John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, our Democratic colleagues in the House and, to some extent, here in the Senate have talked about how the so- called Build Back Better legislation is popular, but I think the main reason it is popular is because, frankly, many Members of Congress and certainly the public at large don't know what is in it. So I would like to spend just a few minutes talking about that. First of all, there is the size of the bill. Originally, the Budget Committee chairman, the Senator from Vermont, floated a $6 trillion spending bonanza. This, of course, was on top of about $5 trillion we spent last year in a bipartisan fashion dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. But, of course, this $6 trillion more was designed to be passed with a pure party-line vote through the reconciliation process. After some pushback, the $6 trillion figure that Chairman Sanders proposed was cut back to 3.5, and now our colleagues in the House and elsewhere are touting a new pared-down bill which spends only--and I underline the word ``only''--$1.75 trillion. I dare say that is a number that none of us can fully comprehend given its magnitude, but it has become--sort of rolls off our tongues like everybody understands what a trillion dollars is like everybody knows what a million is or a thousand or a hundred or ten dollars. But it is an enormous number. As our colleagues have slimmed and trimmed this bill to reach a pricetag that could get consensus in the House, some of their favorite provisions have fallen off the chopping block. They realize that programs like free college actually cost a whole lot of money. So to live within this new number, which I will talk about in a moment, Democrats in the House kept cutting and cutting, but they found-- instead of real cuts, they found another solution to their problem of a topline. What they have basically done is to create the illusion of a lower pricetag without making any real, substantive, long-term cuts. How do you do that? Well, it is the old-fashioned way; it is called budget gimmicks. Rather than remove these expensive programs entirely, they chose to create a number of arbitrary cliffs, sunsets, and expirations. That way, they could pretend to pass these bills at a lower cost with the tacit promise to continue them at another time and on another day. One example of this was the expanded child tax credit. Our Democratic colleagues originally crafted this as a temporary measure in their partisan bill that became law in March, just 8 months ago. The first payments had barely gone out the door when they decided to call for making those temporary provisions permanent in the BBB, the so-called Build Back Better bill. Our colleagues knew that a permanent extension and expansion would have been far too expensive to meet their topline, so they pretended to cut it by making it a temporary extension. Earlier drafts of this bill would have extended this policy through 2025. As time went on, the pricetag was still too high, so it was scaled back to a 1-year extension. But the truth is, nothing has really changed. Calls to make the expansion permanent have not gone away. I have seen no indication that our colleagues across the aisle are content to let this extension expire after just 1 year. The same is true of the earned income tax credit, which also was expanded in March. A number of our colleagues have spoken here on the Senate floor about the need to make this expansion of the earned income tax credit permanent. But the not-so-temporary extensions don't end there. This bill extends the Affordable Care Act's premium tax credits through 2025, which our colleagues claim will enable more Americans to afford healthcare coverage. But at the same time, this bill cuts funding to safety net hospitals and States that did not expand Medicaid. If their goal was to expand access to low-income individuals under the Medicaid Program, their bill cuts that funding to safety net hospitals in States like mine that did not expand Medicaid. These cuts specifically target hospitals that treat underinsured and uninsured patients. In short, our colleagues are manipulating the budget process in a way that appears to extend access to healthcare while at the same time cuts funding to our most vulnerable patients--all in the cause of pushing America closer to a single-payer system, something like Medicare for All. I have no doubt that our colleagues across the aisle will, if possible, not let these temporary provisions expire. In the immortal words of Ronald Reagan, though, ``The closest thing to eternal life on earth is a [temporary] government program.'' We have seen this movie before, time and again. It is smoke and mirrors. It is budget gimmickry. It is starting new programs and claiming to cut them off after a year, knowing that, inevitably, Congress will be tempted to extend them much, much longer. Well, before this bill comes to a vote in the Senate, I hope our Democratic colleagues will agree with me that we need to know precisely how much this bill will cost the American people. We know that our colleagues across the aisle have struggled to try to make a $6 trillion bill appear to be a $3.5 trillion and now a $1.75 trillion bill, but I don't think anybody is really fooled or confused. Because they have strategically chosen start dates, sunsets, and expiration dates to make it appear that these programs cost less, we know that eventually, if they have the votes, they will be extended through eternity. Our colleagues gamed the Tax Code to partially fund the bill while handing out massive tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. I am glad to see the chairman of the Budget Committee say that we really shouldn't be focused on tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires in blue States and cities like New York or San Francisco, which is exactly what the Democratic bill tries to provide--tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires in blue States. This bill is really chock-full of inconsistencies. It claims to extend access to healthcare while cutting off access to Medicaid or some of the safety net programs in States like mine. It claims that, well, we are going to tax the rich folks while at the same time providing tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires in blue States by lifting or eliminating the SALT deduction--the State and local tax deduction-- which allows taxpayers, these millionaires and billionaires in blue States, to deduct their State and local taxes, which means not only do they get a tax cut, but the rest of us end up subsidizing them because, in order to get the revenue needed, that means regular working folks are going to have to pick up the gap. The best evidence of this maneuvering is the fact that there is not a single year over the next decade in which each tax provision would be used at the same time. Let me say that again. Of all of the gaming in the Tax Code, the fact is, under the proposal by the House of Representatives--that we at some point will consider here--the fact is there is not a single year over the next decade in which each of these tax provisions would be used at the same time. This is nothing but gimmicks and sleight of hand accounting. In my previous life, I was the Attorney General of Texas. We had something called the Consumer Protection Division. If anybody in the private sector would falsely advertise, like the Federal Government and Congress are trying to do in this so-called Build Back Better bill, we would go after them with a vengeance for defrauding consumers. Unfortunately, that doesn't apply to Congress. I wish it did. We often talk, at least intermittently, about needing to know what is in a bill before we actually vote on it. At one time or another, Senators on both sides of the aisle have griped about voting on thousand-page bills that were completed just hours before the vote. Knowing the true cost of this legislation is no different. Before voting on it, we have the duty to understand how it will impact our debt and deficits and how big of a bill the American people will be stuck with. There is also this ugly animal rearing its head called inflation. Seventy percent of the public said--I think in a recent public opinion poll I have seen--that inflation is eating away more and more of their income and is actually reducing their standard of living. It is a silent tax on working families. I would think that, if we are concerned about the welfare of those families, we ought to be very concerned about making inflation worse by pouring more and more money into our economy, chasing fewer and fewer goods and services. That is part of the problem now. There is so much money sloshing around as a result of the spending by Congress--much of it associated with COVID-19, but not all of it. Some of it is with the American Recovery Act that was passed with the $1.9 trillion in the early days of the Biden administration. But the truth is inflation is eating our lunch, and we should not be making it worse by spending a lot more money, as our Democratic colleagues are proposing we do in the Build Back Better bill. So we need a cost estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, the official scorer of these spending bills, because we know that what we have seen so far is full of gimmicks, tricks, phony cliffs, phony expiration dates, as I have said, and is, basically, a misleading of the public and Congress into knowing what exactly is in this bill and how much it will cost. Well, the cost estimate provided by the CBO, we know, given these phony assumptions, is not an accurate statement of the true cost of the bill. This isn't a reflection of the folks who work at the CBO but of the scoring rules they must follow. So, despite the fact that our Democratic colleagues have explicitly said that temporary programs will be extended at the first opportunity beyond the terms laid out in the bill, the Congressional Budget Office has to play along and act like that is true, but we know it is not true. Fortunately, there are groups on the outside that have conducted their own analysis. Assuming all of these phony cliffs and expiration dates and the 1-year creation of programs that will later be extended, they don't have to buy this sort of smoke-and-mirrors approach to the budget. These groups have conducted their own analyses and have told us what they think the true cost of this $1.75 trillion bill, so-called, that passed the House will be. For example, the budget experts at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business have analyzed this legislation as if these temporary provisions would be made permanent, which, I think, is the safest assumption to make. So, instead of $1.75 trillion, they have pegged the cost as close to $4.6 trillion over 10 years--more than 2\1/ 2\ times the amount the Democrats have claimed. Then there is the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that thinks that the number could even be a few hundred billion higher than that. They estimate the true cost of this bill, now claimed to be $1.75 trillion, to be approximately $5 trillion. This is a massive, massive jump from what the Democrats have said the cost of this bill will be. Even one of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle has acknowledged that this is disingenuous--and I would just use the word ``false''--advertising. The true cost of this legislation is much closer to Chairman Sanders' original $6 trillion request than the so- called scaled-back proposal of the current bill. Before this legislation comes to the Senate floor, we need to see a true cost estimate based on reasonable assumptions, not a fairy tale scenario. It defies all common sense to vote on a bill without knowing how much it is going to cost ahead of time. To this end, last week, I sent a letter to the leaders of the Congressional Budget Office and of the Joint Committee on Taxation requesting an updated estimate based on more reasonable assumptions. If the temporary provisions of this bill are extended--and I fully expect them to be if our Democratic colleagues have the votes to do it--this legislation will cost a whole lot more than what the American people have been told; and we need to know, as close as we can, exactly how much that will be. Well, it is obvious what is going on here. These not-so-temporary provisions won't expire in a year or 4 years or 10 years. We need to operate under rational assumptions that our Democratic colleagues, when the chance is provided to them, will make these programs permanent and come up with a true and honest score for the bill. If this legislation is all of a sound investment as our Democratic colleagues claim, they shouldn't have anything to be afraid of. We do have a duty, I believe, as Members of Congress, in voting on legislation of this magnitude, to know what we are doing before we are asked to vote on it. I don't think anybody, really, should have anything to be afraid of, unless they are afraid of a true accounting as opposed to the smoke and mirrors we see so far on this phony, gimmickry bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to start by thanking my colleagues for being willing to stand up and defend innocent human life. I remember, recently, watching a young woman walk across one of the downtown bridges in Austin, TX, carrying a sign that read: ``Abortion-- any time, any reason.'' That is what she was advocating for. I was shocked when I saw it because I thought even the most ardent advocates of abortion would not take that position of denying the humanity of this unborn child, but, apparently, that is what it has become here--48 years after the Supreme Court first created a right to abortion out of whole cloth as a constitutional right. You look, in vain, in the Constitution of the United States, as well as in the amendments to the Constitution, for any reference at all to abortion. What you will find, if you read the Declaration of Independence, is a familiar statement to all of us. On July 4, 1776, the 13 States then that made up America wrote: ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.'' By the way, there is no asterisk--there is no footnote--that says, if you are an unborn human life, that you are denied this unalienable right to life. Such noteworthy figures as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was probably one of the most aggressive advocates for abortion rights on the U.S. Supreme Court, later in life decried the fact that, by the Supreme Court's holding a right to abortion as a constitutional right, it denied the very sort of give-and-take debate by which our differences are resolved in the States and at the national level. I would just like to point out some of the misinformation that you hear and read about Roe v. Wade. If Roe v. Wade is no longer the precedent by which abortion rights are decided, it will not mean that abortion will not be available in many, if not all, of the States. What it will mean is that it will be decided, under our Federal system, on a State-by-State basis, according to the decisions made by elected State leadership, including the legislature. In 1973, Richard Nixon was inaugurated for the second time as President of the United States. Suffice it to say that a lot has happened since then--a lot. I think it is entirely appropriate that the U.S. Supreme Court revisits its precedents, including Roe v. Wade-- decided in 1973--and decide if that precedent has stood the test of time. By the way, in serving on the Judiciary Committee, we frequently have nominees for the Supreme Court of the United States come before the committee, and many of my pro-choice colleagues will say: Do you agree, Judge or Future Judge, that Roe v. Wade is the precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court? Of course, that is along with Casey and the other decisions that have been decided since then, but they act as if the U.S. Supreme Court cannot revisit bad decisions and correct those bad decisions. To act as though Supreme Court precedent is somehow sacrosanct would still leave us with the likes of Dred Scott, which treated African Americans as less than fully human. Obviously, we fought a Civil War, and 600,000 Americans died--that would be the equivalent of 3 million people today--in a bloody Civil War that tore our country apart. So being able to revisit those precedents, especially in light of the passage of time and over long experience, is entirely within the purview and entirely appropriate for the Supreme Court to do. Well, we have heard from my other colleagues that, since Roe was decided in 1973, more than 60 million abortions have been performed in the United States. As originally was decided, Justice Blackmun wrote an opinion and established an event he called viability. Basically, the argument by the proponents of Roe is that somehow, in this decision by Justice Blackmun's saying that abortion should be widely available pre- viability, we should not be able to reconsider or take a look at that. The truth is, Justice Blackmun admitted this was an arbitrary standard. What does ``viability'' mean? We have heard that seven countries around the world have more permissive or equally permissive abortion laws as the United States. I, frankly, don't want to be in the same company as North Korea or the People's Republic of China, governed by the Communist Party. I would hope that America would aspire to something different and better and more humane, more in line with our fundamental statement about the unalienable right to life. But, as to the fact that America is only one of seven countries that allows elective abortions after 20 weeks, which, as I said, puts us in the same category as communist China and North Korea, you would think that would raise a huge red flag as to say something is terribly wrong here. How is it that we are in the same category as communist North Korea and as communist China when it comes to the value we place on unborn life? Well, unfortunately, we have seen the right to life become a partisan issue in the U.S. Congress when you take a look at the pro-life legislation which has been introduced over the last years. We saw last year, for example, our Democratic colleagues filibuster legislation to outlaw elective abortions after 20 weeks, which is when science tells us that an infant can feel pain. Then they blocked a bill requiring physicians to provide lifesaving care to infants who survive abortions. This is care that any other newborn baby would receive, and yet our colleagues--so concerned about the backlash among their pro- abortion constituents--blocked it, denying a child born alive after a botched abortion the same sort of care that any other newborn would be entitled to. They blocked it. And the latest attack on an unborn baby's right to life is the Women's Health Protection Act. This bill would undermine State laws limiting abortion, even after viability, and undercut the Supreme Court's ruling that defines our current definition of ``viability.'' What does ``viability'' mean? Even at 20 weeks, can an unborn child live without medical attention and support from their mother or medical personnel? Of course not. This was an arbitrary line drawn by the Supreme Court in 1973. As we have heard from many of my colleagues, medicine has, thankfully, advanced considerably since that time. Well, even though the U.S. Congress seems to be stuck when it comes to the issue of abortion and respecting the right to life of unborn babies, thankfully, the States have taken the issue up, which is why States, like Mississippi, have passed their own legislation to protect unborn babies. Pro-abortion advocates say, well, 15 weeks--which is what the Mississippi law says. They say that a right to abortion only for the first 15 weeks of a pregnancy violates constitutional rights. But it is interesting. It is no less arbitrary than this notion of viability, which suggests that a child can live--which they cannot--outside the mother's womb even if they are 20 weeks or 24 weeks of gestational age. Interestingly, in a number of States, like Massachusetts and Nevada, abortions are restricted after 24 weeks. California, Washington, Illinois are among States that explicitly restrict abortions after viability. The American people clearly stand behind the protection of unborn life. This summer, a poll found that 65 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be illegal in the second trimester. That is the second 3-month period of a 9-month pregnancy. Opposition to third-trimester abortion is even stronger, as 80 percent of Americans are opposed to a third-trimester abortion. Indeed, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld a Nebraska law banning late-term abortion, which is essentially producing a delivery while the child is still alive, killing the fetus, and then completing that abortion. The Supreme Court of the United States upheld a ban on that third-trimester, late-term abortion--that brutal and barbaric practice that even the Supreme Court could not abide. Last June, a baby born at 21 weeks and 2 days, this last summer, celebrated his first birthday. That is what is at stake here when you are dealing with more than just one person--or you are dealing with more than just one person. The question is: How do you balance and deal with the rights not only of the woman seeking the abortion, but also of the unborn child? Right now, under its current jurisprudence, that unborn child is not even considered a human. America cannot be its best if we devalue the lives of the most vulnerable among us. I believe that babies with heartbeats, fingerprints, and taste buds deserve some protection under the law. I am proud of the efforts led by our colleague Senator Lankford and others to make sure that we actually have a discussion about this issue and don't just sweep it under the rug and we don't just let the pro- abortion lobby mischaracterize what we are talking about, as if eliminating Roe would eliminate abortions in America. It would just allow the States to do it on a State-by-State basis. But, actually, Roe was made up right. It created a constitutional right that is not even stated in the Constitution itself, and it created an arbitrary time limit in which abortions could be performed or not as a matter of constitutional right. So I join the rest of the body and this country awaiting the Supreme Court's ruling. I believe that it is more than appropriate for the Supreme Court to revisit its precedence that essentially disparaged and denigrated the right to life of an unborn child. I would yield the floor to my friend from Oklahoma.