President, on a more positive note, the Senate approved funding earlier this morning to bolster domestic semiconductor manufacturing by a vote of 64 to 33. This funding will help kick-start the development of these microprocessors, these chips that go into everything from your cell phone to the F-35, to Javelin and Stinger missiles that we send to Ukraine to defend their country from Russian aggression. This funding will help kick-start a domestic production of these semiconductors in a way that will prevent a vulnerability of our supply chain, since 90 percent of those advanced semiconductors currently come from Asia, with 60 percent coming from Taiwan alone. One other benefit to this bill is that this bill could create roughly 185,000 jobs every year as these new facilities are constructed. Long term, it could bring another 280,000 jobs online. And once these foundries are operational, they will supply ``Made in America'' semiconductors that can be used on everything from smartphones to cars, to airplanes, to missile defense systems. Semiconductors are the cornerstone of this legislation, but the bill also takes a range of other steps to help propel innovation in the competition we are currently in with the People's Republic of China. This bill authorizes investments in research that will support everything from robotics to next-generation wireless technology. It also authorizes NASA programs that will keep America at the forefront of space exploration. It extends the authorization for the International Space Station to 2030. This is very important, especially now that Russia has said it will end its commitment to the International Space Station after 2024. This bill also lays the groundwork for America's continued presence in space after 2030, including language I championed requiring NASA to develop a strategy to retire the International Space Station and transition to a successor platform. It also enhances existing programs that support future exploration missions. This includes the Moon to Mars Program, which is leading efforts to get an American astronaut on the surface of Mars. Texas is the proud home to the Johnson Space Center, the home of human space flight, but also a range of other universities and companies leading the way in human space exploration. Enabling these partnerships saves money, drives innovation, and gives us a competitive edge over countries like Russia and China. The broader bill included in the CHIPS Act will support both our economic and our national security and strengthen our efforts to lead the world in scientific innovation. The way we are going to compete with China and to beat them is to out-innovate them because no country in the world has better human capital, better brains, and a better system to encourage innovation, which will keep us ahead of the People's Republic of China. They don't play by the rules. They certainly don't observe the rule of law. They steal all the technology they can get. But it is important for the United States to be in the game and not be left behind. I want to thank Mr. Warner, the senior Senator from Virginia, for launching this effort with me 2 years ago. We introduced the CHIPS for America Act in June of 2020, which demonstrates how long it takes to get important legislation passed here in the U.S. Congress. Since the time we introduced it, I have worked with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to secure the necessary funding so we could deliver the benefits for our country. Countless colleagues have been part of the process over these last few weeks, particularly Senator Young, Senator Portman, Senator Wicker, Senator Sinema, and countless others; and Senator Cantwell and certainly Senator Schumer as well and numerous others have led the charge on this legislation. Their hard work and their willingness to work cooperatively together and to find common ground is the reason for our success. This has been a long, winding road with a lot of twists and turns along the way, but the end is finally in sight. Speaker Pelosi has promised to bring this legislation up for a vote in the House, and I hope our colleagues across the Capitol do not dally and get this bill voted out of the House and to the President's desk. Chip manufacturers are watching Congress and waiting to see if this bill passes before they decide where to build new fab manufacturing facilities. And we have been told that, unless this bill passes, these hoped-for manufacturing jobs and these semiconductor manufacturing fabs will not be built here in America but will be built in Europe and other places around the world. Secretary Raimondo, the Secretary of Commerce, has assured our colleagues that the United States will miss out on big benefits in terms of jobs, national security, and our economy if Congress doesn't pass this bill by the start of the August recess. Once this bipartisan legislation passes the Senate, our Democratic colleagues are reportedly planning a dramatic pivot from bipartisanship to an ultrapartisan reconciliation process. Apparently, they are willing to work together when it is convenient, but they are also willing to abandon the notion of working together and are preparing to go on another reckless, partisan spending spree. This isn't the first time. At the start of last year, Democrats spent nearly $2 trillion in unnecessary spending on a party-line basis. People wonder why we have 9 percent inflation. Part of it is our Democratic colleagues are willing to shovel money out the door and chase limited goods with supply chain problems, which means that prices get driven higher and higher--as well as, as I mentioned, flawed energy policies that look for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to increase production rather than to produce more American oil and gas here at home. Well, our Democratic colleagues succeeded in that $2 trillion bill, and they tried to pass another partisan bill at the end of the year which would have cost the American people nearly $5 trillion. But, thankfully, that entire effort failed. Now, some of our colleagues are committed--this is their last chance before the August recess--to take advantage of the rules of the Senate and to go on a partisan spending bonanza, and certainly they don't want to miss this opportunity. We are hearing that our colleagues are frantically piecing together a bill that has not yet even been written and completed and passed the so-called Byrd bath test with the Senate Parliamentarian. So we are waiting to see whether they can meet the time deadline of the end of next week or not. As I said, the bill is still reportedly being written, so we don't even have a good picture of everything that is in it. But we do have an understanding of the general framework, and it is not looking good for the American people. For example, our colleagues have said their proposal will implement government price controls on lifesaving drugs, a move that will stifle innovation and end up with scarcity. That is what price controls always do. Then we have heard that they plan to expand and extend the ObamaCare tax subsidies. This all started with a partisan spending bill that became law last year. It expanded the amount of taxpayer assistance people receive, which, in short, gave more money to more people, including lifting the cap on individuals who could receive those subsidies above $400,000. Of course, at the time, the camel's nose under the tent was that it was designed as a temporary provision. But here we are a year and a half later, and they are already trying to extend it, indicating that there was nothing temporary intended by it. They claim it is not a permanent extension and that it will only last 2 or 3 years, but I have no reason to believe that Democrats will give up on extending those provisions when they expire. In the words of Ronald Reagan, the closest thing to eternal life on Earth is a government program. Once created, they will not die, even if they are no longer necessary. And of course, a permanent extension will cost the American people a lot of money. Last week, the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation released a report of the true cost of a permanent expansion, and it is pretty shocking for a number of reasons. First is the financial cost. By expanding the ObamaCare premium tax credits and making them permanent, Democrats will add $248 billion to the Federal deficit over the next decade. Mr. President, my age and your age--we are not going to be the ones who have to pay that money back. But these young people sitting down here are going to have to pay the price for the profligate spending today, and all Americans will pay the price by adding fuel to the fire of inflation. For whatever reason--reasons I really can't fathom--the Federal debt and the national debt are of no concern to our Democratic colleagues. They simply don't seem to care. They act as though we are playing with Monopoly money, that we can print and borrow like there is no tomorrow because none of this really matters. But we know that is not true. Every dollar we spend is paid for by taxpayers, and every ounce of debt we accrue will be carried and repaid by our children and our grandchildren. But none of this seems to matter to our friends across the aisle. They are still plowing ahead with this legislation. Unfortunately, the irresponsible spending isn't even the worst part. Our colleagues claim this extension will allow more Americans to afford healthcare, but the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation told us that under this plan, some 2.3 million Americans will lose their current coverage provided by their employer. Some 2.3 million Americans will lose their coverage provided currently by their employer. Hard-working Americans whose health insurance is currently covered by their employers would be told: You are on your own now. And no matter what you negotiated when you negotiated your salary with your employer, presumably if you are a union member and subject to a collective bargaining agreement where your union negotiated a generous healthcare plan, all of that will be in jeopardy by this reckless expansion of the ObamaCare subsidies. Our Democrat friends want to continue subsidizing healthcare for six- figure earners. People earning 750 percent of the Federal poverty level would be eligible for taxpayer-funded subsidies--750 percent of the poverty level, you would get cash from Uncle Sam. Our country would be essentially paying wealthy people to lose their current employer- provided healthcare so they can end up on the government subsidy. This is simply crazy policy: driving up the deficit, kicking people off of their employer-provided health plans, and forcing taxpayers to subsidize health insurance for the rich. This isn't about helping the uninsured; it is a backdoor way to implement Medicare for All. Yes, Joe Biden may be President, but it is the Bernie Sanders agenda at work here. Of course, Democrats couldn't get enough support for this radical plan, so they are trying to jam it through on party-line votes. Instead of attempting to pass a massive, unpopular bill all at once, they are trying to serve it to the American people in spoonfuls. Bit by bit, they are trying to push America closer to a single-payer health system. American people do not want Medicare for All. People who have their employer-provided coverage want to keep it. And the American people don't want the Federal Government subsidizing wealthy people who can afford to pay for their own healthcare. This is a bad idea whose time I hope has not come, and I hope our friends on the other side of the aisle will simply give up on this massive, partisan tax-and-spending spree bill that will do no good and will do a lot of harm.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, as I was preparing to come to the floor, I was going to say we are going to have a vote tonight to proceed to fill a major gap in our national security, although it looks like Mother Nature and the weather may prevent a vote tonight, and it may be tomorrow. But, still, I expect in the next couple of days for us to address a major gap in our national security. More than a year and a half after the original CHIPS Act became law, we are finally approaching the finish line in the race to fund it. You may recall that it was June of 2020 that Senator Warner, the senior Senator, a Democrat from Virginia, and I introduced the CHIPS for America Act to address a frightening supply chain vulnerability when it comes to the most advanced semiconductors in the world, 90 percent of which come from Asia, and 60 percent come from Taiwan. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently wrote a letter to congressional leaders saying that ``funding the CHIPS Act is critical to our national defense,'' and last week, former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo also urged Congress to pass this funding, saying: The cost of compromise on this bill pales in comparison to the costs we will suffer if we allow the Chinese Communist Party to one day own and control access to our most critical technologies. I agree with both of these statements, one by a Democrat appointee, another by a Republican appointee. Chips underpin virtually all the technology that we use that keeps us safe at home and protects our troops around the world. And for those not conversant with the role semiconductors play, these microprocessors underpin literally everything that has an off-and-on switch, and obviously our dependency on that kind of technology will do nothing but increase in the days and months and years ahead. From our major military assets, like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, to everyday technologies that keep our troops safe, like advanced body armor, semiconductors are key. Keeping a ready and dependable supply chain of these defense assets requires a lot of semiconductors, and right now, we are mainly looking to other countries to manufacture them. As a matter of fact, the United States of America makes zero percent of the most advanced semiconductors in the world. We depend on outsourcing virtually all of the manufacturing to other countries and produce none of them here. Roughly 75 percent of the semiconductor manufacturing globally is concentrated in China and East Asia, and 100 percent of the world's most advanced chipmaking capacity is located in only two places--Taiwan and South Korea. As I said, Taiwan commands 92 percent of the world's advanced chipmaking, and the United States makes zero. You might wonder, How did we find ourselves in this situation? Well, I think it was probably the supply chain vulnerabilities that we saw from COVID-19 that called into question this assumption that just because something could be made cheaper somewhere else in the world, that that necessarily checked all the boxes. Well, it does if all you are depending on is China to make toys for our children or other nonessential items, but when you are talking about the very brains behind the technology we need, ranging from our cell phone, as I said, to our most sophisticated military weapons, it does not check all the boxes to say we will just import those from abroad, where they can be made cheaper, because that vulnerable supply chain, if disrupted, could cause not only a severe economic depression in America but also threaten our national security directly. If access to those chips were cut off or restricted, we would be up a creek without a paddle. We couldn't produce a stockpile of Javelin missiles to supply Ukraine or produce the radios and communications devices that keep our troops and our allies connected. That is why shoring up this domestic supply, this manufacturing capacity, is a key national security priority, and this is the best way to protect one of our most critical supply chains and ensure our military readiness will not be compromised by the People's Republic of China or the Chinese Communist Party, which has threatened, by the way, to invade Taiwan, where the vast majority of these advanced semiconductors are made. But it wouldn't necessarily require a military intervention. It could be another pandemic, it could be a natural disaster--anything that might block our access to these advanced semiconductors. While closing that national security gap is the top priority here, we can't ignore major economic consequences that this legislation will deliver as well. When I introduced this legislation with Senator Warner from Virginia, who is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which I also serve, our focus was on national security. Obviously, many of our States will be winners when it comes to the economic consequences of this legislation as well. Texas has been, for example, a longstanding leader in the semiconductor industry and is home to more than 200 chip manufacturing facilities that employ 29,000 Texans. For years, our State has reaped the benefits of semiconductor manufacturing. Most of these are what are called legacy chips. They are the older chips where you are not as concerned about miniaturization or compactness or power--things that, for example, run our refrigerators or TV sets or other consumer electronics or maybe even our cars. We are already seeing the types of investments that this chips bill will finally bring. Earlier this summer, Texas Instruments, in the metroplex in Dallas-Fort Worth, broke ground on the first of four new fabs in Sherman, TX, about an hour north of Dallas. This is part of a $30 billion investment that is expected to create some 3,000 more jobs. The mayor of Sherman, where this is located in Northeast Texas, described it as ``a watershed day,'' noting that ``it's hard to have a frame of reference for a $30 billion investment in a town of 50,000 people.'' Sherman isn't the only town in Texas preparing for a major chips boom. Last fall, I joined leaders from Samsung--a South Korean company with a large facility already in Austin, TX--when they announced a $17 billion additional investment in a new chip fab in Taylor, TX, just outside of Austin. That facility is expected to directly create more than 2,000 high-tech jobs, as well as thousands of other related jobs, once it is operational because these fabs, or manufacturing facilities, are not stand-alone; they are part of what ultimately will become an ecosystem of suppliers and other affiliated industries that will be built up around them, creating thousands more jobs. But we also learned from Samsung that they are not likely to stop there