Amy Klobuchar

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, as Senators in this proceeding, we were bound by two oaths, to support and defend the Constitution and to pursue impartial justice as we considered the Article of Impeachment filed against former President Donald Trump: a charge of incitement of insurrection. The Framers of our Constitution gave us the tools to respond to a moment like this. Having lived under the tyranny of an unaccountable King, they were well aware of the risks of a President willing to abuse his or her power. William Davie, one of North Carolina's representatives at the Constitutional Convention, argued that empowering the Congress was necessary to protect against the threat of a President who would spare ``no efforts or means whatever to get himself reelected.'' Our system of checks and balances as laid out in our Constitution provides that the Congress can impeach a President for committing ``Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.'' The phrase was meant to encompass any offenses that, as Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 65, include an ``abuse or violation of some public trust'' and ``injuries done immediately to society itself.'' Impeachment is a remedy for this public harm. Some of my colleagues argue that the Senate could not sit as a court of impeachment for a former President. But constitutional scholars from across the political spectrum agree that the plain language of the Constitution and the historical precedent are clear that the Senate has the power to hold former officers accountable for offenses committed while in office. The question was debated on the Senate floor, we had a vote, and a bipartisan majority decided that we should proceed. As Manager Jamie Raskin said, ``[t]he jurisdictional constitutional issue is gone . . . We are having a trial on the facts.'' As we were all witnesses to what happened on January 6, the facts are clear. During the trial, we saw evidence that was haunting and chilling. But more than that, collectively, the evidence presented a clear indictment of President Trump's role in threatening not only the lives of those at the Capitol, but the very lifeblood of our democracy. President Trump's actions on January 6 were consistent with a years- long effort to undermine faith in our democratic system. After spending months trying to delegitimize our elections and despite losing by more than 7 million votes, President Trump filed dozens of lawsuits and called into question the election results across the country. In court after court, the President's claims were rejected. As Judge Bibas, who was appointed by President Trump, wrote for the Third Circuit, ``Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.'' In an attempt to delay the certification of the results, President Trump privately pressured State election officials, including asking Georgia's Secretary of State to ``find'' 11,780 votes, a number that would flip the State in his favor. Thankfully, election officials followed the law, and by December 11, 2020, all States had certified the results of the election. Despite the results being final, however, President Trump convinced his supporters that there was one last opportunity to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power: preventing the Congress from counting the electoral college votes. And they responded to his call. During the trial, we saw a video of a rioter yelling, ``We were invited by the President of the United States!'' and examples of the rioters' social media posts telling President Trump they were there for him, including a photo of rioters storming the Capitol steps captioned, ``This is me.'' Law enforcement, sworn to protect the Capitol, were repeatedly assaulted defending our temple of democracy and our very republic. We will never forget the shrieks of the police officer pinned in between the doors at the hands of the rioters, pleading for help. We will never forget Officer Harry Dunn, who fought against the violent mob for hours and, after it was over, broke down in tears, telling fellow officers he had been called the N-word numerous times that day. He asked: ``Is this America?'' Or Officer Eugene Goodman who ran to take on a growing group of the rioters by himself, diverting them away from the Senate Chamber and allowing Senators to move to a secure location. Tragically, the attack on the Capitol also cost the lives of three brave officers, including Officer Brian Sicknick who died from injuries sustained while engaging with rioters. Two other officers died by suicide following the events of January 6: D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith and U.S. Capitol Police Officer Howard Liebengood. While much of the trial rightfully focused on what President Trump did on and leading up to January 6, in many ways what he did not do was even more dangerous. After he sent the mob to the Capitol, putting law enforcement in danger and threatening the safety of the Vice President, President Trump did nothing to stop the violence. Despite calls from Republican leaders across the country, President Trump did not even send a tweet to defend our democracy. Hours after the rioters first breached the Capitol, he finally released a video and told the rioters: ``we love you; you're very special.'' President Trump betrayed his oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. He incited a mob to attack the Capitol and prevent the peaceful transfer of power, and for that, he should be impeached. On January 6, we were all awakened to our responsibilities as Americans and as Senators. I will never forget walking to the House Chamber around 4 a.m., with shattered glass from broken windows strewn in the hallway, joined by Senator Blunt, Vice President Pence, and alongside two young women who carried the mahogany boxes holding each State's electoral votes. We knew we had to return to do our jobs, and that night, we made clear to all: Democracy will prevail. Thank you.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to thank the staff who worked tirelessly to ensure the 59th inaugural ceremonies were a success even under extreme and extraordinary circumstances. The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, also known as JCCIC, is tasked with the planning and execution of the inaugural ceremonies of the President-Elect and Vice President-Elect of the United States at the Capitol. This ceremony is the culmination of 244 years of a democracy. It is the moment when our leaders promise to be faithful to our Constitution. It is the moment when they become, as we all should be, the guardians of our country. I would like to thank the chair of JCCIC, Senator Blunt, for his outstanding work to ensure that the inauguration was an extraordinary success. It was a pleasure to work with Senator Blunt and his extremely professional staff. I want to commend the entire JCCIC staff, especially Maria Lohmeyer, the Chief of Inaugural Ceremonies, for their remarkable accomplishment. I also want to thank Vincent Brown, who works for me on the Senate Rules Committee, for his work while detailed to JCCIC, as well