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, here we are, following the Thanksgiving holiday, where I hope that people got to get together with friends and family and enjoy a little respite from the hectic schedule here in Congress. But here we are now, with just a few short days intervening between now and Christmas, and the end-of-the-year legislative mad dash is officially upon us. This year, our Democratic colleagues, who control the Senate agenda, have ignored some of the Senate's most important and basic responsibilities, leaving us with a whole lot to do and not a whole lot of time in which to do it. In September, when the Senate should have passed a group of bills to fund the government for the next fiscal year, our colleagues instead kicked the can down the road. You would have thought they would have used the past couple of months to pass the annual appropriations bills, which is one of most basic and fundamental responsibilities of Congress; but, no, they chose not to do that. Instead, our Democratic colleagues found time for partisan, dead-on- arrival messaging bills while they failed to bring a single appropriations bill to the floor with a December 3 deadline. As things stand today, it looks like these funding bills are nowhere near ready. This risks leaving millions of Americans without a paycheck right before the Christmas holidays or punting on our funding responsibilities once again. And that is not the only potential fiscal disaster we are careening toward. At some point in the coming days, weeks, or months--we don't know exactly when; only Secretary Yellen knows--the U.S. will run up against the debt limit. That is, we have maxed out our credit card and, unless our Democratic colleagues decide to raise that credit limit, we will exhaust the credit of the United States Government. It kind of feels a little like ``Groundhog Day'' because we saw this movie just about 2 months ago. Democrats had a clear roadmap and ample time to increase the debt ceiling on their own and avoid a financial crisis, but they stubbornly refused. They said they didn't have enough time. Well, they don't have that excuse now. And, even then, they have known since July that Republicans would not help them with another partisan spending spree. So we find ourselves staring down the barrel of a potential economic crisis, but our colleagues can't blame the calendar for not having enough time again. If our Democratic colleagues want to exclude Republicans and continue spending on a purely partisan basis, they will have to raise the debt ceiling in a partisan fashion. They have proven they are OK with spending trillions of dollars of borrowed money without a single Republican vote. It is not too much to say that they should be held accountable for that reckless course of conduct. Of course, before the Senate addresses either one of those crises, there is another item on the agenda: The National Defense Authorization Act. Congress has passed the National Defense Authorization Act each year for the last 60 years, and for good reason. It is the case, I believe, that our national security is the single most important duty that we have here in the Senate. But this bill has been waiting in the wings for months, ready for floor action, and both the chairman of the Armed Services Committee and the ranking member have had to push the majority leader to actually bring this to the Senate floor, even at this late date. So 2 weeks ago, before the Thanksgiving holidays, the Senate finally began consideration of the Defense Authorization Act, and we hope we can actually do what the Senate is supposed to do, which is to vote on amendments to that bill and then pass it in the coming days. But the fact is, it is nearly December, and the fact that it has not been done yet is simply inexplicable. Now, with such a big to-do list and so little time to do it, you would think our colleagues would be laser focused on this hefty end-of- the-year agenda: funding the government, avoiding a debt crisis, strengthening our military, and supporting our volunteer military forces and their families. None of the Senate's most basic responsibilities have been attended to; and, as it stands today, the Senate is only scheduled to be in session for a handful of days before the Christmas holidays. Well, unfortunately, our Democratic colleagues think they have an even more important job to do. Forget the millions of government employees who could be left without a paycheck before the holidays, or the economic crisis that will cripple our country if we defaulted on our debt. Our Democratic colleagues are laser focused on their multitrillion-dollar tax-and-spending spree. After months of party infighting and countless iterations of this bill, the Democratic leaders in the House--most notably Speaker Pelosi--finally managed to pass a partisan version of this bill. They couldn't even convince every Democrat to vote for the bill, which is an indication of how problematic it is. What we are talking about is an absolutely massive bill that would increase the role and power of the Federal Government and Americans' lives in an unprecedented fashion. It would reshape how we take care of our children, our healthcare system, our energy, our educational systems. Virtually every aspect of American citizens' daily lives would be affected by this monstrosity. And, of course, these programs don't come cheap, but Democrats have pulled every gimmick in the book to hide the true cost. They have filled this bill with arbitrary sunsets and cliffs and expirations that make these programs appear to cost less than we know they actually will. One example is the expanded child tax credit. As originally drafted, this policy was a temporary measure in their bill that became law in March, just 8 months ago. Earlier drafts of the so-called Build Back Better legislation would have extended that policy through 2025, even though it seemed all but certain that Democrats would later try to make it permanent. When Democrats needed to cut the overall pricetag of the bill to convince their own Members to vote for it, the expanded child tax credit was scaled back to a 1-year extension. But nothing has really changed. I have no expectation that this or a number of other so-called temporary programs in this bill will actually expire. As President Ronald Reagan once famously said, the closest thing to eternal life on Earth is a temporary government program. If all the temporary provisions in this bill are made permanent, it will cost a whole lot more than is advertised. And the budget experts at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business have given us an estimate of how much more it will cost. Of course, there is President Biden, who said it will cost zero. Nobody believes that. Others have said, well, it is a $1.75 trillion bill. And I would argue that, based on all the budget gimmickry, you can't really believe that either. The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business pegs the price at close to $4.6 trillion over 10 years--that is the budget window--more than 2\1/2\ times the amount Democrats have previously stated. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget agrees with that estimate. They estimate that the true cost of this bill would be approximately $5 trillion over the next 10 years. That is $5 trillion in largely borrowed money that would have to be paid back by somebody. That is a whole lot more than the $1.75 trillion pricetag that the press has reported based on the incredible estimates that our Democratic colleagues have provided. Of course, that flies in the face of President Biden's estimate that it would cost nothing. Well, again, we understand that is not true, and the 1.75 trillion pricetag is not true either. Last week, I sent a letter to the leaders of the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation requesting a true cost estimate for this bill. The American people deserve a full and complete picture of the real-world price of this legislation. And before voting on the bill, every Member of the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats, should want to know how much this legislation is going to end up costing the American people. The pricetag of this bill is deeply concerning, but that is only part of what makes this legislation so dangerous. As I said earlier, it dramatically increases the role of the Federal Government in every aspect of our lives. It drives up taxes on working families; it harms our energy security; and it hurts our competitiveness on the global stage, which hands a big win to China. That, apparently, is the priority for our Democratic colleagues right now, not the looming debt crisis or potential government shutdown. They are focused on legislation that actually does more harm than good. Our Democratic colleagues control the Senate agenda. They control the House, and they control the White House. They control every lever in the legislative process here in Washington, DC, and this is how they have chosen to use that power. Our Democratic colleagues continue to prove that they are not doing what is best for the American people. If it was, then there would be an effort to build a bipartisan consensus for this legislation. Instead, they are using raw partisan political power to jam through an agenda that they know will end up costing somewhere around $5 trillion and that will permanently alter the relationship of the American people to the Federal Government. For our country's sake, I hope something changes between now and the time we actually take up this partisan tax-and-spending spree bill that has been passed by the House of Representatives. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, families back home in Texas are planning their Thanksgiving menus, but they are also bracing for steep grocery bills. Prices are up for just about every part of a typical Thanksgiving meal. The cost of a frozen turkey is the highest in history. Things like potatoes, butter, pumpkin pies, even salt, cost more than they did a year ago. It is not just going to cost more to eat; it is going to cost more to cook. Appliance prices have skyrocketed over the past year, as have electricity bills, and family members will have to pay a lot more just to visit their friends and relatives because gas prices are up 60 percent from last year. As families are being pummeled by higher prices and inflation, our Democratic colleagues are planning to hand major savings to a select group of Americans, just not the ones you think and certainly not the ones who need the help. Despite their cries of taxing the rich, the Democrats are plotting an absolutely massive handout to the wealthiest Americans. This windfall is not distributed through stimulus checks or lower tax rates. That would be far too obvious. Instead, our Democratic colleagues are relying on a range of gimmicky sunsets and expirations to dole out the millionaire tax break. If they thought no one would notice, well, they would be wrong. For example, The Washington Post headline says it all. It reads: ``The second-biggest program in the Democrats' spending plan gives billions to the rich.'' That is not how our colleagues have tried to brand their legislation. They would portray themselves as modern-day Robin Hoods--stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Strange in that it is really just the opposite. They talk about the wealthy paying their fair share and giving working families free programs, but the reality of the situation is far different from the picture they paint, and the wealthiest Americans stand to reap big benefits under this legislation. For example, the Democrats have included a provision that will allow millionaires and billionaires in blue States to pay less in Federal taxes. As the headline notes, this handout comes with a big pricetag of $285 billion in tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. It is more expensive than the clean energy and climate provisions in their bill; more expensive than paid family leave; more expensive than the combined cost of the child tax credit and home-based services. And there is no denying that the beneficiaries of this ultraexpensive provision are the wealthiest Americans. According to the Tax Policy Center, about 70 percent of the benefit goes to the top 5 percent of wage earners--70 percent goes to the top 5 percent. That is people making more than $366,000 a year, roughly six times the median household income of Texans. We were not talking about saving a few dollars here and there. The top 1 percent would save an average of $14,900 next year, and the bottom 40 percent of taxpayers wouldn't be given a dime's worth of a break in their taxes. The rich in America who stand to gain the most from this change are those who live in blue States, like New York and California that have higher State and local taxes. They would, under this legislation, get to deduct up to $80,000 in their State and local taxes from next year's Federal tax return, leaving everybody else to fill up the gap. Working families in Texas should not have to subsidize the tax bill for Manhattan millionaires. If the wealthiest people in New York or California think their State and local taxes are too high, there is a pretty simple solution: Tell your elected officials to cut taxes or you can do like many people are doing these days, vote with your feet and move to places like Texas. Over the last decade, Californians have flocked to my State by the hundreds of thousands. People do vote with their feet, and they clearly support what we are doing in Texas. We have been happy to welcome folks from all around the country who are in search of lower taxes, affordable homes, and a better standard of living. Blue State millionaires can't expect my constituents to subsidize their tax bills. They need to either pay their taxes or maybe they need to decide to move to someplace where they are not taxed at such a high rate. Under this bill, two-thirds of those making more than $1 million will receive a tax cut next year. Let me say that again. The vast majority of millionaires will, under the Democratic legislation, receive a tax break, and nearly 90 percent of those earning between $500,000 and $1 million will receive a tax cut. This is a sharp contrast from how middle-class working families are treated. Less than a third of those earning between $20 and $100,000 a year will receive a significant tax cut. And the following year, 2023, those savings dramatically decrease. Year over year, the tax provisions in this bill change dramatically. In fact, there is not a single year over the next decade in which each tax provision will be used at the same time. Democrats aren't rewriting the Tax Code to make millionaires pay their fair share; they are gaming it to create the illusion of fairness. Some programs begin immediately and end after 1 year. Some don't even take effect for a couple of years. These are plain budgetary gimmicks. After all, they can't afford to give billionaires a tax break and dole out increased social welfare programs. The fact of the matter is, the millionaire tax break in their legislation is the largest handout for wealthy Americans. But it is not the only one in the bill. This legislation would allow people earning hundreds of thousands of dollars to receive up to $12,500 from the taxpayers if they buy an electric vehicle. They also can receive up to $900 to purchase an e- bike, which is obviously less green than a good old-fashioned regular bike. The Democrats' reckless tax-and-spending bill also creates handouts for union bosses, trials lawyers, wealthy media corporations, and a host of powerful friends of the Democratic Party. All of these handouts may appease some of our colleagues' wealthiest supporters, but it will only make life harder for working families. Families earning just over the median household income, which is just under $62,000 in Texas, could see their childcare costs soar by as much as $13,000. And the climate policies in this bill are sure to drive energy prices even higher. Gasoline already costs 60 percent more today than it did a year ago. That is a combination of inflation and the policies of this administration which attack the very energy industry that we depend upon to provide affordable energy. If the Democrats manage to get this grab bag of radical climate policies signed into law, prices at the pump will go even higher. So this bill will not, as advertised, help America to build back better. It will ensure that we never reach the prepandemic recovery that was the envy of the world. No public relations campaign can hide the truth about this bill. This is a reckless tax-and-spending spree that will benefit the wealthiest of Americans at the cost of working families. The last thing we need to do is to line the pockets of wealthy Americans while driving up the costs of the middle class. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, yesterday, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Mr. Mayorkas, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is the first time he has been before the Judiciary Committee for an oversight hearing. Of course, our minds were all on the crisis that is currently underway--and has been since the beginning of this year--at the border. When our colleague Senator Lindsey Graham asked him how he would rate his own performance so far, he gave a bizarre answer. He said: ``I [would] give myself an A for effort.'' Well, that is the type of rating you would give yourself if you offered to cook dinner and completely bungled the recipe, or if you ordered a really thoughtful Christmas gift for your spouse, but it didn't arrive on time, you would give yourself an A for effort. But when you are talking about the person who is responsible for some of our Nation's most critical responsibilities for which there are life-and-death consequences, an A for effort is hardly acceptable, and in this case, it is an overly generous assessment. Over the last year, Customs and Border Protection has encountered more than 1.7 million migrants along the southern border--the highest on record. In 1 month alone, more than 213,000 migrants crossed the border, including 19,000 unaccompanied children. The Secretary may think he is worthy of an A for effort, but the numbers certainly do not reflect that. The American people are clearly concerned about the way things are going. A recent poll found that more than 80 percent of voters think illegal immigration is a serious issue. Nearly two-thirds believe that the President's Executive orders actually encourage more illegal immigration, and, as a result, only 35 percent of voters approve of the President's handling of the border. Leaders in the administration have tried to play the blame game, saying, well, they inherited policies from the previous administration that led to the crisis. That seems to be part of the playbook--let's blame Trump; let's blame the previous administration and absolve ourselves of any responsibility--but they have simply failed to provide an explanation to why those policies led to 460,000 fewer encounters in fiscal year 2020 but more than 1.7 million in 2021. There is no question at all that this crisis is a direct result of the Biden administration's words and deeds. Back in February, just a few weeks after President Biden took his oath of office, migrants who were interviewed in their trek from their homes across our border said as much. One woman who crossed the Rio Grande River on a smuggler's raft said that she and her 1-year-old son only came to the United States because of the Biden administration. She said: ``That gave us the opportunity to come.'' The administration has signaled that it is not only OK with the record levels of illegal immigration but that it is actively encouraging more people to make the trek. Prior to the Biden administration's border crisis, there was a clear and sensible process for migrants who crossed our border to claim asylum. That individual would be processed by the Border Patrol and undergo a credible fear assessment, which is the standard for claiming asylum, essentially determining, at least as a preliminary matter, whether they would qualify for asylum. If so, that person would be issued a notice to appear at a future court hearing--a critical document that tells asylum seekers when and where to show up for their day in court. But under Secretary Mayorkas's leadership, that is not happening anymore. I have heard from many folks in Texas about the fact that huge numbers of migrants are now being released without a notice to appear. Thousands of migrants have been released with what is now called a notice to report--essentially, a document that says: When you get where you are going, turn yourself in to your local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office. Well, these migrants haven't undergone a credible fear screening, so we have no way of knowing how many of them will likely, potentially, qualify for asylum. We do know, based on decisions from immigration courts, that only about 10 percent of the people who claim asylum actually qualify under the prevailing legal standard. Because these migrants haven't undergone preliminary screening, we have no information about the validity of their asylum claims. And it is unclear whether the administration has given any teeth at all to the warning that the failure to contact the local ICE office may result in your arrest. In other words, there are no consequences for not showing up. The Department of Homeland Security is now telling us that they have stopped issuing notices to report, but the truth is, they have just changed the title. They are still paroling migrants into the United States without issuing a notice to appear. When these migrants inevitably fail to turn themselves in to the nearest ICE office--and ICE's internal figures suggest the compliance rate is unsurprisingly low--it isn't clear that the Department of Homeland Security will do anything at all to locate them and remove them from the United States even though they haven't complied