Ron Johnson

Mr. JOHNSON

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, as my colleague, the senior Senator from Iowa, has shown, Hunter Biden and James Biden received millions of dollars from companies connected to the communist Chinese regime. Frankly, it is worse than that. These companies were effectively an arm of the Chinese Government. This isn't Russian disinformation; these are hard facts backed up by bank records of actual financial records and transactions that prove just how connected the Bidens were and how compromised President Biden probably is. I use this next series of transactions to prove my point. The first chart here shows a bank record showing a $1 million wire transfer into the account of Hudson West III from CEFC Limited on November 2, 2017. As Senator Grassley and I have already established, CEFC is effectively an arm of the communist Chinese regime. It is also important to note that at the time of this transfer, in November 2017, Hunter Biden was already invested in and providing management for Hudson West III. So a company that was effectively an arm of the Chinese Government transferred $1 million in November 2017 to a company that Hunter Biden is managing and is invested in. I also bring up the second record. Focus on the $1 million wired out on March 22, 2018. Again, this is a record from Hudson West III's bank account. Like the previous record, this is showing the transfer of $1 million, but this time the money is being transferred out of Hudson West III to OWASCO, another one of Hunter Biden's firms. This transfer took place on March 22, 2018, a little less than 5 months after the $1 million transfer from CEFC to Hudson West III. Hunter is transferring $1 million between two firms he manages and has ownership in. So what is the purpose of these two $1 million transfers? This next record seems to answer that question. This record shows OWASCO's receipt of the March 22, 2018, $1 million transfer. It also shows what the transfer is for on the OBI line. ``OBI'' is an abbreviation for ``originating beneficiary information.'' It is like the memo line on your personal check; it tells you really what that check was about. In this case, the OBI indicates the transfer is being made for ``Dr. Patrick Ho Chi Ping representation.'' So, to recap, on November 2, 2017, Patrick Ho's company, CEFC, wired $1 million to Hunter Biden's company, Hudson West III. On March 22, 2018, Hudson West III wired $1 million to OWASCO, another Hunter Biden company. The bank record clearly states that the $1 million payment was being made for the purpose of representing Patrick Ho. Represent him for what? Here is where things get interesting. We know that Patrick Ho was arrested by U.S. authorities in November 2017 for international bribery and money laundering charges. Keep in mind that this arrest occurred in the same month that Patrick Ho's company, CEFC, is wiring $1 million to Hunter Biden's company, Hudson West III. According to the Department of Justice, ``Ho orchestrated and executed two bribery schemes to pay top officials of Chad and Uganda in exchange for business advantages for CEFC China, a Shanghai-based multibillion dollar conglomerate that operates in multiple sectors, including oil, gas, and banking.'' These are crimes for which Patrick Ho is eventually convicted and sent to Federal prison for committing. So the company that Patrick Ho was making bribes for sends $1 million to a company Hunter Biden manages and is invested in. That company, in turn, transfers a million dollars to another Hunter Biden company for the purposes of representing Patrick Ho, who is eventually convicted of international bribery and money laundering. Guess what Patrick Ho did around the same time he was arrested by the FBI for corruption and bribery. He contacted James Biden, President Biden's brother. Patrick Ho's decision to call the Biden family around the same time he got arrested is revealing, particularly in light of the fact that the same month, a million dollars just happened to be transferred to Hunter Biden's company. Now, Hunter Biden isn't a criminal defense attorney. Patrick Ho was charged and convicted for bribery and related Federal offenses and crimes. So what kind of representation was Patrick Ho's company paying Hunter Biden's firm to provide? Were they paying for his firm's legal expertise or for Hunter's political connections? In March 2021, Senator Grassley and I asked the Justice Department about Patrick Ho. Why? Because there is a Federal court filing that says the Department has FISA records on Patrick Ho. We requested these records. In response, the Department would not confirm whether they even had his records. Unfortunately, the Attorney General refuses to clarify that outrageous contradiction for Congress. Oh, and one more tidbit. In a recently uncovered audio extracted from his laptop, Hunter Biden referred to Patrick Ho as the ``[expletive deleted] spy chief of China.'' Let that sink in a minute. Hunter Biden referred to Patrick Ho in an audio as the ``[expletive deleted] spy chief of China.'' This quote alone tells you that Hunter Biden knew exactly who he was dealing with. He knew exactly who he was dealing with. He was dealing with the ``[expletive deleted] spy chief of China.'' Now, that fact should alert the media and our Democrat colleagues to seriously consider the implications the Biden's family vast web of foreign financial entanglements have in the conduct of this administration's foreign policy and our national security, but I am not holding my breath. In October 2020, Senator Grassley and I requested to interview Hunter and James Biden about their financial dealings. If they had nothing to hide, they could have volunteered to come in and sit for an interview. If there was an innocent explanation for these foreign financial transactions, they could have used that interview to clarify what those transactions were about. Unfortunately, rather than being transparent, honest, and forthcoming, they declined to speak to us. Their silence speaks volumes. Fortunately, facts are stubborn things. As the Bidens, our Democrat colleagues, and the media are learning, it is difficult to keep them hidden forever. Senator Grassley and I will continue to investigate the Biden family's foreign financial entanglements and provide the American people with the truth to the best of our ability. Our challenge is that the deep state does not give up its secrets easily. New evidence of Biden family influence peddling is surfacing on a regular basis, often coming from records from Hunter Biden's laptop-- the same laptop, by the way, that the media and deep state foreign intelligence agency officials inferred--strongly inferred--was, you guessed it, Russian disinformation. And their guile worked. Prior to the election, people bought the fact that that laptop was probably Russian disinformation. It wasn't. As the New York Times just admitted about a year too late--more than a year too late--that laptop is authentic, and the evidence it is producing is real. But, of course, that laptop wasn't Russian disinformation, nor is any of the information we presented in our reports and here on the floor of the Senate. We may never know all the details of the Biden family foreign entanglements or the full extent to which those entanglements compromise our current President, but I am pretty confident I know who does know--intelligence operatives in Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Elements within our U.S. intelligence agencies probably also know; they are just not going to tell us or you, the American people. Senator Grassley and I will return for our third speeches in this series on the Biden family's foreign financial entanglements. Until then, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Madam President, I first want to thank the senior Senator from the State of Iowa for his tenacity in pursuing the truth and ignoring all of the false attacks lobbed against us during the course of our multiyear investigations into corruption at the highest levels of the Federal Government. Both of us have been firsthand witnesses and at the same time victims of the dishonesty of our Democratic Senate colleagues and their willing accomplices in the media. When it comes to our investigation into the vast web of foreign financial entanglements of the Biden family, those attacks have had one goal in mind, to cover up the extent to which President Biden might be and almost certainly is compromised. Over the course of our investigation into how Hunter Biden used his father's position and name to enrich himself and his family, the dishonest press published countless stories reporting on the Democrats' false charge that Senator Grassley and I were soliciting and disseminating Russian disinformation. Once we issued our September and November 2020 reports, which were based almost exclusively on U.S.-sourced documents and interviews with U.S. citizens, the media largely ignored it. When they did write a story, they declared that our reports found nothing new, a classic media coverup. I have always said the bias in the media is revealed far more in what they don't report than what they actually do report. But all the false attacks did not deter us. We have continued to uncover the truth and, fortunately, our reports also served as a catalyst for others to come forward and for more investigative journalists to keep digging. The American people deserve the truth. That is why we are presenting additional evidence today and over the next few days. For example, this is the first time this document is being made public. As Senator Grassley described in detail, it shows that money from CEFC, which is effectively an arm of the Chinese Government, went directly to Hunter Biden. Bank records like this piece of evidence are pretty hard to deny and sweep under the rug. Our reports were chockful of irrefutable evidence like this, and yet the media buried those details in an attempt to keep it hidden from the American people. Because the mainstream media and our Democratic colleagues had no substance to refute our reports, they reverted to their time-honored tradition of lying, making false accusations against us, and engaging in the politics of personal destruction. Again, their goal was to destroy the credibility of our reports before the American people even had a chance to read them. They were fully aware that the lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put on its shoes. For example, listen to what New York Times journalist Nicholas Fandos said about our report: ``lack of meaningful new information'' and, again, ``overlap [of the] Russian disinformation campaign.'' The then-Democratic minority leader was quoted saying about our report, ``as if Putin wrote it, not United States Senators.'' A Democratic Senator described our investigation as being ``rooted in disinformation'' from Russian operatives. Separately, a Democratic Senator also said about our report: Bottom line: the Johnson-Grassley investigation is baseless. It's laundering Russian propaganda for circulation in the U.S. But, of course, all those quotes were disinformation, disinformation designed to distract all of us from the truth. As Senator Grassley reiterated, our reports were based almost exclusively on government records from the Obama administration and transcribed interviews of government officials. So how did the Democrats and the liberal media allies carry out this false attack on us? We describe part of what they did in section 10 of our September 2020 report. Their disinformation and smear campaign against us in our reports was extensive, but in the interest of time, I will give you a shorter Cliff's Notes version. On July 13, 2020, then-Minority Leader Schumer, Senator Warner, Speaker Pelosi, and Representative Schiff sent a letter to the FBI to express a purported belief that Congress was the subject of a foreign disinformation campaign. The letter included a classified attachment that had unclassified elements that attempted to tie Senator Grassley's and my work to Andriy Derkach, a Russian agent. The Democrats speculated that, based on this unclassified information, Senator Grassley and I had received materials from Derkach. This was false. Nothing could be further from the truth, but this information purportedly linking Senator Grassley and I to Derkach was leaked to liberal media outlets to start a false narrative to smear us. Until news reports of this false allegation surfaced, I had never even heard of Andriy Derkach. We immediately and forcefully denied the false allegation, but Democrats and the media continued to spread the lie. To this day, no one has ever apologized to either of us for spreading that lie, even though it was proven conclusively to be a lie and disinformation. Next, my staff and Senator Grassley's staff did a transcribed interview with George Kent. During that interview, Democratic staff members introduced Derkach's materials into our record. Then Democratic staff members asked Mr. Kent about it. He stated: What you are asking me to interpret is a master chart of disinformation and malign influence. That was Mr. Kent's evaluation of the Derkach disinformation that Democrats were spreading that they entered into our record. So the actual truth of the matter is that Democrats--not Senator Grassley nor I--introduced known Russian disinformation into our investigatory record. They did the exact thing they were falsely accusing us of doing. Again, not my staff, not Senator Grassley's staff, Democrats were disseminating Russian disinformation just like they did with the Steele dossier. Then-Ranking Members Wyden and Peters sent me and Senator Grassley a letter asking for an intelligence briefing relating to our investigation. Now, such a briefing was completely unnecessary, but it was an effort by our Democratic colleagues to further falsely taint our investigation, hoping to discredit it and discredit the truth. On July 28, 2020, Senator Grassley and I reminded them that the FBI and relevant members of the intelligence community had already briefed the committees in March of 2020 and assured us that there was no reason to discontinue our investigation. Then, in August 2020, Senator Grassley and I were provided a briefing from the FBI, a briefing that we did not request that was also leaked to the press to further smear us. This unsolicited FBI briefing was also not necessary and was completely irrelevant to the substance of our investigation. The FBI briefers did tell us that they weren't there to ``quash, curtail, or interfere'' in our investigation in any way. No government entity ever warned us that our investigation into the Biden family's financial deals was connected to any kind of Russian disinformation campaign--because it wasn't. But, again, the substance of that FBI briefing was later leaked and contorted to smear us, which was exactly why we suspect we were given the unsolicited briefing in the first place. Those briefers promised confidentiality. Clearly, that confidentiality was breached and resulted in another smear operation on Senator Grassley and me to deflect allegations of corruption and conflict of interest that could compromise a President Biden. To date, we do not know who all was involved in this smear campaign, but even after repeated requests, Director Wray and Director Haines have refused to come in and fully explain who requested and directed this briefing and why it was provided. I think we know why it was provided. So to review, senior Democrats and liberal media cooperated to smear Senator Grassley and me with false accusations of receiving and spreading Russian disinformation. They created documents, leaked them, asked for briefings, and then leaked those, too, and then they themselves disseminated Russian disinformation. You can't make this up. Fortunately, they failed to discredit our investigation because we stayed true to government records. We stayed true to the facts and the evidence. And the evidence is stunning, and it is growing. Over the next few days, Senator Grassley and I will come to the floor to present additional evidence that has not yet been made public. These records show extensive connections between the Biden family and elements of the communist Chinese regime. We are talking high-dollar transactions, some of which we have already highlighted in our September and November 2020 reports, but our speeches will introduce new financial documents into the record for all to see. Now, we expect Democrats and the media to continue to use their power to smear us and cover up for the Bidens. But the truth has a power of its own, and we intend to continue to reveal the truth. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Madam President, oftentimes when we talk rising crime, we talk about statistics. For example, last year in Milwaukee, there were 194 murders. As I prepared to give remarks yesterday, I got the stat that there were 26 murders already this year. That is an 86-percent increase. Unfortunately, last night there were two more murders, and now it is up to 28. Seventy-three law enforcement officers were intentionally killed in the line of duty last year. That is the highest it has been since 1995. We had three police officers shot in a 2-week period at the end of January. Those are just some of the statistics, and I am sure you have heard a lot more on the floor here today. But one thing I don't think we talk about enough are the victims. I heard President Biden's Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, last week. I guess she was monitoring different TV stations, and she remarked that one commentator was talking about soft-on-crime consequences, and she giggled and said what does that even mean? Well, I will talk about what it means. An excellent article in the Just the News a couple days ago had some heartbreaking examples of those consequences. Last week, we held an event about the open border, about the catch- and-release policies of this administration, record levels of people coming into this country illegally and what that represents from a standpoint of national security and homeland security and crime. In Alabama's Chilton County, two illegal immigrants, ages 27 and 28, have been charged in the murders of three adults found shot and burned in an SUV. In another recent case, a Florida father who believed he was taking in a 16-year-old migrant minor from Honduras, a Good Samaritan, was killed by that migrant who turned out to be much older and involved in crime. In Florida, a 5-year-old girl riding in her mother's car was crushed to death when an illegal immigrant from Honduras crashed into the car. The driver admitted he got into the car after drinking six cans of 32- ounce beers. In Harris County, TX, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador is charged with exiting his vehicle during a routine traffic stop and fatally shooting the sheriff's deputy in the face. Those are just a few examples of the consequences of soft-on-crime policies. Those are crimes that were committed by illegal immigrants that take advantage of the catch-and-release policies on the border. But we are not only just experiencing catch-and-release on the southern border, we also have catch-and-release in our criminal justice system--these no-bail, low-bail policies promoted by generally Democrat district attorneys in cities governed for decades by Democrats. We had a tragedy in Waukesha, WI. It never should have happened. This was during the Waukesha Christmas parade, when children lined up on the street, on the curb, waiting to see Santa Claus--instead they saw a slaughter. Six innocent people lost their lives. Sixty-two people were injured--their lives forever altered. And it didn't have to happen because the murderer had been let out on a thousand-dollar bail after having run over the mother of his child with that same SUV. That is the result--that crime, those 6 innocent victims, those 62 innocent victims who were injured, their family members, their loved ones are the consequences of soft-on-crime policies of Democratic governance. So as horrific as those 6 murders were, as horrific as the 62 injuries were, what I can't get out of my mind are those little children sitting on the curb waiting to see Santa and instead witnessing the slaughter. How do they ever recover from that? Is that something that Jen Psaki ever thinks about? Is that something that President Biden ever thinks about? As Jen giggles about the consequences, these are serious consequences. We need to get tough on crime. We need to put violent criminals in jail and leave them in jail so they don't create more victims. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON

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

Mr. JOHNSON

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

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I come to the floor of the Senate today to make a few points and ask a few questions. First of all, can we all acknowledge that there is so much that we do not know about the coronavirus, about COVID, the disease, or about the COVID vaccines? Our response to COVID, as a result, has been a reaction to very imperfect information. So, very early in the pandemic, I gave those individuals in a position to have to make very tough decisions with imperfect information a great deal of latitude in making those tough calls, but over the course of the months, we have learned a lot. We have always been told to follow the science, but it sure seems our healthcare Agencies--as I refer to them, the COVID gods; the Dr. Faucis of the world, the Agency heads, the Biden administration, the mainstream media, and social media--have never allowed second opinions. There has been one narrative, and they simply have not been willing to consider alternative measures. So a question I think we should all be asking ourselves is, Does that response work? Over 780,000 Americans have lost their lives. The human toll of the economic devastation of the shutdowns, the year of lost learning for our children, the psychological harm to our children, the record overdose deaths, the increase in suicides--I don't know how you can take a look at America's death rate--the last time I looked, it was a couple weeks old; about 220 per 100,000 population. By the way, Sweden was at 145 per 100,000 a couple of weeks ago. I don't see how anybody can take a look at the response imposed in our country by the COVID gods and say it was a success. So acknowledging the fact that there is still so much we don't know, I would appreciate a little modesty on the part of the COVID gods. I would appreciate that we actually follow the advice that I have always heard when dealing with a serious medical condition: Get a second opinion. Get a third opinion. As I said, that is not allowed. I think it also calls for a little respect for our fellow citizens. These are some tough decisions. They are tough decisions whether or not you want to get vaccinated. Even more gut-wrenching than tough decisions based on these idiotic and pointless vaccine mandates is, do I subject to the coercion, to the pressure, to the fear of reprisal and take the jab or lose my job? These are tough decisions. I am a big supporter of Operation Warp Speed. I have had every vaccination until this one because I had COVID. The COVID gods aren't acknowledging natural immunity. They are not acknowledging vaccine injuries. They are not acknowledging the fact that even if you are fully vaccinated, you can still get COVID and you can still transmit COVID. So what is the point of a mandate? But, of course, that is not what we are getting from the COVID gods. This weekend, something happened that is not unusual. My words were taken completely out of context, twisted, distorted, and I was relentlessly attacked. I would like to respond to those attacks that were headlined: ``Fauci calls Ron Johnson's AIDS comment `preposterous.''' Fauci said: I don't have any clue of what he's talking about. ``Fauci Blasts Ron Johnson for Saying He `Overhyped' AIDS: `Preposterous!''' ``Anthony Fauci Rips GOP Sen. Ron Johnson's `Preposterous' Accusation He's `Overhyped' COVID.'' So what did I say? That sounds terrible. Well, what I said was in response to radio talk show host Brian Kilmeade's question asking about the Omicron variant. He said: It looks benign. I mean, mild symptoms; mostly people under 40. So I answered his question about Omicron, talking about Muller's ratchet. It is a phenomenon. It makes sense--how viruses generally mutate, how they become more contagious because they want to replicate, so they become more contagious but generally less lethal because it doesn't have replication if you kill your host. Now, nothing is guaranteed, but that would be the general direction of the variants of the coronavirus. Why would we assume anything worse? But that is what the COVID gods are doing. They are assuming the worse. They are using every new variant to keep us in the state of fear that they have created to maintain control over our lives and rob us of our freedom, to impose freedom-robbing vaccine mandates, again, that are preposterous--there is a good use of that word--that are pointless, that are idiotic. But after talking about that state of fear, I went on to say: By the way, Fauci did the exact same thing with AIDS. He overhyped it. Now, full stop, that is where the news media stopped and then accused me, falsely, of downplaying AIDS. I have never, nor would I ever downplay the tragedy that is AIDS, that is COVID. These are serious, deadly diseases. They have killed hundreds of thousands. I would never downplay them. When I said ``overhyped,'' I explained exactly what I was talking about in the next six words. I said: He created all kinds of fear, saying it could affect the entire population when it couldn't. . . . [H]e's using the exact same playbook [for] COVID. Here is the key point that I want to talk about a little bit later: ignoring therapy, pushing a vaccine. The solution to this pandemic, I have always thought, was early treatment. We still haven't robustly explored early treatment, and that is a travesty. Now, Dr. Fauci wanted to show us that this criticism of him, creating a state of fear, is preposterous, but let's go to what he actually said back in May of 1983. Now, I was alive in May of 1983. I understand how unsettling this new disease was. I understand the state of fear, the legitimate state of fear. But responsible health officials should not have stoked it, and Dr. Fauci did. He authored an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association stating ``the possibility that routine close contact, as within [any] family household, can spread the disease.'' He added: If indeed the latter is true, then AIDS takes on an entirely new dimension. And then: If we add to this the possibility that nonsexual, non- blood-borne transmission is possible, the scope of the syndrome may be enormous. Now, it is important to note that these aren't off-the-cuff comments; this is in a column he wrote with forethought. Dr. Fauci knew what a delicate time we were in as the public awareness of this disease was emerging, when people were already frightened by what they were hearing. He was in a position of authority. He knew what he said carried weight and would be disseminated, and it was. The following day's headlines--the United Press International published a story headlined ``Household contact may transmit AIDS.'' The next day, the Associated Press ran a story asking ``Does AIDS spread by routine contact?'' The same day, the New York Times article read ``Family Contact Studied in Transmitting AIDS,'' and it invoked Fauci's article in discussing the possibility of transmission between family members. He stoked the fear, and it, quite honestly, continues to this day. He stigmatized AIDS patients for years with his fearmongering. Now, less than 2 months later, in June of 1983, Dr. Fauci flip- flopped and he publicly contradicted his own fearmongering by stating: It is absolutely preposterous-- He likes that word, by the way-- It is absolutely preposterous to suggest that AIDS can be contracted through normal social contact [by] being in the same room with someone or sitting on a bus with them. I mean, you heard what he said 2 months earlier, right? If he felt it was so preposterous on June 26, why had he raised the fear, stoked the fear, just 2 months earlier? It is interesting. I just found out last night that not only did he write that article stoking the fear, he started giving interviews. I have seen an interview where he basically used the exact same words. But now he denies it. He wants to deny the reality of what he said and what he did. He wants to rewrite history. By the way, when it comes to the AIDS crisis, rewriting history, I am not the only one who is accusing him of that. In an article published-- or updated last on December 6 in 2017, in the Huffington Post, in their comment platform, which I guess has since been taken down, an author of a book--his name is Sean Strub--wrote an article--wrote