Richard Durbin

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons), the Senator from Nevada (Ms. Cortez Masto), the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich), the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mrs. Shaheen), and the Senator from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, 1 million deaths--unbelievable. But this week, it became very, very real. One million of our fellow Americans now have died from COVID, 1 million parents, grandparents, siblings, children, friends, neighbors. That is more Americans who lost their lives than the casualties in World War I, World War II, or the Civil War. That is the size of San Jose, CA, the 10th largest city in our Nation. But behind those 7 stark figures are real people, including more than 33,600 in my home State of Illinois. One of those was a woman named Maria Elena Sifuentes. Maria lived in Chicago, where she worked at Communities United and organized for housing and education equity in her community. She had received her first COVID shot when she contracted the virus last summer. She passed away on June 10 at the age of 57 and left behind five children. We also grieve the loss of Sergeant Ken Thurman and Officer Brian Shields, two 51-year-old veteran police officers who worked in Aurora at the police department. They succumbed to COVID infections last year, both within the same week. When the pandemic first hit, this degree of loss was unimaginable. Some people dismissed COVID-19 and said that it was just like the ordinary flu and that it would go away and mysteriously disappear. But now that we have crossed this tragic threshold, we must take stock of where we are and where we are headed. More than 2 years into this pandemic, COVID is still a threat to America and the world. In fact, infections nationwide are up 50 percent over the past 2 weeks. Hospitalizations are up 20 percent. That is the case in Illinois as well as our neighbors in the region. The Commonwealth of Kentucky, home of Minority Leader McConnell, had the highest COVID death rate in the country over the past week. The one thing worse than being swamped with another wave of COVID cases is being caught unprepared. Right now, we are sleepwalking into the next potentially deadly wave, and we know the virus will continue to mutate and pose threats. We need to learn from our 2 years of experience with Delta and Omicron and act now and be ready, be prepared. Over the weekend, the Biden administration warned that new subvariants could fuel a wave that is forecast to infect 100 million Americans--almost a third of our population--over this fall and winter. Yet last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Becerra testified to the Senate Appropriations Committee: ``[B]ut in order to be ready for that, we have to start purchasing today.'' That is what Secretary Becerra said. If we wait for the surge to hit, it is too late. Last week, it also was reported that the administration will run out of COVID vaccines by September 1 if the FDA authorizes second boosters for all adults. How can America be caught in this situation again--even with vaccines--unprepared? Because Federal funding has dried up to reimburse hospitals and health centers for testing, we don't have a complete picture of how many new infections are actually showing up. The University of Washington estimates the true number of infections is five times higher than official reports. So the alarm bells are ringing, and a looming vaccine crisis is right around the corner. Other countries in the world get it. They understand it. They are racing ahead of us to secure supplies of vaccines, but because of resistance from Republicans in Washington, we are not doing that. So why won't the Senate act to pass this COVID legislation--obviously necessary legislation--right now? It was more than a month ago that Senators Schumer and Romney, together with half-a-dozen bipartisan Senators, announced a $10 billion emergency COVID package. It is not everything we want; it is not everything we need; but it is an urgent measure that seeks to address the crisis. Instead of just getting this done, politics were inserted. There were demands for amendments or else. The process broke down. Instead of getting the job done, Republicans are playing politics. They are demanding poison pill riders on issues unrelated, like immigration. With summer approaching, Americans are eager to keep the face masks off for good and move past the pandemic. I get it. Everybody wants the kids back in school. They want them home for vacation. They want to take family vacations. They want to go out to dinner--all things that are part of the joy of life. I share the sentiment, but we have to deal with the reality of this virus. It is changing every day, and it has surprised us so many times before. Even the most persuasive political speech isn't going to change the course of this virus. Rather than reacting to whatever deadly curve ball gets thrown at us next, we must be ready beforehand with the right tools to keep us moving in the right direction. I don't want to come to the floor to mark 1\1/2\ million dead Americans or 2 million dead Americans due to the virus. The time to provide additional funding is not now; it was weeks ago. It is incredible to me that, after what this Nation has gone through--1 million dead Americans--we are still debating over whether we should be prepared for the next stage of the virus. Shame on the politicians who are inserting politics into a life-and-death debate. Without this funding, we could very well lose the progress we have made in containing COVID. We cannot tolerate that sort of setback, especially at this pivotal moment where continued progress puts us on the cusp of what we dreamed of 2 years ago: finally putting an end to this pandemic, finally returning to normal. While Senate Democrats and the Biden administration have taken tremendous strides with getting shots in arms, supporting local businesses, and getting our kids back in school, we still have a lot to do. To my Republican colleagues: Drop the political antics. Join us in making this responsible investment to save lives and prevent the pandemic from once again spinning out of control. We know a new wave could be coming, and we need to sit down and face this public health issue for the reality that it is. Let's not waste time with irrelevant, anti-immigrant rhetoric. Let's do something that helps the American people and work together to drive America's recovery forward.