with the process that they have been told they must comply with. The Biden administration has made it even easier for migrants to disappear into the great American heartland. Several weeks ago, Secretary Mayorkas gave migrants another reason to believe that they could make it across our borders and be able to stay. According to Secretary Mayorkas, illegally entering our country is no longer reason enough for ICE to begin removal proceedings. The Secretary's guidance provided a few exemptions. In theory, illegal border crossers are a priority for enforcement but only if they are apprehended in the United States after unlawfully entering after November 1, 2020. It is unclear what the magic is with that date. In other words, ICE agents can't touch them unless another law enforcement agency picks them up first. It says individuals convicted of serious criminal conduct who pose a current threat to public safety should be a priority for removal, but it is unclear what crimes meet those criteria. Is distributing or receiving child pornography considered serious criminal conduct? What about crimes like embezzlement? larceny? breaking and entering? sex offenses? It is unclear exactly what the standard is, and I think that is on purpose because clearly Secretary Mayorkas does not want the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to actually enforce the law that Congress has written. We are the ones who make the policy, and the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement simply execute that policy. Clearly, Secretary Mayorkas is trying to confuse things such that no apprehension and detention takes place at all. What if the distribution of child pornography, let's say, happened 4 years ago? Is the perpetrator no longer a priority for apprehension and removal now that the threat isn't ``current''? In fact, the Secretary explicitly says the threat shouldn't be determined according to bright lines or categories. In other words, he wants to continue to fuzz it up and make it ambiguous. I don't understand why if you are actually serious about enforcing our laws. Is there a reason that any migrant convicted of possessing or distributing child pornography should be allowed to remain in the United States? The Secretary indicates that even certain migrants, like those who are elderly or provide for their families, should be exempt from the law. That clearly is not within the authority of the Secretary to decide against whom the laws should be enforced. Does that mean that someone who committed a sexual assault 20 years ago but now has a family who depends on him should be able to remain in the United States? It defies all common sense to ask our law enforcement officers to turn a blind eye when they encounter individuals who have clearly broken the law. Imagine calling the police to report an intruder in your home and being told, unless this person is young, childless, and murdered a member of your family, we can't do anything or we won't do anything. The reality of the situation, however inconvenient it may seem for our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, is that, by entering the United States illegally--by doing that--migrants have broken the law, and there have to be consequences. The Secretary cannot, consistent with his oath of office, refuse to enforce those laws in order to appease his party's political base. In fact, by clearly outlining who will and who will not be able to remain in the United States, notwithstanding what the law says, the administration is actually encouraging even more migrants to put themselves in harm's way to come to the United States. This is known as pull factors, which actually encourage more illegal immigration. Under this guidance, visa overstays aren't a priority for enforcement at all. If somebody comes in on a visa but overstays that visa, they are illegally present in the United States, but they don't have to worry about the Biden administration actually enforcing the law and removing them. In other words, the guidance is an open invitation for migrants to disregard the terms of their entry into the United States. When President Biden's nominee for the Customs and Border Protection testified before the Senate Finance Committee, I asked the police chief from Arizona if he agreed that the Biden administration's policy of nonenforcement is a pull factor that is encouraging more illegal immigration. He admitted that, yes, it is. So, yesterday, I asked Secretary Mayorkas the same question: Does this guidance of nonenforcement send a signal to criminal organizations, human smugglers, and migrants that if they illegally enter the United States and commit no other crimes, they can stay? He said: No. That is 100 percent false. But I disagree with Secretary Mayorkas. He is clearly not telling the truth. There is a clear correlation between the Biden administration's reckless policies and the record level of illegal migration. Any administration, of course, has a certain amount of discretion when it comes to enforcement, but what we are seeing from Secretary Mayorkas isn't an exercise of discretion, and it is certainly not A- for-effort worthy. I don't think anyone expected Secretary Mayorkas to lead the charge to secure our borders and crack down on illegal immigration, but he is not even doing the bare minimum that his job description requires. The truth is, the Biden administration has fumbled the border crisis at every turn. The President sent smoke signals about open borders before he even took office, and his administration has rolled out incentive after incentive for migrants to continue to break the law, and it has tied the hands of dedicated law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line to protect the American people. We have got a border czar who once compared ICE to the Ku Klux Klan, and we have a DHS Secretary who gives himself an A even though more than 1.7 million migrants have crossed the border since he took office in February. So, while Secretary Mayorkas thinks he is entitled to an A for effort, there is no question that, on balance, the Biden administration has earned an F for its response to the border crisis. 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, after months of delay, I am glad Senator Schumer has finally indicated he will allow the National Defense Authorization Act to come to the Senate floor this week. For each of the last 60 consecutive years, Congress has passed an NDAA to ensure that our servicemembers and military leaders had the resources they need to safeguard our democracy and our freedoms. This bill is how we maintain our military bases, modernize our force, and invest in the next generation of weapons that we hope we will never need to use but which are necessary for deterrence. It is how we strengthen our relationship with old allies and forge strong partnerships with new ones. It is how we address the global threat landscape and ensure our troops have the training, equipment, and the resources they need to counter adversaries of today and tomorrow. From threats by an increasingly hostile Iran to those by an unpredictable North Korea, there are many challenges on the horizon, but there is no question that the greatest threat to the world order and to peace itself is the People's Republic of China. The Chinese Communist Party has made no secret of its desire to continue to squash democracy, as they did in Hong Kong, and impose its economic, political, and military power on the rest of the world. Here at home, we are intensely aware of how China's aggression can impact our economy and supply chains for critical components of everything from cell phones to our fifth-generation stealth fighter, the F-35. Our dependency on advanced semiconductors manufactured in Taiwan and in Asia is a threat to America's economic and national security, but the most urgent and grave threats are against countries closer to China's borders. Last week, I had the chance to lead a congressional delegation visiting Southeast Asia to gain a better understanding of the threats and challenges in the region. The area spanning from Pearl Harbor all the way to the western border of India is the largest military theater in the world and is overseen by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and is home to 40 percent of the world's population. My colleagues and I had the opportunity to hear from our military leadership and key foreign partners in the region and gain a better understanding of ongoing and anticipated security threats, mainly from China. China has already co-opted, as I said, a formerly democratic Hong Kong. It is building missile batteries and aircraft runways for its bombers on artificial islands. It threatens freedom of navigation in international waters. It is guilty of gross human rights abuses against its own people; namely, the Muslim minority Uighurs. It is engaged in a border war with India. And it threatens to invade the Republic of China, otherwise known as Taiwan. Here at home, there is no question that China is a looming presence, but it is not in our backyard. We don't see its warships on our coastlines, or worry about an imminent military invasion on our shores. But that is not the case in the Indo-Pacific. In the Philippines, we caught a ride on a Navy P-8 aircraft over disputed waters. Within minutes of leaving Philippine airspace, we spotted a Chinese spy ship engaged in intelligence gathering operations off the Philippine coast. We traveled to India, where we met with Prime Minister Modi and Cabinet officials to discuss threats posed by China, as well as other shared priorities. But one of the main topics was the timetable for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. In every way possible, Taiwan is a stark contrast to the People's Republic of China. It is a true democracy, with elections whose results are not predetermined. It is a free-market economy that adheres to the rule of law. And it shares the same basic values we embrace in the United States: freedom of speech, freedom of press, religion, and assembly. Despite the fact that Taiwan has been a self-governing entity for more than 70 years, the Chinese Communist Party continues to claim the island nation as part of its territory. But as the Indian Minister for Foreign Affairs said, Taiwan isn't just a Taiwan problem; it is a China problem. In other words, what is at stake here is much larger than the future of one nation; it is the entire scope of Beijing's power and ambitions in the region. If China is able to capture Taiwan, there is no reason to believe that the Chinese Communist Party would stop there. China also has territorial claims against the Philippines, Japan, Vietnam, and India. We shouldn't view Taiwan as the CCP's ultimate goal, but as the first domino in a quest to reach regional and global dominance. If Taiwan falls, it will not be the end, but, rather, a beginning. As the Taiwanese Minister of Foreign Affairs told us, Taiwan is democracy's outpost standing watch against authoritarianism. I believe we have a legal and moral obligation to stand with Taiwan and deter China from invading. And we also have our own national security at stake. There is an old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In defense parlance, that means peace through strength; deterrence. There must be a strategy to dissuade China from an attempt to seize Taiwan. And there is no question that time is of the essence. Our delegation met with the commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, who described the current power dynamic rather succinctly. He said it is not a question of if China invades Taiwan, but when. According to our top military leaders, we have an idea of how long that might happen, because Xi Jinping himself has said he wants to be ready to invade by 2027. But we have been wrong before. I remember when people said that the Taliban--the intelligence community said it would take 2 years for the Taliban to take over Afghanistan, and we saw that happen almost in the blink of an eye. No one thought that country would fall to the Taliban before we even hit the withdrawal deadline, and we certainly did not expect the withdrawal in Afghanistan to turn into a rapid emergency evacuation mission. Taiwan might be safe for 6 years, but we can't operate on that assumption. We need to work with Taiwan and our friends and allies in the region to raise the costs, such that the PRC decides it is not worth its time and effort. The defense authorization bill is one critical way we can do that. It includes a bipartisan bill I introduced with Senator Duckworth, called the Taiwan Partnership Act. It would establish a partnership between the U.S. National Guard and Taiwanese defense forces to strengthen Taiwan's preparedness. Should troops need to deploy quickly in the event of a crisis, they would be armed with the same knowledge and skills as our dedicated U.S. National Guardsmen. The NDAA includes other provisions to increase defense cooperation with Taiwan and equip the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command with more resources. I appreciate my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have championed these provisions. As I said earlier, we have a moral imperative to stand with Taiwan and show China that the costs of invading are far greater than the benefits. But we have our own national security interests at stake because, if the supply of semiconductors from Taiwan were cut off, it would be a body blow to the American economy and our national security. I am glad Australia has already signaled its support for Taiwan, and I hope more of our international partners will follow suit-- particularly the quad composed of Australia, Japan, and India and the United States. Beijing can try to exert its muscle around the world, but the United States has one thing that China never will have, and that is friends and allies. I am grateful to our partners in the Indo-Pacific and around the world who have fought and who will continue to fight to preserve freedom and democracy. It is an honor to spend time with them. And on behalf of our entire delegation, I want to thank all of our hosts for their hospitality. Our trip to the Indo-Pacific was a timely reminder of the critical need to invest in our national defense and support our allies, new and old. As the Senate prepares to begin consideration of the Defense authorization bill, I would encourage all of us to keep in mind our solemn responsibility to support our national defense. That is our No. 1 priority. All of our other freedoms flow from our ability to protect and defend the American people. Whether our servicemembers are guarding against threats from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, or terrorist groups, they need the backing of a strong National Defense Authorization Act to succeed. I appreciate the bipartisan work of the Armed Services Committee, chaired by Chairman Reed and Ranking Member Inhofe, and appreciate their hard work in getting this bill ready for our consideration. The committee, during its markup, adopted 143 bipartisan amendments and reported out the final bill by a vote of 23 to 3. You don't get much more bipartisan than that around here. This legislation has been waiting in the wings for months, and I am glad we can finally begin consideration of this critical legislation this week. I hope we can continue the legacy of bipartisanship that guides this legislation through the Senate. This debate should be about how to defend our national security, how to deter tyrants and bullies from around the world, and guarantee the blessings of liberty to all democracies--those that share our values. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I am sure I am not alone in expressing concern for what the next few weeks in the runup to Christmas are going to look like, and certainly the Senate and the Congress have not operated as a well-oiled machine, to be sure. Back in September, when the Senate should have passed a group of bills to fund the government for the next year, we saw the can get kicked down the road. Last month, when our Democratic colleagues, the majority, had ample time and a clear roadmap to raise the debt ceiling, they punted and really depended on 11 of us on this side of the aisle to avoid a threat to the full faith and credit of the United States. Despite a strong push from both the distinguished Presiding Officer, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and the ranking member, the majority leader has so far refused to bring up the National Defense Authorization Act even though it has been ready for months. I am hoping that will change this week. I am advised that it will change and it will be taken up. These are not necessarily lofty goals we are talking about. We are talking about the bare minimum when it comes to doing the work of the Nation: funding the government, paying our bills, strengthening our military. But none of these basic responsibilities have been accomplished yet. These delays weren't out of necessity. After all, the Senate hasn't been debating and voting on important legislation--just a series of nominations and dead-on-arrival messaging bills. With such a long yearend to-do list, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, who control the agenda, don't have a lot of time. The Senate is only scheduled to be in session for 2 weeks before government funding expires, and there is just another additional week of scheduled legislating before the end of the year. You would think that would mean it is time to buckle up and start checking off these high-priority items, but our Democratic colleagues believe they have an even more important job. Forget the millions of government employees who would be left without a paycheck before the holidays or the economic crisis that would cripple our country if we defaulted on our debts or the servicemembers and their families who deserve a pay raise; our Democratic colleagues, the majority, are devoting all their time and agenda to a spending spree and the largest tax increase in American history, which apparently is the top item on the House agenda this week. The size and scope of this bill has changed a lot over the last several months. The chairman of the Budget Committee, the Senator from Vermont, initially floated a $6 trillion spending spree and tax increase. It was later ostensibly pared back to $3.5 trillion, and now our colleagues claim it would cost a mere $1.75 trillion--hardly a bargain and certainly hardly for sure when it comes to the amount of spending and taxing because, until the bill is finalized and the Congressional Budget Office has time to score it, we don't know actually how much this beast of a bill will actually cost. But the budget experts at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business say that the Democratic proposal has been dramatically understated in terms of its cost and its scope. Indeed, the folks at the Wharton School say the ultimate cost of this bill is really somewhere on the order of $4 trillion--more than double the amount that the advocates for this bill have stated. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concurs. They estimate the true cost of the bill would double to almost $5 trillion over 10 years because of arbitrary sunsets and expirations and other gamesmanship when it comes to this expensive government proposal. That is a whole lot more than the President's promise of zero dollars in cost. The President continues to insist that this bill costs nothing, but the American people are not deceived. They understand, when you talk about $1.75 trillion or $4 trillion, that somebody, somewhere, is going to have to pay for it; hence, the largest tax increase in American history. Then there is the so-called temporary nature of some of these government programs. This is all designed to mislead the public and Congress into thinking these bills are cheaper than they actually are. As President Reagan famously said, ``Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.'' Despite the lofty promises that have been made, millionaires and billionaires won't be the only ones footing the bill for this spending spree. In fact, one of the last-minute provisions would actually give the ultrawealthy a tax cut, and that is from our Democratic colleagues. One of the latest additions to the bill allows blue-State millionaires and billionaires to pay less in Federal taxes. A former economic adviser to President Obama and current Harvard professor described this provision as ``even worse than [he] had feared.'' Under this tax break for millionaires and billionaires, nearly two- thirds of those making more than $1 million would get a tax cut. So we are not just talking about a few bucks; the wealthiest Americans would save an average of $16,800 next year alone. The party that talks about the need to tax the rich is actually plotting a massive tax cut for the rich. While this bill will help the wealthiest Americans pay less in Federal taxes, it will ensure the middle class actually ends up paying more. Dating back to the campaign trail, President Biden has repeatedly said that ``if you make under $400,000 a year, I will never raise your taxes one [cent].'' His Treasury Secretary has made the same pledge, and the White House Press Secretary has restated this commitment again and again and again. Well, I understand why the White House is so concerned about this huge tax increase, but the more we learn about this bill, the clearer it becomes that the middle class will be required to help foot the bill for this spending bonanza. The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation found that significant numbers of families will see their taxes increased under the plan. In 2027, well over half of taxpayers earning between $75,000 and $100,000 will be paying more in taxes under this proposal. That is a violation of President Biden's promise that families earning less than $400,000 will not pay a single penny more in taxes. You just can't reconcile those two positions. That is only the beginning of the mounting costs this bill creates for hard-working American families and my constituents in Texas. The so-called free childcare in this bill will end up costing many families a lot of money. A left-leaning think tank found that middle-class families could pay up to $13,000 more a year for childcare. That is not a price increase on the top 1 percent; that is for people who earn more than their State's median income, which in Texas is just under $62,000. It is hard to imagine a family who brings home $62,000 a year being able to absorb another $13,000 in childcare expenses. Then come the mounting energy costs. We all know, when we go fill up the tanks of our vehicles, that gas prices are up more than 60 percent from 1 year ago, and this year, energy bills are expected to soar by as much as 54 percent. Our Democratic colleagues, by pushing so much money out the door, chasing so many limited goods and services, are pushing for policies that will actually exacerbate inflation and make these prices climb even higher. Specifically, they want to attack the fossil fuel industry by imposing a so-called methane fee on gas companies and resurrect an excise tax on each barrel of crude oil. But these price increases won't just be absorbed by the companies that produce oil and gas; this will be an expense that is passed on to customers. If families are struggling to cover their transportation costs today, they will be up the creek without a paddle once these new taxes and fees go into effect. The cash grab does not end there. This bill would also require hard- working Texas families to subsidize the cost of our colleagues' preferred green initiatives. It provides hundreds of billions of dollars in so-called green subsidies for massive corporations to become eco-friendly. That is right--our Democratic colleagues are proposing more subsidies for corporations, as if Fortune 500 companies need taxpayer assistance to go green. Wealthy Americans earning hundreds of thousands of dollars each year could receive up to $12,500 in taxpayer assistance if they buy an electric vehicle. Unfortunately, this also includes a little bit of cronyism in it because our Democratic colleagues are making sure that their party's most loyal supporters reap the benefits of this taxpayer- backed handout. The electric vehicle tax credits are even more generous if the car is made in a union shop even though there is no evidence that these vehicles are somehow better for the environment. We all know what is happening here. It is all too clear. But, again, hard-working American families will be the ones footing the bill for these tax credits that disproportionately benefit the wealthy and organized labor. To help cover the sky-high price of this bill, our Democratic colleagues want to ensure that Uncle Sam will be able to squeeze each and every penny possible out of middle-class families and small businesses. This bill gives the Internal Revenue Service, which has been notorious for its abuse of power, even more money and more authority. This bill would give the IRS $80 billion, more than half of which will build an army of auditors to poke and prod working families' finances. Instead of building back America, this builds up the bureaucracy, much to the detriment of Texas families. After all, it is going to take a lot of taxpayer money to pay for President Biden's zero-dollar bill. This reckless tax-and-spending spree is not what our country needs, particularly not at this time, Mr. President. Families don't want an even bigger government that reaches deeper into their pockets and exerts more and more control over their daily lives. They want the freedom to make their own decisions for themselves and their families and the opportunity to succeed based on their hard work. That is not what we are seeing today from the national Democratic Party. Our Democratic colleagues' bill takes steps toward Medicare for All by harshly penalizing States that didn't expand Medicaid. When the Affordable Care Act mandated a Medicaid expansion, the Supreme Court of the United States characterized that as a gun to the head for the States and said that was unconstitutional. But we know that Medicare for All will discourage medical innovation by slapping arbitrary price controls on things like prescription drugs. It turns the IRS into the government's No. 1 welfare Agency by extending no-strings-attached welfare checks into perpetuity. It proposes the highest income tax rate in the developed world. It gives Washington bureaucrats unprecedented power to punish States that fail to meet arbitrary climate mandates. It forces hard-working taxpayers to cover the bill for another unnecessary partisan spending spree. This far-left turn is not what the American people thought they were voting for in 2020, and, frankly, it is members of the President's own party who are beginning to tap the brakes in resisting this huge government expansion and huge spending spree, which will do nothing to address the rising concern of inflation in the country. So we are simply not going to join our colleagues in voting for this reckless tax-and-spending spree, and we will continue to do everything we can to expose the components of this bill because, frankly, I think the more the American people learn about what is in the bill, the less likely they will be to support it. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, later today, the Senate will vote on the latest power grab by our friends across the aisle, a bill that is called the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021. The most important reason to vote against this legislation is that it is clearly unconstitutional. I know it is unusual for Members of the legislative branch to make statements like that, but we do take an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States, and I think it is part of our responsibility to assess the constitutionality of legislation that is being proposed and to make a judgment on whether it is constitutional or not. One reason why I say that is because the Supreme Court has made very clear that it is within the authority of the States to conduct elections, and that those elections must be run subject to the Voting Rights Act; but that is section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which applies across the entire country. One of the reasons we find ourselves in this position today is because, in 2006, our Democratic colleagues proposed an extension of the Voting Rights Act but did not update the formula by which covered States were being determined. In other words, in 2006, they did not reflect the huge improvement and advances made in minority voting strength since 1965. I think you could say without fear of contradiction that the Voting Rights Act is one of the most important and most successful pieces of legislation ever passed in this country. The good news is that it has worked exactly as Congress had hoped. So our colleagues are really trying to pass an unconstitutional law, which would require States to change their voting rules to ask permission of the Biden Justice Department before they do so. As Chief Justice Roberts laid out in the Shelby County case, that is a departure from the norm, to be sure, and can only be justified to remedy past discrimination. But if you look at the current numbers of minority voting strength around the country, you see minorities voting at historically high numbers and even in many instances exceeding that of the majority. So this is really a piece of legislation that is being sold under false pretenses. Based on the way our Democratic colleagues talk about the state of voting rights in America, you would think the Supreme Court had struck down the Voting Rights Act. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who just spoke, the Democratic whip, described the current law as an ``insidious effort to suppress the right of voters of color.'' The majority leader, Senator Schumer, recently said that the right to vote was ``under attack in ways we have not seen in generations.'' And the Speaker of the House has said ``voting rights are under relentless attack.'' But the facts do not align with this doom and gloom picture of America. In 2020, roughly two-thirds of all eligible voters cast a ballot. In Texas, 66 percent of registered voters cast a ballot, 11.3 million voters. Compared to 2016, 17 million more people voted in 2020. This includes a higher turnout in Black, White, Hispanic, and Asian- American communities. When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act back in 1965, the goal-- the laudable goal, which we all share--was to eliminate discriminatory practices, and there is no question that it ultimately has worked. In 2012, for the first time on record, the turnout among Black voters was higher than that of White voters--higher. And in 2012, Hispanic and Asian voters turned out at the highest rate on record. So, clearly, thankfully, we have come a long way since 1965. And despite what Democrats would have you believe, the Voting Rights Act is alive and well and continues to protect minority Americans from discrimination. Even though the facts don't align with the Democrats' sky-is-falling depiction of voting rights in America, that hasn't stopped them from pushing this false narrative of widespread voter suppression. As our colleagues have demonstrated over the past few years, they have one tried-and-true strategy: if you can't win the game, change the rules. They failed to stop conservative nominees from reaching the Supreme Court, so their solution is to pack the Supreme Court with additional Justices--just add more liberal Justices. They are uninterested in bipartisanship, so they proposed ending the legislative filibuster. We have heard that time and time again. The Democratic whip just talked about the filibuster. And since they failed to secure a mandate in Congress, they want to forever change the rules of America's elections to rig the game in their favor. We have seen a steady stream of bills designed by our Democratic colleagues to achieve this end. This current bill, I think, is about the third iteration. First came the so-called For the People Act. Who could be against the For the People Act? It was so unpopular among Democrats that they had to go back to the drawing board and rewrite it. When the updated version came to the floor for a Senate vote, it went down with bipartisan opposition. So they came back from their drawing board once again, giving their legislation a new and different name: the Freedom to Vote Act. They stripped out some of the most egregious provisions, but not nearly enough to change the fate of this partisan bill; and like its predecessor, it failed to pass the Senate. But now our Democratic colleagues, they really do have the answer: a bill that perverts the cause of voting rights to give the Democratic Party unprecedented control over America's elections. At the heart of this legislation is the preclearance regime. In other words, the States would have to ask the Federal Government: Can we pass laws in our State? And it would be up to the Biden Justice Department and Merrick Garland to say yes or no. Now, back in 1965, the original Voting Rights Act did have a preclearance requirement, but it is clear that, according to the Supreme Court, that was only justified based on a history of past discrimination, which has now been essentially eradicated, if you believe the numbers of minority voters who are casting their ballots now. So think about the children's game, ``Mother, may I?'' All the kids line up on one side of the room except one who stands on the other side and acts like the mother. Before anyone can move forward, they have to ask, ``Mother, may I?'' Sometimes the mother says ``yes, you may,'' and sometimes she says ``no, you may not.'' Sometimes she even orders the children to take a step backward. That is eventually what Democrats are proposing in this legislation, to make the Biden Justice Department the mother, and the States have to ask, ``Mother, may I?'' before they could even fulfill their constitutional responsibilities. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the portion of the law that set the formula for when a State or local jurisdiction would have to seek preclearance. But, to be clear--and you can't tell this from the rhetoric on the left--the Court did not strike down the Voting Rights Act in its entirety; just the formula that determined which States would be covered. Because, as the Supreme Court said, that formula had to reflect current conditions, and, instead, Congress chose not to update the formula from 1965. That was section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court of the United States held unconstitutional. Chief Justice Roberts, in his opinion, speaking of the formula in that legislation, said: `` . . . history did not end in 1965.'' Well, here's an example. The formula set in 1965 required States to receive preclearance if they had any ``test or device'' that restricts voting. That would include things like literacy tests or subjective determinations of good moral character, which are, thankfully, nowhere to be found today. Democrats have tried to market this bill as a response to the Supreme Court's decision, but the truth is this legislation goes far beyond updating that outdated formula. It would make the formula so broad that virtually every State would have to ask of the Biden Justice Department, ``Mother, may I?'' before making any changes in their election laws. So if a county or municipal utility district or the State itself wanted to do something as simple as clean up voter rolls and remove the names of dead people, they would have to ask the Federal Government and the Biden Justice Department for permission to do so. Well, this is the same organization--the Biden Justice Department-- that recently took aggressive actions to discourage parents from exercising their constitutional right to speak out at local school board meetings. Clearly, we don't need to vest States' authorities in the hands of these unanswerable bureaucrats who are willing to abuse their power to discourage parents from exercising their constitutional rights. Based on this broad formula, you would think there has been countless unenforced instances of voter discrimination. If Democrats are willing to go this far to stop discrimination, it must be a widespread problem, right? Wrong. The Justice Department, as I said, retains the right to enforce section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which applies to the entire United States, and it prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. During the entire 8 years of the Obama administration, the Justice Department only filed four--four--enforcement cases under section 2. Well, if you think that discrimination against minority voters is rampant, don't you think you would see more than four enforcement actions by the Obama administration over an 8-year period of time? Well, the power grab doesn't stop there. This legislation also gives the Department of Justice veto power over State voter ID laws. Now, we all know you have to show a photo ID to open up a bank account; buy tobacco, alcohol; get married; board a plane; and do countless other things in our country. But our Democratic colleagues have this thing about requiring voter ID to vote, to make sure that you are actually qualified and authorized to cast a ballot. The American people overwhelmingly support voter ID laws. Four in five people believe voters should be required to show a voter ID in order to cast a ballot. But this legislation would override the will of 80 percent of Americans and allow the Justice Department to veto those laws for basically any reason that they choose. In so many ways, this legislation is a solution in search of a problem. It interferes--and I would say it usurps--the States' constitutional authority to manage their own elections and set their own congressional districts. You would have to ask ``Mother, may I?'' of the Biden Justice Department to redo any redistricting, which is currently underway now, in advance. And it makes it virtually impossible for the States to take actions to prevent fraud, essentially encouraging them to wait for large-scale voter fraud before they can take any action. And it arms the Department of Justice with new powers that will surely be used against those of the Democratic Party. We are still seeing the consequences of the Justice Department's blatant attack on concerned parents in our schools. Why on Earth would we hand a politically motivated Department even more power to abuse, especially when that power could shape the result of our elections? From city councils and school boards, all the way up to the President of the United States, the American people have a right--and I would argue a duty--to make their voices heard. A ``government of the people, by the people, for the people''--as Abraham Lincoln phrased it--is only possible if all Americans are free to participate in public life. Despite what the radical left might lead you to believe, there is no nationwide assault on minority voting rights. If there were, every single person in this building would be lined up together, arm's length, to fight against it. As I said before, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is one of the most important laws in modern American history, and it has actually worked, and it continues to protect all persons of color from any sort of discrimination when it comes to their right to cast their ballot. This bill isn't about supporting disenfranchised voters, though, or fighting voter suppression. This is a politically motivated power grab that would allow Democrats to determine and Washington to determine how elections in Texas would run. The narrative of widespread voter suppression is nothing but a scare tactic designed to support a political outcome. Republicans have blocked every iteration of this partisan power grab so far, and we will stand together to oppose this one as well at the next vote. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have my bill printed in the Record. The bill ensures the maintenance of critical supply lines within the defense industrial base.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, in watching from the sidelines and since we are not directly involved and because the Democrats decided to go it alone, our Democratic colleagues appear to be playing a game of whack- a-mole to keep their reckless tax-and-spending spree from falling apart. After months and months of intra-party negotiating--again, talking among themselves, not to us--they hit the gas pedal last week when they knew that President Biden was going to the U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, and they wanted to give him something that he could actually deliver on. So, last Friday, they finally settled on a framework, but the cracks quickly began to show. We don't even have a pricetag on this proposal, but some have estimated its cost at $1.75 trillion--an absolutely staggering amount of money. The truth is no one knows because the bill hasn't even been finalized yet, much less scored by congressional scorekeepers. Unsurprisingly, yesterday, one of our colleagues, the Senator from West Virginia, expressed some of his skepticism about the proposal; and I imagine more are in the wings, wringing their hands in private. After all, this bill spends trillions of dollars on radical priorities that are out of step with where most Americans are: expanded healthcare subsidies; handouts for labor unions; government-funded childcare; and an all-out attack on American-made, affordable energy. On Friday, the President touted the $555 billion that this agreement would put forward to support clean energy efforts, but these, upon further inspection, are mainly subsidies--taxpayer subsidies--for corporations and the well-off. I am reminded of France's yellow jacket protests a few years ago. In 2018, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Paris to protest a hike in gas taxes. At the time, President Macron said the increase was critical to pushing the French people to buy cleaner vehicles, but for most hard-working families, pricey electric vehicles simply were not and are not an option. The yellow jackets felt disenfranchised by the urban elite, saying leaders were talking about the end of the world while they were worried about the end of the month. It sounds pretty familiar. Here in the United States, families are being pounded by inflation. Prices are going up on everything from groceries to home appliances. Gas prices alone have gone up 60 percent from just 1 year ago, and families are doing their best to prepare for an expensive winter. Energy bills are expected to soar by as much as 54 percent. Despite the serious financial strain that families are feeling, our Democratic colleagues are pushing policies that will drive up those costs even more. But here is the real kicker: Often under these proposed policies, the wealthiest of Americans will stand to benefit the most on the backs of hard-working American families. One of the most clear-cut examples is the aggressive push toward subsidizing electric vehicles, which are among the most expensive cars on the market. Now, with 280 million cars on the road, only 2 percent of which are electric vehicles, this will not benefit most hard-working American families. It will benefit those who can afford these expensive vehicles, and the cherry on top is the up to $12,500 taxpayer subsidy that will help those wealthy Americans buy these expensive vehicles that are out of reach for most hard-working families. It doesn't matter if the vehicle is completely or substantially made in China, for example, or if the buyer makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year--they are still eligible for the tax credit. The most generous benefit is reserved for vehicles built in--you guessed it-- union shops. We know the labor unions are among some of the biggest supporters of our friends on the other side of the aisle, and they are set to receive their reward. Buyers could receive up to a $12,500 tax credit for purchasing an electric vehicle from a union shop. I have nothing against union shops. I support people who choose to be part of a labor union, but this idea that taxpayers should have to underwrite a benefit that goes exclusively to one part of the electric car business, to me, is offensive, and it is just unjustified. I haven't seen any evidence either that union-made electric vehicles are somehow more green than their nonunion-made competitors', but those companies are certain to gain financial benefits