if we pass this CHIPS for America funding this week. Samsung is currently considering whether to expand its investment to include 11 new chipmaking facilities in Central Texas. If it moves forward with this plan, which, again, depends on our passage of this legislation this week, it could lead to nearly $200 billion in additional investments and create 10,000 jobs. I know that is tough to comprehend--the economic growth and sweeping benefits that would come with a $200 billion investment and 10,000 new jobs; but as exciting as these potential investments are, there is something even better. This is just the beginning. Companies around the world are eyeing Texas and the United States for new investments in chipmaking. Applied Materials, NXP Semiconductors, Infineon, GlobalWafers, GlobiTech, and a number of other companies are looking at building or expanding their facilities in Texas or other parts of the country. GlobalFoundries, for example, is investing $1 billion to boost production in New York. Intel plans to build a $20-billion facility of two fabs in Ohio. And Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company--TSMC, as it is called--is building a $12-billion plant in Arizona. They have already broken ground on that plant, but they made it clear that their willingness to make that investment and complete that fab will depend on our passage of the CHIPS for America Act. And once this legislation passes, I expect more good news to follow. This is not just good news for our individual States, but also for our national economy and our global competitiveness. We are not used to providing these kinds of financial incentives to businesses, but when it costs 30 percent less to build these manufacturing facilities across the seas in Asia and our access to that supply chain is potentially jeopardized by very real threats, it is a necessary investment for us to make. And we are seeing other places around the world providing similar incentives, for example, in the European Union. But that doesn't necessarily solve our supply chain problem. We need the jobs and that investment here in America for us to be truly safe and secure and to reap the economic benefits of this investment. On the economic front, this funding has the support of many groups on the outside, including the bipartisan support that I mentioned earlier; in my State, the Texas Association of Business; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for example; and we have heard from the National Governors Association, which is a bipartisan organization of U.S. Governors; as well as the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which represent State and local leaders across the country. My Governor, Governor Abbott, called this bill ``an opportunity to lock even greater economic potential.'' So I am proud to support this legislation. After all this time, I will be especially glad when the finish line is in sight and we cross it successfully later this week. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the business before the Senate is a critical undertaking to shore up our vulnerability to imported microcircuits, otherwise known as semiconductors. You might wonder why this is so important if you haven't been following the debate over the last couple of years. While this legislation has taken many names, it began as the CHIPS for America Act in June of 2020, which established a new program to incentivize manufacturers of these tiny microcircuits, known as semiconductors, to set up shop here in the United States. We have tried to fund the program at different times through the Endless Frontier Act; the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, sometimes called USICA; the America COMPETES Act; the Make It in America Act. But no matter what the title is or whatever you call it, the purpose is to eliminate this unacceptable risk that somehow--due to pandemic, due to military conflict, due to natural disaster--our access to the most advanced semiconductors on the planet would be cut off, with devastating consequences to the U.S. economy and our national security. I know some people wonder, Why should the Federal taxpayer provide financial incentives to semiconductor manufacturing? And that is a perfectly good question. The reason is, we are in a competition with countries all around the world that are providing incentives to build these necessary and essential facilities in their country, and if we don't participate in this competition, we will end up maintaining our dependency entirely on semiconductors imported into the United States. We saw big investments being made in other countries--China, the EU, Germany, France. A number of different countries want this manufacturing capability in their country because they understand its importance to their economy and security. Now, you might wonder, Why is it necessary? Well, there is a reason-- an economic reason--why these semiconductor manufacturers are almost all based in Asia. The overwhelming majority are made in Taiwan, and that is because it costs 30 percent less to build these facilities in Asia than it does here in the United States. But COVID-19 exposed a lot of vulnerabilities of supply chains, whether it is PPE--personal protective equipment--or semiconductors, and this idea that just because somebody could build something cheaper somewhere else, that checked all the boxes. It does not check all the boxes. And there are some things we must have access to, and one is a secure source of these microcircuits that run everything from your cell phone to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. We know that semiconductors will get more and more important as the world competes to come up with smaller and more powerful semiconductor chips to operate everything from computers to our weapons systems. When the pandemic hit, the supply chain vulnerability was demonstrated by empty car lots, backordered electronics, higher prices, contributing to inflation. Consumers who never needed to know what a semiconductor was found themselves impacted by this disruption. My State is home to companies across a full range of industries that have been impacted, from consumer electronics to defense companies. Last spring, an executive from Toyota told me that when he first started with the company, he could count the number of chips in a given vehicle on two hands. That certainly is not the case now, with almost autonomous vehicles and certainly with all the sensors that have made driving a lot safer and a lot more convenient added to new cars. Think about the high-tech features in our cars--navigation systems, Bluetooth, automatic braking, backup cameras, and parking sensors. That is on top of standard functions like power steering, air-conditioning, and window wipers. Today, some cars use as many as 1,000 semiconductor chips. So the pandemic of COVID-19 demonstrated our vulnerability to our supply chains that made getting so many semiconductors impossible. This wasn't just a problem for automakers; virtually every industry was impacted. In many ways, the global chip shortage served as a wake- up call--certainly to me and I believe other Members of Congress and the Senate who voted consistently to eliminate this vulnerability in our supply chains. It forced us to recognize the vulnerability of that supply chain and then to do something about it, which we are in the process of doing. As bad as the chip-related shortages have been in the last 2 years, they pale in comparison to what could be coming if we don't act. As I said, the vast majority of the world's chips are made in Asia, with the bulk coming from Taiwan. Sixty-three percent of the advanced semiconductors in the world are made in Taiwan. Even more concerning is that 92 percent of the world's most advanced semiconductors come from that country. So 62 percent--63 percent of semiconductors come from Taiwan, but 92 percent of the most advanced, the most powerful, the smallest semiconductors come from that same place. None, zero, zip, nada are made in America. None. Taiwanese semiconductor firms make the chips used in our military's Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35, artificial intelligence, and other military-grade devices. Now, if you have been paying attention to what President Xi and the People's Republic of China have been saying about Taiwan, they are saying they are going to unify the PRC with Taiwan either peacefully or by military action. Again, I believe the risk of pandemic, natural disaster, or military intervention makes this risk simply unacceptable. Last fall, I led a congressional delegation to visit Indochina, the INDOPACOM area of operations, to learn more about the threat of Chinese aggression when it comes to Taiwan. One of the leaders we met with was the commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, located in Hawaii, who described the current power dynamic rather succinctly. He said it is not a question of if China invades Taiwan but when. We even have a rough idea of when that could happen. President Xi has made no secret of his desire to unify Taiwan with the mainland, saying he wants to be ready to do that by 2027, just 5 years from now. But, as we have learned from Putin's invasion of Ukraine, when one person makes a decision, you can't depend on any particular timeline because it could happen in the blink of an eye. It is tough to overestimate the impact this lack of access to these advanced semiconductors would have on the United States and our allies. To be sure, our cars, televisions, refrigerators, and washing machines would be impacted, but that is only the beginning. Those would be mere inconveniences. How would we manufacture Javelin missiles that are used in Ukraine? Well, we couldn't because they all run on semiconductors. There is the Stinger that is being used so effectively by the Ukrainians to go after Russian tanks invading Ukraine. The Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35, our most advanced, fifth-generation, stealth aircraft, is chock-full of semiconductors that would be unavailable if our access was cut off for some reason. Then just think about our critical infrastructure. Think about cell towers. Think about the energy grid. Where would we get the chips that are needed for modern farming equipment? Just as cars have become more and more automated, so have tractors and other farming equipment. What would we do for the chips that we need to treat water to make sure it is clean and easily available? So these aren't problems just for consumers; it is a major national security vulnerability. Back in 1980, President Jimmy Carter gave his State of the Union Address in which he spoke about the instability of the Persian Gulf and Soviet threats to the movement of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. That was back in the days when we depended almost entirely on imported oil into the United States. But Jimmy Carter said in 1980 that any attempt to gain control of the Strait of Hormuz and to block access to that essential energy source, he said, would be ``an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America.'' That would be a declaration of war. I think the same argument applies to semiconductors today. In fact, some people have called semiconductors the new oil because it is so essential to our way of life, to our economy, and our security. Just as the Soviets could have blocked the Strait of Hormuz and choked off the global oil supply back in 1980, the People's Republic of China could seize Taiwan's supply of chips and starve the rest of the world. Will they go into the ventilators and the other lifesaving medical equipment or provide homes with clean drinking water? These are important questions that many of us have been asking and looking to try to find ways to mitigate, if not to eliminate, our dependency on imported semiconductors. So funding this program in this bill currently before the Senate will shore up domestic chip manufacturing to make sure that we meet the needs of our most critical industries. It would deliver economic benefits to our communities through new investments and jobs. It will strengthen our national security by providing chips that can make their way into markets around the world. It will ensure that we have a reliable supply of chips so we can outinnovate and outcompete any and every adversary, and that is a point worth stressing. We know we are in competition with the People's Republic of China, but the way we will beat them is to outcompete them. The only way we will do that is with access to the most advanced electronics, including semiconductors, that are made anywhere on the planet, and we need to make them here in America so there can be trusted supply chains and readily available. So I appreciate all of our colleagues who supported this legislation for the long and winding journey that has brought us here today, and I hope this bill will pass the Senate and the House next week and finally make its way to the President's desk. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, while my friend, the Senator from Delaware, is on the floor, in Texas we are known for oil and gas production, but the truth is, and what I think we really should be known for, is for an ``all of the above'' energy policy. We produce more electricity from wind turbines than any other State in the country, and that is a surprise to a number of people. But one reason for an ``all of the above'' energy policy is that during the current hot spell we are experiencing in Texas--I think we have had over 33 days of over 100-degree temperatures in my hometown of Austin, TX. It is hot. Some might say: Well, of course it is hot. It is July in Texas. But what has happened, we have seen this phenomenon where the wind is not producing nearly as much electricity because it is not blowing as hard as it might otherwise do. So, again, I think if we can encourage an ``all of the above'' energy policy, then different segments of the energy picture can fill in at different times and satisfy our overall need. I thought while my friend was speaking on that topic I would just mention that interesting lesson that we have learned here recently in Texas.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I want to express my gratitude to the Senator from Ohio for his excellent remarks and for his support getting us to the point we are today, which is on the cusp of a historic accomplishment--and that is to make sure that the supply lines of advanced semiconductors remains available to American businesses and, even more importantly, to our national security. Now, 2 years ago, Senator Warner, the senior Senator from Vermont, and I introduced the CHIPS for America Act. It has been a long, strange trip till today. I daresay at the time we introduced the bill, there were many people who didn't know the difference between chocolate chips and microchips. Frankly, that is an exaggeration, but the point is that most people are really unaware of the dependency of our economy and our national security and, frankly, just the quality of our life on access to these microcircuits known as semiconductors. And over time, the semiconductor manufacturers have been able to make them smaller and smaller and more and more powerful until your cell phone, which is essentially a minicomputer, contains thousands of these microchips. Again, whether you are talking about a laptop computer or a new car or a washing machine or just some desktop computer, all of them depend on access to these semiconductors. As I said, Senator Warner and I introduced the bipartisan CHIPS for America Act 2 years ago. Eighteen months ago, this legislation became law; that was as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. Thirteen months ago, the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan bill to fund the program. Unfortunately, as the Senator from Ohio mentioned, the House failed to respond to the bipartisan USICA, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, and sent over a partisan bill, which has delayed our consideration of this important legislation unnecessarily. Today, I am optimistic that the Senate will follow up on its commitment to enact this chips funding into law before we break for the August recess. This afternoon we will take a procedural vote to kick- start consideration of the legislation. Of course, as we lead up to this important vote in debate, many of us have been talking about the size and shape of the bill on both sides of the aisle. And there is still some things that need to be decided, and the fate of the bill is not yet secure. Being the majority leader, Senator Schumer will ultimately be the one to determine what the size and shape of the bill will look like, but I am encouraged by where we stand. This bill will not, however, be the Senate's U.S. Innovation and Competition Act or the USICA bill or the House's massive partisan America COMPETES Act. This will be a far more narrow bill that focuses on the core issue of semiconductor manufacturing. Semiconductor manufacturing is, as I said, the key to our economy and our national security. As it turns out, most of the manufacturing capacity has been built overseas, primarily in Asia, because it is significantly cheaper to build those manufacturing facilities there rather than here. I am not opposed to additional Commerce provisions, for example--that have already been voted on as part of USICA--being included, but anything else that is included by Senator Schumer must be bipartisan, and those decisions have to be made very quickly. The time for voting on this bill should not be delayed any further. Over the last three decades, the United States has gone from making 37 percent of these microcircuits, or semiconductors--37 percent--to only about 12 percent now. When you look at the most advanced chips, the smallest and the most powerful, none of these are made in the United States--none. Now, Taiwan's Semiconductor, located in Taipei, Taiwan, has a great business model: American companies design the chips, and they make them. As I said, it is cheaper to make them in Asia than it is here in America, but post-COVID we have come to realize the vulnerability of our supply chains for virtually everything. When you look at our dependency on the supply chain of these advanced chips and what it might mean to our country, well, it is shocking. The CEO of Micron, out of Idaho, has said there is a 35- to 45-percent cost gap between domestic and overseas production. Now, if you are talking about