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Leahy) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last week, Americans woke up to the news that was perhaps not unexpected but still stunning. It appears that in a matter of weeks, we may soon live in a country where women have fewer constitutional rights than their parents or grandparents. In one bold move, the ultraconservative, activist majority on the Supreme Court appears poised to erase the constitutional right to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term. I want to be clear: The leak of the majority draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization is an unprecedented breach of the Court's confidential deliberations. It may harm the trust the Justices have with one another, as well as the public's trust in the Court. Still, one must wonder, Why is it that our Republican colleagues have been focused so exclusively on the leak of the draft opinion rather than the substance of the opinion itself? And why do we hear in the last few days a continued reference to the security of Supreme Court Justices without a real discussion of where the proposed opinion will take us? Let's make it clear--unequivocally clear--in a bipartisan fashion: Violence is never acceptable. Violence is never acceptable against Supreme Court Justices, their families, their staff, or anyone associated with that branch of government. Nor is violence acceptable on January 6, 2021, in this Chamber, when the mob--the insurrectionist mob--leaving a Trump rally came here and tried to stop the business of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, and we left as fast as we could move out the back door to try to escape that. That was violence which led to five deaths and the assaults on 150 members of law enforcement. That violence is unacceptable as well, and I hope my friends on the other side of the aisle, who vetoed an effort for a bipartisan commission to investigate the violence of January 6, will step up now and say they were wrong. Violence against a Supreme Court Justice, violence against a Member of the House, and a Member of the Senate--none of those is acceptable, period. Unequivocally. Period. I am in favor of protecting the Justices, of course. I have been party to efforts in my home State of Illinois, after a tragic incident over 10 years ago, when a disgruntled client ended up killing a Federal judge's mother and husband in their home. Since then, I have called for more security, and I am glad to add my name to this effort now to provide security to this Court and all the members of the Court, their families, and the staff who are involved. It is unacceptable. Violence, either in this building or across the street, is unacceptable. But I would like to speak as well to the substance of the statement just made by the Senator from Texas. He recalled the case of Kermit Gosnell, a case where a doctor in Philadelphia was convicted, virtually of infanticide--repeated cases of infanticide--and he was sentenced, ultimately, to life in prison, where he still spends his time serving that out, with no chance of parole, nor should he ever have a chance at parole. I struggle to get the connection between the crime of infanticide and the debate we are having, because there is nothing in the bill coming to the floor by the Democrats which is going to change that basic finding in the case in Pennsylvania. That doctor, now removed from his profession and serving time in Federal prison, was guilty of a crime, and the bill before us on the floor of the Senate will not change that reality at all. I don't know if that was the inference, but I took it to mean that. I hope I was wrong. We need to acknowledge the basics that a critical constitutional right may be removed by the Supreme Court. I am an amateur historian studying the history of this country. I can't think of another time when a constitutionally guaranteed right by Supreme Court opinion of over 50 years has been removed by the Court. But that is what we face now--on the right of Americans to make the most basic decisions about their health, their lives, and their future. Sadly, many Republicans are desperately trying to deflect from this ruling and what it means for every single American. If the legal reason in the Court's draft opinion becomes final, that decision in Dobbs will end a half-century guarantee that the right to abortion is protected in our Constitution. Republicans know that overturning Roe v. Wade and eliminating access to a woman's healthcare is extremely unpopular. When asked point-blank whether we should do it, only 28 percent of Americans say that they agree. In a world without Roe, Americans would not only be denied healthcare services they are entitled to, it is possible--it is possible--that some will be prosecuted. Far-right lawmakers have been feverishly anticipating this moment. Over the past week, some of these same officials have introduced legislation around the country designed to punish women for making the basic decisions about reproductive health. State legislators in Louisiana introduced a bill to allow prosecutors to bring murder charges against a woman who undergoes or anyone who provides an abortion. The same Louisiana bill would seemingly call into question the legality of in vitro fertilization, as well as IUDs, the morning after pill, and other forms of emergency contraception. I am glad I was on the floor a few minutes ago. My colleague, Senator Duckworth, talked about her two little girls--cutest kids you can imagine. I remember those kids from the earliest time. When I was in a car driving in the State of Illinois to an event in Bloomington, the phone rang and it was Tammy Duckworth. She was my colleague in the U.S. Senate and--she was going to be my colleague in the U.S. Senate, and she was a Member of the House of Representatives, and she told me that she was going to have a baby. I couldn't believe it. Tammy and I have known one another since a few weeks after her, I should say, terrible crash of the helicopter in Iraq. I had known what she had gone through, surgeries and recovery, and I was the one who encouraged her to run for office, and I am sure glad I did. She has become the voice of the military, the voice of veterans, and one of most powerful voices in the U.S. Senate. And when she told the story about those two little girls, born through the process of in vitro fertilization, it struck home. I am fortunate enough as a grandfather to have two in vitro grandbabies. I love them to pieces, and I thank goodness that there was