Ron Johnson

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Reserving the right to object. One thing that----

Mr. JOHNSON. I object.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Madam President, let me first say that I wish this Chamber were full of our colleagues who had listened to my Republican colleague's description--the Senator from Pennsylvania--of what this bill is and what this bill isn't. It is not a COVID relief bill. Senator Toomey did an excellent job. I am hoping that people are watching it on their TV screens. They really can't be reading the bill yet because it is not constructed. I don't want to repeat all of the excellent points the Senator from Pennsylvania made, but I wanted to come down because I think we have grown immune to these vast amounts of money. I always knew we were going to be in big trouble when we stopped talking about hundreds of billions of dollars and switched to talking about trillions of dollars. When we talk about $1 trillion or $2 trillion, it just doesn't sound like as much as $200 billion or $800 billion, which was in the stimulus package under the Obama administration. The fact of the matter is we have already authorized $4 trillion in COVID relief. That is 18 percent of last year's GDP, and, roughly, $1 trillion is yet to be spent. Some of that isn't even obligated, and we are going to be debating, over the next couple of days, $1.9 trillion. So I just wanted to come down here to the floor and try to illustrate what a massive amount of money $1.9 trillion is. You have to use analogies. Again, the human mind really can't contemplate what ``a trillion'' is. I found this first analogy--my wife talked to me about it--in terms of time. This one is simply talking about, if I would give the Presiding Officer $1 per second, how long would it take me to give her $1 million? You see the chart here. It would take 11.6 days. Again, with $1 per second, how long would it take to give her $1 million? 11.6 days. The next question: How long would it take you to accumulate $1 billion? Again, when you do the math, you find out it would take 31.7 years. That was back when the Chinese had their protests in Tiananmen Square. The next question: What about $1 trillion? This is what becomes mind-boggling. If I gave you $1 every second and I wanted to give you $1 trillion, it would take 31,688 years to give you $1 trillion. That takes us back to beyond the last glaciation period, a period in time when Wisconsin was under a mile-thick glacier. By the way, as a quick aside for my colleague, the Senator from Rhode Island, since that point in time, about 20,000 years ago, the water level in the San Francisco Bay has increased 390 feet. Now, that is global warming--that is a rise in sea level--but that is what happened through natural causes. That was an aside. How long would it take to accumulate $1.9 trillion? Over 60,000 years. Again, put that in context. The human race began to develop language about 50,000 years ago. So that is the time analogy. Another way of looking at this is through distance and volume. So here is the calculation. I should have brought a $1 bill to just demonstrate its thickness, but the thickness of a $1 bill is 4.3- thousandths-of-an-inch thick. To illustrate how much $1 trillion is, let's start with $1 million. If you stacked a million dollar bills on top of each other, they would stack up to be 358 feet high. You can see the calculation here. That is about a 30- to 35-foot-story building. How big would a stack of a billion dollar bills be? It would be 67.86 miles. Now, there is something called the Karman line. I think I am pronouncing that right. That is the point at which the atmosphere ends and outer space begins. That is 62 miles. So a stack of a billion dollar bills would actually exceed the atmosphere and extend into outer space--62 miles. Then, the next question is: How big would a stack be of a trillion dollar bills? Well, it would be 1,000 times that. So it would be 67,866 miles high. That is an astonishingly large stack of dollar bills that equals $1 trillion. Again, we are not just talking about $1 trillion. We are not talking just about 67,000 miles worth. We are talking about $1.9 trillion, which would stack up to be 135,732 miles high. The distance to the Moon is 238,900 miles. So that stack of $1.9 trillion worth of $1 bills would be more than halfway to the Moon. That is what we are debating spending--a stack of dollar bills that extends more than halfway the distance to the Moon. This is at a point in time when we are about $28 trillion in debt. That single stack would be over 1.9 million miles or, if you were to put it relative to the Moon, there would be eight stacks--seven stacks that go directly to the Moon and one further stack that would be 95 percent of the way there. These are astonishing sums that we are talking about, and the majority party here wants to jam this through using the reconciliation process--no consultation with our side. They want to just blow it through here with 20 hours of debate, a vote-arama, pass $1.9 trillion in spending, and go home, having no consideration whatsoever about the fact that we are mortgaging our children's futures. At some point in time, there will be a day of reckoning--a debt crisis--and it won't be pretty. My suggestion, at least as we consider this, is to actually have a debate. Let's have a discussion. Let's consider the amendments. Let's not do this in 20, 24, 30 hours. Let's take the time to seriously consider what we are doing to our children in contemplating spending a stack of dollar bills over 135 miles high, extending more than halfway to the Moon. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I send a question to the desk for both parties.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Madam President, on behalf of myself and Senator Tuberville, I call up amendment No. 542 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. JOHNSON. Madam President, in 2006, the Secure Fence Act was signed into law, authorizing 700 miles of double-layer fencing along the southwest border. It passed this Chamber on a vote of 80 to 19, with 26 Senate Democrats voting to secure the border. Among the Democratic Senators voting for it were then-Senators Obama, Biden, Clinton, and current Senators Schumer, Feinstein, Carper, and Wyden. In the end, only 36 miles of double fencing was actually constructed, which, in the end, combined with a very low bar for asylum claims and DACA, created the catalyst for a humanitarian crisis in 2014 of unaccompanied minors and family units coming in, with the crisis peaking in the summer of 2019. In reaction, President Trump enacted a number of policies, including construction of 700 miles of wall. Now, we didn't construct all of it, but we contracted 700 miles, completed 450, and, as of today, 250 miles are contracted but not built. Unfortunately, the Biden administration is now reversing all of these policies.