a blog for HuffPost. The book Mr. Strub wrote was ``Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival.'' And he describes it, as he recounts how slow the Federal Government was in publicizing the use of Bactrim and other sulfa drugs to prevent PCP, which is the pneumonia that was then the leading killer of people with AIDS, in addition to its longtime and well-known use to treat that type of pneumonia. So let me quote from Mr. Strub's article. He said: Dr. Anthony Fauci is rewriting history. He is doing so to disguise his shameful role in delaying promotion of an AIDS treatment that would have prevented tens of thousands of deaths in the first years of the epidemic. The article goes on to say: In 1987, pioneering AIDS activist Michael Callen begged Fauci for help in promoting the use of Bactrim as PCP prophylaxis and issuing interim guidelines urging physicians to prophylax those patients deemed at high risk for PCP. The article goes on: Had Fauci listened to people with AIDS and the clinicians treating them, and responded accordingly, he would have saved thousands of lives. In the two years between 1987, when Callen met with Fauci and 1989, when the guidelines were ultimately issued, nearly 17,000 people with AIDS suffocated from PCP. Most of these people might have lived had Fauci responded appropriately. Another doctor, Dr. Barry Gingell--I am continuing with the article here-- a medical advisor to Gay Men's Health Crisis, met with Fauci to plead for his support, they didn't just say there was ``this preliminary activity and some small trials,'' as Fauci claims. They explained that many frontline AIDS physicians, following the lead of Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, were already using Bactrim effectively to prevent the recurrence of PCP. The science was clear. A decade before, clinical trials by Dr. Walter Hughes had proven its efficacy in preventing PCP in other immune-compromised populations, like children with leukemia. It continues: Fauci refused to acknowledge the evidence and, according to one account, even encouraged people with AIDS to stop taking treatments, like Bactrim, that weren't specifically approved for use in people with AIDS. Dr. Sonnabend wrote in 2006: Why, in the case of AIDS, was Bactrim, a known preventative measure against PCP, introduced so many years after a need for it had been recognized? To this must be added the question of why this neglect, the consequences of which can be measured in the tens of thousands of lives lost, has received almost no attention. The media has continued to cover for Dr. Fauci. The article goes on: If we don't tell the truth about the history of the AIDS epidemic, it will be subject to more whitewashing-- As we witnessed this weekend. My aside. --more distortions and more rewriting to suit the legacies of the officials in charge. These are the same officials who seem incapable of ever acknowledging or taking responsibility for mistakes they made--mistakes that cost our community thousands of lives. Now, why did I take so much time to read an excerpt from this article from 2017? It is because it is the major point I was making in my comments to Brian Kilmeade. Dr. Fauci, he is using the exact same playbook for COVID as he did for AIDS: ignoring therapy like Bactrim or the cornucopia of cheap, generic, repurposed drugs that are available, that are being used successfully to treat COVID and save lives. The solution, I have always felt, has always been early treatment. But, again, Dr. Fauci is ignoring therapy and pushing a vaccine. Why? There are multiple medical experts who have looked at this, who are treating COVID, who are doing the research, who say upwards of 500,000 lives were needlessly lost because we ignored and, I would argue, sabotaged early treatment with cheap, generic, repurposed drugs. In fact, the FDA completely trash-talked one of these repurposed drugs, a Nobel Prize-winning drug termed by the World Health Organization as a miracle drug, Ivermectin, calling it horse paste; saying: Come on, you all; you are not cows. Fake news stories saying that people are lining up, clogging hospitals because of overdoses of Ivermectin, only to find out that is a completely false news story--like false studies published in medical journals that had to be withdrawn 2 weeks later early in the pandemic, which also poisoned the use of some of these repurposed drugs. Let's take a look at some facts. Let's take a look at some facts that, when I go on media and I describe these facts, I am censored by the COVID gods; I am removed from YouTube, as is sometimes the radio talk show host. But let's look at the facts of drugs versus the vaccine. Now, many of you will be shocked by this because this is all being censored. This information, this is not allowed. Again, there is one narrative; it is the narrative of the COVID gods. No second or third opinions are allowed. No questions are allowed to be asked, much less answered. So let's take a look at Ivermectin. I have got two columns here: Total adverse events reported to either the FAERS system--the adverse event reporting system from the FDA for drugs--and the VAERS system-- the vaccine adverse event system reported through the CDC. So the top three. First of all, Ivermectin. Over 26 years--26 years of reporting--Ivermectin has about 3,756 adverse events reported in through FAERS. So that is adverse events. In terms of deaths, it averages about 15 reports of deaths per year. Now, let's get something straight here. There are two main criticisms of FAERS and VAERS. It doesn't prove causation. I get that. But it also dramatically understates the adverse events. So, again, we are going to use this as a comparison. Ivermectin: 15 deaths per year, on average, over 26 years of usage. Hydroxychloroquine: 23,355 total adverse events over 26 years. On average, about 69 deaths--death reports per year. How about the seasonal flu vaccine? Again, 26 years' worth of history: 198,776 total adverse events reported on VAERS, but an average of 80 deaths per year for the seasonal flu vaccine. I look at these, and I go: These are pretty safe drugs. No drug is 100 percent safe. No human body is exactly the same. But you have to look at these drugs as having a very safe and reliable safety profile. So if you have COVID--and let's face it, the current NIH guideline on COVID is to do nothing: go home, foray it alone, isolate yourself, hope you don't get so sick you have to check yourself into a hospital. The only thing they are recommending for use is monoclonal antibodies. Try and get those. I have talked to so many constituents that haven't been able to. Either they are not sick enough or they become too sick or it has taken too long. So, virtually, the NIH guideline continues to this day: Do nothing. Now, a quick aside: How many other diseases is that the recommendation? Isn't it always early detection allows for early treatment, produces better outcome? Of course, that is what we recommend for every other disease, except COVID because Fauci ignored therapies and pushed vaccines. He has just been--he has got his blinders on. It is vaccines, vaccines, vaccines. And then they scaremonger both Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. I don't know. Are you afraid of those? If you have got COVID, would you give those a shot? I certainly would. And, by the way, I am not a doctor; I am not a medical researcher. But I have been in contact with doctors who have the courage and compassion to treat. And so when I have a friend or a constituent who calls me and says, ``What can I do?'' I refer them to a doctor who treats them. And I have example after example of these things working, keeping people out of hospitals and certainly preventing death. I know it is anecdotal, but the evidence is mounting, and it is getting to the point of being--I think it is at the point of being irrefutable. So now let's compare this to the drugs of choice of Dr. Fauci and the COVID gods. Let's take a look at Remdesivir. The studies were weak. They changed the endpoint of reducing death--because it didn't--to reducing days in the hospital. But they still rushed through the emergency use authorization, and it has been the treatment, because it is blessed by the COVID gods, that hospitals will apply. Now, in fairness, hospitals also do dexamethasone. They will do other things--corticosteroids. Pierre Kory testified before my committee in May of 2020 about corticosteroids. But Remdesivir is the big one; over $3,000 a dose when these cost 20 to 50 bucks, total, as part of a multidrug, multivitamin--vitamin D, zinc. Remdesivir: 6,500 adverse events. I don't have it here. 1,612 deaths so far since it has got its emergency use. That is an average of 921 a year. That is Remdesivir. Now let's look at the COVID vaccine, and this will shock you. It should shock you because nobody is talking about it. And when a guy like me talks about it, I get censored, I get vilified, I get attacked. 927,740 total adverse events. And, remember, one of the criticisms is VAERS dramatically understates the number of adverse events. Total deaths: 19,532. Now, again, I realize VAERS doesn't prove causation, but almost 6,000 of these worldwide deaths occurred on days 0, 1, or 2 following vaccination. I know Fauci, I know Janet Woodcock, I know Francis Collins are not concerned about this. I am concerned about this. Other people who have been able to avoid the censors and see this, they are concerned about it. They are making those tough choices. They also realize COVID can be a deadly disease. They have to make an informed decision whether or not to get vaccinated. Shouldn't they have all the information? But they are not being given all the information. It is about time they are. Let me conclude by just asking--for the audience, really--why do I continue to push these truths? And they are truths. There is no misinformation up here. This is the truth. These aren't my numbers. This isn't my data. This is the CDC and the FDA's data. Why do I continue to talk about these things when I get attacked, when I get vilified, when I get ridiculed, when I get censored? It is pretty simple. It is because I have acknowledged the vaccine- injured. I have held events to let them tell their stories--like little Maddie de Garay, 12 years old. Now she is 13. She participated in the Pfizer trial. She is in a wheelchair. She can't eat. She has a feeding tube. Pfizer has ignored her, cast her aside. They are not paying for her medical bills. That is a scandal right then and there. Brianne Dressen participated in the AstraZeneca trial: paralyzed from the waist down. Fortunately, she has gotten her leg function back. But she is not whole. She is not cured. Ernest Ramirez: he lost his only son, his best friend. He is a single dad. I have given the vaccine-injured--the survivors, I have given them a forum to tell their stories, and the media just shrugs. All they want is to be seen and heard and believed so they can be cured or so they can prevent other people from experiencing their trauma. The real reason I continue to tell the truth--although I am attacked--is because not only have I given these individuals a forum to tell their stories, but I have seen their tears. I have hugged the vaccine-injured, the surviving spouses, the surviving parents, the surviving children. Why won't we acknowledge these truths? Why won't we acknowledge the vaccine-injured? Until we do, until we acknowledge what the root cause of the illness might be, how is there any hope of healing them? So again, our response to COVID has been a miserable failure. We must acknowledge that. We can't deny reality. We need to embrace early treatment because we are going to continue to need early treatment. The vaccines aren't 100 percent guaranteed effective. New variants will emerge. We are going to have to treat. Better start now and might as well give these cheap generic, widely available drugs a shot. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON

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

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, on Sunday, November 21, 2021, a Christmas parade in Waukesha, WI, meant to usher in a season of peace on Earth, good will toward men, turned into a nightmare. An 8-year-old child and 5 adults were murdered, 62 others were injured. Some of the injured, including three children, remain in critical condition, their lives forever altered. Families with their children who came to see Santa Claus, high school bands, the Dancing Grannies instead witnessed a horror that will leave lifelong psychological scars. First responders and law enforcement who rushed in to administer first aid and compassionately deal with the tragedy will be burdened by their terrible memories for the rest of their lives. But as is so often the case, in the midst of an awful event caused by the worst of humanity, the absolute best of humanity is fully revealed. This is what we are witnessing in Waukesha. The healing process has already begun. It began immediately as members of the community came together to help the victims and survivors. The very next evening, hundreds of people gathered at an interfaith prayer vigil to pray for healing and strength. I had the privilege of attending that vigil and speaking to members of the community, first responders, and those who knew the victims. It was a moving experience that I will never forget--sorrowful and yet hopeful. From that experience, I have no doubt that the citizens of Waukesha will recover from this tragedy, but it will take time and a great deal of effort. It will also be the responsibility of civil society to administer justice for this heinous act of evil because the victims and the community of Waukesha deserve justice. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to bring back the six innocent lives who perished: Virginia Sorenson, Leanna Owen, Tamara Durand, Jane Kulich, Wilhelm Hospel, and Jackson Sparks, who was only 8 years old. We can pray for healing for those broken in both body and spirit and also pray for those who helped them heal. We can also show our support by offering a moment of silence here on the floor of the U.S. Senate, which I will ask for following the remarks of my colleague from Wisconsin whom I now yield to.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I now invite the Senate to observe a moment of silence in memory of and to recognize those killed, injured, and forever impacted by the attack on the Waukesha Christmas parade on November 21, 2021. (Moment of silence.)