a science achievement available to help my daughter deliver those beautiful kids. A Republican lawmaker in Idaho said he is open to banning certain forms of birth control if this decision goes forward at the Supreme Court. He wanted to include plan B emergency contraception and IUDs. Think about that. State by State, legislator by legislator, will decide what is acceptable when it comes to contraception. Now, some people are going to think: Durbin, you are exaggerating. Democrats are at it again exaggerating. But I am old enough to remember before Griswold, the regulation of contraception in those days when it was virtually, in many States, even illegal to buy a condom. And so you think I am exaggerating? We lived at that time. It wasn't until Griswold v. Connecticut, decided by the Supreme Court, that established a right of privacy under our Constitution, which then led to Roe v. Wade. That was America. It was an America which, sadly, many Republican lawmakers long for. A lawmaker in Missouri introduced a bill that deputizes bounty hunters to sue anyone who helps a woman seeking an abortion outside the State of Missouri. I wanted to remind my colleague from Texas, who spoke just before me, it was the Texas bounty hunter's law that started this conversation in earnest. In Texas, they decided that there would be a civil penalty that can be charged against those who were engaged in an abortion, and the person could claim that penalty if they disclosed that to the public. Just a few days ago, the Republican leader in this body, Senator McConnell of Kentucky, said that a national ban on abortion could be ``possible''--a national ban if Roe is overturned and the Republicans take control of the Senate. Leaving it up to each State to decide a woman's reproductive rights is creating a patchwork quilt of uncertainty. Your constitutional rights would depend on your ZIP Code, but that is exactly the future we are facing. To be sure, Democratic State legislatures will continue to protect access to abortion unless, of course, Republicans in Congress enact the national ban that Senator McConnell said is possible. In the absence of a national ban, if you can afford to travel, you will be able to access reproductive care in States like Illinois and Connecticut. But what about everyone else? If the right to have an abortion now depends on where you live or how much money you make, millions of women, many from historically marginalized communities, will face even greater hurdles in obtaining an abortion. America already has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the developed world. Drastically restricting access to abortion or banning abortion altogether will make those rates worse. Republicans and anti-choice activists are trying to minimize the impact that erasing Roe would have. They talk about other times the Supreme Court has overturned precedent, and they argue--disingenuously, I think--that this is how the Court has always worked. It corrects its own past mistakes. They claim that overturning Roe is no different than the Supreme Court overturning Plessy v. Ferguson--a decision which gave us the odious fiction of ``separate but equal'' that was later overturned by Brown v. Board of Education. But there is a profound difference. It appears that never before in the history of America has a Supreme Court decision to abandon settled law made Americans less free--never. In the past, when the Court has taken the serious step of overturning settled law, it has done so to expand freedom, expand opportunity, not eliminate it. What the activist, anti-choice majority on this Court will do is unprecedented, radical, and dangerous. Here is another fact that Republican lawmakers are hoping you will not notice: It is not just the right to abortion that is in jeopardy; Justice Alito's draft opinion in the Dobbs case questions the very existence of the right to privacy. It argues that unenumerated rights-- that is, rights not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution--must be deeply rooted in U.S. history and tradition in order to be recognized as a constitutional right. Who decides what is deeply rooted in history and tradition? The Court's Obergefell v. Hodges decision established marriage equality only 7 years ago. Will the Court's reactionary majority put that next on the chopping block? What about the right to contraception, as I mentioned before, established by Griswold v. Connecticut 11 years before Roe? A Republican Member of this body recently criticized that decision establishing the privacy right of every individual to choose the contraception right for their family. He described this as ``constitutionally unsound.'' Rather than settling the debate on abortion, the draft Dobbs opinion would further divide our fractious Nation and set the stage for a radical majority in the Court to erase even more constitutional rights. It would give government the power to dictate your rights and dictate your future. That is why we must take action to protect women's productive rights. Tomorrow, the Senate will vote on the Women's Health Protection Act. This bill will codify the right to provide or obtain an abortion free from medically unnecessary restrictions. The American people deserve to know where their Senators stand. I will not stop fighting for the right of every American, especially the women of America, to have these rights as established for over 50 years. For years, the Republicans have claimed they are the party of families, the party of family values. Yet they have spent decades ignoring the needs of working families. Republicans are willing to force women to carry unwanted or unexpected or even dangerous pregnancies to term, but they are not willing to help them raise their children. There are aspects of their voting patterns in the Senate that make it clear that when it comes to helping families with the basics, such as tax credits for children, making sure that families have paid medical leave for their newborns or other family members--all of these things are family friendly and family values. Unfortunately, they are not supported by many, if any, Republicans. That would be a demonstration that they truly care for families. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Pursuant to S. Res. 27, the Judiciary Committee being tied on the question of reporting, I move to discharge the Committee on the Judiciary from further consideration of the nomination of Charlotte N. Sweeney, of Colorado, to be U.S. District Judge for the District of Colorado.