making toys or something like that or furniture items, it is great to have a cheaper alternative where that product is manufactured overseas rather than here in America. That is good for consumers as it makes things a lot more affordable, but when you are talking about a sole source for the most advanced semiconductors, that goes from being a convenience to a nightmare, and, of course, during the pandemic, we experienced a number of supply chain vulnerabilities. Now, as the economy around the world continues to expand, anybody who has tried to buy a car, a dishwasher, or a computer over the last couple of years has likely been impacted with higher costs or long delays or both. As a matter of fact, due to the shortages of supply, that has necessarily driven the costs higher, which has further exacerbated inflation, but there is an even more important reason to get this bill done. The chip shortage and our lack of domestic manufacturing capability is a huge national security risk. That is why the Secretaries of the Departments of Defense and Commerce sent a letter to Congress a few weeks ago, saying very clearly: Funding the CHIPS Act is critical to our national defense. That is why the Republican-led Senate passed the original bill and helped it become law during the previous administration. That is why I hope the current Congress will fund it with today's vote--or with, actually, this week's vote. Whether it is advanced fighters, the fifth-generation stealth strike fighter, like the F-35; whether we are talking about quantum computing, the next generation of computing; or whether we are talking about missile defense systems or the Stinger or Javelin missiles that we have exported to Ukraine for them to defend themselves against Russian aggression, all of them depend on semiconductors. As a matter of fact, a single rocket interceptor used in Israel's Iron Dome, for example, contains more than 750 chips. An overreliance on other countries to produce the key components to our most vital defense assets is a huge and unacceptable risk. As I said, that is why Senator Warner and I initially introduced the bill in June of 2020 and why it has received such strong bipartisan support. Building a new foundry--or ``fab'' as they are sometimes called--is a huge undertaking and requires a massive investment. A single foundry can cost upward of $10 to $20 billion--$10 to $20 billion. Without some level of support from the government, these investments simply won't materialize, at least not in America. Other governments, as you have heard, have made similar investments in semiconductor manufacturing in trying to make sure that their supply chains are not vulnerable. Countries like China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Germany, and a number of others have included an over-$100 billion pledge to boost semiconductor manufacturing in the European Union alone. The United States simply cannot get left behind, and we can't keep dragging our feet. It doesn't just take a lot of money to get these foundries up and running; it also takes time. Last year, I hosted a roundtable in Dallas, TX, to talk about the impact of the chip shortage with industry leaders. During our conversation, a Qorvo executive talked about how it can take years to receive all of the high-functioning equipment that is necessary to make semiconductors. That is why there has been such a big push in Congress to get this funding out the door. Chip makers who have to make decisions about where and when to build their next manufacturing facilities need to know that these incentives are available for them to build those foundries here in America, and the window of that decision-making process is closing rapidly. If it closes--if we continue to drag our feet and not fund the chips bill-- they are going to pull their investments from new or expanded foundries in the United States and take them overseas. This isn't just a ``Chicken Little'' claim. Companies have put out the warning call, and I believe them. One company called GlobalWafers is planning to build a new silicon wafer factory in Sherman, TX, which would create up to 1,500 new jobs and produce 1.2 million wafers a month. Silicon wafers are an essential component of semiconductors. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said that the CEO told her that their plan to build this factory in Sherman, TX, is contingent on Congress passing the CHIPS Act. Unless the funding is approved by the August recess, which is rapidly approaching, the company will scrap its plans for that facility. As you heard from our colleague from Ohio, the CEO of Intel expressed a similar sentiment for a planned Ohio facility. He said the company would expand chip production in Europe instead of in America if Congress fails to pass this funding. Another company, NXP Semiconductors, is weighing new investments too. It is looking at expanding one of its factories in Austin, TX--a project that would cost, roughly, $2.6 billion. The company is planning to decide later this year whether to move forward with that investment or to take that investment to Europe or Asia. In other words, there are real consequences on the line. If Congress passes this chips funding act in the coming days, we can shore up this domestic supply chain vulnerability, bring good jobs back to America, and protect our economic and national security, but if we fail to act or if we fail to act with dispatch, all of those benefits will evaporate, and all of those dangers will become our worst nightmare. Instead of here in America, those benefits from building those fabs will rain down on communities on the other side of the planet instead of here at home. It has been more than a year and a half since the CHIPS Act became law, and we simply cannot afford to wait any longer. Every day that goes by creates additional risks. Unless Congress gets this job done in the coming days, these companies will simply go elsewhere. Chips funding will help secure our most critical supply chains. It will create thousands of well-paying jobs and boost our global competitiveness by providing made-in-America chips to our friends and allies around the world. So we have a big opportunity ahead of us but big risks in not acting as well, and success, I believe, is our only option. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, it has been more than a year since the U.S. Senate passed the bipartisan U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, commonly known as USICA. It includes an important provision that Senator Mark Warner, the Senator from Virginia, and I introduced more than 2 years ago called the CHIPS Act, which is designed to shore up a dangerously vulnerable supply chain of high-end semiconductors from Asia to the United States. The fact is that the United States makes zero percent of those advanced semiconductors that are necessary for everything from your iPhone to fifth-generation Joint Strike Fighters like the F-35. Unfortunately, after we passed the bipartisan bill in the Senate, the House decided to go the partisan route and add additional, unrelated pieces of their wish list, everything from handouts to labor bosses to money for a U.N. climate slush fund. We were in the process of stripping out these partisan provisions through the conference committee that was appointed by the House and the Senate when Senator Schumer made a big decision. He said that Democrats were likely to bring to the floor another reckless tax-and- spending bill like Build Back Better, although in a different version. Our Democratic colleagues got the bright idea that they wanted to revive something like the Green New Deal, increase taxes on working families, and give runaway inflation even more staying power. Well, Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, and Members of the Republican conference thought that was a bad idea and said that there would not be a bipartisan conference bill and a partisan, reckless tax- and-spending spree bill. It wasn't a threat; it was just a statement of fact. There is no such thing as negotiating with our Senate colleagues on the Democratic side while they sit on the sidelines drafting partisan legislation. The provisions negotiated out of the bipartisan bill wouldn't land in the trash; they would simply be recycled through a partisan reconciliation bill. But Senator Manchin, the Senator from West Virginia, put an end to that last week when he killed the bill that would increase taxes on families and small businesses and implement costly Green New Deal climate policies. In my book, that is a big win for the American people, who are already facing high prices at grocery stores and at the filling station. With this reckless tax-and-spending spree reconciliation bill dead and buried, there is now an opening to do something that we can agree upon on a bipartisan basis. I spent the weekend talking with a number of our colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats, and I am cautiously optimistic that we can now proceed to a vote on the USICA bill or some version of it. Based on our discussions, it sounds like the majority leader will bring a narrower bill to the floor that focuses on chips funding--again, something that has been pending now for more than 2 years--as well as tax incentives for manufacturers. This bill will not be USICA, though, and it won't be ``Endless Frontier,'' which was the name of the bill when it was initially introduced, and it sounds like a far cry from the COMPETES Act, which was the House's partisan response; rather, from all reports, it focuses on the core issue of reshoring American semiconductor manufacturing here in the United States. With COVID-19, we became aware of a lot of supply chain vulnerabilities that I think we just, frankly, were not aware of. It is one thing to be aware of a supply chain for things like toys or consumer items, but it is another to be dependent on a supply chain--a foreign supply chain--for something as critical to our way of life and our economy and our national security as advanced semiconductors. What Senator Warner and I initially proposed and what I hope we will be voting on this week provides market-based incentives to close the cost gap between manufacturing overseas in places like Taiwan and doing so here in the United States. According to a Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company located in Taipei, they figure it costs about 30 percent less to manufacture these high-end semiconductors in Taiwan than it does in the United States. If we are going to get some of that manufacturing capacity back here to the United States to protect us against potential blockades, whether it comes from a military conflict or a pandemic or a natural disaster, we are going to have to find a way to provide incentives for those manufacturing, fabrication facilities to be located here in the United States. That is what we are talking about. There is a closing window of opportunity for us to act. Secretary Raimondo, the Secretary of Commerce in the Biden administration, has made clear, as have various CEOs of semiconductor companies, that if the United States does not act soon, they will have to make a business decision to locate their manufacturing facilities in other places in the world where those incentives are already provided. But it does nothing to protect the U.S. economy or national security to have another fab or manufacturing facility located somewhere else around the world. We need them here in the United States if we are going to protect our economy and guard against those national security threats. So if we don't make a decision soon--and I am talking about in the next couple of weeks--then we can kiss those manufacturing facilities goodbye, and places like Texas, Ohio, Arizona, and other States around the country that might benefit from that construction and the high- paying jobs that go along with them will see them taken to Europe or somewhere else. Well, even though the Senator from West Virginia said he would not support the reckless tax-and-spending portion of the reconciliation bill, it is possible our colleagues will move forward with a slimmed- down version of an already-slimmed-down reconciliation bill that would require the Federal Government to set a price for drugs covered by Medicare--a move which I believe will stifle innovation. Price fixing always results in scarcity, meaning consumers--particularly seniors-- will have less access to choice. It would also extend ObamaCare subsidies for insurance companies and prop up the struggling healthcare marketplace. It is clear that I oppose those provisions and the perennial effort to legislate on a partisan basis, but the truth is, if the Democrats have 50 votes plus the Vice President, they can pass it notwithstanding Republican opposition. We all understand that. But given the fact that these horrific tax increases are off the table as a result of the announcement from the senior Senator from West Virginia, I believe we are in a posture where we can go forward with the chips funding and other related provisions, and I hope we will be able to take action on that in the coming days.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, inflation continues to batter American families at a rate we have not seen in 40 years. Since last year, the prices of items that Texans use every day have increased more than 9 percent. That is, if your paycheck is still the same, you have 9 percent less purchasing power just since last year. At the grocery store, the price of bread is up nearly 11 percent. Chicken is up more than 17 percent. And the price of eggs has jumped a whopping 33 percent. I sense there is a huge disconnect between the folks here in Washington--perhaps in Congress--that this does not have a dramatic effect in terms of our daily lives; but to the people we represent, the 29 million people I represent, this is real, it is happening now, and it is to the detriment of their quality of life. Groceries aren't the only thing that are challenging family budgets. Electricity is up 14 percent. I will be traveling with some colleagues to the Rio Grande Valley this afternoon. I looked at the weather forecast for today and tomorrow. It will be 104 degrees in the Rio Grande Valley; and, no, it will not be a dry heat. And demand on our electricity is real because people cannot live without air-conditioning and climate control; but in order to run your air-conditioning, you are going to have to pay 14 percent more for that electricity this year as opposed to last year. Propane used at summer barbecues costs 26 percent more. And gasoline prices--there are about 280 million cars on the road today that run using gasoline. The price has jumped 60 percent since last year. If people want to go on a vacation, they just commute to work, they want to take their kids to summer camp, they have got to pay 60 percent more for gasoline than they did last year. And, for the first time, the national average price has exceeded $5 a gallon. Over the last few weeks, thankfully, prices have fallen slightly--and I emphasize the word ``slightly''--but there is no reason to celebrate. The national average is still about $4.60 a gallon, which is about a buck and a half higher than it was last year alone. So the American people are looking to Washington, DC, to their elected leaders, and they are wondering: Why aren't you doing something about it? They want to know what the Biden administration's plans are to address these rising costs, especially when it comes to things that are not--I mean, there are some things you can substitute for others. I even saw a woman on the news who said she decided to become a vegetarian because she couldn't afford the meat cost in the grocery store. But there are some things that are simply irreplaceable, and gasoline to drive your car is one of them. Well, one of the most logical ways to increase the supply of gasoline--because it really is about supply and demand--would be to boost American production of our domestic energy supply. That way, we could reap the economic benefits of strong production here at home, along with the jobs that go along with it. We could continue to use our capability to export things like natural gas to countries that previously were dependent almost exclusively on the Russian Federation. Actually, the capacity of the United States to produce energy at home and export it around the world has changed the geopolitics of the planet in a very positive way. But, unfortunately, we see the Biden administration has taken a different approach. He knows that a part of his political base would have an absolute meltdown if the President showed anything other than contempt for the domestic energy producers. So he has come up with a different strategy that, frankly, makes no sense whatsoever. So he is on a trip to the Middle East. He is going to visit with Muhammad bin Salman, Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and ask him to increase production of oil and gas from not the United States but from Saudi Arabia. Forget American energy producers. President Biden would rather go, hat in hand, and talk to an autocrat, an oligarch in the Middle East, than take his boot off the neck of American energy producers. So, apparently, the President is not anti-fossil fuels; he is just anti-American fossil fuels. President Biden's trip illustrates a remarkable show of his priorities. He views the crown prince in Saudi Arabia as a more dependable ally than energy producers in Texas. Well, the decision to shop for oil in the Middle East instead of harnessing what is in our backyard is absolutely baffling. The sooner the administration views domestic energy producers as a friend and ally rather than enemies, the better we will all be off. We are fortunate to live in a resource-rich country. Growing up, I learned in school that countries that are endowed with great natural resources have an advantage over other countries that do not have those natural resources. And we do have them here in the United States, along with the technology to develop them. But, for some strange reason, we just simply refuse to do so--take what is a gift and ignore it completely and go, hat in hand, and talk to autocrats in other parts of the world and ask them to do what we should be doing here domestically.