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. President. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, last week, I came to the floor in support of Senator Scott's bill pushing back on what many of us consider the unconstitutional COVID vaccine mandates. I used my floor time to describe the lack of transparency of our healthcare Agencies by talking about the information that our healthcare Agencies, the media, and the news media are not providing the American public. I come to the floor today to expand a little bit on that information. Now, last week, I presented this chart, which shows the daily number of new cases. Those are the blue lines. You actually have daily deaths--the tragic deaths--very thin red line. But you also have this line showing the percent of fully vaccinated Americans. Now, I pointed to this chart because this is not what I would expect to see if we had 100 percent effective vaccines. Now, let me again state, I was a big supporter of Operation Warp Speed. I am not an anti- vaxxer. I have had every vaccine up to this one because I had COVID. So I had hoped and prayed that the COVID vaccine would be 100 percent safe and 100 percent effective, but this chart is not what I would expect to have seen with a vaccine that was highly effective and what we all were hoping would happen once we had a high percentage of Americans vaccinated, together with those who already had COVID, like myself, with natural immunity. You can see, prior to the vaccine even being able to take effect, as the first major surge of the pandemic was winding down, I would have expected to see a continued winding down, but that is not what we saw. We have seen this surge in Delta, and we have seen additional deaths, and the tragedy continues. Now, back on September 9, President Biden said: This pandemic is of the unvaccinated. And he also said: This is not about freedom or personal choice. No, this is exactly about freedom and personal choice. President Biden also said in July of this year--on July 21, he said: If you are vaccinated, you are not going to be hospitalized. You are not going to be in the ICU unit. You are not going to die. You are not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations. Today, I received an email from a constituent in Wisconsin. I am going to read an excerpt. I am not going to identify the individual because he fears reprisals. He has seen what happens to people that tell the truth about COVID and COVID vaccines, so I will keep his name anonymous. But let me quote from his email: Both my parents were fully vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine in the spring. Yet, in August, my mom became infected and then gave it to my dad. They became so sick that my sister, fully vaccinated with Moderna, moved in with them to care for them. She used PPEs and was careful, and she caught COVID too. Hence, my family, three of us, caught COVID while fully vaccinated. They spread it while they were fully vaccinated, from vaccinated to vaccinated. My mom and sister recovered. Dad died in a week at home after a 3-week stay in the local hospital. Now, that is a tragedy. I wish what President Biden said would have been true, but it is not. That talks to the vaccine's efficacy. Let's talk about vaccine safety. I have heard so often from who I refer to as the ``COVID gods''--the healthcare Agencies, the media, the news media--that vaccine adverse events are rare, and they are mild. Well, they are rare, and they are mild until they happen to you. Here is a chart that compares the number of deaths reported on the VAERS system. Now, this is the CDC's own vaccine adverse event reporting system. And I charted this all the way back to 1990, at the beginning of the VAERS system, and I got deaths associated with the flu vaccine there in blue. You can barely see them. But the largest year, the peak year for the VAERS-reported deaths associated with the flu vaccine was--in 2010, there was 162 reported deaths. Now, again, I understand that the VAERS does not prove causation. I have got that. But if you compare our experience since 1990 with the flu vaccine--by the way, it is generally about a third of the number of doses for an annual flu season versus what we have experienced with the COVID vaccine. So you compare that very low level of deaths reported on VAERS to what we now experienced with COVID, for just this count here, and it is 15,737 worldwide for the 3 vaccines that have emergency use authorization in the United States. In total, it is 15,937 deaths reported on the VAERS system. Now, again, I realize that does not prove causation, but I do need to point out that 5,272 of those deaths occurred on day zero, 1, or 2 following vaccination. Now, if I were in the CDC or FDA, those Agencies that in October of 2020 touted the VAERS report, their early warning safety surveillance systems--before the vaccines ever got the emergency use authorization--they were talking about how they were going to rely on these to provide the safety signals. I remember one member of the CDC saying: We are going to take adverse events so seriously that if somebody loses a couple of days work, lost work time because of an adverse event, we are going to get a CDC representative on the phone with that individual, and we are going to look into it. That simply has not happened. Now, one thing that the FDA has done is they have ridiculed some of the early treatment drugs. I don't have it on the chart here, but I just want to put things in perspective. So, now, again, 15,937 deaths in about 10 months with the COVID vaccine. Ivermectin, since 1996, over 25 years, has 379 total deaths. That is 15,937, COVID vaccine; Ivermectin, 379 in 25 years; Hydroxychloroquine, about 1,039 deaths over 25 years; Remdesivir, which appears to be the drug of choice for hospitalized COVID patients, 1,499 deaths. Again, that is information our Federal Agencies aren't providing the American public, but this is information people need to know. Now, why am I giving you this information? Well, first of all, on social media, this is suppressed. This is being censored. People like me that would even broach the subject of VAERS have been attacked. So I think it is important to come to the Senate floor so the American people understand what is happening. But the main point I am trying to make is, those individuals who believe in their own health autonomy, believe in their own personal freedom, many of whom have already been infected with COVID, are reading the science and believe, based on what they are reading, that their natural immunity is probably as, if not more, effective than the vaccinated immunity and have chosen not to get the vaccine. That is their right. You may not agree with that, but it is not your body. It is not your right to impose on someone else a mandate to take the vaccine or take away their job, take away their livelihood, and take away their healthcare. By the way, I am not the only one that thinks this. President Biden, back on December 4, said: I don't think it should be mandatory. I wouldn't demand it be mandatory. The Press Secretary said: The vaccine mandate is not the Federal Government's role. And yet here we are, nurses being fired. What do you think that is going to do to our healthcare system? We already have a severe healthcare worker shortage. We are going to exacerbate that problem. These mandates are unconstitutional, but they are going to be incredibly harmful for military readiness and for our healthcare system. They are also going to be incredibly corrosive to our society. I have been inundated--even well before President Biden announced his ill-advised and unconstitutional mandate, I have been inundated with emails and letters and phone calls from people who are so concerned about being coerced, being forced to take a vaccine under duress. It has had an incredibly corrosive effect on our society. But I want to quote from one particular letter. I got this letter from a nurse. She has a master's degree. She is also a professor of nursing. She is describing what happened inside a meeting of their faculty as they were deciding how to handle mandates in their nursing school. She writes: Some of the biggest issues today are the conversations occurring behind closed doors. Our nursing department faculty got together to decide how to handle the nearly 50 percent of students that hadn't yet received their COVID-19 vaccination and faced being dismissed from their nursing program unless they complied. The students were referred to as ``ignorant,'' ``uneducated,'' ``killers.'' This name-calling, although deeply inappropriate, is becoming the cultural norm against the masses of those who decide that it is within their right to attack the personal choice of others. But if I were a student or a parent of a student who heard that interaction that I am about to share with you, you would be beyond furious. When it was determined by consensus of the faculty group that we were not going to allow any special accommodations--in other words, switching of clinical assignments or sites--to allow for the unvaccinated students to progress, and that will be the standard practice in all other nursing programs soon, one faculty member exclaimed to the group: ``Good luck finding a new career.'' And the group responded with laughter. This nurse writes: Let that sink in for a moment. They laughed. They laughed at the thought of someone's dreams being crushed. That's the effect these unconstitutional, coercive, freedom-robbing mandates are having on our society. There is no need for them. As the previous email from my constituent that I received today proves, even if you have been fully vaccinated, you can catch COVID. You can transmit COVID. You can die from COVID. Now, it is a tragedy. I wish it weren't so, but it is true. When are we going to start following the science? When are we going to reclaim the freedom that has been lost in this pandemic? There has been enough harm done during the course of this pandemic. I am begging this body; I am begging the President, do no further harm. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I rise in support of Senator Scott's bill. I want to make a few different points. First of all, I don't believe this administration or people who support the mandates are really thinking the process through as to how devastating these mandates are going to be on our economy. Well before the President even announced his unlawful regulatory initiative, I was hearing from truckdrivers; I was hearing from nurses and doctors who have already had COVID, who had natural immunity, who are looking at, for example, the reports, are looking at some of the data and science saying that natural immunity is 13 to 27 times more effective than the vaccine, and they have chosen not to get it. President Biden promised the American public he wouldn't mandate this. He said: ``I don't think it should be mandatory. I wouldn't demand it to be mandatory.'' His Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, said it is not the Federal Government's role. I agree. The President also said: ``This is not about freedom or personal choice.'' No, this is exactly about freedom and personal choice. I have written so many oversight letters to the healthcare Agencies. I completely agree with Senator Scott. I was a big supporter of Operation Warp Speed. I have gotten every vaccine until this one because I have had COVID, but the Federal Agencies have not been transparent. They have not given the American public information that we need to make that informed choice. We need to recognize people's health autonomy. This is their body. They should be able to make these choices. I want to talk a little bit about some of the information we are not getting from our healthcare Agencies that people who are choosing not to get vaccinated are looking at. And it is not disinformation. This is real information. It is just being withheld from the public by our healthcare Agencies, by the media, and the social media. The first thing I want to show is a chart that I put together. Again, this is real data. This comes from the CDC in terms of the number of new cases per day, as well as the number of deaths per day. The deaths are down here in a very thin red line. But you can see by this chart that in terms of the surge of the initial Alpha variant of COVID, it pretty well peaked late December, early January. The vaccines got the emergency use authorization about mid-December. The orange line shows the percent of Americans vaccinated, fully vaccinated. You can see the initial surge, the initial pandemic, was winding down before the vaccines even could take effect. Now, again, we all hoped and prayed that the vaccine would be 100 percent effective and 100 percent safe. But when you look at this chart, as the pandemic is winding down, the percent of fully vaccinated individuals are going up, you would think--again, you would think what you would see is just a complete winding down of the pandemic. But that is not what we have seen. We have seen this new surge, this new surge of a variant called Delta. So what are we to make of this? Again, I am not a doctor; I am not a medical researcher--but I look at this, and I am going, well, it certainly doesn't look like the vaccine has been particularly effective against the Delta variant. But let's look at some data, the type of data that we are not getting from our healthcare Agencies. So we have to look, unfortunately, to England and to Israel that are more transparent. I don't expect anybody to be able to read the figures here. I will give you the highlights, but I am showing that this is from Public Health England. This is one of their Federal healthcare Agencies. This is from their technical briefing No. 23, dated September 17, 2021. It covers cases for about 7\1/2\ months, from the beginning of February to February 12. What the data shows is that during that 7\1/2\-month period in England, there are about 750,000 new COVID cases. A little under 600,000 of those were the Delta variant, about 80 percent. The number of deaths associated with those 600,000 Delta cases was 2,542, which gives us a case fatality ratio of about 0.4. Now, again, case fatality is higher than infection fatality because these are actually registered cases, and there are all kinds of infections that never get registered. So to put this in context, an infection fatality rate for a bad flu season is slightly under 0.2, half of this. Again, put things in perspective. Now, President Biden--and this has been parroted by media, news media--said that what we are currently experiencing is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. They don't give us, really, any data to back that up; they just proclaim, pronounce, that 99 percent of people with COVID now are unvaccinated, but they don't give us the data. We have data from England. And here is the data. So of the 600,000 cases in England, 43 percent were with the unvaxxed; 27 percent were with the fully vaxxed; another 30 percent were partially vaxxed or just undetermined. But I think what is interesting--here is another quote from President Biden--President Biden said: If you are vaccinated, you are not going to be hospitalized; you are not going to an ICU unit; you are not going to die; you are not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations. Well, maybe that is true in the United States. I kind of doubt it because in England, of the 600,000 new cases of Delta, of the over 2,500 deaths--63 percent of those deaths--1,613 people were fully vaccinated. Twenty-eight percent were with the unvaxxed. This is information the American people probably never heard. It is information, by conveying it, I will get attacked. I will be vilified. I will be censored. I will be suppressed. It is one of the reasons I come to the floor of the Senate to reveal this information that the American people need to know. Let me close with something else that certainly nurses know, nurses who were our heroes. They had the courage and compassion to treat COVID patients. Many got infected; some tragically died; most survived. Now, many of those nurses are treating the vaccine injured. Let me just quick quote a couple of figures from the CDC's own safety early surveillance system--the VAERS report, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Worldwide, from a couple of weeks ago--these numbers are pretty fresh--there have been over 15,000 deaths reported on VAERS. Now, I realize VAERS does not prove causation. But of those 15,000 deaths, over 5,000 of those deaths have occurred on days 0, 1, or 2 following vaccination. Now, again, it doesn't prove causation, but if I were working at the CDC, I would be looking at that very closely and analyzing those cases. The final number, total adverse events, on the VAERS system in 10 months, since the COVID vaccines have been under emergency use authorization, over 725,000 adverse events. So, again, I was hoping and praying this vaccine was 100 percent effective, 100 percent safe, but that does not appear to be the case. And I believe this administration, I believe our healthcare Agencies need to be honest and transparent with the public. They have not been. The American people have the right to choose. It should not be mandated. We should respect their personal choice. We should respect their freedom. And I will just close on--I will be bringing more information as we discuss other ways to push back on these mandates over the next few days, so stay tuned. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I rise in support of Senator Scott's bill. I want to make a few different points. First of all, I don't believe this administration or people who support the mandates are really thinking the process through as to how devastating these mandates are going to be on our economy. Well before the President even announced his unlawful regulatory initiative, I was hearing from truckdrivers; I was hearing from nurses and doctors who have already had COVID, who had natural immunity, who are looking at, for example, the reports, are looking at some of the data and science saying that natural immunity is 13 to 27 times more effective than the vaccine, and they have chosen not to get it. President Biden promised the American public he wouldn't mandate this. He said: ``I don't think it should be mandatory. I wouldn't demand it to be mandatory.'' His Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, said it is not the Federal Government's role. I agree. The President also said: ``This is not about freedom or personal choice.'' No, this is exactly about freedom and personal choice. I have written so many oversight letters to the healthcare Agencies. I completely agree with Senator Scott. I was a big supporter of Operation Warp Speed. I have gotten every vaccine until this one because I have had COVID, but the Federal Agencies have not been transparent. They have not given the American public information that we need to make that informed choice. We need to recognize people's health autonomy. This is their body. They should be able to make these choices. I want to talk a little bit about some of the information we are not getting from our healthcare Agencies that people who are choosing not to get vaccinated are looking at. And it is not disinformation. This is real information. It is just being withheld from the public by our healthcare Agencies, by the media, and the social media. The first thing I want to show is a chart that I put together. Again, this is real data. This comes from the CDC in terms of the number of new cases per day, as well as the number of deaths per day. The deaths are down here in a very thin red line. But you can see by this chart that in terms of the surge of the initial Alpha variant of COVID, it pretty well peaked late December, early January. The vaccines got the emergency use authorization about mid-December. The orange line shows the percent of Americans vaccinated, fully vaccinated. You can see the initial surge, the initial pandemic, was winding down before the vaccines even could take effect. Now, again, we all hoped and prayed that the vaccine would be 100 percent effective and 100 percent safe. But when you look at this chart, as the pandemic is winding down, the percent of fully vaccinated individuals are going up, you would think--again, you would think what you would see is just a complete winding down of the pandemic. But that is not what we have seen. We have seen this new surge, this new surge of a variant called Delta. So what are we to make of this? Again, I am not a doctor; I am not a medical researcher--but I look at this, and I am going, well, it certainly doesn't look like the vaccine has been particularly effective against the Delta variant. But let's look at some data, the type of data that we are not getting from our healthcare Agencies. So we have to look, unfortunately, to England and to Israel that are more transparent. I don't expect anybody to be able to read the figures here. I will give you the highlights, but I am showing that this is from Public Health England. This is one of their Federal healthcare Agencies. This is from their technical briefing No. 23, dated September 17, 2021. It covers cases for about 7\1/2\ months, from the beginning of February to February 12. What the data shows is that during that 7\1/2\-month period in England, there are about 750,000 new COVID cases. A little under 600,000 of those were the Delta variant, about 80 percent. The number of deaths associated with those 600,000 Delta cases was 2,542, which gives us a case fatality ratio of about 0.4. Now, again, case fatality is higher than infection fatality because these are actually registered cases, and there are all kinds of infections that never get registered. So to put this in context, an infection fatality rate for a bad flu season is slightly under 0.2, half of this. Again, put things in perspective. Now, President Biden--and this has been parroted by media, news media--said that what we are currently experiencing is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. They don't give us, really, any data to back that up; they just proclaim, pronounce, that 99 percent of people with COVID now are unvaccinated, but they don't give us the data. We have data from England. And here is the data. So of the 600,000 cases in England, 43 percent were with the unvaxxed; 27 percent were with the fully vaxxed; another 30 percent were partially vaxxed or just undetermined. But I think what is interesting--here is another quote from President Biden--President Biden said: If you are vaccinated, you are not going to be hospitalized; you are not going to an ICU unit; you are not going to die; you are not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations. Well, maybe that is true in the United States. I kind of doubt it because in England, of the 600,000 new cases of Delta, of the over 2,500 deaths--63 percent of those deaths--1,613 people were fully vaccinated. Twenty-eight percent were with the unvaxxed. This is information the American people probably never heard. It is information, by conveying it, I will get attacked. I will be vilified. I will be censored. I will be suppressed. It is one of the reasons I come to the floor of the Senate to reveal this information that the American people need to know. Let me close with something else that certainly nurses know, nurses who were our heroes. They had the courage and compassion to treat COVID patients. Many got infected; some tragically died; most survived. Now, many of those nurses are treating the vaccine injured. Let me just quick quote a couple of figures from the CDC's own safety early surveillance system--the VAERS report, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Worldwide, from a couple of weeks ago--these numbers are pretty fresh--there have been over 15,000 deaths reported on VAERS. Now, I realize VAERS does not prove causation. But of those 15,000 deaths, over 5,000 of those deaths have occurred on days 0, 1, or 2 following vaccination. Now, again, it doesn't prove causation, but if I were working at the CDC, I would be looking at that very closely and analyzing those cases. The final number, total adverse events, on the VAERS system in 10 months, since the COVID vaccines have been under emergency use authorization, over 725,000 adverse events. So, again, I was hoping and praying this vaccine was 100 percent effective, 100 percent safe, but that does not appear to be the case. And I believe this administration, I believe our healthcare Agencies need to be honest and transparent with the public. They have not been. The American people have the right to choose. It should not be mandated. We should respect their personal choice. We should respect their freedom. And I will just close on--I will be bringing more information as we discuss other ways to push back on these mandates over the next few days, so stay tuned. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I rise to speak to my amendment that is completely germane to the discussion of infrastructure. I can't think of more important infrastructure that would actually secure our homeland from a variety of threats. But as I have always said, coming from a manufacturing background, the first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one, and right now this administration is in a complete state of denial regarding the crisis that is on the border. This crisis has been growing. It is not a seasonal surge; this is a growing problem. This has been a growing problem, and I have my chart here that demonstrates that. Here is January. This is when President Biden came into office. You can see the enormous surge of the crisis he created. Vice President Harris went down to Central America looking for the root cause of this crisis. She only would have had to walk into the Oval Office and look at President Biden because President Biden is the root cause of this crisis. It is his policies, the dismantling of successful policies from the previous administration that had stemmed the flow, that had largely secured our border until this President took office and reversed all that progress. It is a real shame. Let me just give you the numbers because you have to describe the problem. This has been growing. For the last 4 or 5 months, in particular, we have been averaging, first, almost 6,000 and now over 6,000 apprehensions per day--6,000. In June it was 6,249. In July it will probably be over 6,500. There have been weeks we believe it is over 7,000 people per day coming in and being apprehended at the border. Now, that doesn't even count the 750 to 1,000 known got-aways. DHS is now--or CPP, at least, is now estimating that is going to result in about 269,000 people coming into this country that we know they came in; we just couldn't catch them. This also doesn't even describe or enumerate how many unknown got-aways. So, again, the fact of the matter is, from January through July, approximately 1.3 million people have been apprehended coming into this country without documentation. About 173,000 of those individuals have been released in the interior, either with a notice to appear or, even worse, a notice to report. If you multiply that times 2, that is 346,000 people dispersed to all points of America. DHS, this administration, is not notifying the States, not notifying the cities that these individuals, apparently claiming asylum, are coming into communities near you. You add that to the 269,000 estimated known got-aways, that is over 600,000 people just this year. That is larger than the population in the State of Wyoming. It is approaching the population of the State of Vermont. And, again, this is while we have the title 42 restrictions in place. Probably about 900,000 people in the first 7 months had been returned under title 42. If the administration ends that program, imagine the surge. Now, there once was a time when securing the border was a nonpartisan issue. Senator McCain led the charge. In 2006, this body passed, on a vote of 80 to 19, the Secure Fence Act, which was going to build about 700 miles of fence. In the end, only 36 miles was double-layer fencing; the rest was pretty ineffective, as we have seen. But voting for that bill was President Biden, President Obama, Senator Carper, Secretary of State Clinton, Senator Feinstein, Senator Schumer, Senator Wyden, Senator Stabenow. This was a bipartisan effort to secure our border. But somewhere between 2006 and 2021, this has become a partisan issue. Now, what is absurd is, in the last administration, again, we pretty well solved the problem, had allocated about $10 billion to build the fence. It has all been contracted. It has all been paid for. We have built about 453 miles of the 738 miles that was contracted for; 285 miles remain unbuilt. An exit report by Senator Lankford shows that we have spent about $2 billion getting out of those contracts--$2 billion to not build the wall. It is costing us $3 million a day just to guard the steel fencing that is lying there not being used. So my amendment is very simple. It is very common sense. It says, please, let's recognize fences work. Certainly, Congress recognized it when we put a double layer around the people's House for a number of months, spent hundreds of millions of dollars on that security effort. So let's not waste the taxpayers' money. Let's recognize walls work. We need to complete the 285 miles of wall that will help secure our border, that will help secure our homeland, and that will help keep Americans safe. It is a very simple amendment. Let's hope it is not a partisan result. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I need to respond quickly. Senator Carper was talking about root causes. The root cause of the instability--the primary cause of the violence in Central America is Americans' insatiable demand for drugs. If you solve that problem, you solve the root cause of the problem, and you won't have the violence. But the root cause of this current crisis--because it was already solved--the root cause of this current crisis is President Biden's policies. President Biden is the root cause. So if you want to fix this, we can fix it. Secure the border. Go back to the policies that worked. We are not going to be able to fix Central America until we end our insatiable demand for drugs. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, in quick response, the prior administration's--what the good Senator claimed a ``boondoggle'' worked. During this comprehensive review by this administration--again, this administration is the root cause of this problem; they caused this--the problem is growing worse. It is not getting better. Congress, by supporting a double layer of fence around this Capitol for months, spent hundreds of millions of dollars keeping us safe and secure, recognizes that fencing and walls work. Again, this fencing has been paid for. This wall has been paid for. Two billion dollars will be wasted. Three million dollars a day will be wasted. This is just common sense, and it will improve the security of this Nation. And, again, in 2006, this was a bipartisan type of effort. Building 700 miles of fence was bipartisan: 80 to 19. It should be bipartisan today. I am urging my colleagues, let's finish building this wall. Let's not waste billions of dollars in taxpayer money. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I need to respond quickly.

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

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the sponsors and managers of this bill have made the point that this piece of legislation has followed regular order, and I will admit, versus how things have been passed in the last 10 years since I have been here, this is a little bit better regular order than I have experienced in general. But it still does not even come close to giving Members time to fully consider what we are voting on here. I don't even have a total score on this. I have been told it is approaching a quarter of a trillion dollars. The history of this bill is on May 13, about 730 pages were reported out of committee. This wasn't exactly the bill that was voted out of committee, though. Somewhere, somehow, the chair modified at least one amendment that was not particularly recognizable to those that offered the amendment. On 5/19, on September--or May 19, the bill grew to 1,445 pages, and just today we voted on an amendment, 900 pages. So now here we are at 11 o'clock. We come to the Chamber. For the first time, I see what the amendments are in the managers' package. I am sorry. I don't know what these amendments are. I know what my amendment is. I don't know what the rest of these are. I haven't seen them. I don't even know how many pages this is. I just have a list. So you can claim this is regular order. You can claim this is a deliberative process, but it is far from it. So I would just ask that the Senator modify her request; that the Senate stand in recess for 3 hours--only 3 hours--to allow us to review this package of amendments. Would the Senator modify her request?