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote on the motion to discharge the Sweeney nomination occur at 11 a.m. tomorrow, Wednesday, May 11, and that the cloture motions filed during yesterday's session of the Senate ripen following disposition of the motion to discharge; further, that if cloture is invoked on the Bedoya nomination, all postcloture time be considered expired at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. DURBIN

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

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 552.

Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution being agreed to; that the Murphy amendment at the desk to the preamble be agreed to; that the preamble, as amended, be agreed to; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. DURBIN

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

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 627, submitted earlier today.

Mr. DURBIN. I know of no further debate on the resolution.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 628, submitted earlier today.

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

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 594.

Mr. DURBIN

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

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, this last Friday, we learned that U.S. employers added another 428,000 new jobs in the month of April. The unemployment rate is down to 3.6 percent, which is just about what it was before the pandemic struck. April marked the 15th consecutive month of job growth under President Biden, and the United States has now recovered more than 90 percent of the jobs that were lost during the coronavirus pandemic. To put it into context, when President Biden took office, 20 million Americans relied on unemployment benefits just to get by. Now that number is down to slightly more than 1 million--from 20 million to 1 million. This historic progress shows the resilience of American workers and small businesses that battled through more than 2 years of this unprecedented health crisis. This is truly an American success story. It is also the result of bold and decisive economic actions taken by the Democrats in Congress and President Biden. The American Rescue Plan you will remember well. It passed without a single Republican voting in favor of it last year. That plan helped us get shots in the arms, and it provided economic relief to small businesses and unemployed Americans when they needed it the most. The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and JOBS Act represented a historic investment in America, in our Nation's infrastructure-- everything from roads and bridges to expanding broadband and access in underserved communities. This legislation is creating jobs. We see it in the report. It is helping America stay connected at home, at school, and with their doctors, and it is allowing us to meet 21st century demands like climate change and cyber attacks. Even with last Friday's good news, we still have more work to do to make sure we have an economy that really works for everyone. Too many American families are still struggling to pay the bills and afford the basics amid global inflation caused by President Putin's unprovoked war in Ukraine and rising COVID cases in China that are disrupting our supply chains. Last week, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by half a percentage point. That is the biggest rate hike in 22 years. They are trying to tamp down this inflationary pressure. We know, for many American families, a break in rising prices can't come soon enough, but we also know that the root causes of this challenge are complicated and that it will take a global effort and some good fortune for us to address it successfully. Democrats are committed to taking action to lower household costs and combat rising prices, get kids back to school, and workers back to work. We need to give families a helping hand when it comes to the basics: medication, housing, gas for your car or truck. We need to think ahead and begin preparing and investing now for future COVID surges so we can save lives and minimize the potential disruption to our supply chains and the economy. It is incredible to me, after what this Nation and world have gone through and continue to go through with over a million Americans having died from COVID, that we still are in a fierce debate over whether we ought to prepare for the possibility that it could come back. We know it will. Sadly, it will. I hope it is in a manner that we can control. We believe, on the Democratic side, that we should ``be prepared.'' We weren't prepared when it hit initially. With the statements by the former President that this was some sort of a hoax and that it would all disappear someday, we just lulled ourselves into thinking it wasn't serious. Well, a million American lives have been lost to prove just how serious it has been. We need to support workers and families-- healthcare workers, too--and small businesses, like restaurants, that are the lifeblood of our economy. I urge my Republican colleagues to sit down and get real. We ought to face this public health issue for the reality that it is. We ought to face this economy with the challenges we face. We need to boost American manufacturing and jobs. We need to lower costs for families, and we need to insulate our economy against future COVID.