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, during my time in the Senate, I have spent a lot of time learning from folks who live and work along our 1,200- mile border with Mexico about the challenges that region and that border present. I have worked with local leaders who know the advantages and the challenges of living along an international border better than anyone else in the country. Of course, I have spoken with a number of Border Patrol agents--these, of course, are frontline law enforcement officers--as well as our local sheriffs and others, who have come face-to-face with human tragedy, exploitation, and many other forms of heartbreak and hardship. I have learned a great deal from the nongovernmental organizations--the so-called NGOs--that go above and beyond the call of duty to care for the migrants who often arrive sick, abused, and malnourished. When it comes to border security and commonsense immigration policies, the input of these experts is invaluable. It is irreplaceable. Later this week, I will be traveling back home to the Rio Grande Valley along with a number of my Republican colleagues so that they, too, can learn from the true experts about the border crisis. Senator Cruz and I are leading a visit to the Rio Grande Valley to receive an update on the current state of circumstances at the border. I know, with everything happening here in Washington, DC, and around the country, it is easy to lose sight of what is happening on the border, the humanitarian crisis that is occurring at the border, so I want to remind anybody who is listening about what we have seen over the last 2 years during--well, actually, it is the first year and a half of the Biden administration. For a year and a half now, border communities have been overwhelmed by the sheer number, the volume, of migrants crossing the border. Since President Biden took office, the Border Patrol has encountered nearly 3 million--3 million--people along the southwest border. That is almost an incomprehensible figure, and it is far from the normal situation. Let me provide a little historical context. At this point during the Obama administration, an average of about 46,000 migrants were apprehended each month along the border--46,000 during the Obama administration. During the Trump administration, that number was cut in half to 24,000 migrants every month. But during the Biden administration, so far, that figure has skyrocketed. On average, more than 185,000 migrants cross our southern border every month. That is 7\1/2\ times more than we were seeing just a few years ago. And there is no question--certainly in my mind--and I don't think any rational review of the facts would lead to another conclusion other than that President Biden's policies are the driving force for this crisis. The President ran on the promise of policies that would lead to this exact result, and we have heard stories from migrants who explicitly came to the United States because of the signals the Federal Government is sending that if you can make it to the border, you are going to be able to make it into the interior of the United States. But even though the President's policies have encouraged many people to make this dangerous trip from their homes across the border-- particularly in temperatures like we are encountering in Texas now, where for the last 33 days we have seen 100-degree-plus temperatures-- these migrants are coming from their home, traversing huge expanses of land, and showing up at the border--if they do show up--as I said, sick, dehydrated, suffering from assault. The fact is, if you visit Brooks County, TX, where Falfurrias is located, they have a Border Patrol checkpoint. What the coyotes do-- that is the name given to the human smugglers--is they will transport people from the stash houses on this side of the border, up the highway, but then, before they get to the border checkpoint where the Border Patrol is, they will tell all the migrants to get out of the vehicle and here is a jug of water and maybe a power bar, and we will see you on the north side. They will have to walk around the checkpoint and then reconnect with the coyote, with the smuggler, on the north side. But the fact is that a number of these individuals don't make it; they die in Brooks County from exposure. Certainly, the coyotes care nothing about humanity but only about money. If someone is sick or lame or can't keep up, they get left behind to die. Well, it is clear, too, that this administration has failed to prepare for what I think most people could have predicted given the green light that the Biden administration has posted at the border welcoming anybody and everybody who wants to come to the United States from anywhere in the world without complying with our immigration laws. When thousands of people are crossing the border every day, it overwhelms the Border Patrol's capabilities. That is part of the plan, because when thousands of people overwhelm the Border Patrol at the border, many of them have to go away from the border for paperwork, to process unaccompanied children and perform other tasks. So they are not there when--guess what--here come the drugs. Last year alone, 108,000 Americans died of drug overdoses. Virtually all of those came across the southern border. The one that we are most concerned about now--but we are concerned about all of them--is opioids, synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which are enormously powerful and have resulted in the death of far too many Americans. Part of that is because of the border crisis. Now, the drug cartels make a lot of money doing this. The human smugglers charge $5-, $10-, $15,000 a head to bring people across the border. This is a huge moneymaking criminal enterprise. But, in response, the Biden administration has failed to prepare and failed to embrace policies that would deter people from making this dangerous trip in the first place. Last fall, I visited the Del Rio Sector with a group of about 30 Border Patrol agents at their muster. That is their meeting right before they are deployed out into the field. When they were asked to raise their hand if they would be working out in the field that day patrolling, not a single hand was raised. These men and women who would normally be out on the frontlines stopping dangerous people and drugs from sneaking across the border--they are filling out paperwork, they are watching unaccompanied children, and they are transporting migrants. This is part of the cartel's plan. It looks like, to coin a phrase, we are playing checkers when they are playing three-dimensional chess. The cartels have simply adapted their policies to exploit what they see as weakness at the border. This is a dangerous situation. If Border Patrol agents are caring for unaccompanied children, obviously they can't patrol the frontlines. If they are knee-deep in paperwork, they can't stop criminals and drugs from coming across the border. The chaos at the border provides an excellent camouflage and disguise for dangerous people coming across. Gangs, cartels, criminal organizations are paying close attention. They see the gaps, some of which they create themselves, and they are taking full advantage. Every day, criminals attempt to sneak across our border. The dedicated men and women of the Border Patrol arrest a number of them if they can locate them. Many of them get away. Since October, agents have apprehended more than 450 gang members. But, as we know, they are outnumbered and overwhelmed, meaning that countless others slip through the cracks. According to some reports, more than 300,000 migrants evaded Border Patrol between October and the end of March. That is 300,000 on top of the 3 million whom I mentioned a moment ago who have been encountered during the Biden administration. So that is 300,000 additional who have evaded Border Patrol in just 6 months. These are known as ``got- aways,'' the ones Border Patrol sees on surveillance cameras. But the number could well be significantly higher. The cartels and the human smugglers who help people illegally enter our country are not fools. They pay close attention to the rhetoric of the President and politicians here in Washington, and they watch television from their home country and see that people who show up at the border can by and large enter the country without any consequences. They know our immigration laws better than the average American, better than the average Member of Congress, and they know how to exploit them to their advantage. They will flood the system in one area to distract the Border Patrol and take advantage of the security gaps. This is an important point. These cartels and criminal organizations are what one Border Patrol agent called commodity agnostic; in other words, they are in it for the money. If they can make money by smuggling--by trafficking in young girls or in economic migrants or drugs, they will do it because that is why they exist: because of the money they derive from their crimes. As I suggested, one of the biggest moneymakers is drug trafficking. Since October, Customs and Border Protection has seized more than 7,700 pounds of fentanyl and more than 120,000 pounds of methamphetamine. Add the other drugs--cocaine, heroin, and other dangerous drugs--that have been seized, you have 440,000 pounds of drugs that came into our country in only 8 months, and that is just the drugs we were able to locate and confiscate. These criminal groups also profit off the backs of migrants. Again, to them, a migrant is not a human being. It is a commodity; it is a moneymaker, a way to wring a dollar out of somebody else's misery. And a couple of weeks ago, we received a tragic reminder of how ruthless these criminals are. Smugglers abandoned a tractor-trailer packed with migrants in San Antonio, my hometown, leaving the truck to bake in the Texas heat. Fifty-three migrants died in what has been described as the deadliest human smuggling incident in U.S. history. It is a devastating reminder that this isn't about politics. Lives are actually on the line. President Biden has talked about the need to treat immigrants humanely. I agree. This isn't about treating them inhumanely, but 53 migrants dying in the back of a tractor-trailer rig in 100-degree Texas temperature is not humane either. Migrants are dying. Drugs are pouring into our country. And all the while, these criminal organizations are getting richer and richer. I don't know how President Biden and Vice President Harris look in the mirror knowing that this is happening on their watch. I do know that President Biden and Vice President Harris have not been down to the border and talked to the same experts that I have learned from over the years. I think they would learn a lot. I would welcome them if they decided to come. Instead, the President has sent a signal to the cartels and human smugglers that they can continue to abuse, rape, and get rich off of vulnerable migrants. We have even seen some in the administration villainize the dedicated law enforcement officers who are trying to keep our communities and our countries safe. And despite the recordbreaking levels of migration, we know the President still refuses to visit the border. He is in the Middle East. He is visiting Muhammad bin Salman and other officials in Israel and elsewhere, but he won't go to the border where this crisis is happening, in large part because of his failed policies. As I have said, throughout my time in the Senate, I have learned a lot from these dedicated leaders in border communities who deal with this crisis firsthand. Their input has been invaluable to my work in the Senate. And I look forward to seeing some of these folks later this week and introducing them to a number of our Senate colleagues. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, month after month, week after week, day after day, family budgets are being battered by inflation--inflation made worse by the reckless spending habits of the Federal Government and particularly of the Biden administration. Gas prices are up nearly 50 percent from a year ago, and grocery bills--as any of us can see when we go to the grocery store--have soared. From eggs to milk to meat to produce, everyday essentials cost more today than they did last year. The pain of inflation is having a dramatic impact on the American people. This quote from the New York Times yesterday sums it up pretty well: Widespread concerns about the economy and inflation have helped turn the national mood decidedly dark, both on Mr. Biden and the trajectory of our nation. It is a sentiment I have heard over and over again in my conversations with my constituents in Texas, and it is one that is increasingly visible in public surveys. A recent poll from the New York Times and Siena College found that more than three-quarters of voters think that the United States is headed in the wrong direction--three- quarters of the country. Only 13 percent said the country was on the right track. With voter confidence at a concerning low, our Democratic colleagues have made an interesting calculation. They are trying to resurrect their ``Build Back Broke'' agenda. Now, you may remember this bill, which was called Build Back Better, but I think it can more accurately be described as ``Build Back Broke'' or ``Build Back Bankrupt.'' This bill went out with a whimper last year because our Democratic colleagues didn't even have the support among their Members to pass it in an evenly divided Senate where the Vice President breaks the tie. So they have now chosen this moment, for some reason, to bring it back. To have a shot at passing this proposal, our Democratic colleagues have slimmed and trimmed the bill, but it still packs a painful punch, especially where it has to do with energy prices. Last month, the national average of gasoline exceeded $5 a gallon for the first time on record--5 bucks a gallon, plus. Since then, prices have fallen some, but the national average today is still $4.66 a gallon. Now, that is better than $5, but it is certainly no reason for celebration, and it still costs almost 40 bucks more to fill up a pickup truck today than it did a year ago. In standard fashion, the Biden administration has tried to blame someone else. Mr. Biden has implausibly blamed Vladimir Putin for the high price of gasoline. So rather than acknowledge the impact of its own policies which have discouraged investment in new production, new supply, the administration is trying to blame the very energy companies that we are depending on to produce more oil and gas so we can make more gasoline and so we can bring the price down. I have heard from oil and gas producers in Texas who are working to ramp up production and bring down prices for consumers. It is as if the law of supply and demand has somehow been repealed during this administration. They simply don't get it that if you want to bring down the price of something, you need to increase supply or reduce demand. This administration doesn't understand that it is not as simple as just pushing a button on a machine to increase output. This is a process that takes time. It takes investment. It takes time to build the pipelines and the infrastructure. It takes time to drill the wells and produce the oil and send it to the refineries to make into gasoline and jet fuel. While industry is working to increase supply, Washington Democrats are looking for new ways to put an even tighter squeeze on domestic energy. You would have thought that the Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrated the irresponsibility of not maintaining multiple accesses to energy. As a matter of fact, Mr. Putin had convinced most of Europe to depend solely on Russian supply, and then when that is no longer available or when he uses it as a weapon, they are looking around for alternatives. But they are not easy to come by. They take time, and they take some investment. According to reports, we are hearing that our Democratic colleagues are considering a new tax that would require energy producers to pay hefty fees if they emit more methane than our Democratic colleagues would allow. Natural gas accounts for about 40 percent of our electricity, double the amount of renewable resources. You know, we are having a hot spell in Texas. I know it is July. It is always hot in Texas in July, but we are having a particularly bad spell of 100-degree-plus days in my hometown of Austin, TX, and across the State. And one of the problems is that, for some reason, the wind that we depend on to produce electricity from wind turbines has died down during this hot period, so not only do you have the constraints on natural gas and other sources of energy, but now even renewable sources like wind are not producing as much electricity as we need in order to maintain the grid, in order to maintain things like air-conditioning. Hitting producers of natural gas with a methane fee and other proposed tax hikes isn't going to change the fact that we need natural gas to keep the lights on. We have seen emissions reduced by about 15 percent over recent years, primarily because the country has transitioned from coal to natural gas. You would think that would be something that we would celebrate, and certainly our energy supply continues to transition as we come up with new and different ways to satisfy our demand and our economy's need for affordable energy. One change this tax that our Democratic colleagues are considering would have is on energy costs for American people. Electricity costs are already up 12 percent from last year, and with this new methane fee, they would certainly rise even more. So instead of policies that would reduce the pain at the pump and at the grocery store of sky-high prices, actually, our Democratic colleagues are considering policies that would make it worse. I understand this proposal is still in the drafting phase, but it is an example of the sort of things that our colleagues are considering in their ``Build Back Broke'' reconciliation bill. Last go-around, the ``Build Back Broke'' included tax credits for rich people buying expensive electric vehicles. Now, most of my constituents in Texas can't afford an $80,000 electric vehicle, but if you are a well-to-do person and you can pay that price, you will get a tax credit, courtesy of Uncle Sam and the Federal Government and our Democratic colleagues. But you won't get it if you are buying a used car on a parking lot because you need to take your kids to school or you need to be able to drive to work. Our colleagues also propose to provide billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded rebates and grants to cover the cost of retrofitting private homes--not public buildings but private homes. While