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I mentioned earlier that there is no doubt this bill did go through more regular order than we have been used to over the last decade. But I think we also demonstrated that the massiveness of this bill, close to a quarter trillion dollars, over 2,300 pages, many of those pages dumped on us today, and now this managers' amendment package--we haven't seen it; a few Members have-- does not represent adequate regular order. I also did not have much participation in the development of that managers' package. I realize that a couple of my amendments did get in there, certainly not my priority amendments. I will talk later about the one that actually got a vote. I only got one vote on one amendment, and that vote was to simply honor the contracts that we have outstanding, about $2 billion worth to build the additional 250 miles of wall to secure our border. But I will come back to that. Right now I would like to talk about four of my--I probably had about a dozen amendments but four priority amendments that we tried to get in this managers' package. There was no consultation with me personally, maybe a little bit of back-and-forth with staff. The first amendment really would have codified something we passed twice out of my committee when I was chair of the Homeland Security Committee. It was called the GOOD Act, Guidance Out of Darkness. President Trump issued an Executive order, which basically ordered the Agencies to publish the guidance that they were creating so that the American public would know what the regulations were expected of them, so they understood the rules of the road were--a good piece of transparency in government. It passed unanimously twice out of my committee. For some reason, President Biden on his first couple of days in office reversed that Executive order. So now we have, literally, executive Agencies pulling down these websites so the American public doesn't even know what guidances they are expected to follow. So that would have been a very simple amendment. Again, it passed twice out of my committee unanimously. That didn't make it into the managers' package. One amendment that I had also introduced--actually was voted on during the debate over the Iran Nuclear Agreement--simply stated that any new agreement with Iran that this administration enters into should be deemed a treaty. That is what should have happened in the Obama administration. When the JCPOA was just entered into as an executive agreement but literally was no better than the piece of paper it was written on because the next President could just do away with it, and that is exactly what happened. So this is a very simple amendment. Quite honestly, this should pass 100 to 0. Every U.S. Senator should demand, when you have an agreement between two nations as significant as the JCPOA, or whatever this administration might enter into with Iran, it should be deemed a treaty, and it should come before this body for ratification by two- thirds of this body. That should have been included in this managers' amendment, but it wasn't. One threat that this Nation faces--and this relates, I believe, directly to China because China, in their own military doctrine, does not recognize a high-altitude nuclear blast as a nuclear attack. A high-altitude nuclear blast, otherwise known as an EMP, could wipe out our electrical grid. And for as long as I have been serving here, administrations of both parties have not paid adequate attention to this. So this amendment, vital to our national security, also should have been included in the managers' package, but it wasn't. Why not? This is perfectly suited to this piece of legislation. This is an important national security priority, and this was left out of the managers' packet. I would like to have a little bit more time working on this legislation to insist that this at least gets an up-or-down vote because I pretty well assumed that this would be accepted by both sides and not objected to, but it wasn't. Again, EMP, or geomagnetic disturbance, could represent an existential threat to this Nation, but it was simply ignored. It wasn't included. And then the final amendment that was a priority of mine was the SOFA Act. We are all fully aware of the fact that in this Nation, we have a crisis of overdoses--of things like heroin and fentanyl. It is plaguing all of our communities, large and small, every State. No Member of Congress is unaware of this. We have all heard the tragic stories from our constituents. One of the problems with fentanyl is the way it is scheduled to be illegal. And the problem with that is there are analogs. You can change the molecular makeup of fentanyl very easily, and then all of a sudden it is not scheduled as being an illegal substance. All this amendment would have done is codified what the DEA has been doing for a number of years, but the DEA regulation has run out So one more time--this is completely bipartisan. There is no controversy to this amendment whatsoever--completely, directly related to this piece of legislation. It is trying to protect this Nation against China's malign actions. This amendment was left out of this package. You might get some measure of sense of why I am not happy with the managers' package, why I think this body should take a little bit more time to deliberate; take a few more votes on amendments like this that, again, should be passed unanimously but were overlooked because, I guess, the only people really consulted, in terms of amendments, were those that they felt they could figure out how to get their vote. And I was pretty solid from the standpoint that I didn't want to vote for a quarter of a trillion dollars to government Agencies that I don't think are going to spend that money particularly effectively. I would like to talk about one amendment that I did get a vote on. Unfortunately, it was voted down on a largely party-line vote. The Senator from West Virginia--both Senators from West Virginia, but the one who does not caucus with us was the only Senator from the other side of the aisle that supported this piece of legislation. When I introduced this amendment, I came down to the floor and I talked about there was a time--and that time wasn't very long ago--when border security was actually bipartisan. Securing our border, an imperative to national security, was a bipartisan goal. Evidence of that was in 2006, the Senate passed a piece of legislation called the Secure Fence Act of 2006. What that piece of legislation would do--was supposed to do--was build 700 miles of double-layer fencing, 700 miles. Now, in the end, only 36 miles of double-layer fencing was built. The other 613 miles was built, but 299 miles of that was just a vehicle fencing. In other words, pedestrians can easily walk right through. Another 314 miles was a single-layer pedestrian fence that, unfortunately, pedestrians can almost hop over, but they can scale and defeat that fence very easily. Now, again, proving the bipartisan nature of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, it passed the Senate overwhelmingly with a vote of 80 to 19. Twenty-six Democrats joined 54 Republicans in voting yes. In the House, the Secure Fence Act passed by a vote of 283 to 138, with 64 Democrats voting yes. So, in total, the Secure Fence Act of 2006 passed Congress with a combined total vote of 363 votes for and 157 votes against. In other words, 70 percent of Members of Congress back then voted yes, and 90 Democrat ensured that it was bipartisan support. By the way, notable Democrats who voted for it were the majority leader of this body today, the Senator from New York. President Obama voted for it. President Biden voted for it. Secretary of State Clinton voted for it. The chairman of Homeland Security, and then my ranking member when I was chairman, Senator Tom Carper, voted for it, Senator Feinstein, Senator Wyden. And Senator Sherrod Brown voted for it as a House Member back in 2006. We need a fence. Walls work. I think we admitted that fact after January 6, when we put a double layer of 7- or 8-foot-high fencing, concertina-tipped wire, and left it up for way longer than it needed to be left up. So here in Congress, we are happy to put up a fence, put up walls, as long as it is protecting us. I mean, it is about time that we build a wall to protect the rest of America. Now, what my amendment did is it simply required the administration to complete construction on the part of the wall that has already been contracted. We build about 450 miles; 250 has been contracted. We are going to have to pay for it whether we build it or not, and that is all my amendment is. Don't waste American taxpayer money, which, if we don't pass my amendment, that is exactly what is going to happen. I do want to take a little bit of time, seeing as we have a lot of time here tonight--and we intend to take that time tonight--I want to lay out the history of the current problem. So my first chart here is detailing unaccompanied minors that are apprehended at the southern border. And these minors are from Central America, from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Now, I want my colleagues to notice that in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, we never had more than 4,431 unaccompanied children cross our border illegally and be apprehended. As a matter of fact, in 2007, there is less than 2,000 people. In 2008, 4,380; in 2009, 3,288; in 2010, 4,431; and then in 2011, 3,038. So we average under 4,000 unaccompanied children crossing the border illegally and being apprehended in those 5 years. Then something happened. And what happened was the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals memorandum. When President Obama got frustrated that the deliberative process wasn't delivering him the border security or the immigration reform that he wanted, he used his pen. And he did what I certainly did not believe was constitutional. As a matter of fact, a couple of years before that, he said he didn't have the constitutional authority to do this, but he did it anyway. It has been challenged in the courts ever since. But the most significant thing about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, other than its unconstitutionality, is what it sparked, what it was a catalyst for. You notice those who passed in June 2012 and, lo and behold--and it is not a coincidence--in 2012, all of a sudden that less than 4,000 annual average became 10,000. The following year, 2013, 20,805 unaccompanied children entered the country illegally and were apprehended. And 2014 was the crisis year. That is when President Obama even admitted that this was a humanitarian crisis. We had 51,726 unaccompanied children exploiting our immigration laws, our asylum laws, all because of DACA. By the way, what happened in Central America with the passage of DACA was the coyotes--human traffickers, some of the most evil people on the planet--I will talk about that later. They talked about the fact that America changed their policy. Now, as an unaccompanied child, you can get into America. You get a piece of paper. It is called ``permiso,'' permission to enter the country. That is not what it was at all. It was a ``notice to appear.'' Do you know what? Coyotes lie. They lied to Central Americans. So vulnerable children put themselves in the hands of, again, some of the most evil people on the planet. That sparked that crisis. Now, the Obama Administration reacted. I remember going down, when I became chairman of the committee, on a bipartisan trip to the border, down to McAllen, TX. At that point in time, Customs and Border Patrol were overwhelmed, but they did what Customs and Border Patrol often do. They rose to the challenge. They dealt with this humanitarian crisis as humanely as they possibly could. They built a facility. They put up chain-link fences to keep the children safe--the young ones from the older ones or from the adults. On a bipartisan basis, we sung Customs and Border Patrol's praises. Fast forward to the crisis of 2018-2019, and, all of a sudden, that exact same facility, it was actually upgraded. It was better than it was. It was more humane. All of a sudden, my Democratic colleagues started calling that facility one that housed children in cages. What hypocrisy. You can see through 2019, once the Obama Administration started detaining families together, they stemmed the tide. But that didn't last for long, as I will demonstrate on my next chart. On a quick explanation of this chart, the gold bars are single adults. It has been an ongoing problem we are always going to have in some way, shape, or form--single adults coming to this country illegally through the southwestern border. What we never had in the past was this surge, this crisis level of illegal immigration by children and families. By the way, some are real families; many are not. Many are families of one adult and one child. Sometimes they are a child who has been sold to them. In my committee, we heard testimony of a child being sold for $84. We heard of children being recycled to be used by multiple adults so they can come as a family and exploit our laws. Let me explain how they exploit them. This chart starts in 2012 with the passage of DACA. Again, single adults are gold, red are unaccompanied children, blue are family units. You can see the humanitarian crisis in 2014. It doesn't look like much of a crisis compared to 2018 and our current crisis, which this administration is completely denying--completely denying. We had Secretary Mayorkas in front of our committee 2 weeks ago. I can't tell you how surreal it was as he blamed the previous administration for the crisis he created. He talked about how it is getting better: It is improving because we are getting more efficient. We are getting more efficient at processing and dispersing. That is not solving the problem. Let me go back because what this chart does is it has the cause and effect. DACA is the catalyst of all of this. It sparked it all. It made citizens of Central America realize that the immigration system was broken and easily exploitable. You can see where President Obama declares the 2014 crisis a ``humanitarian crisis.'' Then President Obama instituted a family detention policy, a consequence. You couldn't just cross into America and get dispersed throughout the country, never to show up for your immigration hearing, move into the shadows, potentially be exploited by human traffickers and their agents here in America. And that actually helped stem the problem. It pretty well solved the problem until a court reinterpreted the Flores decision. The Flores decision dates back many years, about one little girl who came to this country. It established standards--humanitarian standards--which I don't disagree with. America is a humane nation. We are a nation of immigrants, but it has to be a legal process. The Flores decision dealt with unaccompanied minors and made sure that they could always stay in CBP's, Customs Border Protection's, custody and ICE's custody for only so long before they had to be turned over to Health and Human Services to then find sponsors or parents. But there is a time limit on it. What the Flores reinterpretation did--and I think incorrectly, as did President Obama's DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, who completely disagreed with the decision--that court--that unelected court--pretty much out of plain cloth or whole cloth said: Oh, no, the Flores decision or agreement applies to accompanied children, as well. It didn't, but