Mr. JOHNSON. I have 2 minutes, don't I?

Mr. JOHNSON. I was told 2. Well, anyway, my amendment--

Mr. JOHNSON.--will prevent cancellation of those contracts, saving taxpayers the cancellation costs and securing the borders. I urge support of my amendment.

Mr. JOHNSON. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I would like to first thank my colleague from Kentucky for his consistent, over the years--consistent fighting, I use that word--fighting for the Constitution. I truly appreciate it, and I appreciate his raising this constitutional point of order in an hour or so. The issue he raises is one of constitutionality versus unconstitutionality. I have been reading positions on both sides. I understand there are legitimate arguments on both sides of that question. But the fact is, 3 weeks ago, we came together in this body and we collectively decided that it was not wise, it was not smart-- regardless of the constitutionality or the ability for us to do so, it was not smart for Congress to overrule, overturn the wishes of voters and of States that certified the electors. We felt that was not wise. Again, in a couple of hours, we are going to be voting on--we won't be able to debate, which is why I am rising today or at this moment--we are going to debate whether a trial of someone who is no longer a President, no longer a civil servant, a private citizen, whether that is constitutional or not constitutional. Again, there are good arguments on both sides. Senators will vote differently and have justification for whatever side of that argument they take. What I would like my colleagues to consider when they decide how to vote on that is not the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of that; I want them to consider, is it wise? Will a trial of a former President, of a private citizen--will it heal? Will it unify? I think the answer is clearly it will not. A trial of a former President is simply vindictive. It will divide. It is like opening up a wound and throwing salt in it. That is not a healing process. Again, the question when we vote on this in a couple of hours, for every Senator, should be, Is it wise? Is it the right thing to do? I think from that standpoint, the choice is very clear: It will not heal. It will not unite. Let's put an end to this now. Let's dismiss this trial and rule it unconstitutional. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President. First of all, I want to say to my colleague from Missouri that I certainly share and I think every Senator in this Chamber shares his concern for people who are hurting because of this COVID pandemic. Businesses have closed. People are on unemployment. People are in need through no fault of their own. This is an act of God, and that is one of the reasons why I certainly supported the CARES Act. That was over $2 trillion. In total, this body has passed well over $3 trillion, 15 percent to 16 percent of last year's GDP in terms of financial relief. My comments here are really not directed specifically at the proposal of the Senator from Missouri because he makes many good points. We do have working men and women, we have households that--again, through no fault of their own--are struggling, and we need to provide financial support. I think my comments are, in some respect, more general from the standpoint of how we have done that. As I have explained to my colleagues in conference, by and large, the initial need packages here were a shotgun approach. We had to move fast. We had to do something big. We had to make sure that markets wouldn't seize, that financial relief could be sent to people very quickly, and so we passed over $3 trillion in financial relief. I knew it would be far from perfect. It was far from perfect. But now we have had a lot more time, and anything we consider for this additional package that we are considering now that is being debated, that is being discussed, that is being negotiated, ought to be far more targeted. One of the reasons we are currently $27.4 trillion in debt, which is about 128 percent of last year's GDP--if we do this bipartisan deal, another trillion dollars, we will be $28.4 trillion in debt in the next 3 or 4 months. That is 132 percent of GDP. When I came to the Senate, we were a little over $14 trillion and our GDP was over $15 trillion, and we were actually below 100 percent of GDP. I know I am using a lot of numbers right now, and I am going to use more because that is part of the problem. One of the reasons we are $27.4 trillion in debt is, we only speak about need; we only talk in terms of compassion. We all have compassion. We all want to fulfill those needs. We just don't talk in numbers very often. We don't analyze the data. We don't take a look at what we did in the past and see, did it work or didn't it work? What was spent well? What was wasted? So I didn't have enough time to do charts. It would be a little bit easier. But let me go through numbers, and I will go through slowly so that people can understand at least my perspective of why I am so concerned about our Nation's debt and the fact that we are mortgaging our children's future. I think we need to be very careful about mortgaging it further when we aren't doing it in a targeted fashion So, again, before the COVID recession hit, in December 2019, we hit a record number of people employed in this country. There were 158.8 million people employed. That was a record. Our economy was humming. Because of President Trump's administration, they put forward a reasonable level of regulation and competitive taxes. That brought back