the climate policies would be sure to hurt working families, another piece of this proposal would give the richest Americans another cause to celebrate. The so-called millionaire tax break has been scrapped and revived many times over the past few years. It is extremely unpopular among working families for a very simple reason: It allows millionaires and billionaires in blue States to pay less Federal taxes. It is a tax cut for millionaires and billionaires. That is the proposal. When our colleagues tried to include this provision in their most recent partisan spending attempt, the price for this tax cut for millionaires and billionaires was $285 billion. That is quite a tax cut for the wealthiest people in America. According to the liberal Tax Policy Center, 93 percent of those making a million dollars or more would receive a tax break averaging about $48,000--a $48,000 tax cut for people making a million dollars or more or at least 93 percent of them. So this isn't an attempt to support those who are struggling to make ends meet or to bring down high prices that are wiping out family budgets; it is a get-out-of-jail-free card for the wealthiest people in America who don't want to pay their fair share of taxes. Under this proposal, two-thirds of those making more than a million dollars would receive a tax cut next year. Nearly 90 percent of those earning between $500,000 and a million dollars would receive a tax cut. These aren't the families who have been forced to buy just a few bucks' worth of gasoline because they can't afford to fill up their car or remove items from their shopping list because they simply find them to be too expensive or have to make conscious choices for cheaper items at the grocery store in order to feed their family to deal with inflation. We are talking about not making their life better but making life maybe a little bit better for the wealthiest of Americans. If this proposal were enacted, about 70 percent of the benefit would go to the top 5 percent of earners; that is, people making $366,000 a year--roughly six times the median income in Texas. The millionaires who stand to gain the most from this change are those who live in blue States like New York or California that have higher State and local taxes. They would get to deduct up to $80,000 of their State and local taxes and send the bill to the American taxpayer. Working families in Texas should not be forced to subsidize the tax bill for Manhattan millionaires. Inflation is already pummeling folks in Texas. The last thing we need to do is to send more tax breaks to the wealthiest of Americans, who are not hurting at this time when the vast majority of Americans are hurting. Well, I guess it shouldn't be a surprise when the majority leader of the Senate is from New York and the Speaker of the House is from California, two of the highest taxing States at the State and local level. And I understand they are hearing from their constituents saying: We want our old tax break back that we lost in 2017. But you shouldn't prioritize tax breaks for the wealthiest of your constituents over dealing with the rising costs of working families. This proposal won't ease the burden that Americans are facing or help our country build back better; it will ensure that we never reach the prepandemic economy that was the envy of the world. No PR blitz or no spin doctoring can hide the truth about this reckless tax-and-spending spree proposal that apparently the majority leader is considering. It wraps ill-conceived tax plans, irresponsible spending, and hurtful energy policies into another partisan exercise. And let's get this straight. No Republican is going to vote for this. So if, in fact, our Democratic colleagues can pass it--and they can if all 50 Senators on the Democratic side and the Vice President vote for it--it will be they who own it and who will be accountable to the American people in the upcoming midterm elections. But it is fair to ask where have these policies gotten us so far. While the administration has kept its foot on the neck of domestic energy policy while the President is making, apparently, a trip to Saudi Arabia to talk to Muhammad bin Salman about increasing Saudi production of oil--not here in America, which would create jobs, which would create more supply, arguably bring down price at the pump--he is going hat in hand to a foreign leader in a nondemocratic country and saying: Will you please open the spigot just a little bit more? I think it is embarrassing. We have also seen our Democratic colleagues spend nearly $2 trillion on a party-line vote earlier this year that helped ignite inflation to its current 40-year high levels. This new tax-and-spending spree--or, I should say, the old tax-and-spending spree bill which is now being repackaged and presumably resold--won't be any different from the earlier one. So it isn't time to hand out tax breaks to the well-off or push our country toward unrealistic energy goals at a time of more demand and not enough supply. We need more domestic energy supplies. That would provide relief for working families and a shot at waking up from the economic nightmare that we find ourselves in. So this reconciliation bill--this ``Build Back Broke'' bill that is apparently being contemplated by our Democratic colleagues--is not the solution. It is making the problem worse.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, during the immediate past recess, the bipartisan conference committee negotiations over the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, otherwise known as USICA, have officially come to a screeching halt. It has been more than a year since the Senate actually passed this bill--more than a year. Eight months later, House Democrats passed their own partisan bill, which looked more like the failed ``Build Back Broke'' agenda, rather than a serious attempt to protect our national security by countering the Chinese threat. And earlier this summer, a conference committee was appointed and began negotiating a compromise bill that would finally fund the CHIPS Act and make other critical investments in our national security and competitiveness. Of course, the CHIPS Act was designed to try to bring back on shore American manufacturing of advanced semiconductors, which I will talk more about in a moment. But with the CHIPS funding on the five-yard line, the majority leader, the Senator from New York, has tossed a grenade into the end zone. And why would you possibly jeopardize such an important national security priority? Apparently, so Democrats can try to, yet again, pass their unpopular social welfare bill that doesn't even appear to have universal Democratic support. Forget the bipartisan bill to safeguard our national security; forget commonsense safeguards to protect our most critical supply chains; forget new American manufacturing jobs and big investments in States all across the country. Senator Schumer has chosen to revive the ``Build Back Broke'' bill because we are just months from an election where polls suggest that his party is going to get swept out of control and then instead of majority leader, he will become the minority leader. So let's take a moment to recall how we happened to get here. More than 2 years ago, Congress began working to bolster domestic semiconductor manufacturing and address a major supply chain vulnerability. Semiconductors or microcircuits underpin all of the modern technology we depend upon every day: the cell phones in our pockets, the cars in our driveways, the tractors our farmers drive, and missile systems that our troops use abroad. Chips keep us safe; they keep us connected; and they ensure that we have fresh food, clean water, and a way to get to work every day. The United States relies on strong supplies of semiconductors, and we lead the way in chip design, but here is the kicker. While we lead the way in chip design, we outsource the actual manufacturing abroad. That is right. We manufacture none of the world's most advanced chips--zero. Seventy-five percent of these chips come from East Asia, and a whopping 90 percent of them are made in Taiwan. Given the explicit threat of war by the Chinese Communist Party against Taiwan, that is a grave cause for concern. Furthermore, having just lived through a pandemic, consider what another pandemic or natural disaster might do to disrupt the supply chain of these critical semiconductors. And when you consider the fact that global chip demand is expected to increase by 56 percent over the next decade, it is clear that the problem is going to get worse. A major disruption in our global chip supply would halt manufacturing on everything from laptop computers to cars, to anti-tank Javelin missiles being used in Ukraine against Russian aggressors. This is a matter of both economic and national security, which is why addressing the chip shortage has been a bipartisan priority. In 2020, 96 Senators supported passing the CHIPS for America Act as part of the national defense authorization bill. That was way back in 2020. And it took less than 6 months from the time it became law until the Senate passed a bill to fund the CHIPS Program. That bill was called the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act passed by the Senate with a vote of 68 to 32. Despite the broad bipartisan support for the CHIPS Program, the House refused to pass the Senate bill not because it was a bad bill, but because it wasn't a partisan grab bag that provided billions for longstanding liberal policies. Their ``Build Back Broke'' agenda was 6 feet under, and they saw a must-pass national security bill as a convenient way to resurrect it. Their partisan legislation known as the COMPETES Act, included handouts for labor unions, a key supporter for the Democratic Party. The labor bosses were promised some pretty big benefits that never came to pass, and this was the way that House Democrats saw to respond. They also tacked on a range of unrelated partisan provisions, like an $8 billion payment to a U.N. climate slush fund, which has provided more than $100 million to China. The stated purpose of our efforts in USICA--the United States Innovation and Competition Act--has been to counter threats from China, not to subsidize them with taxpayer dollars, which apparently is what the House has chosen to do. Well, throughout the conference committee process, Republicans have pushed back against the long list of unrelated and downright harmful provisions. This bill should be about safeguarding our critical supply chains and strengthening our competitiveness, not doling out partisan political favors. Negotiations have made progress, but, frankly, we are running out of time, and time is of the essence. Last month, more than 120 tech CEOs sent a letter to congressional leaders urging quick action on this legislation. And we are seeing signs that a failure to act will lead to these critical investments being made not in the United States but outside of the United States, just the opposite of what we hoped to attain. A company called GlobalWafers is planning to build a silicon wafer factory in Sherman, TX, that would create up to 1,500 jobs and produce 1.2 million wafers a month. These silicon wafers are an essential component of semiconductors. But last month, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said the CEO told her that the plan was contingent on Congress passing the CHIPS Act funding. Unless the funding is approved by the August recess, the company will scrap plans for the facility. A couple of weeks ago, the CEO of Intel expressed a similar sentiment. He said the company could expand chip production in Europe instead of the United States if Congress fails to pass this funding. So the stakes are high, as is the need to move quickly, but apparently none of that matters to the majority leader and House Democrats. They have chosen to ignore this rapidly closing window of opportunity and the national security risks associated with the current chip shortage. They have chosen to ignore the jobs and investments this bill would bring to States all across this country. They have chosen to ignore the symphony of voices from across the spectrum who want to get this done. And for what? Apparently, another unwanted and unnecessary partisan spending spree--this trillion-dollar proposal known as a reconciliation bill, which is a spinoff of Build Back Better, which I affectionately call ``Build Back Broke.'' This proposal would attack oil and gas producers at a time when gas prices remain at record highs, and one of the most urgent needs of everyday, working American families is to bring down the price of gasoline at the pump so they can afford to take their kids to school and go to work. Yet the partisan reconciliation bill that the majority leader contemplates bringing up would actually make that problem worse, not better. This partisan reconciliation bill would also increase taxes on American families, as their budgets are already being pummeled by inflation. And it could be that we are already in a recession, technically defined as two quarters of negative GDP. Well, one thing President Obama recognized back after the great recession of 2008, is it is not a time to raise taxes, and apparently the current Biden administration did not learn that lesson, nor did the majority leader. This bill would simply make inflation worse, not better. Why the Democratic leader has prioritized partisan politics over sound, bipartisan policy is lost on me. Why he would elevate partisanship above national security is lost on me. And why he would show contempt for the challenges families are facing due to failed policies of the Biden administration is lost on me. But now he is doubling down. His decision to pursue this partisan reconciliation bill won't just hurt families, it risks our ability to pass critical CHIPS funding on a timely basis. To reiterate the words of the Republican leader: There will be no bipartisan USICA as long as Democrats are pursuing their reckless tax- and-spending agenda. Our Democratic colleagues cannot spend their mornings working on a purely partisan spending spree for the next 4 weeks and expect Republicans to work with them on a bipartisan bill in the afternoon. We simply don't have time for these antics. Bipartisan conference negotiations require compromise and confidence that the person sitting across the table from you is negotiating in good faith. Senator Schumer's tactics have jeopardized the good faith that has driven this process up until now. From the beginning, what was originally known as Endless Frontiers to now the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, or USICA--this has been a big bipartisan effort. Two years ago, I introduced the CHIPS for America Act with Senator Warner, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee on which I sit, and a Democrat. We worked in good faith to get it signed into law as part of the national defense reuthorization act. And we all worked together--68 of us--to make sure that the bill was funded through the bipartisan U.S. Innovation and Competition Act. And more recently, I have been trying to help broker an agreement that can get this bill signed into law as part of the conference committee process. My desire to fund the CHIPS Act has not changed, but Senator Schumer's choices have taken an already difficult job and made it nearly impossible. He is trying to turn what has been a bipartisan process into a partisan exercise. I hope the Democratic leader will reconsider and will abandon his partisan spending spree so that we can spend the next 3 weeks passing the CHIPS funding as part of the USICA with broad bipartisan support. This is a matter of national security and economic competitiveness, and it should not become a victim of partisan games. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I came to the floor to talk about the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. But first, let me just express my gratitude to the Senator from West Virginia for his longtime commitment to come up with a bipartisan solution. This is not easy. And there are a lot of examples of good-faith attempts to try to come up with an answer that can get the requisite number of votes. And I know the Senator from West Virginia knows how hard that is. But it hasn't deterred him from contributing to our efforts, and I think our product that we are voting on is better for that. I want to say thank you.