all of a sudden it did by court order. That created some real problems for the Obama Administration. They had to choose: Do they continue to detain families as a deterrent, as a consequence to fix this problem, or do they separate them so they could detain the adult while they complied with the law under the court decision? Well, what they decided to do--and I can't fault them for this--is they kept the families together and they dispersed the all. That really instituted the process, the policy--the horrible policy of catch and release, almost open borders. Now, it took a while for people to understand what was happening. It took a couple of years, but by the summer of 2019, citizens of Central America were well aware of how exploitable our laws were. And guess what. They exploited them. I certainly learned from the experience of Michael Chertoff back in-- I believe it was--2008. It might have been an earlier year, when we had a surge of Brazilians coming into Mexico and then coming illegally into this country through the southern border. I don't have the exact numbers, but I think it is something like 30,000 in a short period of time. What Secretary Chertoff did at that point in time is he instituted a program called ``Texas Hold'Em.'' Basically, it was a consequence, to apprehend Brazilians and send them right back to Brazil. Within a month, the flow of illegal Brazilians was cut by about 90 percent. Problem solved. There was a consequence. We didn't have catch and release of Brazilians like we now had, and we have again catch and release of Central Americans coming into this Country. Based on that experience working with the senior Senator of Arizona, who was on my committee, we proposed something called ``Operation Safe Return.'' The basic premise of that program would be, once apprehended, we would quickly adjudicate that initial asylum claim to see whether there really was a valid, credible fear. Understand, if adjudicated, most of the people coming into this country do not have a valid asylum claim. As generous as our asylum system is, coming here for economic reasons is not a valid asylum claim. That is the majority of why people come here. What became of Operation Safe Return, to a certain extent, is the Trump administration's policy of migrant protection program, also known as ``Return to Mexico''--a consequence. Again, I called my program Operation Safe Return: Quickly adjudicate those who don't have a valid asylum claim and safely return them to Central America. I would have been happy to expend funds to make sure there were centers to accept people so they could be accepted safely. The Trump administration, instead, instituted the migrant protection program, return to Mexico. I realize there are people who don't particularly like that program, but it worked. It is undeniable that it worked. They instituted it right here. Mexico wasn't particularly cooperating. So President Trump threatened them with tariffs. All of a sudden it got Mexico's attention. Mexico started cooperating, and you can see how the numbers dropped precipitously. We basically stopped the flow of children and children being used to create family units, and we had the problem solved before COVID hit. This is how you solve the problem. Unfortunately, during the 2020 election, every Democratic Presidential candidate vowed to stop deportations and also vowed to provide free healthcare. I don't deny the push factor out of Central America. I don't deny the violence, the corruption. When I went down there on a bipartisan codel, I was surprised talking to the Presidents of Guatemala and Honduras. They talked about corruption and impunity. I understand corruption. But what do you mean by impunity? Well, impunity is pervasive in their society because of the drug cartels. Why do we have drug cartels down in Central America? It is because of America's insatiable demand for drugs. That is the root cause. The root cause of this problem, the push factor, isn't the violence. The root cause is our insatiable demand for drugs, which puts billions of dollars in the pockets of the other most evil people on the planet, the drug cartels, the drug traffickers. By the way, what we did in our drug interdiction, relatively successfully, is we shut down the drug flow from Colombia up to the Caribbean into Florida, and we just redirected it into Central America and destroyed those nations because those drug cartels are untouchable--they are untouchable. One story I heard is about a new police chief and first day on the job. He gets a DVD, and the DVD is of his wife and children going to church, going into school--a pretty powerful message: Don't mess with us. And they don't. So that level of impunity from drug cartels becomes pervasive through society. Then you have the extortionists. If you are a cab driver, you had better pay the fee or they will shoot you and burn you in your cab. That is what impunity means. That level of violence is facilitated by our insatiable demand for drugs. If you are going to fix that root cause, if you are going to solve the problem of violence in Central America, you have to actually fix the root cause, which is our insatiable demand for drugs. I wish we could. I wish it was easy to do. It is not. We want to stop illegal immigration so that we can fix the problem of the DACA kids and so we can establish a legal immigration system that works for all of us. I mentioned my codel down to Central America. The Presidents of Central America tell me--they beg me: Please, fix your laws. This isn't good for our countries. We are losing our future. We need these people. The vast majority, I would argue, are hard-working and are coming here to improve their lives. I can't blame them for that, but it has to be a legal process. That is not working for Central America. It is going to further impoverish Central America. It is not an economic model that works. It is certainly not good for migrants who come to this country to live in the shadows and who are still under the control of the drug cartels and human traffickers or are in gangs, especially the young men. The 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds are used by the drug traffickers to traffic drugs. The sex trade is the other involuntary servitude. This is not a good process. We need to solve the problem of illegal immigration and control our borders so we can have a functioning legal immigration system. What happened? What caused this? Isn't it obvious? You could see the increase in adults coming into this country illegally during the Presidential debates when the Democratic Presidential candidates were going: Hey, if I get elected President, no more deportations. I am going to give you free healthcare. We will take care of you. That was a huge incentive, and they came. Then I think it was the first day, maybe the second day--maybe he waited that long--when President Biden dismantled the successful migrant protection program, ``Remain in Mexico,'' and the rest is a very, very, very sad history. I will leave that up. Now, I mentioned that 2 weeks ago we had Secretary Mayorkas come before our committee, and it was surreal the way they denied that they had anything to do with this, that this was an inherited problem. I mean, if it were inherited, yes, it was inherited by the Obama administration in DACA and in an incorrect court decision in the Flores reinterpretation. I will admit it was inherited there. It wasn't inherited here. The problem had been solved. It had been fixed. What is so tragic about this is that we had pretty well taken the first step to solving the problem, to having immigration reform, to controlling the border. Keep these successful policies in place, and build the fence. Then you can address DACA. Then you can set up a functioning legal immigration system. Unfortunately, I only had one round of questions--only 7 minutes-- with Secretary Mayorkas. Again, as he was dodging responsibility, I didn't get to ask a lot of questions. Here is the list of questions that I wanted to ask Secretary Mayorkas in a second round that I didn't get. I wanted to ask Secretary Mayorkas whether or not he was aware that human traffickers sell children to adults so they can exploit our asylum laws as posing as a family unit. I wanted to know whether he was aware of that. I am quite sure the Vice President is, because the Vice President was on my committee. She heard this testimony. She should be aware of it. She should go down to the border. I wanted to ask him: Are you aware that we heard testimony, under my chairmanship, that a child was sold for $84? I wanted to ask Secretary Mayorkas: Are you aware that children are recycled--that they are sent back over the border to be used by another adult to pose as a family unit and exploit our asylum laws? I wanted to ask him: How are you verifying that a child belongs to an adult? In one of my trips down to the border and in having heard that children were being sold, that they were being recycled, that many of these family units weren't real family units, I saw about a 50-year-old man. He was holding, probably, about a 2-year-old little girl. Now, I can't be sure as I don't speak Spanish, and I don't think he would have admitted it, but my assessment was that she was not his little girl. On that same trip, we heard about a little 3-year-old boy having been abandoned in a hot cornfield, with a telephone number written on his shoe, because the adult for whom he was posing as that person's child didn't need him anymore and just abandoned him. I wanted to ask the Secretary: Are they doing DNA tests, and, if so, what percentage of family units are being tested? I wanted to ask the Secretary: Is he aware that human traffickers throw children out of their rafts when they are interdicted by law enforcement? When we were down at the border with 18 of my colleagues, we saw a floating body in the Rio Grande. The next day, a 9-year-old girl drowned in the Rio Grande. During one of my hearings, I showed a picture--it wasn't a fun picture to show, but I thought it was something we should see--of Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his 2- year-old daughter, Valeria, face down. They had drowned in the Rio Grande. I wanted to ask Secretary Mayorkas: Is he aware of the fact that migrant girls are given birth control because they know such a large percentage is going to be raped during the dangerous journey that President Biden's policies are incentivizing? I wanted to know whether Secretary Mayorkas was aware of the kidnappings, the beatings, the abuse, and the additional ransoms demanded by the human traffickers. I wanted to know whether he knows how much the human traffickers charge for their human prey and if he is knowledgeable in how they pay off their debt. Some pay in advance. Some don't have the money. Some pay later. How do you think a pretty, young girl pays off her human trafficking debt? How do you think a young minor--a 15-, 16-, 17-year- old boy--who can traffic drugs pays off his debt? I think it is pretty obvious I wanted to know: Does he know how many young girls are forced into the sex trade and how many young men are forced into involuntary servitude or used to traffic drugs or are gang members? I wanted to know. I wanted to know if he was fully aware of how President Biden's policies created this crisis and how those policies are facilitating the multibillion-dollar business model of some of the most evil people on the planet. I wanted to know. I still want to know. I think this administration and I think Secretary Mayorkas need to be held accountable for this human tragedy. Apparently, these policies are meant to be more humane. They are the exact opposite. The degradations and the inhumanity are untold. They are only growing, and they are continuing. Again, what is so tragic about all of this, in addition to the human tragedy, is the fact that we were so close. We had pretty well taken that first step in any immigration reform. We had stopped the flow or had dramatically reduced it, and we were building the fence. There are only 250 miles yet to build that we have already paid for. What a waste of the American taxpayers' money if we don't even complete that fence and what a waste of an opportunity that we can't take that first step-- complete that first step--for true immigration reform. This amendment was voted on and defeated, largely, on a party-line vote. Only the senior Senator from West Virginia joined us, and it is just such a shame. You know, America hungers for comity. America hungers for bipartisanship. This is the kind of bipartisanship they would appreciate that doesn't mortgage our future and that actually fixes a problem as opposed to the bill we are considering right now. The bipartisanship that always concerns me is a mad spending spree--deficit spending--wherein, over the last 18 months, we have already spent about $7 trillion that we don't have. I am shocked, by the way, by the reports that the President's budget is going to be $6 trillion, to be announced tomorrow, and another $7 trillion in other types of--it boggles your mind. That is not the right kind of bipartisanship. That is the type of bipartisanship that mortgages our children's future and bankrupts this Nation. I think I have probably had enough time here, and I see that a number of my colleagues would also like to make a few points. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON

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