because of these generous taxpayer-funded handouts. Wealthy Americans and Big Labor win; hard-working American families not so much. Then there is a long list of government handouts to make homes more energy efficient. Similar to those electric vehicles, the high cost of retrofitting a home makes it infeasible for most families--certainly, the middle-class families. Outfitting a home with solar panels will cost you well over $10,000; and, of course, the bigger the house, the more the cost. The Biden administration is, once again, happy to let taxpayers subsidize these expenditures. The Democrats' proposals include billions of dollars in rebates and grants to help cover the cost of retrofitting homes, even for the well-to-do, who will be the ones who will primarily be able to afford, even with these subsidies, this sort of retrofit. At the end of the day, the family with the means to spend thousands of dollars on these products will spend less on their monthly electricity bill, which I assume is the point, but everybody else will pay more in taxes without having the benefit of a lower electricity bill. If our colleagues on the other side of the aisle get their way, monthly electricity prices are likely to increase for everyone else. As I mentioned, gas prices are up significantly from last year. If you filled up your pickup truck a year ago, today you will find out that you will spend about $33 more for each tank of gas that you pump. And energy prices for homes this winter are expected to go up as much as 54 percent. These are incredible numbers. This is what happens when you throw so much money at limited goods and services--prices go up; inflation goes up. It is a silent tax on people who must pay for these goods and services and have nowhere else to turn. With this as a backdrop, our Democratic colleagues have proposed to raise taxes on energy companies and drive those prices even higher. Now, only in a fantasy world can you impose greater costs through tax increases on a business and not have them transferred directly to the consumers who buy these goods and services. They are going to be passed along to the people who pay for these goods and services. This bill will include a new methane tax, which would require oil and gas producers to pay hefty fees if they emit more methane than the government allows. Natural gas accounts for 40 percent of our electricity--double the amount as renewable sources. Hitting those companies 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. By the way, we need natural gas in order to produce the electricity that you use to charge your electric vehicle. As we hope to move to cleaner forms of energy--obviously, coal being the one that most of us believe emits the most emissions--moving to natural gas just makes sense, and as a matter of fact, the United States has reduced our emissions, not by banning access to any particular energy source but by producing more natural gas. If we need an example of what a natural gas shortage in America would look like, just take a look at Europe. The supply shortage has caused electricity prices in Europe to skyrocket, plus the fact that they have banned the use of coal and even nuclear power, which is emissions-free. But after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown and the tsunami that followed, Europe basically decided to hang up on any additional nuclear production. So natural gas prices, which are going to sustain the greatest demand, will go up about 600 percent. Since the start of the year, they have. The situation is so dire that utility companies have switched from natural gas and now begin to burn coal and fuel oil because they simply don't have access to enough natural gas. This is the problem with the push to quickly move away from fossil fuels before we are ready to transition into other types of energy sources and when you punish the producers of that affordable energy. Renewables, as laudable as they are--and in Texas, we are an ``all of the above'' State. We produce more electricity from wind turbines than any other State in the Nation. But renewables don't come close to generating enough energy to power our world. If the United States and our allies scale back production to pursue arbitrary emission benchmarks, that leaves the world turning to countries like Russia and organizations like OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, to provide that energy. So it is no wonder that Russia is a no-show at the U.N. climate summit. They are actually the ones that will stand to benefit the most if other countries eliminate fossil fuels from their fuel mix because other countries around the world will have no choice but to buy more and more Russian energy. In his remarks yesterday, President Biden said we should view the current price volatility as a call to action rather than a reason to back off our clean energy goals. Well, I disagree. Families are being pummeled by high prices across the board. We don't need to increase that burden by driving up costs or potentially adding an energy crisis to the mix. As I said, Texas has always been a proud supporter of the ``all of the above'' energy strategy. We are often recognized for the might of our oil and gas sector. But a lot of folks don't know, as I said, that Texas is a leader in wind energy. Well, we produce about one-quarter of all the wind energy in the United States. If we were a country, we would be the fifth-largest wind energy producer in the world. We don't plan on stopping there. We are also making serious strides in energy innovation through cutting-edge carbon capture and storage projects. Texas is proof positive that we can strike a balance between conservation, productivity, and economic power, and you can embrace low-emission energy sources without hammering the middle class. But those are not the types of proposals we see from the tax-and-spending spree bill now pending before the House of Representatives. This bill would simply drive up costs for hard-working American families, hurt our energy independence, and benefit our adversaries. This may impress President Biden's peers in Glasgow, but it is sure to fall flat with the American people. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have my bill printed in the Record. The bill ensures the maintenance of critical supply lines within the defense industrial base.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, communities across our great Nation are dealing with a startling spike in violent crime. Last year, the murder rate soared by nearly 30 percent, the largest single-year jump on record. The American people are paying close attention, and they are concerned. A poll this summer found that nearly 60 percent of Americans are worried about crime. The percentage of those who say they are extremely concerned is at the highest point in more than two decades, and folks largely think not enough is being done to address this spike. A separate poll found that 65 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with policies to reduce or control crime. That is up more than 16 percent from 2020. Perhaps this is an offshoot of the ``defund the police'' movement that we have seen in radical circles over the last year or so. With such a dramatic and shocking jump in homicides and violent crime and the clear belief that more should be done to address it, you would expect that the U.S. Department of Justice would be in an all-hands-on- deck posture. After all, this is the highest law enforcement agency in the country. You would think it would take a leading role in finding ways to keep our country and our communities safe. Unfortunately, leaders at the Department of Justice in the Biden administration believe that they have bigger fish to fry. Forget stopping murderers and violent criminals. The most forceful language we have seen recently from the Attorney General hasn't been about stopping dangerous criminals; it is about going after concerned parents at school board meetings. That is right--communities across the country are worried about violent crime, and the Biden Justice Department is worried about parents who are concerned about what their kids are learning in school. This all started with a deeply misguided letter from the National School Boards Association about heated school board meetings across the country. Parents who are concerned about things like critical race theory and other controversial topics, who are simply worried that their kids aren't learning about American history and civics and the foundations upon which this great country was built, they have taken their concerns to school board meetings--something they have every right; indeed, a constitutional right--to do. I want to be clear: there is no place for violence or threats of violence in our public discourse. It doesn't matter who you are or what you are fighting for; violence is not the answer. But rather than allow State and local law enforcement authorities to intervene in those rare circumstances when things go off track, the school board leaders at the National School Boards Association went nuclear. They encouraged the Biden administration to treat these parents like something akin to domestic terrorists. They advocated for unleashing the full arsenal and might of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation on concerned parents--concerned parents. And the Attorney General was, apparently, happy to oblige their outrageous demands. The National School Boards Association letter argued that a parent who disagrees with the curriculum in their children's school could be investigated under the PATRIOT Act. You will remember the PATRIOT Act was passed after 9/11/2001 to address radical extremists who had just killed 3,000 Americans in attacks at the Pentagon and in New York. Unsurprisingly, this letter from the National School Boards Association was met with fierce and immediate blowback. I don't know how they didn't see it coming. Concerned parents and terrorists don't share anything in common. Well, after the negative press, the National School Boards Association eventually retracted their letter and apologized. They admitted that there was ``no justification for some of the language included in the letter,'' but the damage had already been done. A few days later, after the letter was sent, Attorney General Garland decided to get into the game, and he published a memo directing Federal law enforcement to inject itself into local school board elections. Well, we had a chance to question Attorney General Garland last week, when he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he conceded that his decision to send out a memo to the Federal law enforcement was based almost entirely on the letter from the National School Boards Association and ``news reports.'' Of course, the Attorney General could not cite any specific examples that he relied upon before unleashing the awesome power of the Federal Government on parents, nor could he provide any data or evidence that local enforcement was incapable of handling any incidents that might occur. In his memo, the Attorney General also encouraged the Federal authorities to take action far beyond any threats of violence and references to intimidation of school officials. But you have to ask: What counts as intimidation to the Attorney General? Is an angry, frustrated parent raising their voice at a school board meeting intimidation? I think not. What if one of the parents tells a school board member they plan to run against them in the next election or donate to their opponent in the next election; is that intimidation? Well, to his credit, the Attorney General did finally concede that parents' right to speak their minds at school board meetings are protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is their constitutional right. But I ask you, put yourself in the shoes of a parent who reads about this Department of Justice memo--from the Attorney General, no less--at the kitchen table. Is it going to have an impact on their decision to attend the next school board meeting? Will it cause them to shy away from advocating for their children's education and speaking up about misguided policies that they think have no place in their child's school? I ask you to consider the chilling effect that this had, and will continue to have, on parents who just want to have a say in their children's education. Instead of raising their voices in opposition to things like critical race theory or other radical educational policies, parents are more likely to be intimidated and to stay at home for fear of being labeled domestic terrorists by the highest law enforcement officer in the land. They certainly can't afford to hire a lawyer to defend themselves against these sorts of charges by the Federal Government, were the Federal Government to come after them for exercising what Attorney General Garland said were their First Amendment rights under the Constitution. In response to the Attorney General's memo, the U.S. attorney from Montana sent out a list of Federal statutes that could serve as a basis for prosecution. He took the Attorney General at his word. Among the Federal statutes that he thought could serve as a basis for prosecution included repeated telephone calls. Well, last week, I asked the Attorney General if he considered the chilling effect that his memo might have on parents exercising their constitutional rights. He evaded the question. So I asked him again. His answers became more evasive. So I asked him again. Ultimately, the Attorney General--although he was sworn in under oath, testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee--refused to answer the question. He wouldn't tell me, wouldn't tell the Judiciary Committee, wouldn't tell the country, whether he had put any thought at all into how his actions would impact concerned, law-abiding parents. Even though the National School Boards Association retracted and apologized for its letter, the Justice Department--the Biden Justice Department--still refuses to do so. Attorney General Garland has doubled down on this colossal overreach and still refuses to take ownership or consider how his swift and uninformed action has harmed public discourse in our country. But, clearly, it is not only where we are headed, because we are already there. The President and the leaders in his administration aren't making decisions on the basis of the law of the land, but based on demands of their radical left. Amid an alarming spike in murder and violent crime rates, the Justice Department is focused on the threat of concerned parents, because that is what the radical left wants. The Department is filing meritless lawsuits against State election laws, like those in Georgia and Texas, because that is what their radical base wants. The Secretary of Homeland Security has told Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers not to enforce our Nation's immigration laws, because that is what the radical left and the Democratic Party want. President Biden has signaled that he is not only OK with this kind of selective law enforcement, he actually wants more of it. One of the most controversial nominees being considered by the Senate right now is Rachael Rollins, who the President has nominated to serve as the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts. Ms. Rollins currently serves as a district attorney for Suffolk County, MA, where she is embroiled in her own controversy. Shortly after taking office in 2019, Ms. Rollins released a memo outlining more than a dozen crimes that she said should be ignored by local law enforcement. According to Ms. Rollins, individuals who commit offenses like trespassing, shoplifting, larceny, wanton or malicious destruction of property, and even possession with intent to distribute drugs, she said her office would not prosecute them, so law enforcement should not arrest them. Now, I have no issue with law enforcement using limited resources to prioritize the biggest threats, but there is a big difference between prioritizing dangerous criminals and offenses and exempting wholesale classes of crimes from enforcement. What happens when the message is sent that government will not enforce its laws? As being played out in California now, where many businesses are simply withdrawing from places like San Francisco, where, if you steal or shoplift something under $950 worth of merchandise, law enforcement will not arrest you; they will not prosecute; and thus the stores are left without recourse and, as you can imagine, thievery runs riot. Well, leaders certainly shouldn't tip their hat to criminals as to what crimes may be committed free of any consequences, and that is exactly what is happening. The Justice Department's priorities are completely out of whack, and radical, partisan U.S. attorneys will only make things worse. The Biden administration cannot continue to take their marching orders from the radical base of their political party. And the United States should never be a place where concerned parents are treated like criminals and actual criminals get a free pass. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, after months of--well, I won't call it infighting; I will call it intraparty negotiating, our Democratic colleagues are still trying to reach an agreement on their multitrillion-dollar tax-and-spending spree legislation. They have yet to decide how much money they want to spend. I think they started--the Senator from Vermont started at $6 trillion, and then we heard it was $3.5 trillion. Now we are hearing that it may be more on the order of what the Senator from West Virginia said was his cap of $1.5 trillion. We still also don't know how much they are willing to raise taxes to cover the cost or how far they want to move America into a European welfare state. Still, our colleagues are trying to reach a deal in a matter of days. Our colleagues are rushing to compile the largest peacetime tax hike in American history and see just how much government overreach those hard- earned tax dollars can buy. Some Members experienced buyer's remorse before even swiping the taxpayers' credit card, so our colleagues are trying to scale back this massive spending bill. We read, but we don't know, but it is reported that they have cut certain programs, like free college, which, despite the name, we know that free programs actually cost money because somebody has to pay for them. We also read that they are scaling back other plans, including paid leave and the expanded child tax credit, to reduce the short-term costs and hope for more money down the line. I think, if truth be told, once these policies are established, many times they are very difficult to repeal later on, which is why they are trying to establish a toehold even for a short period of time. But even with these pared-down proposals, there is still plenty of government overreach to go around. One of the biggest dreams of our Democratic colleagues is government- run healthcare. We have heard the left embrace Medicare for All as its rallying cry. Well, the Senator who popularized that policy is now chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Sanders, and he wields a lot of power when it comes to this particular tax-and-spending bill. It is no surprise that his top priority is a dramatic expansion of Medicare. Initially, we read that our colleagues wanted to lower the age of Medicare eligibility by 5 or 10 years, making tens of millions of younger Americans eligible for this benefit. This, of course, comes at a time when Medicare is in financial trouble already. In just 5 years, the trust fund for Medicare Part A is scheduled to go insolvent. It hardly seems right, while your boat is in danger of sinking, to add more and more people into the boat. Instead of fixing those problems or providing stability for Medicare, our colleagues want to spread those waning dollars even thinner. The sky-high cost of expanding eligibility seems to have eliminated that provision. Again, this is based on reporting since no one has actually seen the documents, but a massive expansion of benefits apparently is still being discussed. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that this expansion would cost more than $350 billion in the first 10 years. We will see if the chairman of the Budget Committee is able to keep this provision off the chopping block. But this is only part of the plan to put the government in greater control of our daily lives--of all Americans' daily lives. Another big- ticket item which certainly must poll well is free childcare. Again, nothing is free; it just means somebody--not you--is having to pay for it. But free programs, as it turns out, don't come cheap. In this case, the original pricetag was pegged at $450 billion. The American people won't just pay more in taxes to cover this program; many families will end up spending more on childcare. One left-leaning think tank analyzed the impact of this free childcare bill and found that it is likely to have a devastating impact on middle- class families. According to the People's Policy Project, the Democrats' childcare plan would cause middle-class families to pay more than $13,000 more a year in childcare. That is not just a price increase for the top 1 percent; that is for people who earn more than their State's median income, which in Texas is just under $62,000. It is hard to imagine a family of four who brings home $62,000 a year having an extra $13,000 to spend on childcare, especially when they are already being pummeled by inflation and rising costs. We will see all the ways that President Biden was wrong when he said that ``my Build Back Better agenda costs zero dollars.'' Of course, nobody believes that, but the President keeps saying it over and over and over again. But the American people are pretty smart, and they understand when the wool is being pulled over their eyes or when they are being sold a bill of goods by saying: Yeah, we are going to spend $3.5 trillion, but it is actually going to cost zero. It is really an insult to their intelligence. Our colleagues across the aisle have also proposed a litany of tax increases on families, workers, and small businesses to cover part of the costs of this massive spending bill, and they hope the increase in the size and power of the Internal Revenue Service will make sure that Big Brother doesn't miss anything. The administration wants to double the size of the Internal Revenue Service by increasing the number of agents by 15 percent every year for the next decade. Well, we have already seen what a politically motivated IRS can do. We know about the leaking of taxpayer information recently, and we remember the IRS targeting controversy during the Obama administration. IRS bureaucrats subjected conservative groups to a double standard when it came to scrutiny compared to left-leaning nonprofit groups, and it looks like the Biden administration may want to dust off that old playbook. The administration also wants to give the IRS unprecedented power to snoop in your bank account. The administration proposed requiring banks to give the IRS data on accounts with more than $600 in annual transactions. So that means every time you bought a washing machine or a refrigerator, you paid your rent, maybe paid your mortgage, maybe bought a car, that information would be reported to the IRS. The IRS already knows how much you earn because that is reported, but that is apparently not enough for the IRS surveillance. They want to make sure that the IRS, like Big Brother, knows everything you do, everywhere you go, and who you associate with. Well, this was a $600 annual transaction minimum, and, of course, that is for an entire year. It is easy to see how that would swoop up virtually everybody in this new government surveillance program. This obviously is not designed to catch billionaires evading their tax responsibilities. It is tough to imagine somebody who wouldn't get caught up in that threshold over the course of an entire year. A single month of rent is higher than 600 bucks in most Texas cities. Well, we know what happened. The blowback was so fierce that our Democratic colleagues said: Well, it is not going to be $600 a year. We will up it to $10,000 a year. But, yeah, we will continue the surveillance of your personal private financial information just so we are sure we don't miss anybody. Well, even at a threshold of $10,000, a widow who gets a monthly stipend from Social Security for $1,500 a month would obviously be a target of IRS snooping under this proposal. It is pretty obvious this is a huge violation of personal privacy, and people are rightfully angry about it. I think people are angry because they don't want to be presumed to be a tax cheat by their own government. I have received letters from nearly 60,000 of my constituents who are opposed to such massive government overreach and invasion of their privacy. We know it is also an incredible financial and paperwork burden on financial institutions--community banks, credit unions, and the like. Imagine the time and the people and the hours necessary to comply with this new surveillance by your own government. Transmitting the sensitive financial information of almost every customer of a bank or financial institution to the IRS would involve a lot of time and a lot of money that these banks or credit unions may or may not have. I have cosponsored a bill with Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina to prevent the IRS from monitoring American citizens' private financial information, and I was pleased to see our colleague from West Virginia, Senator Manchin, cast doubt on the future of this controversial and unnecessary provision. The truth is, it doesn't matter if the pricetag of this bill is $5.5 trillion, $3.5 trillion, or $1.5 trillion; the goal is the same: to permanently transform America and the role that government plays in our everyday lives. Whether that is through the healthcare system, childcare, or through the IRS, there is no line too sacred to cross in pursuit of this ideological nirvana. Our colleagues continue working behind closed doors to determine just how much socialism they want to force on the American people. We still don't know how much this bill will cost--again, nobody has seen it yet outside of the small group of Democrats who are actually negotiating--or how much harm it will actually inflict. But we do know one thing: This is not what the American people bargained for in the last election. The American voters elected a 50-50 Senate, reduced the Democratic majority in the House, and took President Biden at his word when he promised to work in a bipartisan fashion across the aisle. This is not what the American people bargained for. They did not vote to make Joe Biden the next FDR, and they did not vote to have this Build Back Better bill be the next New Deal. We will continue, once we are able to find out precisely what is in this bill, to do everything we can to fight against this irresponsible taxing-and-spending bonanza. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, after failing to pass any radical climate proposals this year, it appears our colleagues across the aisle are in a panic mode. The reason is, later this week, President Biden will be traveling to Glasgow, along with a dozen or more U.S. officials and Members of Congress, for a U.N. climate summit, and it looks like they are going to show up empty-handed. The President has talked a big game when it comes to climate change. On the campaign trail, he promised that the electric sector would be carbon pollution-free by 2035. He committed to building 1.5 million energy-efficient homes and public housing units, and he said the United States would transition from oil and gas. Of course, he will be long gone from office, so he will never be held accountable for these projections, even if they miss by a mile, which I predict they will. But the fact is he has failed to make good on his promises to fundamentally transform the energy landscape in America, and I would suggest that that is for a very good reason. Policies that drive up costs for the American people, hurt our energy security, and enrich our adversaries don't typically get a lot of traction here in the U.S. Congress. Two-and-a-half years ago, we saw a great example of how unpopular these policies were when the pie-in-the-sky Green New Deal came to the Senate floor for a vote. Not a single Senator voted for that bill. Even the Members who introduced it were too afraid to vote yes because of the blowback. But now that our Democratic colleagues control all levers of the Federal Government, afraid of their radical base, their calculus seems to have changed, so they are trying to jam these radical policies into the multitrillion-dollar tax-and-spending spree bill, otherwise known as reconciliation. Despite working on this bill for months and only needing Democrat support to get it to the President's desk, our Democratic colleagues are still struggling to reach an agreement among themselves. But now that President Biden has a deadline and he wants to look good in front of other world leaders in Glasgow, it is, apparently, crunch time. But they have a problem: no bill has even been written or even seen the light of day. There is a steady stream of reporting about which outrageous policies are in and which are out, but none of us have seen a bill--we haven't seen it in writing--if it exists at all. Based on reporting, though, massive tax hikes on the energy sector appear to be in the mix. Energy companies would pay higher taxes on income earned in the global marketplace and be subjected to the double taxation of their foreign incomes. And we know that when producers have higher overhead because of the higher tax burden, they don't absorb that; they pass it along to consumers in terms of higher prices. Our Democratic colleagues want to also add a Superfund excise tax, which would force energy companies to pay more on every barrel of crude oil that is sold. Tax hikes on oil and gas companies won't increase the output of renewables, and renewables only accounted for 20 percent of the electricity generation last year while natural gas accounted for double that. That is why, in my State, we believe in the all-of-the-above approach--all forms of energy--knowing that the Sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. We found out last year, because of extremely cold weather, we couldn't even put natural gas in the pipeline because we didn't have the electricity to run the compressors, and so it was--no pun intended--a perfect storm. What we learned from that experience--and I think what we should all learn--is that renewables have their place. They are important, and their role is growing, but you have to have a reliable base load of energy, which renewables cannot supply. The only outcome of these tax hikes will be to drive up costs for working families and send more business to foreign energy producers. I remember recently that President Biden, in looking at the high price of gasoline--which has gone up dramatically--looked to OPEC--the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries--led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, and asked them to produce more oil. Well, how about American energy producers and the jobs that go along with that and the pipelines that move that oil and gas safely around the country? He is OK with Nord Stream 2, which is a Russian gas pipeline over in Europe; but when it comes to the Keystone XL Pipeline here in America, ``shut her down'' is his attitude. Massive tax increases aren't the only provisions that seem to have survived negotiations, the best we can tell from the reporting. Handouts to wealthy Americans to buy electric vehicles appears to be safe. Talk about socialism for rich people. These aren't cars that average working families can afford to buy. They are, roughly, double or more expensive than regular cars operating on an internal combustion engine. Nevertheless, this bill, apparently, will provide for $12,500 in tax credits for electric vehicle purchases--again, for some of the most expensive cars in the marketplace. So, for those people working for a living, who cannot afford to buy these expensive electric vehicles even with this very generous tax credit, they are going to be asked to subsidize the purchase of these vehicles by wealthy Americans who don't need the tax credit or the subsidy coming from hard-working American families. This subsidy isn't only set up to reward buyers purchasing American- made vehicles; you can still receive a taxpayer handout even if the vehicle is completely or substantially made overseas, in countries like China. On top of that, a bigger tax credit is available to electric cars built in union shops. Well, maybe union-built vehicles are somehow more green than other electric vehicles. I doubt that. Or maybe it is a favor doled out to a favored interest group by our friends across the aisle. That seems like the more likely conclusion. While electric vehicles don't use gasoline, they still require a lot of energy to run. Our colleagues don't, apparently, know where electricity needed to run these vehicles comes from. Well, I will tell them. It comes from coal; it comes from natural gas; it comes from renewables; it comes from hydropower and nuclear power or some mixture of all of those. Yet these are the very energy sources they say they are seeking to avoid by incentivizing more use of electric vehicles. Well, if Democrats raise taxes on companies that produce natural gas, which accounts for 40 percent of our electricity production, what is the plan to power the fleet of taxpayer-subsidized electric vehicles? Renewables don't generate enough energy to power our country today, let alone the amount we need to charge millions of new electric vehicles. Still, the Democrats are eager to push America toward renewables and punish those who don't jump on board. One of the most controversial parts of the Democrats' energy push appears to be in peril, if you can believe the reporting. Again, none of us have seen this. We just know what we read. That program is known as the Clean Electricity Performance Program, or the CEPP. This program would reward utility companies that already use renewable electricity sources and punish those that do not. So, if you are wondering how that switch would go, just look at some of the energy policies out West, in California. That State made an aggressive push to transition to push 100-percent renewables by 2030, but as I said, renewable energy is not always reliable energy, and it certainly isn't affordable energy. In recent years, California has implemented rolling blackouts to ration limited energy supplies during the hot summer months; and, on average, Californians pay twice as much as Texans for electricity. That is where those higher prices go--they get passed on to the consumer. Twice as much is the cost of electricity in California as compared to Texas. So imagine what would happen if every utility company across the country were forced to use only renewable sources. Last month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Commissioner testified before the Senate, and he said this proposal would be an ``H bomb'' for electricity markets. It would blow it up. Our colleague, Senator Manchin, from West Virginia, has said he won't support this proposal; and good for him, but other Democrats have not given up yet. President Biden recently insisted ``nothing has been formally agreed to.'' Again, this whole process is opaque to Republicans because we haven't been invited to the table or welcomed to the table to try to come up with a bipartisan policy. Our Democratic colleagues have insisted they want to do this all on their own because they know only then will they be able to come up, presumably, with something that will appease the most radical elements of their political base, and if they negotiated with the Republicans, they wouldn't be able to do that because we would have to negotiate toward the center rather than on the fringes of political ideology. Despite the fact that these policies that I have mentioned would radically transform the energy landscape and drive up costs to consumers and hurt our energy security, our colleagues are rushing-- rushing--to reach a deal before the President is wheels up to Europe. Forget sound public policy; President Biden wants a new talking point at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. This rush job comes at a time when energy prices are already skyrocketing. Talk about inflation. Gasoline is up more than 55 percent from a year ago. With winter fast approaching, heating bills, including heating oil that many Northern States use, are expected to rise as much as 54 percent from last year. This is really an invisible tax on people, where the value of your dollar that you earn is diminished by the increase in cost--54 percent over last year for heating bills in the northern part of our country. Well, it is all across the country, but it is, obviously, needed more there than in my part of the country. Of course, these aren't the only higher prices that families are facing. Inflation continues to pummel the American people, putting a tight squeeze on family budgets. For seniors, for veterans, and others who operate on fixed incomes, those price hikes are a threat to their livelihoods. There could not be a more dangerous or costly time to wage war on American energy. No family should have to choose between buying groceries and turning on the heat in the wintertime. President Biden is eager to put a show on in Glasgow and impress world leaders with dubious commitments that he can't keep, but these measures have the potential to inflict real and lasting harm on the American people. I am not opposed to renewable energy, electric vehicles, or efforts to preserve our greatest natural resources for future generations. I support efforts to capture carbon and sequester it. All of these policies need to strike a delicate balance based on prudence, based on science, and based on logic, not based on some ideology about the way that you wish the world was; it is how the world is. Democrats want to force the American people to pay more for less reliable energy and endanger our own energy security to meet these arbitrary net zero deadlines. As I said, they are rushing to meet a deadline so that President Biden can have a good applause line in Glasgow. This is just the latest example of how the reckless tax-and-spending spree is not helping the American people at all but, rather, it is about forcing Democrats' vision on every city, State, and family in the country. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, in the coming days, thousands of politicians from 200 different companies will convene in Glasgow, Scotland, for the U.N. climate summit. They will step off their private planes and into meetings about the need to reduce global emissions, and I am not sure many of them will see the irony of their actions. These leaders will try to paint fossil fuels as the world's greatest enemy. They will make lofty and, yes, unrealistic commitments to eventually transition to clean energy sources. At the same time, they will completely ignore the realities of the current energy landscape. Around the world, energy shortages are having a costly impact on working families. Here at home, Americans are experiencing sticker shock at the gas pump. Gas prices, after all, have gone up by more than 55 percent from just 1 year ago. If you are driving a pickup truck, you will spend almost $32 more to fill up your tank today than you did last October. In States like California, the problems are even worse. Last week, the price of a gallon of regular gas in one town hit $7.59 a gallon, and premium was nearly $8.50 a gallon. It is hard to imagine how somebody operating on a fixed income or working a minimum-wage job would cover those sorts of expenses, especially since it is lower income Americans who typically have to travel farther because of the high cost of living and housing in our major urban areas. So low gas prices are the only thing that will allow them to get by. But gas prices are not the only growing energy expense in family budgets. As we head into winter, heating bills are expected to soar. Households could pay up to 54 percent more than they did last winter. It will cost more to heat your home, more for your family to visit for the holidays, more to put holiday meals on the table, and more to buy gifts for under the Christmas tree. This holiday season is shaping up to be a pricey one. Costs at home are growing by the day, and our friends across the Atlantic aren't faring any better. Europe, in fact, is in the midst of an unprecedented energy crisis. A supply shortage has caused prices to skyrocket. For example, since the start of the year, natural gas prices are up almost 600 percent. The situation is so dire that utility companies have switched from natural gas, which is the cleanest burning fossil fuel, to coal and fuel oil. This global energy crisis serves as the backdrop for this summit in Glasgow, where the world leaders will discuss plans to further reduce the use of fossil fuels. They are not saying what they would do as an alternative; they just want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg when it comes to low cost, cleaner burning energy like natural gas. Now, making promises to curb emissions sounds pretty good if you could, in fact, do it. It sounds good until you realize this is what you get: unreliable and unaffordable energy. In Europe's case, there is also a very dangerous power dynamic at play. The supply of energy to the continent could be increased, but the guy controlling the spigot--his name is Vladimir Putin. One of Russia's top priorities is Nord Stream 2, a pipeline to carry more gas directly from Russia to Europe. This project, of course, has been years in the making and has faced considerable opposition around the world, especially among our colleagues on this side of the aisle. President Biden has already handed Moscow a massive victory by stepping aside and refusing to impose sanctions on the company building Nord Stream 2. Now Putin is withholding desperately needed gas from Europe until the pipeline is approved. Yes, he is using energy as a weapon against those who are totally dependent on Russia for that energy. This is a problem with the global efforts to quickly move--too quickly--before we are ready, away from fossil fuels. Phrases like ``energy transition'' appeal to some activists but fail to deliver results in the real world in real time. Renewables are great, but they don't come close to generating enough reliable energy to power our world because the wind doesn't always blow, and the Sun doesn't always shine. We can't just sit in the dark until Mother Nature lets us turn the lights back on. We need a base supply of reliable energy, and as much as some of our colleagues hate to admit it, natural gas is our best current option. If the United States and our allies scale back production to pursue arbitrary emission benchmarks, they will leave the world turning to countries like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela for their energy. Today, we are experiencing how costly that reliance is, and in years past, we acknowledged how downright dangerous it is. In January 2009, Russia effectively turned the gas off to Ukraine for almost 3 weeks, and at least 10 countries in Europe were affected. By transitioning solely to renewables before the output matches the demand, we are placing ourselves in a very, very vulnerable position, and the same is true for our allies. President Putin has demonstrated as much. Unfortunately, I don't expect those kinds of real-world concerns to dominate the conversations at this summit in Glasgow, and President Biden certainly won't be advocating for America's energy independence-- to the contrary. We were only a few hours into the Biden administration when they launched the first attack on American-produced energy. Within hours of taking the oath of office, President Biden canceled the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline. For some strange reason, he is OK with Nord Stream 2 from Russia to Europe, but he is not OK with the Keystone XL Pipeline here in America. I don't get it. There is no question that the biggest losers from this decision were the energy workers whose jobs evaporated and the communities that stood to benefit from the tax revenue. The biggest winners, unfortunately, from President Biden's decision include countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia, who now hold too much power on the global energy market. We will see how