the entrepreneurial spirit that supercharged the economy. We were at 3.5 percent unemployment. When I took econ, 5 percent was considered full employment. We were at 3.5 percent unemployment. Then, COVID hit and, by April, we had gone from almost 159 million people employed in this country to just a little over 133 million people, so that was a reduction in employment of a little more than 25 million people--again, from 159 million to 133 million, 25 million fewer people employed in this Nation. Now, the good news: Even though the pandemic is still not over and the vaccine is being delivered, and it is being administrated--I think the end is in sight--we have already gained 16 million people employed, so now employment stands at 149.7 million people; 150 million people are employed--down about 9 million jobs--9 million. I want you to keep those numbers in mind because they are important. Our unemployment rate stands at 6.7 percent. By the way, the number of people unemployed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has a little bit different calculation, is about 10.7. So, in this, somewhere between 9 million and 11 million people are currently unemployed. Now, in the CARES Act--again, which I supported because we had to provide relief--we did provide economic impact payments, which Senator Hawley wants to just duplicate--no changes, no modifications, no further targeting. Those economic impact payments were about $275 billion to 166 million people. Remember, 25 million people lost their jobs, but we sent our checks to 166 million people, averaging about $1,673 per person. What may be a more relevant figure is how many households we sent those checks to. We sent them out to about 115 million households at about $2,400 per household. So, again, $275 billion to 115 million households--that was about 4.5 more households than the number of jobs lost. Today, with only 9 million jobs lost, not only--I mean, that is a big number, a big number. I am not minimizing that. With 9 million jobs lost, if we just repeat it--send out to another 115 million households--that is 12.6 times the number of jobs lost. And if we double it, it goes from $275 billion to $550 billion. That is half a trillion dollars. I know a trillion doesn't sound like much anymore. It seems like hundreds of billions seem more, but now that we are dealing in $1 trillion or $2 trillion, it is pocket change apparently. I think it is important to ask: Well, how was that money spent? Did it really--was it really spent on essentials? Was this money really needed? Was there any hope, actually, of that money being stimulative to our economy? Well, we have one study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They issued it on October 13 of 2020. What they did is, since 2013, they have been sending out in the internet a national survey to 1,300 households called the Survey of Consumer Expectations, and with COVID, they decided to send out two special surveys--one in June and one in August. Here is what those survey results said. Of the $2,400 per household in the June survey, 18 percent of that $275 billion was spent on essential items; 8 percent was spent on nonessential; 3 percent, on donations, for a total of 29 percent spent. This is what they call the marginal propensity to consume, 29 percent. Of the other 71 percent, equally divided, 36 percent of that was saved, so our Nation's savings rate increased, and 35 percent went to pay off debt--credit card debt. They also asked the same question about what happened to the unemployment payments. Very similar results: 24 percent of those unemployment payments--the plus-up to $600 per week to stay on unemployment benefits--24 percent was spent on essential consumption, 4 percent on nonessential, 1 percent on donations for, again, the same percent: 29 percent was the marginal propensity to consume from the unemployment payments; 71 percent, for savings and for debt repayment. They also looked ahead, assuming that we are going to do another round of stimulus checks. This time they asked their respondents: How would you spend $1,500 if you got a check? This time respondents said that they would spend about 14 percent on essential consumption, 7 percent on nonessential, 3 percent on donations, for a total of 24 percent that would be the marginal propensity to consume--24 percent--and 76 percent, again, on savings and debt repayment. So I don't think you can take a look at these direct payments to individuals as stimulative. Obviously, 18 to 24 percent was spent on essential items. We ought to figure out how to provide that money so that people can spend it on essentials. Again, that is only 18 to 24 percent maximum. I do want to talk a little bit about past stimuli. I personally don't believe they do much to stimulate the economy. I think the best way to stimulate the economy is, again, what this administration has done: Lower regulation to a reasonable level--nobody argues for no regulation; we need a reasonable level--and have a competitive tax system. I fear, in the next administration, we may just repeat the mistakes of the Obama-Biden administration, and here is the proof of their mistakes. Again, remember those employment numbers: a record of about 159 million, currently 150 million people, being employed. Well, back during the great recession, prior to that, we did have employment of about 146 million people in January 2008. By December 2009, that had dropped to 138 million people employed. But when President Obama took office, he had total control of Congress--a filibuster-proof majority here in the