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I thank my friend, our friend, from West Virginia for those generous remarks. As we all know, a lot of people have been working on this issue, for the last few weeks especially, intensely. And this included, obviously, a lot of people beyond those that I have the time to name here. But we finally introduced our proposed legislation last Tuesday, exactly 4 weeks after the last terrible shooting in Uvalde, TX. I am not a patient person by temperament or personality. So I was hoping we would get here faster. But the truth is, since it requires consensus and persuasion, sometimes it takes a little longer than you hoped for. And I appreciate the space that both the majority leader and the Republican leader have given us to come up with something that will achieve a result. So often around here, people do things and say things not with the intention of actually passing legislation but with the intention of making a political statement, or messaging, as it is sometimes called. That is not what we are doing here. We are not looking to posture or to try to embarrass anybody. We are trying to find a solution to a very real problem. And I think what we have come up with will, in the end, pass the test, which I know so many of us believe is the standard. And that standard is: Will it save lives? Will it save lives? And I believe the answer to that is yes. And that makes this worth doing. Well, from the beginning, I was optimistic that we could reach a bipartisan agreement, but I know that on both sides of the aisle, there were some places that we could not go. As the Senator from West Virginia said--a proud defender of the Second Amendment, as am I--I was not going to go anywhere in this negotiation that jeopardized the rights of law-abiding Americans under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Some people act as if the Second Amendment is somehow different than the rest of the Bill of Rights--the freedom of speech, the freedom of press, the freedom of association, the freedom of religion. Well, it is right there all in the same 10 first amendments to the U.S. Constitution, called the Bill of Rights. So it is entitled to no less respect than those other constitutional rights contained in the Bill of Rights. But I think we have come up with a way to make good public policy and also to maintain that commitment to the Constitution. Some people want to create a false choice. I don't think we need to go there because there is not a false choice, as I said, between the Constitution and the Second Amendment and making good public policy. They don't have to overlap or interfere with each other. Both can stand on their own merits. Well, as I said, law-abiding gun owners are not the problem. And that was a redline for me. During the course of our negotiations, our Democratic colleagues did push for a range of provisions that I believe stood no chance of becoming law, particularly in a 50-50 Senate. We know that if Democrats want to do everything their way or Republicans want to do everything our way, almost by definition in a 50-50 Senate, nothing will happen. And to me, that was one of the most important things we are doing here. One is demonstrating that our institutions--in this case, the U.S. Senate--can actually work at a time when a lot of people are questioning whether our institutions can work and also questioning whether it is possible to come up with some bipartisan piece of legislation rather than fail as we have so many times before and each side sort of returning to their corner of a boxing ring and trying to message it to their base and not actually get a result. So there were a lot of things that the President has asked for in this bill. For example, a ban on so-called assault weapons, which are a semiautomatic long gun, named, I guess, because of focus groups or polling assault weapons, but it is really a semiautomatic rifle. And there was also some discussion about high-capacity magazines. Neither of those are part of this legislation. Now, I know there are Members who would perhaps love to have that, but they understand that to press that point to its logical extreme would mean we would not have anything at all. There is also no mandatory waiting period. There is no potentially unconstitutional requirement that gun owners store their weapons in a particular way. Unless a person is adjudicated mentally ill or is a violent criminal, no one's Second Amendment rights will be impacted by this legislation, period. We know already that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System--which is the gold standard, in my view, to make sure we draw the line in the right place between law- abiding gun owners and those who cannot, under existing law, purchase a firearm. For example, if you have been adjudicated in a mental institution, you can't buy a firearm. If you have been convicted of a felony, if you have been dishonorably discharged from the military, if you are addicted to drugs--all of those are current questions in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which if you answer yes to, then you cannot legally purchase or possess a firearm. Some wanted to include more categories, but we did not. We essentially are, by doing what we have done here, saying we are going to make sure that existing law is enforced but not add additional requirements. Well, some of our colleagues like to say that to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals, we need to limit the rights of law- abiding citizens. But as we know, the bad guys--the criminals--aren't going to respect the law; they are going to get the guns by any means they can, including illegally. Frequently, they obtain firearms on the street or through straw purchasers. Background checks don't deter them because they don't buy them from a Federal firearms licensee, which does a background check. They buy it from a member of a street gang or someone else. So we have rejected those attempts to add restrictions, as I say, on law-abiding gun owners, but we have added stiffer penalties for straw purchasers and gun traffickers. That, I believe, is the most effective way to deal with the problem of street sales of illegal guns through trafficking and straw purchasing. That is a way to improve public safety. Following the shooting in Uvalde 4 weeks ago, I said I wanted to look at reforms that might have prevented this terrible tragedy from occurring. To me, that is the best way to approach these cases because it is hard, sort of in the abstract, to say what it is we could do that might save lives. Frequently, we can look at the fact pattern of what happened and say: Here is where there was a failure, and here is another place there was a failure. Unfortunately, in Uvalde, there were multiple points of failure. One is a lack of our access to juvenile records. This young man showed up after he had his 18th birthday. Right now, the criminal background check system doesn't look back before you were 18 to see whether you had a mental health adjudication or some disqualifying criminal conviction. That is a problem because if somebody who we know, in retrospect, is sort of a ticking timebomb as a result of his troubled past, there is no way under the current system to get access to that information. So one of the things we have done here is to say: Let's see if we can work with the States to make sure that they supply to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System information that had it occurred as an adult post-18 would clearly disqualify someone from purchasing a firearm. This is a little bit of a challenge because every State kind of does things differently, and there is no way we can compel the State to provide the information, but I would think that Governors and State legislatures would want to work with us to try to keep guns out of the hands of people who we know are a threat to themselves and a threat to public safety. Our bill incentivizes the States to upload whatever juvenile records they have to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System to ensure that any disqualifying criminal convictions or mental health adjudications are available. This is, to be clear, not an expansion but a clarification of the types of conduct and records that would disqualify somebody if you were an adult that are not currently available because we don't look past the 18th birthday--behind the 18th birthday to juvenile records. So what we are doing is simply ensuring that those records, which would already disqualify somebody had it occurred if they were an adult, are available and could be considered as part of that background check. If the background check for a buyer under 21 returns a potentially disqualifying record, what we have provided in this enhanced background check is an opportunity for the FBI to ask more questions. And under our legislation, we don't change this part of it. The NICS system--the National Instant Criminal Background Check System--has 3 days to do a background check. But because it is computerized, 90 percent of them are done just in a matter of seconds, but on occasion the FBI has other information they need to investigate. This was a real problem, for example, in Charleston, where Dylann Roof, somebody we know had a misdemeanor drug conviction--and on further inquiry, the FBI would have found out he was addicted to narcotics, which is also a disqualification. But because there was no opportunity to expand the background check beyond just the 3 days under current law, it wasn't part of the NICS system. And, unfortunately, he bought a gun and killed a lot of innocent people at Mother Emanuel Church there in Charleston. So giving the FBI, for this cohort of 18- to 21-year-olds, an opportunity, if they come across something that needs further investigation, to give them up to an additional 7 business days to look into it. I will give you another example. Let's say they come up with a record that demonstrates there was an assault. Well, there are different types of assaults against someone. It may be a bar fight or punching someone in the nose or it could be domestic violence. Well, the first is not a disqualifier under the law, but if the assault conviction actually turns out to be domestic violence, it would be. And so that is the kind of information that we are giving the FBI an opportunity to explore in this extension of the background check. But this is not a mandatory waiting period, and it doesn't apply to gun buyers of all ages. For example, if somebody is 19 years old and they do the background check and they do what we require here, which is inquire of the juvenile record repository and the repository for mental health adjudications and local law enforcement, and they find nothing, then the transaction can occur in a matter of hours or a matter of days. There is no mandatory waiting period. And this really addresses only that cohort of 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds, which has become a common profile for young shooters who have shot innocent people everywhere from Uvalde to Sandy Hook in Connecticut and other places. The profile, unfortunately, is very sad and very tragic, people who are a danger to themselves and others, and that is the reason why we thought this enhanced process was important. We also included comprehensive due process requirements relating to firearms. I have talked about the fact that this is a constitutional right, and of course the Constitution guarantees due process of law. And a lot of folks are, frankly, concerned about these red flag laws, these crisis intervention orders when somebody is demonstrated to be a danger to themselves and others. And the concern is that not all of these red flag laws contain robust due process requirements. What are we talking about? Well, due process generally is understood to include notice, the opportunity to be heard, the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses, and to present evidence in front of an impartial judicial officer. So, in order to make sure that none of the grant funds would be available to States that did not have robust due process requirements and had red flag laws, as 19 States and the District of Columbia do, we have very strong due process conditions on the grants that are available. But many States don't have red flag laws. For example, Texas does not, but we sure have a lot of crisis intervention programs that are sort of focused on the same sort of problem. We have mental health courts, veterans courts, drug courts. We have something called assisted outpatient treatment for people who, under court order, can be an outpatient and be required to show up for their counseling or treatment but also to take the medications that their healthcare provider requires them to take if they are going to manage their mental health challenges. That is done under a court order but as an outpatient. So it is another way of sort of addressing this problem of people having unmanaged mental health challenges and, in some cases, becoming a danger to themselves and others. We firmly rejected the idea that the Federal Government would impose a national red flag law. And we did not view it as appropriate for the Federal Government to make the grant funds that are available through the Department of Justice be seen as an incentive to sort of nudge States or encourage States to pass their own extreme risk protection orders. Those are decisions that are made at the State level, not here. But like I said, we provided robust due process requirements of any grants that go to those States. And it may be, as one of my colleagues said this morning, in his State, they have red flag laws, and he thinks that money could be used to ensure that the rights of law-abiding gun owners are protected by a robust due process. And for States that don't have red flag laws, as I mentioned, there are other ways this money can go to help and address a similar problem. So all States will have access to these funds through the Department of Justice Byrne JAG law enforcement grant program. So while some have said that taxpayer dollars are being used to violate someone's Second Amendment rights without due process, that is, clearly, a false accusation. Unfortunately, we know that when there is so much money to be made and so many people to be recruited to one cause or another when it deals with this general subject matter, that a lot of reckless and irresponsible and false statements get made, which is the reason I am here explaining what is in the bill and what is not in the bill. One of the things that was very important to our Democratic colleagues is the definition of the ``boyfriend loophole.'' Just by way of explanation, under current law, before we passed this bill, if you are married to someone, if you are cohabitating with someone, if you have a child with someone and are not married or cohabitating or if you are in a relationship which is, for all practical purposes, similar to a marriage but not official, if you commit a domestic violence offense in your State and are convicted of that misdemeanor domestic violence, you are forever barred from purchasing or possessing a firearm. One of the things we negotiated, frankly, because I think it just makes a lot of sense, is that for this category of boyfriends, so- called, roughly defined as recent or current serious relationship of a romantic or intimate nature, if you find yourself in one of those relationships and you commit an act of domestic violence, one of the things we negotiated is 5 years later, with a clean record, then you can have your Second Amendment rights restored. And I think that is an important protection, again, of Second Amendment rights. Well, we would not agree that someone who was convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence against a girlfriend 30 years ago would be forever barred from their Second Amendment rights or someone who just had a casual dating relationship. But as I said, we did include a provision to restore the Second Amendment rights to certain individuals who have a clean record of not committing any additional criminal acts, including domestic violence, for a period of 5 years. We all know that there are plenty of people who make mistakes but then turn their lives around, and this legislation opens up the anatomy for individuals to have their Second Amendment rights restored if they do that. We have worked throughout this process with a lot of different people, from the school safety portion to the mental health portion, and we have worked with law enforcement, and we have worked with a variety of groups, including some of the groups that represent gun owners as well as those who have advocated reform of our gun laws. I thought it was important for us to hear from everybody. And now it may be that in the end, some of these outside groups do not love 100 percent of what we are doing here. We know that no piece of legislation is perfect. By definition, it is a compromise and a consensus to try to find that common ground. And so some outside groups may say: Well, we can't support that because it doesn't give us 100 percent of what we want, but frankly there is never a bill that passes that gives one side or the other 100 percent of what they want. So just to conclude, just to repeat myself for emphasis, this bill does not infringe on law-abiding citizens rights under the Second Amendment. It doesn't actually expand the background checks system. It doesn't impose mandatory waiting periods or any other restrictions. There is a lot of misinformation and, believe me, I think that is what social media was created for, for spreading misinformation or disinformation. So there is a lot of misunderstanding about what is in this legislation, which is the reason I wanted to come to the floor and set the record straight. This bill does, however, include important targeted reforms, complete with robust due process protections, that I believe in the end will keep our children and our communities safe while respecting Second Amendment rights. Over the last couple of days, we have had a chance to have even further and more robust discussions among not only Republicans, but Democrats, and I appreciate those who perhaps may have been skeptical to what we were trying to do here--their willingness to keep an open mind, to ask us hard questions, and to force us to come up with good answers that will address their concerns. That is how we pass legislation here in the Senate; and my hope is that through those good- faith negotiations and debates and discussions, we can continue to build additional support for this legislation. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, tomorrow will mark 1 month since the tragic shooting in Uvalde, TX. A high school dropout with a history of violence and mental health struggles purchased 2 AR-15s within days of turning 18, and he passed a background check. He then shot his own grandmother because she wanted him to go back into the classroom rather than drop out of school, and then went to the Robb Elementary School through an unlocked door. He then opened fire on two fourth-grade classrooms, killing 19 students and 2 teachers. The American people were shocked, outraged, and devastated by this attack and collectively asked: How can we prevent this from happening again? Well, the discussion surrounding this topic causes emotions to run high, and I understand why. For too long, some politicians have tried to pit the right to live in a safe community against the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. They make it seem like our country can only have one or the other--either the Second Amendment or safe schools and churches and grocery stores. And, of course, this is a false choice. Law-abiding gun owners are not the problem. Men and women who buy guns to protect themselves and their family to hunt or engage in sports--they are not a public safety problem. Following the shooting, I promised to do everything in my power to try to answer that call to do something. I don't believe in doing nothing in the face of what we saw in Uvalde and we have seen in far too many communities. Doing nothing is an abdication of our responsibility as representatives of the American people here in the U.S. Senate. At the same time, I reiterated my bottom line, which is: I would not support any provisions that infringed on the rights of law-abiding gun owners. Again, they are not the problem. But I knew that this effort was about the art of the possible; looking at areas where we could agree and setting aside those areas where we could not. I was fortunate to find partners who were thoughtful and realistic about how we could pass this bill. I want to thank Senator Murphy, Senator Sinema, Senator Tillis, as well as a larger group of Senators without whom this legislation would not be on the cusp of passage. Thank you. Thank you for not listening to the naysayers and the critics and those who would spew disinformation and outright lies about what we are doing here and for standing up to the responsibility that we all have as U.S. Senators to do our very best to make progress, to try to answer the call in the face of these tragedies, and try, in the end, to save lives, which is what this is all about. Now, less than 1 month after the shooting in Uvalde, the Senate will vote soon on the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. This legislation will protect our schools, protect our communities, and safeguard the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. I have said it before, and I will say it again: No parent should ever fear for the safety of their child at school, and no child should be afraid to go to school in fear of their safety. This legislation responds to that in a positive and affirmative way. This bill includes targeted, commonsense measures to prevent violence and to save lives while respecting our Constitution. (Ms. BALDWIN assumed the Chair.) Madam President, the dirty little secret is America is experiencing a mental health crisis. Our mental health delivery system is a scandal. Too many people are not getting the sort of attention and care they need in order to manage their mental health challenges. And many of them can be saved from the fate of Salvador Ramos or Adam Lanza if they can get access to timely care and the medication that will help them manage their mental illness. So this bill will represent the single largest investment in community-based mental health care in American history. That is huge. That is enormously important. And to me it may be the most important aspect of what we do here. So police officers answering a 9-1-1 call from somebody in a mental health crisis, they don't have to take that person to jail where they won't get help. They can take them to a community-based mental health delivery system--to a clinic. And a person experiencing a mental health crisis, they don't have to go to the emergency room. They can go to a clinic and get the sort of care and help they need in order to manage their condition, whatever it may be. This bill will also provide support and services for our schools. Our schools should be sanctuary--a sanctuary--for our children, not a place where they plan on what will happen during the next shooting and how they can hide under their desks or try to make their escape. Schools should be a sanctuary. And this bill will provide the kind of services that will help identify students in crisis and help intervene to provide them the assistance they need. This bill also provides major investments in school safety and security. It includes physical safety measures. We probably can't eliminate human error like we saw in Uvalde, TX, but we can promulgate the best practices, which we have done in this bill, from the best minds based on evidence--what works and what does not--to make sure we keep unauthorized visitors out of the hallways and the classrooms as well as evaluate current protocols and, like I said, develop best practices. Again, those who say we need to infringe on the rights of law-abiding citizens under the Constitution in order to make good policy are offering a false choice. Passing good public policy and supporting the Constitution are not mutually exclusive. One of the ways we are providing assistance to the States is through crisis intervention grants which will provide the States with funding to implement programs to help those in crisis and prevent them from committing self-harm or harm to others. We have rejected the idea of a national red flag law, even though 19 States and the District of Columbia have chosen to do that themselves, and one of the ways we can help is to make sure that these funds assist State officials in training them on how to make sure that the due process rights of an individual are protected, as they should be. This legislation also closes a gaping hole in the background check system which is the lack of juvenile records. This is a real challenge because most juvenile records are sealed or expunged. But we know that Salvador Ramos, who went in at 18-years-old and passed a background check--he was a ticking timebomb. Everybody knew he was struggling with his mental health challenges, and he was slowly circling the drain because he didn't get the help that might have prevented his self-harm, not to mention the harm to others. But if a person's record includes a criminal conviction or mental health adjudication that prohibits them from purchasing a firearm as an adult, it shouldn't matter whether they were 17 or 18 at the time. That information should be available on the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and that is what this bill will encourage. Our bill incentivizes the States to upload this information to ensure that disqualifying criminal convictions or mental health adjudications are available. Unless a person is convicted of a crime or adjudicated as mentally ill, their Second Amendment rights will not be impacted by this legislation, period. Let me close by saying, I am grateful to Senator Murphy, who has been a good-faith partner. He would like to do a lot of things in addition to what we have done here, but he was pragmatic and realistic enough to know that if we were actually going to be successful, we weren't going to be able to do everything that he wanted. Conversely, there were things that we did on our side that were outside of our comfort zone that, frankly, we are having to explain to people, but that is what a good-faith negotiation looks like. And again, I think, on balance, the good we are doing here and the potential we have to save lives is worth any sort of concession we might have had to make during the negotiation. Let me also express my gratitude to Senator Sinema, the Senator from Arizona, who has been a key partner in the negotiation as well as Senator Tillis, the Senator from North Carolina. But the truth is, a lot of people were involved in this. And I want to thank all of our colleagues who helped us round out this legislation and make sure it delivers the benefits that we sought. We also worked with a variety of stakeholders from education to mental health groups, to law enforcement, as well as gun rights groups. And I appreciate everybody who has helped us make this product better. And obviously we don't agree on a lot of things, but I am encouraged about how much common ground we were able to find. Our bill has earned the endorsement of more than 100 mental health and education groups, including the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the National Association of School Psychologists. It has received the support of law enforcement organizations, including the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Sheriffs' Association, the National District Attorneys Association, and the Major Cities Chiefs Association. It has been backed by domestic violence groups such as the National Network to End Domestic Violence and the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. I believe we have in the Gallery tonight people who have suffered unthinkable losses of loved ones in some of these mass shooting incidents. But I want to tell them that their advocacy has turned their pain into something positive. I believe the best antidote for the sort of unthinkable loss that they have suffered is the knowledge that something good will come out of their tragedies, something that will save lives. This broad support for this legislation shows that it is a meaningful comprehensive response to the tragedies we have experienced. And I am proud of what we have been able to do together. And I am very optimistic about the impact it will have on our schools and communities across the country. So, thank you, colleagues, for working together in good faith in a bipartisan way. I think in one way we have demonstrated to people that our institutions can work. Many have come to doubt whether we are capable of making our institutions work, including the world's greatest deliberative body, the U.S. Senate. And we have proved that we can, when sufficiently inspired by the people in the Gallery and others, when they say do something to come together and find common ground that will help keep our communities safer, protect our children, and save lives. I look forward to voting yes and moving this bill one step closer to the President's desk for signature. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I rise today to thank the National Sheriffs' Association for its tireless work on the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. I ask unanimous consent that their letter of support be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print my bill for introduction in the Congressional Record. The bill prohibits certain former employees of the intelligence community from providing certain services to governments of countries that are state sponsors of terrorism, the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print my bill for introduction in the Congressional Record. The bill prohibits certain former employees of the intelligence community from providing certain services to governments of countries that are state sponsors of terrorism, the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, 28 days ago, an 18-year-old young man opened fire on students at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX. He murdered 21 people--19 children and 2 teachers. In the process, he effectively committed suicide as well. This was an attack that was so cruel, so brutal, and inhumane that it has brought much of our Nation to its knees in mourning. Since the shooting, my office has received--as I am sure many other Members of Congress have--I have received tens of thousands of calls and letters and emails with a singular message: Do something. Do something. Not do nothing, but do something. Texans are disgusted and outraged by what happened at Robb Elementary, and they want Congress to take appropriate action to prevent the loss of more innocent lives. I don't want us to pass a bill for the purpose of checking a box. I want to make sure we actually do something useful, something that is capable of becoming a law, something that will have the potential to save lives. I am happy to report as a result of the hard work of a number of Senators in this Chamber that we have made some serious progress. In particular, over the last few weeks, Mr. Murphy, the Senator from Connecticut; Ms. Sinema, the Senator from Arizona; Mr. Tillis, the Senator from North Carolina; and I have searched high and low for common ground. Now, there are some people who would say, What is the use? Why try? We know this is an issue that divides much of the country, depending on where you live, and maybe even divides people living in the same household. But I think we have found some areas where there is space for compromise. And we have also found that there are some redlines and no middle ground. We have talked; we have debated; we have disagreed; and, finally, we have reached an agreement among the four of us. But, obviously, this is not something that will become law or fail to become law because of a small group of Senators. The truth is we had a larger group of 20 Senators--10 Republicans and 10 Democrats--come forward and sign on to an agreed set of principles, and I believe as Senators see the text that supports those principles, they will see we have tried our best to be true as to what we said those agreed principles should be. So soon, very soon--not soon enough for me--but very soon, we will see the text of bipartisan legislation that will help keep our children and our communities safer. We know there is no such thing as a perfect piece of legislation. We are imperfect human beings. But we have to try, and I believe this bill is a step in the right direction. One of the pillars of this legislation is support for community-based mental health care. Following the violent attacks, we have all heard about missed signs, and the fact is the New York Times recently profiled the type of young man: typically alienated, isolated, not receiving any sort of support or medical or psychiatric care, certainly not complying with their doctors' orders when it comes to taking their medication that allows them to manage their mental illness challenges. We know that this profile is one that Salvador Ramos fit, the shooter in Uvalde. He was a deeply troubled young man. He was isolated. He was bullied in school. He cut himself because he said he liked the way it made him look. It made him look tough. He had a history of fighting, of assaulting fellow students, of threatening sexual assault of young women, and torturing and killing animals. It is a familiar profile. This man, this young man, I think was crying out for help. But he got no help, notwithstanding the best efforts of people around him. He shot his own grandmother before he went to Robb Elementary School because she wanted him to go back to the classroom after being out of the classroom for 2 years because of COVID mitigation practices. So our goal with this legislation is to try to help people in crisis get treatment before they reach a point like Salvador Ramos. Now, I want to be clear: Not everybody who is suffering a mental health crisis is a threat to themselves and others. Matter of fact, the opposite is true. Many people suffer in silence with their parents, their families, their siblings, trying to help them to no avail. But there is a small subset of people like Salvador Ramos who are a danger to themselves and others if they don't get the kind of help they need. So the provision of the bill which represents the single largest investment in community-based mental health treatment in American history is drawn from bipartisan legislation introduced by Senator Stabenow and Senator Blunt. I think there are eight demonstration projects around the country. We want to make this kind of access to community-based mental health care available all across the country, and our bill will help to do that. It expands high-quality mental health and addiction services nationwide through the expansion of certified community behavioral health clinics. Many of these providers already operate in communities across the country, but our legislation expands the networks of clinics to deliver even stronger and more fulsome support to our communities. We also include provisions to expand support of care in our schools because it is at school that many of our young people will be identified as needing support. Teachers actually spend more time than parents, typically, with our school-aged children; and the supported services that will be part of this bill will help identify students that need that help so that intervention can come as early as possible. As the Presiding Officer probably knows, 60 percent of gun deaths in America are suicides--suicides. We not only want to try our best to do things that will hopefully stop the Salvador Ramoses in the future from hurting other people, we want to try to help them and keep them from hurting themselves as well. So I believe this huge investment in America's mental health delivery system is an investment in safer and healthier communities. Another pillar of the legislation is school safety. The Uvalde shooter was able to enter Robb Elementary School through a door that was not locked when it should have been. That is an obvious vulnerability. Schools need to be prepared for the worst-case scenario, which means evaluating physical security measures, reviewing current protocol, adopting best practices, which are broadly available through publications and studies by the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies. And they also need to be able to add or expand the number of school resource officers as appropriate. I have said it before, and I will say it again: No parent should have to send their child to school fearful for their child's safety, and no child should have to go to school and be afraid for their safety. All of our students and teachers and the administrators and others in our schools deserve to feel safe, and parents deserve peace of mind, and that is what I hope these additional resources will provide. Now, the final range portion of this bill beyond mental health and school safety involves a range of provisions to prevent these sort of violent attacks from occurring in the future. Again, I believe that law-abiding citizens are not the problem. I don't believe law-abiding citizens are a threat to public health, and this bill honors that commitment. So unless a person is convicted of a crime or is adjudicated mentally ill, their ability to purchase a firearm will not be impacted by this legislation. Now, some have suggested provisions that I believe would infringe on Second Amendment rights and really not get to the root of the problem. For example, there is no particular ban on a type of gun or no mandatory waiting periods, no background checks of intrafamily or friend-to-friend transfer, none of these are included in the legislation. And some of our colleagues clearly would like to see that. But, again, that is because law-abiding gun owners are not the problem. What we are trying to do is prevent dangerous individuals from unleashing violence on their communities. And one way of achieving that goal is through more robust crisis intervention programs. Now, that is a broad term that describes a range of initiatives that aim to reduce violence, protect the public, and connect individuals in crisis with the help they need. It could include something called assisted outpatient treatment, which allows courts to order people with mental health challenges to receive outpatient treatment to ensure they receive the care they needed, and the court will hold them accountable to make sure they make the doctors' appointments and take the medications they need in order to remain productive. But beyond AOTs--or assisted outpatient treatment--there are very effective regimes like mental health courts, like I saw in Dallas, TX, not that long ago. Now, one of the things that encourages compliance is the fact that you have a