that is playing out. That same day, the Biden administration halted all new leasing permits on Federal lands and waters. Rather than responsibly harvest our greatest natural resources and share those resources with the rest of the world, the administration sent more business to our adversaries and to OPEC producers. President Biden piled on with another attack on our energy producers by rejoining the Paris climate accord--an agreement that no one seems to follow. Yes, they will pay lipservice to it, but they actually don't do anything about it. A report published last week found that countries around the world aren't sticking to the lofty commitments that they made. The world's major economies are not on track to meet the climate goals set in the Paris accord. In fact, according to this report, by 2030, these countries are expected to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels required to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord. Then there is the fact that China, which plays by nobody's rules except their own, which also happens to be the world's leading polluter, is completely AWOL from any of these efforts. Not only is China ignoring global efforts to curb emissions, the country is in the process of building hundreds of new coal-powered powerplants. Last year, China built three times as many new coal powerplants as any other country in the world combined--three times all the other countries in the world combined. Rather than pull out of the agreement that is weakening our global energy security, President Biden is making even bigger promises-- promises that he cannot keep. He nearly doubled the emissions reduction goals set by President Obama in 2015. President Obama pledged to reduce emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025, and we are nowhere close to meeting that goal. But President Biden has doubled down and vowed to cut emissions by 50 to 52 percent by 2030--a complete fantasy. He hasn't explained how he would accomplish meeting that goal, nor, if he tried, would he be able to explain it because it is simply infeasible. To be clear, I am a strong supporter of efforts to reduce emissions. There are more ways than one to skin the cat. Texas has been a leader, in fact, in efforts to develop cleaner and more diverse sources of energy. We are truly an ``all of the above'' State. We produce more electricity from wind turbines than any other State in the Nation. New solar farms are being built all across our State, and private companies are making incredible investments in carbon capture and other emission- reducing technologies. I am proud of this work and a staunch supporter of efforts to preserve our greatest natural resources for future generations. But what we are seeing from the administration isn't a thoughtful effort to reduce emissions; it is virtue signaling. When the President addressed a joint session of Congress earlier this year, he spoke about the challenges to reduce carbon emissions. He said: If we do it perfectly, it is not going to matter. How he expects to do it perfectly, he did not say, nor could he. But if that is what he is thinking, why drive up energy costs to the point that Americans can't afford to turn the heat on in winter? Why would he give Putin the power to regulate Europe's only source of energy--natural gas? Why curb domestic energy production and let China run wild? These actions may earn votes in support from some corners, but they will inflict serious pain on the American people, as well as our allies around the world. As an armada of Biden administration officials pack their bags for Glasgow, I want to remind them that there is far more at stake than just the President's credibility on this score. It is our future economy. It is our ability to provide good, well-paying jobs to hardworking American families, and it is our ability as Americans to export energy, which allows some of our friends and allies around the world not to depend solely on the tender mercies of Vladimir Putin. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, earlier this week, one of President Biden's nominees for a very important office testified before the Finance Committee. Actually, I was a little surprised. It is the nominee for Customs and Border Protection, but, apparently, according to the arcane rules of the Senate, rather than the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee or the Judiciary Committee, it was the Finance Committee that conducted that hearing. Perhaps there will be sequential referrals, but that surprised me a little bit. But I met, at least over the phone, Chris Magnus, who is currently the police chief in Tucson, AZ, who had been nominated to lead--who has been nominated to lead U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Agency responsible for managing security and trade and commerce at the border, among other places. Suffice it to say the Customs and Border Protection are overwhelmed, given the current numbers of migrants making their way to the southwestern border. In the last year, CBP has encountered more than 1.7 million migrants along the southern border, the highest number on record. To be clear, this is not the fault of the dedicated law enforcement officials who are putting their lives on the line to protect our children and our country from the influx of illegal drugs but to also enforce our immigration laws. By the way, these are not policies that they make, these are policies that Congress makes. These men and women make incredible sacrifices to secure our border and try to keep our communities safe, and we owe them our gratitude. But we also owe them responsible policies and other support to give them a fighting chance to succeed at the difficult job we have asked them to do. Unfortunately, the current crisis is a direct result of Biden administration words and actions and outright refusal to fix the policies that are being manipulated by the transnational criminal organizations that smuggle people and drugs into our country. We have seen a steady parade of messages and policies and inactions and some actions in some cases, all of which crystalize into a clear message to migrants that if you come to the southwestern border and enter the country illegally, you will be likely able to stay. I am reminded of the widespread shoplifting issues that we have seen in San Francisco. Under State law, which has recently changed, if someone is caught stealing merchandise for $950 or less, it is only a misdemeanor, and rarely are those cases prosecuted. But--surprise--people paid attention, and there is no shortage of videos online showing individuals committing criminal offenses, filling garbage bags full of items and walking right out the front door. This is what happens if you send the message that you can violate the law with impunity. This problem in San Francisco became so expensive that a number of businesses, including Walgreens, for example, started closing stores in the city because they just couldn't afford the loss due to these thefts. The message is that if leaders send a message that says the law won't be enforced, more people will break the law because there are no repercussions, and that is exactly what is happening today at the southern border. The administration has essentially given the playbook to the migrants and the cartels--the transnational criminal organizations that smuggle people and drugs into the United States. It boils down to this: Cross the border, surrender to Border Patrol, repeat these specific lines, and you will be released to the interior of the country with virtually no supervision. And it doesn't surprise anybody that a huge percentage of those individuals never show up for their future court hearing. Earlier this week, I asked Mr. Magnus if he agreed that the administration's stated policy of nonenforcement is a pull factor, encouraging more illegal immigration. We talked about the push factors: violence, crime, a desire for a better life, maybe the smugglers whispering in your ear, ``For a few bucks you can go stay with your family in the interior of the United States.'' But he agreed that the nonenforcement policy of the Department of Homeland Security was a pull factor that actually encouraged more illegal immigration. I was surprised but honestly grateful to hear the President's nominee admit the truth. It is obvious. But it is still somehow a taboo statement--taboo statement for the Biden administration officials to make. It is undeniable that the administration's actions have encouraged the surge of illegal immigration and the humanitarian crisis that exists on our border. One example is the process by which migrants undergo--the process they undergo before they are returned or released. Before the Biden administration existed, there was a clear process for migrants who crossed the border to claim asylum. The individual would be processed by Border Patrol and undergo a credible fear assessment. That is to see if they qualify for the statutory definition of asylum, which essentially determines, at least in a preliminary fashion, whether they qualify. If the asylum officer determines the applicant had a credible fear of persecution, that person would then be issued a notice to appear for a future court hearing. That is a critical document that formally commences immigration court proceedings because if they don't show up, a default order of deportation will issue. Well, I have heard concerns from a number of folks in my State about the fact that huge numbers of migrants are now being released without a notice to appear. Thousands of migrants have been released with what is called a notice to report. This is a document that says when you get where you are going, turn yourself in to the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office to start your removal proceedings. These migrants haven't undergone a credible fear screening. We have no information on the validity of their asylum claims, and it is unclear whether the administration has given any teeth to the warning that failure to contact the local ICE office may result in your arrest. So the Biden administration has made it easier for migrants to disappear and melt into the great American landscape. Last month, Secretary Mayorkas, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, made things worse. He issued a directive, new guidance, at the end of September that strongly discourages Immigration and Customs Enforcement removal proceedings officers from carrying out their duties unless a migrant meets specific criteria. You can read it yourself. It talks about mitigating factors and aggravating factors, and somehow an ICE officer, a Border Patrol agent, is supposed to make an individualized determination whether this individual migrant qualifies or does not qualify to be admitted into the United States. According to Secretary Mayorkas, recent border crossers should be a priority, but it is only if they have been apprehended for some other reason. He has basically said if your only crime is illegally entering into the United States, we are not going to detain you. We are not going to deport you. The Secretary's guidance says that individuals convicted of serious criminal conduct should be a priority for removal, but it is unclear what crimes meet the criteria. For example, is distributing or receiving child pornography considered a serious criminal conduct? What about crimes like wire fraud, racketeering, embezzlement, a whole host of other crimes that you or I might think of? It defies common sense to ask these law enforcement officers, charged with enforcing our laws, to turn a blind eye when they encounter individuals who have come here illegally and committed other crimes because those crimes just aren't serious enough in the opinion of the bureaucracy at the Department of Homeland Security or in the Biden administration. I am reminded of the controversial directive issued by another one of President Biden's nominees to enforce our Nation's laws. Rachael Rollins has been nominated to serve as the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts and is currently the district attorney for Suffolk County, Boston. Shortly after taking her job as DA in Suffolk County, she released a memo outlining a dozen crimes that should be ignored by law enforcement. According to Ms. Rollins--this is a district attorney-- according to Ms. Rollins, individuals who commit offenses like trespassing, shoplifting, larceny--which is essentially stealing-- wanton or malicious destruction of property or even possession with intent to distribute drugs should not be prosecuted in Suffolk County. Now, I have no issue with law enforcement using limited resources to prioritize the threats to the community. But they can't exempt wholesale classes of crimes from enforcement, and they certainly should not tip their hat to the criminals as to what crimes can be committed free of any consequence. But under the Biden administration, unfortunately, we are seeing similar action. We are also seeing a record low number of deportations. In April, as border crossings hit the highest level in 2 years--excuse me--two decades, ICE removed the lowest number of illegal immigrants on record. So not only are more people coming at historic numbers, but historic numbers of people are--low numbers of people are being deported. This, again, is part of an overall message that sends an unequivocal message to the world that if you come to the United States illegally, you are likely to be able to get away with it. There is a good chance migrants will be released with a flimsy notice to report, and once that happens, they won't be removed unless they are caught committing another crime. The Department of Homeland Security is charged with safeguarding the American people and enforcing our laws. But its employees are largely handcuffed because of the Department's own leadership and the guidance they have handed down. Again, there is no problem in my book with prioritizing the removal of dangerous criminals who are in the United States illegally. But it is another thing to send a message that if you break some of our laws, we are going to enforce them; if you break other laws, we won't enforce them--and thus encourage more and more people to come to the United States illegally. It isn't clear that enforcement and removal operations officers will truly retain the discretion they need to remove illegal immigrants who don't fall under some of the categories laid out by the Secretary and his guidance that he issued in late September. Considering everything we have heard from our friends across the aisle when it comes to immigration enforcement, this radical action by the administration is not completely surprising. Vice President Harris, who was appointed by the President to deal with the crisis at the border, once compared ICE to the Ku Klux Klan. And a number of our colleagues have sided with radical activists who want to defund the police. With violent crime and murder rates on the rise across the country, it is no surprise that the American people overwhelmingly disagree with this idea of defunding the police. I was gratified to see after this defund movement hit--had its heyday, that a year later, most of the jurisdictions around the country had restored the funding because of the disastrous consequences of defunding the police. But it is harder to resurrect a police department to recruit new people and train them than it is to defund them and shrink the size of the department. But now we have gone from defunding law enforcement to defanging law enforcement. Slowly, we have seen the tools law enforcement needs to keep our communities safe being taken away from them, and our law enforcement officers are being told: You cannot do your job. Liberal activists can throw out their ``Abolish ICE'' posters because the administration is effectively nullifying the policy from the inside. The reality of the situation, however inconvenient it may seem, is that by entering the United States illegally, migrants are violating U.S. law. Again, it is not something that is dictated by the Department of Homeland Security or by Border Patrol; these are laws that Congress has passed and previous Presidents have signed into law. As I said at the beginning, we are fortunate to have the hard-working men and women of ICE and CBP who are committed to enforcing our laws and safeguarding the American people, but this policy of nonenforcement and of providing additional pull factors to encourage people to illegally enter the United States has to be demoralizing to the very people we are depending upon to keep our country safe. Make no mistake, the President bears full responsibility for this crisis. He is the one who could make the difference. He could change it with the stroke of a pen. January was the only full month this year that President Biden was not President of the United States. It is also no coincidence that it was the only month in which fewer than 100,000 migrants crossed our southern border. The Biden administration has made nonenforcement the de facto response to the border crisis, and as a result, annual apprehensions have hit an alltime high. Until the Biden administration changes the playbook, migrants will continue to flood the zone using the very plays that the administration has laid out for them. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, over the last couple of years, our Democratic colleagues have suggested a range of unrealistic and downright harmful policies in our shared goal--and I emphasize the words ``shared goal''--to reduce carbon emissions. But it is not just a question of what you are doing; it is a question of how you are going about doing it. The way they are going about doing it is going to raise the prices of electricity, gasoline, and all forms of energy on people on fixed incomes, people who are seniors living on Social Security, and others. They have proposed everything from the socialist agenda that is the Green New Deal to more targeted, but no more realistic, zero net emission mandates. Now, we all know that energy transition occurs at all times. I have traveled to India--perhaps the Presiding Officer has--and to other countries where people literally cook their food using cow manure patties, dried cow manure. I remember Prime Minister Modi coming to Houston, TX, during an event that we called ``Howdy, Modi!'' when he heralded the use of increased access to cooking gas so that his constituents, Indians, wouldn't have to use dried cow dung to cook their food--that represents progress--or wouldn't have to use wood chips anymore. Then the transition was to coal, then to natural gas, nuclear, and other forms of energy. So energy transition occurs at all times. The only question is how it comes about, whether it is as a result of higher taxes and forced government mandates or whether it is which form of energy competes favorably for consumers because of its cost and availability. Well, of all of the dangerous policy proposals, I think the reckless tax-and-spending-spree bill takes the cake. This is the so-called reconciliation bill that is now pending over in the House, or is being negotiated. Nobody has actually seen it yet, but we keep hearing what is in it, and we keep hearing that the left is negotiating with the far left. This is what happens when our Democratic colleagues don't include people in the opposing political party to try to build consensus. It is pretty hard, particularly when you only have 50 votes. This isn't like FDR's New Deal after the Great Depression, wherein he had huge majorities. I think what our Democratic colleagues are finding out is that, when they try to go it alone, passing these radical policies is really, really hard to do because you have no room for error. This reminds me of the yellow jackets protests in France, starting back in 2018, as to what is happening now with some of these mandates and these higher taxes. This was, as you may recall, a social movement of French working-class families who felt disenfranchised from the urban elite, who ``can focus on the end of the world,'' they said, ``while we're worrying about the end of the month.'' I think it is pretty apt to where we are today. This reckless tax-and-spending spree not only compiles the most irresponsible policies into one massive bill, as I said, but our Democratic colleagues, along with the White House, are trying to pass it in a 50-50 Senate, on a party-line vote. Well, talk about bad timing. This comes at a time when Texans and other Americans are already being pummeled by rising costs, especially at the gas pump. Inflation is rearing its ugly head everywhere in terms of energy costs, groceries, commodities, and with things like a washing machine or a new refrigerator. Try buying a new house, and you will see the cost has just jumped dramatically. It is a demonstrable fact that, in the last year, gasoline costs have gone up 55 percent. The average price today is about $3.33 a gallon. A year ago, it was $2.16 a gallon. For somebody who drives a pickup truck--and we have a lot of pickup trucks in Texas--it would have cost $56 for a tank of gas a year ago, but, today, it is $87--a $31 increase. Unfortunately, sky-high gasoline prices aren't the only growing drain on family budgets. As I mentioned, electricity, groceries, clothing, eating out occasionally at a restaurant, and countless other expenses are on the rise. Prices are so high that inflation is outpacing wage growth, essentially giving workers a pay cut. Let me say that again. If you are earning, let's say, $10,000 a year--just to pick a number--and inflation rises like it does with gasoline costs, you are effectively getting a pay cut because of the rising costs of goods and services. But that doesn't seem to deter our Democratic colleagues from moving full steam ahead on legislation that would drive these costs even higher. After spending nearly $2 billion earlier this year on a party- line vote, our colleagues are back for round 2, and this time they are prepared to take a wrecking ball to one of our crown jewels in this country, which is our energy sector. By drowning the energy sector in tax hikes or in increased regulations and costs, our Democratic colleagues think that they can achieve their green energy dreams with no consequences, but, of course, that is just a dangerous fantasy. It sort of