Senate--and, within a month, they enacted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act--$787 billion of proposed spending. In February of 2009, there were 141.6 million Americans working--141.6-- and the unemployment rate was 8.3 percent. Again, it continued to dip to December 2009 when it got down to 138 million. It took us 3 years from February 2009 to get back to 141.6 million Americans working, and that is with an $800 billion--roughly, $800 billion--stimulus package that did not work, but it further mortgaged our children's future by another $800 billion. I wish these things worked. A quick aside: Part of that American Recovery and Reinvestment Act--again, Democrats had total control, with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Do you know how much they plussed-up State unemployment benefits to help the unemployed, those 8.3 percent of Americans? They plussed it up by a whopping $25 per week, and now they are arguing that $300 per week, which I believe is the current proposal, isn't enough. It kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it? So, in summary, kind of reviewing these numbers, we currently are at 6.7 percent unemployment. I don't recall ever, in U.S. history, when we have even begun to think that we should even spend $100 billion to stimulate an economy at 6.7 percent unemployment. But this is different. We have underemployed; we have families in need. There is no doubt about it. I completely support some kind of program targeted for small businesses so they can reemploy and so they can reopen to restore capital. Their life savings have been wiped out. I have proposals. They have been ignored. So what I fear we are going to do with this bipartisan package and what the Senator from Missouri is talking about is the same thing--a shotgun approach. We will not have learned the lessons from our very hurried, very rushed, very massive earlier relief packages. We will just do more of the same--another trillion dollars. It takes our debt from $27.4 trillion to $28.4 trillion in a couple of months with doing virtually no revisions, no improvements and, similar to what the Senator from Missouri is talking about in terms of these economic impact payments, no revisions at all--just spend another $275 billion and send it out to 115 million households when we are currently at about 9 million fewer jobs than we were in a record economy before the COVID recession. So, for all those reasons, I not only object to what Senator Hawley is proposing here, but I am certainly lodging my objection to what is barreling through--the train has left the station--on the package being negotiated right now that is way too big, that authorizes more money, even though we have $600 billion there just for repurposing, no new authorization required. There are 52 Republicans who supported it, but that is not good enough. We have to throw another $300 to $400 billion on top, which is $300 to $400 billion more that we are mortgaging our children's future without reforms and without targeting. So I object.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Reserving the right to object, the Senator from Vermont made a couple of statements that I would just like to repeat the words: that we are in a crisis; this is an emergency; we can't turn our backs on the suffering. I agree. I have agreed for months. But he also said something that is completely incorrect. You might call it a lie. He said that Republicans have done nothing. That is not true. I was on daily calls during the August recess after we had attempted and were debating internally a trillion-dollar package at the tail end of July before the August recess, recognizing--and I was one of the ones pointing out--the fact that we had already passed, as the good Senator from Vermont said, over $3 trillion in four different COVID relief financial packages early in the pandemic. At that point in time, there was $1.2 trillion of that unspent. A big chunk of that wasn't even obligated. Today, as we stand here debating this now, we still have a little under $600 billion unspent and unobligated. So the point I was making to my Republican colleagues during those last few weeks in July and those conference calls in August was, before we authorize any more money, before we further mortgage our children's future, why don't we first repurpose and redirect what we already passed because what we passed, we passed very quickly because we had to. We had to do something massively, and we did something massively so that markets wouldn't seize, so that the people--the individuals who were out of work through no fault of their own and the businesses that were shut down through no fault of their own could get financial relief. So we came together unanimously, and we did that, but doing it fast, doing it massively--I certainly knew it was going to be far from perfect. We found out the Federal Government actually has a hard time spending $3 trillion because, over the course of a number of months, they didn't spend it all. They couldn't even obligate it. So what Republicans did during the August recess--because we couldn't come to an agreement by the end of July--was we worked long and hard on a targeted bill, more than $600 billion, $300-plus of it for people on unemployment, $260 billion for small businesses, $100 billion for education, and tens of billions of dollars for vaccines and testing and agriculture and childcare. We offered that on the floor, and 52 Republicans voted to proceed to that bill. Democrats just said no. I felt it was a crisis, an emergency, and we shouldn't