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, yesterday the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by half a percentage point, the biggest rate hike in 22 years. The effort is underway to stop inflation. For millions of American families who are struggling to pay their bills and afford the basics, this can't come fast enough. The U.S. economy has added nearly 1.7 million jobs this year. Consumer spending is strong, but higher costs for groceries, gas, housing, and more are straining family budgets and making people very anxious about their future. In announcing the interest rate hike yesterday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the following: The biggest drivers of inflation today are higher prices caused by Russia's war on Ukraine and rising COVID cases in China, which can further disrupt supply chains. In other words, the Federal Reserve Chairman said two of the biggest drivers of inflation are really global; they are complicated; and they aren't going to be solved by America alone. Fortunately, there are some simple solutions we can take to help families save money. Let me tell you about three of them. The first is to cut gas prices. I can't think of a single cost of living that is more visible. Every street corner in America has a sign declaring what the cost of a gallon of gasoline is, and people compare these in their mind even as they drive down the road. Some people make a hobby of it. Anyone who has filled up a gas tank in the last few months has felt the sticker shock of Mr. Putin's war on Ukraine. President Biden has already made two changes that will reduce gas prices. A little over a month ago, he announced the United States will release 1 million barrels of oil a day from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve--in other words, to increase the supply in an effort to bring down the price--1 million gallons a day for 6 months, while oil companies ramp up domestic production to make up the shortage caused by Mr. Putin's war. President Biden also has issued an emergency fuel waiver allowing E15 gas--that is gas with a higher blend of ethanol--to be sold across America this summer. Normally E15 isn't sold in the summer, but the White House estimates that by allowing gas stations to sell it, it will save Americans 10 cents a gallon. Of course, if we are really serious about cutting gas prices and reducing the power of tyrants like Putin whose nations happen to sit on big oil reserves, we can do that by investing more in electric cars and clean energy sources that don't break the bank or bake the planet. Here is another solution that can save millions of families hundreds of dollars every single month. Let's agree to cap the monthly cost of insulin for diabetes at $35. In 1923, almost 100 years ago, researchers in Canada were awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of insulin to manage diabetes. They sold the patent--listen carefully--for this drug discovery for $1. They wanted to make sure that no one would ever profit from this lifesaving drug. Fast forward 100 years. Something has gone terribly wrong. The same vial of Humalog insulin that Eli Lilly sells for $40 in Canada, it charges $350 for in the United States--40 in Canada, 350 here. The maker of Lantus insulin has raised their price more than 26 times since the year 2000: from $35 to more than $300 today--26 price hikes in 22 years. The cost of insulin can range from a couple hundred dollars a month to more than $1,000 a month. That is the price this year. Who knows how much it will be next year. Who bears the burden of these costs? Patients and families. There are 37 million Americans who have diabetes. The number goes up every year. Senator Warnock of Georgia has introduced a critical bill, the Affordable Insulin Now Act, to cap the monthly cost of insulin at $35 a month. I am a cosponsor. Many Senators are. Senator Collins and Senator Shaheen are spearheading a similar bipartisan effort to support it. I urge more of our Republican colleagues to listen to the people they represent. There are lots of people struggling to afford insulin in their States as well as the blue States. Let's do this together. Can't we agree on one thing in the U.S. Senate that we are going to do to help America this year? I think this is a good project and a good goal. The third way we can reduce inflation is a little more complicated, but it is worth talking about. We need to rein in the excessive fees charged by Visa and Mastercard for their products. We had a hearing yesterday. It was in the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was on something called a swipe fee. Of course, the swipe fee is the amount of money that has to be paid in order to move that piece of plastic through the machine. Most consumers don't even know it exists. Every retailer knows it exists. It was the first hearing our committee has held on this topic in 16 years--16 years. And I was there 16 years ago. I walked into the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by the Senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter, and the hearing was on swipe fees and