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, there was a time--and it really wasn't all that long ago--when securing the border had bipartisan support. It was actually a bipartisan goal--now, I think that made a lot of sense-- but it is not now. It also wasn't all that long ago that, in 2006, Congress passed something called the Secure Fence Act of 2006. What that piece of legislation did was to authorize 700 miles of what was supposed to be double-layered fencing. In the end, only 36 miles of actual double- layered fencing was constructed. Another 613 miles that consisted of about 299 miles of vehicle fencing--in other words, people could just walk right through it--and another 314 miles of single-layered pedestrian barrier fencing were actually built. I think we have seen that unfortunately the fencing did not fulfill the requirements of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, and it also didn't work. What is interesting to know about the passage of the Secure Fence Act is that it passed overwhelmingly in this Chamber by a vote of 80 to 19. There were 26 Democratic Senators who joined 54 Republicans in voting yes. It also passed the House by a pretty overwhelming margin as well-- 283 to 138--with 64 Democrats joining the Republicans. So the total count in Congress was 363 votes to build a fence and secure the border versus 157 people who, apparently, didn't have an interest. In other words, 70 percent of the Members of Congress who voted on the Secure Fence Act, who voted for border security, voted yes. Again, that was with the support of 90 Democrats. By the way, some pretty notable Democrats voted to secure the border by building 700 miles of double-layered fence, including those who are current President Biden; former President Barack Obama; the current majority leader of the Senate, Senator Schumer; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; my chairman and ranking member of Homeland Security, Senator Tom Carper; the chairwoman of the Judiciary in the past, Senator Feinstein; the current chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Wyden. At the time, the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Brown, was a Member of the House, and he voted for it in the House. Again, that was only 14, 15 years ago when securing the border was actually a bipartisan goal. What happened? Why isn't that the case now? Why has securing the border become a partisan issue? Well, politics happened. I wasn't here between 2006 and 2011, but I know there were multiple good-faith efforts to pass an immigration bill. They often referred to it as ``comprehensive immigration reform.'' I remember, when I got here, that this effort was still going on, and we actually passed, in this body, a comprehensive immigration bill. I remember talking to Senator McCain, who was one of the leading proponents. I did suggest that I would stop using the word ``comprehensive'' and that I didn't think we did a very good job with things comprehensively here and that we ought to take a step-by-step approach. Senator McCain was not really happy with my comment, but I made it anyway. I still think, quite honestly, that the test of time has probably proven me right. Bipartisanship pretty well ended the efforts when that effort failed in the House. It didn't move it any further. We had a split Chamber. So the Obama administration got impatient. I understand the frustration. I certainly want to fix the problem. I want to take care of--now they are probably adults--those who came here as children through no fault of their own, the DACA kids. I think most Members of the Chamber want to do that, but you have to do it in a legal way, and you have to do it in a step-by-step approach, starting with securing our border. I will talk about that a little bit further, but let me just talk about what the effect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals had. It is pretty obvious, by this chart, that you can see this goes back to 2007. The red bar is just talking about unaccompanied children apprehended at the southwest border. You can see, through 2011, that, at most, we had a little over 4,000 unaccompanied children coming across the border illegally and being apprehended. Then, obviously, as Americans, we have to take care of them because we are compassionate. In June of 2012, the Obama administration issued the DACA memorandum. The result was almost immediate. It was a magnet. It was a pull factor. It was used by the coyotes in Central America. They would tell people who would want to come to America--and let's face it. Who wouldn't want to be in America? I am highly sympathetic with the people who want to come to America and take advantage of this land of opportunities. The coyotes would tell the migrants down in Central America: They changed their laws. Come with us. We will take you up to the border. We will get you across the border, and then you will get slip, called a permiso, which is really a notice to appear. So they came. They came in such quantities that, in 2014, more than 51,000 unaccompanied children flooded our border, and President Obama rightly declared it a humanitarian crisis, and it was. That humanitarian crisis, at that point in time, entailed about 2,000 people coming and being apprehended at the border--2,000. You can see the result. There were some ups and downs. Quite honestly, what ended up happening is the Obama administration started to detain families, for example. They put in a consequence, and it actually had an impact. I can show you this a little bit better on this chart that really just shows cause and effect. This chart picks up in 2012 with the passage of DACA. You can see that President Obama, in 2014, declared it a humanitarian crisis. That is, by the way, when they built that McAllen facility to which we went down as bipartisan Members of the Senate and sung CBC's praises for trying to deal with this crisis in such a humane fashion. Four and five years later, we have the same facility with the same conditions and a bigger crisis, but now that facility is being referred to as keeping kids in cages. You can see what ended up happening here. President Obama actually had a family detention policy that kept the families together, but then a court reinterpreted the Flores decision. It interpreted unaccompanied children within the Flores decision, in terms of how you treated children and how you had to hand them over to HHS in a short period of time, and applied that to accompanied children. So now a tough decision had to be made: Do we actually separate the children so they can be handed over to HHS while we detain the parents who came here illegally? The decision those in the Obama administration made--and I really can't blame them--was to keep the families together. What I blame them for is they dispersed them into America--most of them never to have an immigration hearing. When you don't have a hearing, you can't have your asylum claim adjudicated properly. We know that a very high percentage of the asylum seekers here do not qualify for asylum. Even as generous as our policies are, they still don't qualify. Of the claims that are adjudicated, the people come here, and they stay. Then they communicate with other people in Central America, and it feeds upon itself. It takes a while. It takes a few years. It took until 2018, 2019 that the word really got out. When Donald Trump was elected President, he was dedicated to securing the border, and we were going to fix this problem. You could tell immigration really dropped off following his election. People really felt that he was serious about it. By the way, he was, but he had no cooperation either by Congress or the courts of enforcing our laws and securing our borders. So word got out over a couple of years, and we had an explosion of illegal immigration primarily fueled this time by families. President Trump--again, with no help from Congress and no help from the courts--fixed the problem. You may agree or disagree with the Migrant Protection Protocols Program, otherwise known as ``return to Mexico,'' but there was a consequence. Because of that consequence, combined with the fact that we also made agreements with Mexico and Central America, people stopped coming. We had pretty well stopped the flow. We had reduced dramatically the flow of unaccompanied children and family members coming to the border. We pretty well had had this problem solved before COVID hit. Throw on COVID and the invocation of title 42, and we really had this problem solved until the Presidential debates, and you had all Democratic Presidential candidates say they were going to stop deportations and offer free healthcare. You can see the number of adults. By the way, we have a colored chart. Gold is single adults. Blue is family units. Red is children. So we had this enormous crisis, first of all, surging that began with single adults. Then, of course, on his first day in office, President Biden dismantled the Migrant Protection Program. He ended those agreements. He made good on his promise to end deportations until the court said he couldn't do that, but the word was out. The crisis came back with a vengeance. In the last 2 months, there have been, on an average basis--daily--almost 6,000 people per day being apprehended at the border. This crisis is out of control, but this crisis is also manmade. It is a manmade crisis by President Biden's policies. Last week we had a hearing with Secretary Mayorkas, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. It was actually surreal. First of all, they blamed this on President Trump, said this was an inherited crisis. No, it wasn't. It is the Democratic Presidential candidates who started the spike of single adults. It was President Biden's dismantling of President Trump's successful policies that sparked and was the catalyst for the renewed crisis of family units and unaccompanied children coming here illegally to exploit our very generous asylum laws. So it was surreal to listen to the Secretary and, quite honestly, the chairman of our committee talking about that this was an inherited crisis but that things were improving. But the only reason they could claim things were improving is--and Secretary Mayorkas said this repeatedly--they are getting more efficient. ``We are getting more efficient''--not at solving the problem; at processing and dispersing the illegal immigrants coming into this country. Guess what that is going to do. It is just going to cause more to come. This crisis isn't going to end anytime soon until we return to having consequences and we actually have the goal of reducing or stopping the flow, and that is not happening right now. I was disappointed. Under my chairmanship, we almost always had a second round of questions, but we were denied that. I am sure there were time constraints. But in a second round of questions, this is what I wanted to ask Secretary Mayorkas. I wanted to ask him whether he was aware that human traffickers sell children to adults so they can exploit our asylum laws by posing as a family unit. Understand, these policies that are being instituted to be more humane do the exact opposite. It leads to all kinds of human degradations, all kinds of inhumanity. I knew it full well. We held hearings on this in 2018. Vice President Harris had to know as well; she was on my committee. I wanted to ask Secretary Mayorkas whether he was aware that we heard testimony during my chairmanship that a child was sold for $84. I wanted to ask him whether he is aware that children are recycled, that they are sent back over the border to be used by another adult to pose as a family unit and exploit our asylum laws. I wanted to ask, are they verifying that a child actually belongs to an adult? Are they doing DNA tests? If so, what percentage of those are actual family units? I wanted to know whether he was aware of the fact that human traffickers throw children out of rafts when they are interdicted by law enforcement. I don't have the picture here. I honestly wouldn't even want to show it. I showed it in our committee hearing 3 or 4 years ago. It was hard enough showing it at that point in time. It was a father and his 2- year-old daughter who drowned in the Rio Grande. I went down to the border with 18 of my Republican Senate colleagues. We saw a dead body floating in the Rio Grande the day after a 9-year- old girl drowned in the Rio Grande. I wanted to know whether Secretary Mayorkas, whether President Biden, whether Vice President Harris was aware of this. I wanted to know whether the Secretary was aware of the fact that migrant girls are given birth control because they know that such a large percentage will be raped during the dangerous journey when they are put in the hands of these human traffickers. I wanted to know whether the Secretary is aware of the kidnappings and the beatings, the abuse, the additional ransoms demanded by human traffickers. I wanted to know whether he knows how much the human traffickers charge for their human prey and whether he is knowledgeable of how that debt is paid off. You realize the border is almost 100 percent secure on the Mexican side of the border. Nobody crosses into America without either paying the human traffickers or being indebted to them. I wanted to know whether the Secretary knew how they pay off those debts. I wanted to know whether he knew how many young girls are forced into the sex trade and how many young men are forced into involuntary servitude, used to traffic drugs, or become part of gangs. I wanted to know whether the Secretary--I would like to know whether the chairman of our committee is aware of the fact that President Biden's policies created this crisis, and they are facilitating the multibillion-dollar business model of probably some of the most evil people on the planet. I wanted to know, but I didn't get a chance to ask those questions. Beyond the human toll, beyond the human tragedy, from a standpoint of legislation, what is the real tragedy is that we were so close to taking that first step, that necessary step of making America confident that we are taking border security seriously, that we will secure our border, because until we do that, we really can't move on. Without creating greater incentives, we can't move on to fix the problem of DACA; we can't set up a legal immigration system that works best for everyone. You know, it is not good for Central America. I have been there. I have talked to their Presidents. They ask us to fix their laws. It is not good that their countries are being depleted of the people they need to rebuild their economies. It is not good for them. It is not good for us. It is certainly not good for the migrants who are put in the hands of the most evil people on the planet and left to their tender mercies. We were so close. President Trump had stopped the flow, largely, of unaccompanied children, of family units, and he was doing the final step, which was complete the wall. Walls work Take a look at what happened here after January 6--double layers of fencing, concertina wire tipped. We obviously thought they worked here for us in Congress; they will work at the border as well. What my amendment would do is simply complete the wall that President Trump started. He wanted to build 800 miles; he built 450. Two hundred and fifty miles of that wall has already been contracted for. It will be paid for whether it is built or not. About 100 miles wasn't contracted. So, American taxpayer, you need to understand this: You will be on the hook for a couple billion dollars, you know, tens of thousands of tons of steel that has already been produced. All that waste--all that waste, and we won't even get the 250 miles of wall. Isn't that absurd? Isn't that ridiculous? All because securing the border has become a partisan issue, when it was not a partisan issue in 2006. So my amendment, amendment 1518, is really pretty simple, just two pages. It is very common sense. It just says: Complete the wall that we have already contracted for, that we are going to have to pay for whether we build it or not. Now, in a rational Senate in reasonable times, this ought to pass 100 to 0. I fear this is going to be decided strictly on party lines, and that is a real shame. If there is one thing that we ought to be bipartisan about, it is about national security, it is about securing our homeland, and part and parcel of securing our homeland is having a secure border. One element of that, in addition to instituting consequences, like the Migrant Protection Protocol, like something I proposed with the Senator from Arizona, Senator Sinema, Operation Safe Return, there has to be a consequence to reduce or stop this flow. But we also need barriers. Technology alone is not going to work. We can't hire enough Border Patrol agents. They are already being dispirited. We are going to have a hard time hiring enough people just to come up to the quota levels we want to hire. We can't do it with personnel. We can't do technology. We need the fence. We bought and paid for it; let's construct it. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I ask for a minute to respond. First of all, let me reiterate--the dollars will be spent regardless. The dollars would be completely wasted and no wall whatsoever. Of course, this reconsideration of their policies--we can already see the disastrous consequences of what they have already done. God help us in terms of what the results will be of future policies as well. So, again, I ask that my amendment be considered. Vote on Amendment No. 1518 I ask support for it, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Madam President.