have been turning our backs on these people who are suffering in September. Democrats said no. All they had to do was say yes. They couldn't take yes for an answer. Madam President, I often use this analogy: I go up to you, because I know you are a generous person, and say: Madam President, give me 200 bucks. And you kind of look at me with a little shock and say: Well, I won't give you 200, but I will give you 100. Then I go stomping off and say: No; it is $200 or nothing. That is what the Democrats did to over $600 billion in needed and necessary relief for the crisis, for the emergency, for the people we don't want to turn our backs on because they are suffering. If they were really serious and they actually wanted a result, if they wanted to relieve the suffering, wouldn't the logical thing have been to say yes, take $600 billion, pocket it, get that relief flowing in September, and then come back and argue for more? But they said no. They were cynical. They played politics with it. And that is what they are doing here today. I am sure, to paraphrase a widely known saying, that the road to total national bankruptcy is paved with good intentions. I am sure that is true. I don't question the good intentions of any Member of this body. We all want to provide the relief. We all want to relieve suffering. We all want to help fellow Americans who are hurting through no fault of their own. But we talk about suffering. We use words. We don't look at numbers very often. The Senator from Vermont has offered a few numbers, but let me quote a couple. Let me just kind of lay it out. I didn't have enough time to do a chart, so I will try and go through this slowly, but I think it is important to put this all in perspective. Prior to the COVID recession, we had a record number of Americans employed at the end of December 2019. Just under 159 million Americans were employed. By April, 2 months into the pandemic, 3 months into the pandemic, employment had dropped to 133 million. That is a loss of over 25 million jobs--25 million--which is why we acted, why we acted in a bipartisan fashion to provide relief for those people--25 million--who had lost their jobs. Now, the good news: It is hard to keep the American economy down when you don't overtax, when you don't overregulate. So in November--the latest figures we have--there are now just shy of 150 million Americans employed again. I realize some are underemployed, but still you have 150 million Americans employed--down about 9 million jobs from that record high when unemployment was only 3.5 percent. We had a record economy because we stopped overregulating and we had a competitive tax system. Now the unemployment rate is 6.7 percent. In the CARES Act, which I supported because I want to help people, part of that was the economic impact payments--basically what the Senator from Vermont is proposing here in this bill he wants to pass by unanimous consent. It spent $274 billion. It was paid to just under 166 million Americans, for an average check of about $1,673 per person. You can break that down into households because, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the average check per household was $2,400. That is 115 million households that got a check--115 million. Now, remember, at the low point, 25 million Americans had lost their jobs. We sent checks to 115 million households--4\1/2\ times the number of people who had lost their jobs. My problem with the CARES Act, with the first four packages, is it was a shotgun approach. We just spent money. We just opened up the spigot, and we just sent it all over the place. We didn't have time to target it to those who really needed it. As a result--and we are seeing today--businesses that needed it, business owners, small business owners, have been wiped out of their life savings. They didn't get relief. It wasn't well designed. It wasn't well targeted. And we probably spent hundreds of billions of dollars and sent it to people who didn't need it. We are $27.4 trillion in debt today. That is 128 percent of the size of last year's economy. If this bipartisan deal goes through, about $1 trillion, we will be at $28.4 trillion in debt--132 percent of our GDP. I remember the good old days when I first got here. I ran because we were mortgaging our kids' future. We were a little over $14 trillion in debt, and when the economy was over $15 trillion, we were under 100 percent debt-to-GDP ratio. What the Senator from Vermont is proposing is basically duplicating, without any reforms that I know of, those economic impact payments from the CARES Act, another $275 billion, for a total of $550 billion--a half a trillion dollars sent out again to 115 million households when right now we have only--not ``only,'' this is tragic. Every job lost is a tragedy. But we have 9 million jobs less than we had when we had a record level of employment before the recession--9 million jobs lost, 115 million households. That is 12.6 times the number of jobs that have been lost. I think the question needs to be, if we are going do this again, is there any sense, any information in terms of how the $275 billion is spent? Well, we have an answer from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They do a monthly internet-based survey called the Survey of Consumer Expectation. They did two special surveys, one in June and one in August. The June survey took a look at how those households spent the $2,400 checks. Here are the results: 18 percent of those checks were spent on essential consumption--essential; 8 percent was on nonessential, the fun stuff, I