reminds me of what I saw reported today by NPR. NPR reports: ``Despite climate change promises, governments plan to ramp up fossil fuel production.'' Indeed, the President and members of this body are going to be heading to a climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, starting on October 31. As you know, usually what happens at those conferences, just like at the Paris climate conference in 2015, is that governments make extravagant promises to reduce emissions and to eliminate fossil fuels, including coal and oil and gas, in favor of clean energy. Now, I am not deprecating clean energy. In Texas, we believe in an ``all of the above'' energy policy. We produce more electricity from wind turbines than any other State in the Nation. So I am certainly not bad-mouthing clean energy, but it has to play a role and not dominate to the exclusion of other forms of energy. But, as the NPR article points out, ``despite lofty commitments [made] by governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they are still planning,'' according to this U.N. report that was just issued, ``to extract huge amounts of energy from fossil fuels in the coming years.'' This report was published on Wednesday, today, and it details how the world's largest fossil fuel producers plan to carry on using coal, gas, and oil despite promises made in Paris in 2015. So it really makes you wonder what is going on when these political leaders go to places like Glasgow or Paris, make extravagant promises, and then come back home and break those promises. Well, I think I know what is happening here because, just like in France in 2018, when the government tried to impose a new fuel tax on consumers, the yellow jackets protested. They said: You are worried about the end of the world. We are worried about how we will pay our bills through the end of the month. I think a similar phenomenon is occurring now because none of these green energy fantasies come cheap. That is another reason energy costs are going higher. Whether you are talking about energy or agriculture or any other sector of the economy, higher taxes, which are what our colleagues are attempting to assess against the energy sector, always mean higher prices for consumers. Companies don't absorb those costs. They pass them right along to consumers in the form of increased costs. In fact, many businesses can't absorb increased taxes and keep their prices stable because they simply can't operate in the black, and they will go bankrupt. So businesses just don't take the hits that keep on coming. They will raise prices; they will lay off employees or will implement any combination of cost-cutting measures, and that is exactly what this pie-in-the-sky, green energy fantasy bill contained in the reconciliation legislation would spur. This year, as I have pointed out, has already given us the highest gas prices since 2014. Now, I just did this year over year, but they are the highest prices we have seen since 2014, and I have no doubt that President Biden's tax hikes will send those prices at the pump even higher just at a time when we are beginning to sound the alarm bells over inflation, including by Democratic-leaning economists like Larry Summers, who sounded the alarm over inflation. I am old enough to remember when inflation was ranked at about 20 percent, and interest rates were up almost at 20 percent. People had to pay huge amounts of money or borrow huge amounts of money and pay exorbitant interest rates because of inflation. We are in danger of getting back to those bad old days. The proposal our Democratic colleagues are trying to ram through Congress would increase taxes--already paid by energy companies--on income earned not in the United States but globally. It also adds a new tax, the Superfund excise tax, which was eliminated 25 years ago. They want to add that back on top. The Democrats want to resurrect this tax and force energy companies to pay more on every barrel of crude oil that is used in the United States. Once again, the burden won't be, ultimately, on the energy and chemical companies. It will fall on consumers, who are already struggling post-COVID to get back on the job and pay the bills and provide for their families--only to be met with a kick in the teeth known as Bidenflation. The middle class won't just be footing the bill for tax hikes on companies. This is, really, sort of an elitist irony. The Biden reconciliation bill would force middle-class families to subsidize the purchase of electric vehicles for wealthy Americans. Not only are we going to raise prices on you through tax increases, but we are going to take money out of your pocket and give it to rich people who can afford to buy these expensive electric vehicles. This bill provides a tax credit for electric vehicle purchases even if the vehicle is made completely or substantially in China. Won't they love that. On top of that, you get a bigger tax credit for electric cars built in union shops--some of the greatest political friends of the Democratic Party. Our colleagues haven't provided a very good explanation for this, but I, for one, find it hard to believe that union-built electric vehicles are any greener or cleaner or emit less than nonunion-built vehicles. This is just a big wet kiss for a political constituency. As a reminder, unlike gas-powered vehicle drivers, EV drivers don't pay any money into the highway trust fund. Now, if you buy a gallon of gasoline, I think it is 18 cents on the gallon that goes into the highway trust fund that is used to build and maintain our bridges and roadways. Because of more use of electric vehicles that don't pay any money into the highway trust fund, that trust fund is going broke. So the tax breaks for the rich just keep on coming. They take money from middle-class families, give it to rich folks so they can buy fancy electric vehicles, courtesy of the American taxpayer. I also have concerns about how the proposal that is being considered by the White House and our Democratic colleagues--how it would impact our energy security. Over the last several decades, we have made incredible strides. Thanks to great investment, innovation, and expertise in the energy sector, we have made great strides to reduce our dependency on other countries to keep the lights on in the United States. After all, we don't want a repeat of the 1970s energy crisis. Now, I know a lot of these young folks who are here serving as pages may not have been around in the 1970s, but they can look it up online. Here is what happened: When the U.S. supported Israel in the Yom Kippur war in 1973, the Arab members of OPEC--the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries--they weren't happy. What did they do? They banned the sale of crude oil to the United States--cut us off-- and it sent shock waves throughout our country. As you might imagine, such was our dependency on imported oil from the Middle East. Despite some strong domestic oil production, we were still relying at that time heavily on imports, and once the supply was cut off, prices quadrupled. Many gas stations simply couldn't serve the demand, and when they could, they basically made you get an appointment to come fill up your gas tank. Some States banned neon signs to cut down on energy use, and a number of towns asked their citizens not to put up Christmas lights because of the drain on the grid. It was a slap across the face, a hard dose of reality that brought America's energy dependence to light and underscored the need to increase our domestic production and resources and wean ourselves off of this dependency--this dangerous dependency on imports. And that is what we did. Thanks to incredible investment and innovation in the energy sector and something that has come to be known as the shale revolution--named for a way to basically get oil and gas out of a rock--the tide of the energy landscape geopolitically turned in our favor. These efforts were so successful that in 2015, the U.S. lifted the crude oil export ban that was put in place in the seventies. Back when we were dependent on imports, we said: You can't export it because we need not only what we can produce, but what we can import. We lifted that in 2015 because American energy producers were producing so much oil and gas. And, in fact, rather than import energy, including natural gas, we turned around what were built originally as LNG--liquefied natural gas--import terminals and created export terminals so we could send that low-cost energy to our friends and allies around the world. But our Democratic colleagues seem to have a short-term memory problem. They seem to have forgotten about our history. After years of building our energy independence and strengthening our energy security, they want to turn back the clock. The tax hikes they are trying to impose on energy producers would ensure that the United States, once again, is reliant on other countries, like Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, for our energy needs. The dangers ought to be obvious. We should never ever put ourselves in a position where we are reliant on any other country for us to keep our lights on, to operate our vehicles, for our small businesses to be able to operate, for us to be able to get electricity from a wall socket when we plug in an appliance. So we shouldn't be dependent on our adversaries or any other country for our energy needs when we can produce it here in America; and by exporting it to friends and allies around the world, we can actually liberate them. Recently, I was in on a trip with some Senate colleagues to the Balkins, in a number of countries that used to be part of the old Soviet Union but which are now independent countries, many of which are part of NATO and the European Union. And one of the things they brought up time and time again is their desire to have a diverse source of energy because they know--they know--that if they depend on Russian gas, that Mr. Putin could turn off the spigot and put them in mortal jeopardy. And that is why it is important for us to be able to continue to export and not be dependent on imported energy ourselves. President Biden unintentionally demonstrated the hypocrisy of some of his policies earlier this year when he literally begged OPEC to increase production to bring down these prices. An American President basically shutting down American energy production and begging Russia and Saudi Arabia to please sell us the oil and gas we need so we can bring down prices at the pump--it is unbelievable. If the President is worried about affordable energy, he needs to stop pushing policies that will drive up these prices. And it is not just gasoline. It is electricity, you name it. Well, Texans are already facing high gas prices. Household energy bills, your utility bill, is on the rise. This is not the time to make it more expensive for families to pay for the energy they need. As I mentioned, Texas has always been a proud supporter of an all-of- the-above energy strategy. We are recognized for the might of our oil and gas sector for sure, but a lot of folks don't realize we are a leader in renewable energy as well. In fact, we produce one-quarter of all of the wind energy in the United States. If we were a country--and we were once--we would be the fifth largest wind energy producer in the world. And we have no plans of stopping there. We are also making serious strides in energy innovation through cutting-edge carbon capture and storage projects. That is the answer. It is called innovation. Not more taxes, not more regulations that raise prices, but innovation, things that literally suck carbon out of the environment, deposit it in the ground in some of these injection sites so we can actually produce more oil and gas, and keep the carbon sequestered in the ground permanently. So we need to find a balance--something that is too often missing here in Washington, DC--between conservation, production, and economic power. That balance will not be found by imposing heavy-handed regulations or taxes that drive up the cost for consumers and that benefit our adversaries. Like the rest of the reckless tax-and-spending spree, the cost of this energy proposal far, far exceeds its benefits. There is a better way to do this. The Biden administration has managed to compound the already unprecedented challenges facing our energy sector here in America. American energy keeps America and much of the rest of the world running, and the administration and Congress need to take action to support a strong, post-pandemic recovery, and not get in the way. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I thank my friend, the senior Senator from Vermont, for his courtesy. Tomorrow, the Senate will vote on the latest iteration of what has come to be known as the Democrats' partisan power grab over our elections conducted overwhelmingly by the States--actually, exclusively at the State and local level. The legislation that prompted this discussion first popped up in 2019, when the newly elected majority in the House went on a messaging bill spree. Over the last 2 years, they have tried a number of different marketing strategies to convince the American people that this overhaul was needed. This latest version is proof that Congress isn't buying what they are selling, and that is for good reason. Those who were advocating for a national takeover of our State-run elections, at one point they said it was a matter of election security. Then they said this was designed to help restore voter confidence. Then they said this is a way to remove obstacles that prevented people from voting. But facts are stubborn things. In 2020, we saw record turnout. Two- thirds of eligible voters cast a ballot, and that was the highest turnout in 120 years. I was on the ballot in 2020. The last time I had been on the ballot, 6 years previously, there were 4.8 million voters in Texas. In 2020, there were 11.3 million voters in Texas. Compared to the 2016 Presidential election, 17 million more Americans cast a vote, and we saw historic turnouts by Black, White, Asian, and Hispanic voters. So facts being stubborn things, clearly it is time for the advocates for this Federal takeover to come up with a new sales pitch. So our Democratic friends attacked election integrity bills being passed by State legislatures, like Texas, all across the country. The Constitution itself gives States the power to determine how their elections should be run, and States are using that authority to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. Our Democratic friends have tried to frame these new State laws as somehow suppressing voting rights. As we have seen, if that is the objective, they certainly are doing a lousy job at it because people are voting in unprecedented numbers. Well, it is interesting to contrast some of the changes that our Democratic colleagues, including the Merrick Garland's Department of Justice, comparing the reforms they have attacked and those that they believe are just fine. The Georgia law, which the Department of Justice has sued under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, actually expanded early voting in person to 17 days. But if you live in Massachusetts, you can only vote for 11 days. I haven't heard many complaints about the Massachusetts voting laws restricting people's access to the polls. And the President's home State of Delaware, they don't even offer in-person early voting, but they will in 2022. But even then, they are even more restrictive than Massachusetts. It will only be for 10 days. So somehow a short period of early voting in Delaware is acceptable-- actually, currently is not available but soon to be acceptable for 10 days--but 17 days of early voting in Georgia is an assault on voting rights. Both cannot be true. Of course, our Democratic friends believe the only answer to this manufactured assault is an unconstitutional, partisan power grab that they have been pushing for years, as I said. Well, the initial iteration of this came up for a vote in June, and it was sadly rejected, for good reason. The bill would have turned the bipartisan Federal Election Commission into a Democrat-controlled Commission. This is supposed to be evenly split and nonpartisan, but that would change under the proposal that we voted on in June. It would have also allowed ballot harvesting--a dubious practice that is a recipe for mischief and wrongdoing, as a ballot could be harvested by paid campaign staffers, political operative, or anyone who had a stake in the outcome of the election. Just go to your closest nursing home or community center, get people to sign a ballot, and harvest away. That would have been permitted. And, actually, prohibitions against ballot harvesting would have been prohibited under the Democrats' bill. And the bill would have commandeered States' constitutional authority to draw their own congressional districts. The only thing this proposal would have done for the people, as it is called, would be to help make sure that the outcome of virtually every future election meant that Democrats win and Republicans lose; thus, Republicans would be relegated to a permanent minority status. That was the goal. If this bill weren't so dangerous, it would have been laughable. Nobody would have taken it seriously. It is no surprise that the only thing bipartisan about this legislation is the opposition. In both the House and the Senate, Republicans and Democrats voted against this legislation. Still, our Democratic colleagues--I admire their perseverance--they refused to throw in the towel. They decided to work on what they now call a compromise. Well, generally, a compromise indicates that you have found common ground with somebody who holds a different view. But the so-called compromise bill we are scheduled to vote on tomorrow isn't the result of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats; it is a compromise between the left and the radical left. You really can't call something a compromise when your negotiating partner is sitting on the same side of the table with you. All this is done to create the illusion or a narrative that the partisan pieces have been stripped out of the bill and it now includes mainstream reforms. But that is far from the truth. Just like its predecessor, this bill seizes States' constitutional authority to make decisions on matters like voter registration and early voting. It contains invasive disclosure requirements that would undermine citizens' privacy and chill free speech. It places Federal standards on States for redistricting, and threatens action from the Democratic-controlled Attorney General's Office if those standards aren't met. And it makes it harder to root out election fraud, and easier to cheat. If that is not bad enough, it also takes tax dollars from the American taxpayer and would require it be given to candidates for public office that those taxpayers disagree with. They call that public funding of elections. Nothing about the bill is a compromise. They may have stripped out some of the most outrageous provisions, but certainly overtly partisan provisions remain. Republicans uniformly oppose the first attempt at this partisan power grab, and it is no surprise we will oppose this one as well. This is not a good-faith attempt to ensure our elections are secure from fraud and interference and accessible to all eligible voters. It is rather a political stunt and statement designed to mislead the American people and appeal to the most radical members of the Democratic base. I am certainly not one to tell the majority leader how to do his job, but it seems like show votes ought to be pretty low on our list of priorities. Our Democrat colleagues narrowly averted a debt crisis 2 weeks ago, and they have less than 2 months to figure out how to increase the debt ceiling and avoid an economic disaster. In the coming months, the Senate needs to do what has become an annual tradition, which is to pass the National Defense Authorization Act to give our troops the support they deserve and our commanders the predictability they need for the future. And we need to pass a full slate of appropriations bills to avoid a government shutdown just before the holidays. Those are the things we need to do, at a bare minimum. We should also be advancing legislation to avert--or to address the border crisis, which has been raging on since January. We need to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. We need to bring down sky- high drug prices, and approve accountability and transparency in policing. There is a lot we should be doing to solve real problems that deserve action from the country and which our constituents deserve as well. There is a strong appetite for bipartisan work on both sides of the aisle, but the leadership of the Democratic Party has effectively stonewalled bipartisan legislating in favor of a completely partisan approach. It is really a head-scratcher. Our Democratic colleagues don't have the kind of majorities that FDR had during the New Deal. We have a 50-50 Senate, with the Vice President as the tie-breaker. Common sense ought to tell you that that demands and requires bipartisan legislating, not these kinds of show votes. We have a long list of tasks that are far more important than virtue signaling. So I hope our colleagues will reevaluate the wisdom of this parade of partisan bills and spend time working with us to find where we have common ground, where we can actually pass legislation and make a difference for our country. Until that time, we will continue to oppose partisan attacks on our Nation's elections and any other damaging, politically motivated bills Democrats bring to the Senate floor. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, if I may respond to the Senator from Maine. I am always interested in working on bipartisan bills and finding common ground. I think my record--and as the Senator knows, we have worked together on a number of things. The fundamental problem with our Democratic friends' approach to election reform is they want to nationalize the election. They want to take the authority away from the States, which is clearly given to the States under the Constitution. But if we can take that off the table and talk about some other areas, we could work together in that area, I would be more than happy to work with my friend from Maine.