judge, somebody wearing a black robe, saying: You will do this. And if that is what it takes, that is fine with me. But there are also drug courts, veterans' courts, and the like which aim to treat the root cause, not the symptom. And across the country, there are hundreds of mental health and veterans' treatment courts and thousands of drug court programs that have delivered incredible results. I have been clear at the outset that I am interested in providing law enforcement-related grants to all 50 States to put forward a range of crisis intervention programs that the State deems best to help reduce suicide and violence. Now, some of our colleagues wanted to focus this money solely on the 19 States that have passed some form of red flag law, and, frankly, that is a choice that is up to the State. But we are not introducing a national red flag law, but we are providing the availability of law enforcement-related grants to crisis intervention programs, whether you adopted a red flag program or not. Perhaps you have chosen something different. Well, this grant program will get every State funding that implements programs that they themselves have adopted to stop individuals in crisis from reaching the point of violence or self-harm. If any State wants to pass a law, obviously, under our Constitution, they have plenary authority to pass whatever crisis intervention laws they choose to do so. But one of the things that we have agreed upon is they have to have robust due process protections because we are talking about a constitutional right. So if the new law does not include due process protections, it will not be eligible for these grants, no matter what form that crisis intervention program takes. Our bill also provides increased protection for domestic violence victims. It shouldn't matter whether a person is married to their abuser, if the abuser is convicted of domestic violence, and many people have what I would call nontraditional relationships, whether they are living together, they have a child together, or whether they just have a long-term romantic or intimate relationship. Eighty-six percent of gun-owning households support that sort of protection for domestic violence victims, where, too often, a gun is involved. Again, this doesn't limit law-abiding gun owners' rights unless somebody is convicted of domestic abuse under their State laws. Their gun rights will not be impacted. Again, this portion of the bill includes critical due process protections which, as we all know, is part of our Constitution. You shall not be deprived of your rights without due process of law. One new feature that we proposed is that those who are convicted of nonspousal misdemeanor domestic abuse--not felony but misdemeanor domestic violence--will have an opportunity after 5 years to have their Second Amendment rights restored, but they have to have a clean record. And this is an incentive, in fact, I think, for people who have made a mistake and have committed domestic violence and received a misdemeanor conviction to straighten up their act and to not repeat it. Our bill also strengthens the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, known as NICS, to ensure it is more fulsome and accurate. In Uvalde, this young man, Salvador Ramos, turned 18. He went in and passed a background check. It is like he was born yesterday because there was no way for the National Instant Criminal Background checks system to look back on any mental health adjudications or criminal convictions, which would have barred him from purchasing a firearm had it occurred as an adult. If a 17-year-old is convicted of a violent crime or adjudicated as mentally incompetent, that information should show up in the background check system if he tries to purchase a firearm when he turns 18. Eighty-seven percent of gun-owning households in America support making juvenile records available in the background check system, and this legislation will make that possible. Now, the States will control what information they are willing to share, but our legislation provides an incentive for States to upload the records that reflect on the suitability of an individual to purchase a firearm, allow them to upload juvenile records into the National Instant Criminal Background System to ensure that firearms are not falling into the hands of those under 21 who would be prohibited from purchasing that gun if they were an adult when it happened. So I know this bill is not going to please everyone. Some think it goes too far; others think it doesn't go far enough, and I get it. But the nature of compromise and the nature of actually wanting to get a result requires that everybody try to find common ground where we can, and that is particularly hard in a 50-50 U.S. Senate. But I believe the same people who are telling us to do something are sending us a clear message to do what we can to keep our children and communities safe. I am confident this legislation moves us in a positive direction. I want to thank all of our colleagues who have worked so hard in this process that has gotten us this far. My understanding is that the text will be released essentially at any moment, although the principles upon which that text is written have been public for quite a while now. This legislation is the product of good-faith, bipartisan negotiations. It includes bills and ideas offered by colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and it makes changes that are supported by vast majorities of Americans. And I think, most importantly, it has the real potential to become a law and to create real changes in communities across this country--safer, healthier communities; stronger, more secure schools; saving lives. That is what we are all about. So I am eager to discuss more details with our colleagues as they review the text in the coming days, and I hope we can continue to show the same sort of good faith and the openness to other ideas that have brought us to this point as we debate and we vote on this bipartisan legislation. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, on Sunday, a bipartisan group of Senators announced principles for addressing the concerns over shootings like occurred in Uvalde, TX, 3 weeks ago, and other places as well. And I would say we have been making good progress, but we have run into a couple of bumps in the road that have slowed things down a little bit. One of them is over crisis intervention programs, something we agree is very important. I believe that we ought to put every State in the position of seeking and receiving funds for crisis intervention programs that they have in place already, even if they don't have a red flag law. ``Red flag'' has been what has been discussed and discussed many times, but 19 States have red flag laws, but that means 31 States have other crisis intervention initiatives that are designed to address the same problem, which is people who are a danger to themselves and others because of their mental health. It includes things like assisted outpatient treatment programs, drug courts, mental health courts, and veterans courts. The other issue that we are wrestling with relates to the domestic violence provision and the way nontraditional relationships are handled. We need to define this in a very crystal clear way. It can't be overly broad or open to interpretation. It needs to be something that can actually be applied because we are talking about very serious consequences here. Of course, with both of these provisions, we must include rigorous due process protections. That is a redline for folks on my side of the aisle. I know Senator Schumer, the majority leader, wants to put this bill on the floor next week, but unless we can resolve these differences over these two provisions and do it soon, hopefully today, then we won't have time to prepare the text so Senators can read the bill for themselves, which we would expect them to do. And so that is going to require some continued work and good faith negotiations on all sides. The details of these provisions are critical for support from my colleagues on this side of the aisle, and I hope that our colleagues across the aisle will understand, if we continue down this path without resolution, that we are jeopardizing the timetable that the majority leader has set out for us, or we are jeopardizing the likelihood we can get to 60 votes for anything, and we know how hard this is. I am eager to wrap up our negotiations, but we are not going to cut corners or capitulate for the sole purpose of passing something. I am not willing to compromise on some of my basic principles or throw the Constitution out the window so we can have something we can hold up and say: Look what we did. There is a bipartisan appetite to get this done--that is good--and I am optimistic about how far we have come, but we are not there yet, and we need to continue and do so quickly to reach an agreement on language so we can then write the text and have the vote. From the outset, I said I wanted to identify targeted reforms that could have prevented the recent tragedies in Uvalde and elsewhere. That includes stronger mental health resources, which could have helped Salvador Ramos before he became so sick that he killed innocent children, and he committed suicide, essentially, in the process. That includes school safety measures, which could have prevented the shooter from actually getting inside Robb Elementary School. It includes reforms to prevent violence by criminals and other dangerous individuals. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System is one of the most effective tools we have to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and people who suffer from severe mental illness, but it is not a perfect system. It is only as good as the information contained in the system. For example, in 2017, in the shooting in Sutherland Springs--a little town outside of San Antonio, TX, my hometown--what happened there highlighted the gaping hole in the background check system. Despite the fact that the shooter had a long and disturbing history of violence that should have prohibited him from purchasing a gun, he was able to do so because the Air Force in this instance had not uploaded his felony convictions, his domestic violence conviction, or his mental health commitment. In response to Sutherland Springs, Senator Murphy and I introduced the Fix NICS Act to ensure that all Federal Agencies accurately and correctly upload the required conviction records on a timely basis. Yes, this is the same Senator Chris Murphy whom I am working with now to try to achieve success here. We have done it before, and I believe we can do it again. Our bill was signed into law in March of 2018, and in the first 3 years, 11\1/2\ million more records were uploaded into the three national databases that the FBI checks. The number of records in one of those databases increased by more than 30 percent alone. So I think I can say with assurance that what we did together in 2018 has saved lives because if it kept a gun out of the hands of somebody who is already prohibited from getting a gun under current law, we will have saved a life--maybe even the life of the shooter. Sixty percent of the gun deaths in America are suicides. But I know we have saved at least those lives and I think many others as well. But, as the Uvalde shooting demonstrated, there is another hole in the background check system, and that is juvenile records. Salvador Ramos showed up at the age of 18 and had a clean record as far as the background check system was concerned because it couldn't look back at his troubled history, struggling with mental health and law enforcement problems. So he showed up as if he had been born the day before, and nothing else previously mattered because it wasn't in the background check system. If there are disqualifying criminal or mental health records, that information should show up in the NICS system. In other words, if there are things in your life that would disqualify you if you were an adult but that happened before you turned 18, I think that is the information we need and would want to have for purposes of determining who should be able to purchase or possess a firearm. So that wall that prevents the lookback into pre-18-year-old records is obviously a problem. Four years ago, the Uvalde Police Department received information about two male juveniles, 13 and 14 years old, who were plotting a school shooting for their senior year. That was 4 years ago, and they were plotting a school shooting when they graduated in--you guessed it--2022. Now, there is no way for us to know for sure whether one of those individuals was Salvador Ramos because those juvenile records are not available to us. But I am here to say that if it is not Salvador Ramos, then we have even a bigger problem. If there are two additional, young, 13- and 14-year-old boys out there saying they are going to shoot up the school when they become seniors, we have even a bigger problem. One of the provisions we are discussing would encourage the States to upload similar relevant juvenile records into the NICS. This is standard practice in some but not all States, and it is easy to see why it is important. If an 18-year-old is convicted of aggravated assault--a felony--the record will show up in his background check and prohibit him from purchasing a gun, but if a 17-year-old is convicted of the same crime, the record will not necessarily be uploaded into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. If he tries to purchase a gun at 18, the background check is likely to come back clean--again, because the system is only as good as the information in it. Let me give you another example. An individual can be adjudicated mentally ill on his 17th birthday and actually be civilly committed for multiple months in a mental institution, but that same person could likely purchase a gun at the age of 18 without anything showing up on his record. Existing law prohibits that purchase, but not all the States are sending that information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Those are examples of why it is so important to be able to get that lookback in the pre-18-year-old history for mental health or criminal justice encounters. This is not actually an expansion of the background check system because it doesn't add any new restrictions to gun ownership, but it would permit the background check system to actually have access to relevant and material information. It is a commonsense step to ensure that the data in the NICS system is accurate. That is easy enough to say, but we need to ensure this idea would work in practice, and that is exactly what we are examining now. No. 1, we need to ensure this provision would protect due process of law. That is a constitutional right that is fundamental. Under current law, anyone who receives a denial has the right to appeal that decision or challenge the accuracy of the record. Of course, those same protections should exist for juvenile records as well. Secondly, we need to establish an interim plan while these records are being uploaded into the background check system, a process that will take some time. Now, my colleagues across the aisle suggested a mandatory waiting period for all purchasers under the age of 21, but we didn't agree to that. There is no reason why somebody who passes a background check with all relevant information in the database should be denied the ability to purchase a gun. In fact, we are talking again about a constitutional right. So no mandatory waiting period. But we are looking at extending the investigatory period for juvenile records that are unclear or ambiguous. Let me explain what I am talking about. Under current law, a person who wants to purchase a gun from their local retailer must complete a background check. We talked about that. In nearly 90 percent of the cases, the background check is resolved almost immediately because these are computerized records. The average processing time is, in fact, less than 2 minutes. In those cases, the seller receives an immediate answer--either the sale can proceed or it cannot. In the remaining roughly 10 percent of background checks, the system doesn't return a green light or a red light. In short, this happens when there are question marks or other things that need to be inquired about. This could be caused by a number of factors. If the buyer has a common name, the system could pull records on the wrong individual with the same name. It could also be caused by incomplete criminal history records. For example, if somebody was convicted of assault but the record doesn't say whether it was a felony or misdemeanor or in some cases whether the assault was a domestic violence incident, that would have consequences in terms of their ability to purchase a firearm. So further review, further investigation sometimes is necessary to see whether the light should be green or the light should be red. Under the current law, the FBI has up to 3 business days to complete a background check and give the seller a clean answer on whether the sale can proceed. That is current law, up to 3 days. In many cases, this review that we are talking about adding for persons between 18 and 21--this review can clarify that the sale can proceed, and that is a great thing. That is how we safeguard Second Amendment rights for law- abiding gun owners. We discussed the idea of extending that investigatory period when there is a question mark surrounding juvenile records. Again, this is the exception to the rule, where more information is required because the answer that you get is ambiguous or unclear. Under this enhanced review, an 18-year-old with a clean record would be able to expeditiously purchase a firearm. The extended investigation period would only apply to those rare cases and, again, only for those 18 to 20 for whom the system does not return a clear answer--yes or no, green or red--but, rather, a yellow light. We believe this is a commonsense and straightforward way to improve the existing background check system without adding new restrictions. As I said, negotiations are ongoing, but time is of the essence because we need to get to an agreement so we can get text to our colleagues so that the majority leader can bring this bill up on the floor next week after giving everyone a chance to read it and understand it and have their questions answered. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

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