guess; 3 percent on donations--Americans are still generous--for a total of 29 percent spent on consumption. The marginal propensity to consume was 29 percent. For the remainder, 71 percent, half of it was put to savings--spent on increasing savings-- and the other half was paying off debt. They also studied how the unemployment plus-up was spent. It had pretty similar results: 24 percent of those dollars went for essential consumer goods; 4 percent, non-essential; 1 percent, donations. Again, a total of 29 percent was consumed; 71 percent was either saved or used for debt reduction. They did another special survey in August, asking those same 1,300 households that they surveyed: How would you spend a $1,500 check? Not $2,400--$1,500. The response was that 14 percent would be spent on essential items, 7 percent on nonessential, 3 percent on donations. But only 24 percent of a new check would actually be spent on consumption; 76 percent would either be saved or pay off debt. That is not very good economic stimulus. Again, the numbers are without any reforms, without trying to target the dollars to people who really need it. I would want to do that. I would like to work with anybody to try and get that relief flowing as quickly as possible to get it to the individuals who need it. I am sure the need is still great. It is greater than 9 million. I understand that. But let's look at some figures. I do want to point out a past stimulus in terms of its effectiveness. In 2009, we had the great recession. Let me quote some employment figures from that. In January 2008, we had 146 million Americans employed. Remember, today we have 149 million. Our record was 159 million, but there were about 146 million before the great recession. By December 2009, it had dropped, hit the low point of 138 million people working; 8 million people had lost their jobs. In January, 2009, President Obama was inaugurated, had total control of government, a filibuster-proof Senate, control of the House. He could pass anything he wanted, and they did. They passed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. They did that in February 2009. At that point, there were 141.6 million Americans working--141.6 million Americans. The unemployment rate was 8.3 percent. Again, throughout 2009, that stimulus didn't work too well because unemployment fell to 138 million Americans. It took 3 years--3 years--until January 2012, because of overregulation and overtaxation, to return to February 2009 levels of 141.6 million Americans working--3 years. That is what we call a slow, nonexistent recovery. Oh, a quick aside: The Senator from Vermont is talking about how we need the $600 plus-up for the unemployed because they are suffering. President Obama, with Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, with a filibuster-proof Senate--they provided a $25-per-week plus-up to State unemployment when they had total control. Now they are demanding $600. I know that is not part of what the Senator from Vermont is asking for in terms of a unanimous consent request. I thought it was just somewhat noteworthy. Again, I am not heartless. I want to help people. I voted to help people. I voted for the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, but I also am concerned about our children's future and the fact that we are mortgaging it. We do not have an unlimited checking account. We have to be concerned about these things. My complaint about the Senator from Vermont's bill--and, quite honestly, the bipartisan effort--we have $600 billion unspent, unobligated. Let's work long and hard. Let's look at economic data. Let's target it properly. Let's not just shotgun it out to the economy again, wasting tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars. Let's focus on that. Let's pretend it is like real money--like it is our money--and spend it well. We don't need to mortgage our children's future by another $300 or $400 billion. We don't need to do that. We can alleviate suffering. We can help our fellow Americans. We could have done it in September, but the good Senator from Vermont and all of his colleagues on the Democratic side simply won't take yes for an answer, and my guess is, they are taking that same stance today. So, Madam President, I object.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. JOHNSON

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

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I come to the floor today, 71 days in the fiscal year, 71 days into a continuing resolution. It is unfortunate. I am placing no blame. It is unfortunate we have not considered on the floor of the U.S. Senate--not 1 of the 12 regular order appropriations bills. The appropriations process is completely broken. Quite honestly, it has been broken since I arrived here in the Senate in 2011. I ran for the U.S. Senate primarily because I was concerned about the fact that we were mortgaging our children's future. Back then, we were $14 trillion in debt, and that was extremely concerning to me. Now, 10 years later, 71 days into the 2021 fiscal year, we are $27.4 trillion into debt. That is an increase of $13.4 trillion. It is almost double since I have been here in just 10 years. Again, the appropriations process is so broken. During that timeframe, we had to pass 36 continuing resolutions. The debt limit has no power in terms of controlling our out-of-control spending. We either raised or suspended the debt limit nine times. Unfortunately, during that time, that 10 years, we have also--because of the broken process here--we have shut down the