interchange fees. I had never heard of the term before, and I sat down and I learned. What happened in that meeting was an exposition of the current situation for every restaurant that you go to buy a meal in, every store that you shop in, all the grocery stores. Any store that takes plastic knows what a swipe fee or an interchange fee is. Here is how it works. Visa and Mastercard control over 80 percent of the credit and debit card markets in the United States--starting point. It isn't as if you can walk away from these two companies and be a retailer in America. If you are going to take plastic, you are going to take these cards. And every time a card with a Visa or Mastercard logo is swiped at the retailer, Visa and Mastercard charge a fee that takes a cut out of whatever the transaction amount turns out to be. Now, some of that cut Visa and Mastercard keep for themselves. Most of it is given to the bank that issues the card. The fee that Mastercard and Visa require the card-accepting merchant to pay to the card-issuing bank is the interchange fee. It is usually charged as a percentage of the transaction plus a flat fee, for example, 2 percent of whatever the transaction cost is plus 10 cents. How does that work out in practice? Just an example: Say you buy $100 worth of groceries or kids' clothes on your credit card. After the fees are deducted, the merchant gets $98, maybe a little less. For merchants operating on tight profit margins--and that is most of them--these fees can add up to a big problem. Laura Karet was one of our witnesses yesterday. She is an amazing woman. What a resume. She is the CEO of a supermarket chain known as Giant Eagle. It is a regional, American-owned chain of grocery stores based in Pittsburgh, PA. At our hearing yesterday, she explained that her industry--groceries--typically operates on a 1-percent profit margin--1 percent. So the 2-percent swipe fee wipes out their entire profit. What do they do? Well, there is only one obvious answer: They raise the prices to cover the high swipe fees required by Visa and Mastercard, and customers end up holding the bag. Remember, we started this conversation about inflation. Make no mistake, what I have just described to you is inflationary. Swipe fees aren't just annoying to the retailers; they are anti- competitive. Ms. Karet told us the story that on April 22, she received the latest modification of the swipe fees being charged to her businesses by Visa and Mastercard. She said the modification was 300 pages long, almost unintelligible. She handed it over to her accountants and to her lawyers and said: Make some sense out of it. What are they doing to me? The banks get the swipe fees, but the banks do not set the fees. Banks let Visa and Mastercard do the behind-the-scenes work and fix the fees. That means that all the thousands of card-issuing banks in the Visa and Mastercard network receive the same exact schedule of swipe fees from merchants regardless of whether they are efficient or inefficient, regardless of whether or not they are preventing fraud. It is a free lunch for the banks. When the fee rates go up, as they did just a few weeks ago, banks make more money every time people use plastic--debit or credit cards-- and they issue more cards. That benefits Visa and Mastercard, which take their cut, called a network fee, out of each swipe. So Visa and Mastercard have an incentive to keep raising fees. What can merchants do? Well, you might think they would sit down at the table and say: We are going to bargain about this fee, Visa and Mastercard. We object to it being raised, and we want to let you know that if you want to do business with our business, that is the way it will be. That doesn't happen at all. This is noncompetitive. Visa and Mastercard control 80 percent of the plastic market in America. They say to the grocery store, to the restaurant, to the shop: Take it or leave it. Play by our rules or you won't play at all. We just won't even let people present their cards at your business. Visa and Mastercard tell merchants, if they want to be able to accept payment from thousands of banks in their networks, the merchants must agree to Visa and Mastercard's fees and terms. Take it or leave it. Only merchants can't leave it. Visa and Mastercard, as I have said repeatedly, control 80 percent of the credit and debit card market. Incidentally, the figures from 2020 show--I am going to roughly approximate these, and I will clear them up in the Record--86 billion transactions using debit cards, 41 billion transactions using credit cards in the year 2020. How does that compare with cash and check? Cash, if I remember right, was 32 billion compared to 120 billion for plastic. And what about checks? How many people are writing checks? It was 5 billion transactions compared to plastic, which was over 120 billion. The reality is, when swipe fees go up--and they do regularly--that cost gets built into the price consumers pay at the checkout counter and at the gas pump. Remember those gas prices? You wonder why they are hitting $4 a gallon, $5 a gallon? They include the swipe fees, the credit card fees, the debit card fees that are being added on to the cost of gasoline. Take a look at this chart. In the 16 years between the first hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee--one that I attended on swipe fees-- and now, Visa and Mastercard have imposed $794 billion in swipe fees-- fees passed on directly to American families and consumers. That is a staggering amount--$794 billion, for the hidden fee you never see. Visa and Mastercard just raised these fees again 2 weeks ago. Senator Marshall, my Republican colleague from Kansas, and I sent them a letter saying this is exactly the wrong time to be raising your fees. It is tough enough for these businesses trying to hire people and get back into business after COVID-19, tough enough for families who are fighting inflation. Why do you have to raise them now? You are very profitable companies. The banks are doing quite well, too, I might add. They did it anyway. These fee increases are adding to inflation. The market can't fix the problem because the credit and debit card market isn't competitive. The retailers have no voice in what this fee is going to be. It is ``take it or leave it.'' Visa and Mastercard have what they call a duopoly-- not a monopoly, one company controlling everything--but these two companies, Visa and Mastercard, control over 80 percent of the plastic market. What can we do about it? Well, in our hearing, we talked about several responses. First, let's bring transparency to the market. The last thing that either Visa or Mastercard want to see is sunlight-- people understanding what they are charging, why they are charging, the impact it has on prices, the impact on inflation. They want this to continue to be a deep dark secret buried in 300 pages of legal gobbledygook that they sent to the retailers. If consumers knew how much their Visa and Mastercard purchase cost at the local restaurants or businesses, they might try using a less costly card and there are some out there. It would be like giving the business a tip, and it would help bring down prices. So why not require banks to show on their monthly statement that they send to us with their credit-debit card transactions how much of that was swipe fees? They could do it in a second. They wouldn't dare. They can't ever embrace transparency. That is just about part of this process. It is all in secret, in code, and legal gobbledygook. I will bet that would open a lot of eyes if you saw each month how much we are paying in swipe fees. Incidentally, Ms. Karet talked about her supermarket chain. She said: The three main expenses we have for my supermarket chain in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Ohio are No. 1, labor costs--understandable; No. 2, rent--that is understandable as well; No. 3, credit-debit card swipe fees. She estimated that it is going to cost her $1 million or more in her businesses based on what Visa and Mastercard just did two weeks ago to raise the fees. Here is another way we can reduce inflation. Let's prevent Visa and Mastercard from hiking swipe fees up to unreasonable levels. Yesterday, I pointed out that in Canada, the most commonly used debit card system, called Interac, operates with interchange fees of zero. There is no interchange fee. All the arguments that the banks and credit cards make in this country about why they have to charge these retailers these hidden fees disappear in Canada because why? The government stepped in. They said: We are going to regulate this. We are not going to let the banks and credit card-debit card companies dictate the policies in our country. They are not alone. The European Union did the same thing. There is a long list of other countries that are moving in that same direction. It operates quite well in these countries with low fraud and high consumer satisfaction. We don't have to eliminate interchange fees all together, but for goodness sake, we ought to make sure they are not excessive and not adding to inflation. There are two ways we can do it: Promote something called competition. Are you a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist; do you believe in a free market? I bet you believe in competition, don't you? There is no competition in these fees. It is ``take it or leave it.'' These plastic companies dictate these terms to the retailers that honor their cards. We can promote competition by giving merchants more options on each of the swipes or place reasonable limits on their fees. Other countries, as I said, figured it out. Many countries around the world say that swipe fees are a fraction of the cost of what they are here because those nations limit Visa and Mastercard. We are afraid to tackle the giants. Our government and the people that work in this Chamber--many of them are frightened by the size of Visa and Mastercard. I didn't get that message. We can do better here. If we do, consumers and competition will benefit. The bottom line is this: If you are serious about reducing costs for American families, get serious about reining in swipe fees. Visa and Mastercard swipe fees are adding to the fires of inflation every single day and they are doing it in secret. Is that what we want in our economy? Is that what American families need at this moment in history? I think not. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DURBIN

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

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.