government three times, costing our economy, costing our government billions of dollars, and hurting real people. I come from the State of Wisconsin, where, if the legislature can't get its act together and we don't pass appropriations bills and we are at an impasse, we don't shut down the government. We don't even shut down a particular agency. What we do is we do something that is pretty practical, the type of commonsense legislation that Wisconsinites would embrace. We just appropriate. We just fund the agencies or the entire State government at the previous year's level. Doesn't that make sense? I think it makes all the sense in the world. Again, here we are, 71 days into the fiscal year, and we haven't passed an appropriations bill. We have to pass, within the next 24 hours or so, our 37th continuing resolution to kick the can another week so we can get our act together and pass some kind of massive omnibus that nobody is going to be able to read before they actually vote for it. It is a completely broken process. I recognize that as chairman of Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, a certain part of this government shutdown--this broken process--some of these elements weren't in my committee's jurisdiction. We had a number of pieces of legislation; one by Senator Portman; one by Senator Paul; one by Senator Lankford, who had been working on a similar piece of legislation from being in the House, to end government shutdowns forever. As chairman of the committee, I had to take a look at these pieces of legislation and decide which one did I want to bring up to my committee, pass out of my committee, and bring to the floor of the Senate. I chose Senator Lankford's because he had done a lot of hard work with Senator Maggie Hassan on a bipartisan bill. Again, it is very simple. It didn't automatically increase spending, didn't automatically decrease spending. It did exactly what we do in Wisconsin. If we don't get our act together, and we don't pass any appropriations bills or a single or two appropriations bills, we don't shut down the government. We don't shut down that agency. We just appropriate enough funds at last year's level, and we continue until we actually do pass an appropriations bill. I know the members of the Appropriations Committee and have all the respect in the world for the chairman and the ranking member. I know they don't like CRs, but, again, this will be our 37th CR since I have been here for 10 years. It is broken. But just in case they are concerned about these CRs, what I can give you is Wisconsin's history in this. Since we passed this commonsense reform, really, the longest CR we ever had in Wisconsin since we had this anti-government shutdown process was just 4 months in 1971. That is a long time ago, and it was only 4 months. We are approaching 4 months now. Again, this is the 37th CR since I took office. We passed out of my committee--there were only two dissenting votes, two ``no'' votes. Those came from two Senators who just had an alternate version of the End Government Shutdowns Act. We passed this out of my committee 12 to 2. We have been working now for the last year trying to find some vehicle to add it on as an amendment to end this insanity. We thought that with the group of us here, this would be a good time. It is a very simple bill. Again, if you don't pass an appropriations bill or all the appropriation bills, you just fund, you appropriate at last year's level. But we have a few little disciplines to force the Senators in Congress to do their job. The first discipline is, we don't allow any Federal or campaign moneys to be spent on travel, which, basically, forces Members of Congress to stay here until we do get our act together, until we do pass appropriations bills and fund government that is necessary. The other thing we do is we only allow Congress, each Chamber, to only bring up appropriations bills in their Chamber. There is an exception, of course, for any bill that would have to do with an immediate national security emergency. That is pretty much it. In committee, Senator Scott had an amendment, which I will turn to him to have him describe the final discipline to force Members of Congress to do their jobs: pass appropriations bills and fund government without shutting the government down. Senator Scott

Mr. JOHNSON. I yield time to Senator Leahy.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Vermont. I think what Senator Lee and I were talking about is, you know, as opposed to the way it used to be, when we got here in 2011, the appropriations process was completely broken, and it is still broken. And it has been a bipartisan failure. I arrived in 2011 under Democratic leadership. Now we are in a Republican leadership. It is broken. The good news is the Preventing Government Shutdown Act is a bipartisan solution. It passed 12-to-2 out of my committee. It is cosponsored, largely, by Senator Lankford and Senator Hassan. The concerns that the Senator from Vermont expressed about an automatic CR and passage of this bill is addressed in the bill. The bill has the disciplines to force us to only work on appropriations bills. We can leave town but not on the Federal dime, not on campaign money. We will have to pay for that ourselves. And I don't know what we are going to pay for it with because we are not going to get paid until we actually pass the appropriations bill. So the discipline is already set in here. That is what is so beautiful about this bill, what is so elegant about it. As I said, in Wisconsin, once they enforced this discipline, the most we have ever had is a 4-month CR. We are 71 days into this CR, and we are going to pass it for another week. This process is broken. The Preventing Government Shutdown Act is a solution that will force us back to the good old days, where we bring up the appropriations bills, because my guess is that not many Members of Congress aren't going to want to not get paid and not be able to go back to their district. So it will focus our minds. We will only be able to work on appropriations bills, other than in a national emergency. We will get the job done. That is what happened in Wisconsin. This is a solution. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 304, S. 1877. I ask that the committee-reported substitute amendment be withdrawn, the Braun substitute amendment at the desk be considered agreed to, and the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. JOHNSON. I appreciate the words from the Senators from Vermont and Alabama. I would like to work with you, and I think all of us would like to work with you on a solution to this problem. So I appreciate those words, and I look forward to working with you in the future on this. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, where do you begin? That was quite the statement. At some point in time, it just becomes galling to listen to the tactics--the scare tactics and false allegations, particularly from the other side that gave us the Affordable Care Act, an Orwellian-named bill if there ever were one. One of the promises made to promote that bill was, in the end, determined to be the PolitiFact Lie of the Year--I think in the year 2013: If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Millions of Americans lost their healthcare plans. They lost their doctors. Premiums didn't decline by $2,500 per family; they actually skyrocketed--sometimes two, three, four times the price because of the faulty design of healthcare, of the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare. Probably the greatest false allegation that is just offensive--and, by the way, to call every Member on this side spineless is offensive. We have different views. You know, you try to respect the different views if you actually want to accomplish something. But one of the greatest false allegations--and they go back to the well time and time and time and time again about this--is the Republicans don't want to protect the coverage for people with preexisting conditions. Nothing could be further from the truth. That was an argument made back in 2010, and the American people decided that we should do that. Republicans agreed with the American people that we wanted to protect everybody's coverage, covering people with preexisting conditions. We just want to do it where it doesn't cost Americans an arm and a leg. The faulty architecture of ObamaCare caused premiums to double, triple, and quadruple because they actually made a very small slice of the American public--5 to 7 percent of the people who had to buy coverage on the individual market, who don't have the employer coverage plans that cover people with preexisting conditions--they made that small percentage of the American public bear the full cost and brunt of covering people with preexisting conditions. It was not smart. It was a faulty design. The way you fix it is, yes, you require insurance carriers to cover people with preexisting conditions, not deny them coverage, but you spread that cost over everybody. Just as I mentioned earlier to the Democratic leader when I objected to his bill, our friends on the other side of the aisle are far more interested in an issue rather than getting a result. How do I know this? Well, particularly on this issue, covering people with preexisting conditions, four times in just the last few days and weeks, they have voted no, first on two COVID relief packages--the ones I was referring to earlier--the target package that does provide financial relief to the unemployed, to small businesses, to schools, to parents with childcare and provides funding for agriculture and testing and vaccines--that also included language to protect coverage for people with preexisting conditions. Twice in the last few days or weeks, they have also voted no on Senator Tillis's bill that does exactly that--protect the insurance coverage of people with preexisting conditions. Now, if they were really serious about protecting the coverage of people with preexisting conditions, they would have voted yes. But they voted no. So I could go on and on. I have jotted down all kinds of points that I would like to refute, but it is really not worth the time and effort. Again, let me emphasize that Republicans agreed with the American people. This debate is over. We have offered proposals to do just this. We want to protect the insurance coverage of every American with preexisting conditions. We just want to do it in a way that doesn't cost them an arm and a leg like ObamaCare did. So I personally am just getting sick of the false allegations, and that is only one of them. I could drone on and on about the false allegations made by the other side against Republicans and conservatives, but I will focus on this: This is a false charge. It is canard. It is a scare tactic. I am begging the American people not to listen to it or believe it. Republicans want to protect the insurance coverage of people with preexisting conditions. If they were serious about it, they would have voted yes on what we have already proposed; and for that and many other reasons, I object.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I object.