as my chief of staff, Lindsey Kerr, who worked diligently with JCCIC and many other agencies and offices to ensure a smooth Inauguration. Maria, Vincent, Lindsey, and the entire committee staff have shown that, through hard work and determination, the entire world can see our democracy prevail. This year's inauguration was the 59th in our country's history, and it may have been one of the most challenging ever to design. Planning an inauguration under normal circumstances is difficult, but this year's event occurred in the midst of a global pandemic, just 2 weeks after rioters climbed the inaugural stage to siege the Capitol. The inauguration is an important symbol in our democracy. It has marked the peaceful transfer of power for more than 200 years. It sends an important message to the American people and the world, of unity and a commitment to our democratic principles. Inauguration day represents a new beginning for the country. It marks the beginning of healing, of unifying, of coming together to get through this crisis. This inauguration was the result of Democrats and Republicans working together to bring about this important symbol of our determined democracy. And that spirit of bipartisanship, of working together, was certainly present on the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. Thank you to everyone who made that incredible day one we will remember forever.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of Dr. Miguel Cardona's nomination to serve as Secretary of Education and to urge my colleagues to confirm him to this position. Dr. Cardona will bring a deep understanding of the needs of students and teachers, a firm grasp of our educational system, and a fresh perspective to the Department of Education. Dr. Cardona was the first in his immediate family to go to college. He is the father of two school-aged children, and he brings to this role decades of experience as an educator, having served as an elementary school teacher, principal, and assistant superintendent. Throughout his career, Dr. Cardona has worked tirelessly to improve the lives of students. He has fought to make sure college is accessible for all students. As the education commissioner for the State of Connecticut, he was on the frontlines helping his state tackle the complex issues facing their schools during the pandemic. In his opening statement before the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Dr. Cardona reaffirmed his commitment to forging opportunity out of crisis. He also recognized the need to address educational inequities head-on and build a better future for the next generation. He has the track record to show he understands the value of education and knows how to get things done. Under Dr. Cardona's leadership, Connecticut became the first State in the Nation to ensure that all of its public school students had access to a laptop and a high-speed internet connection to engage in remote learning during the pandemic. At another point in Dr. Cardona's career, he led a task force to help figure out how to close the academic achievement gap among students in his State. The value of education is something that is personal to me. My grandpa worked 1,500 feet underground in the mines of Ely, and he never graduated from high school, but he knew the value of a quality education, saving money in a coffee can in the basement to send my dad to college. My dad graduated from Vermilion Community College and earned his graduate degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota. He went on to be a sports reporter and a newspaper columnist. My mom was a public school teacher who taught second grade until she was 70 years old. She loved teaching. Her favorite unit was the monarch butterfly unit, where we would dress up as a monarch butterfly, and she would teach the kids about metamorphosis. She would also wear that monarch butterfly costume to the supermarket. She was dressed as this big monarch butterfly with little antennas on her head and a sign that said ``to Mexico or bust'' because that is where the monarch would fly on its way from Canada through Minnesota and down. At the visitation on the night before my mom's funeral, I met a family. I had never met them before, but the mom was sobbing, and she had an older son who had a severe disability. The mom said, ``You know, your mom had my son here in school when he was in second grade. Now he was grown up, and he said he always loved that monarch butterfly unit. And after he graduated, he got a job bagging groceries, and your mom would continue to go to the grocery store and she would stand in line in her monarch butterfly outfit. For years she did this, and would always give him a big hug when she got to the end of the line.'' That was my mom, and she loved her kids, and she was a devoted teacher. I learned the value of education from my parents and grandparents, and I believe that it is a basic right that we have in this country that every child should have a right to education. I know that Dr. Miguel Cardona also believes in that right, and this is why I support his confirmation as Secretary of Education. I will also note that several of my Republican colleagues, including Senator Burr, ranking member on the HELP Committee, have come to the same conclusion. This past year has been like no other, filled with tremendous challenges for students, educators, and families. As a result of this pandemic, parents have had to teach their first graders how to use the mute button to go to school. The crisis has taken a toll on the mental health of students and educators. There is major work to do to make sure that all students can catch up on lost learning caused by gaps in access to technology and broadband during the pandemic. Thankfully, there is now light at the end of the tunnel with the development and distribution of vaccines that protect against the coronavirus and stand to save millions of lives. Our country now faces important decisions about how to safely and equitably return to in- person learning, and we need strong, thoughtful leadership to help guide these decisions and get our country back up and running. That means leadership we can trust to provide guidance that is driven by science and by public health experts. It also means leadership that will support the rights of all students to have a full and enriching educational experience. I believe that Dr. Cardona will be a Secretary who will fight for public education, not against it; a Secretary who takes seriously the Federal Government's role in making education policy, informed by the most rigorous science; perhaps most of all, a Secretary who fosters compromise, not conflict, in addressing our Nation's many educational challenges. As one of my mentors Senator Paul Wellstone put it, government should work to improve people's lives, and we have a lot of work to do with so many students and families in need. But I come to this Chamber today optimistic because our country has had a long and strong history of stepping up during challenging times like these. I look forward to partnering with Dr. Cardona to meet the needs of this moment and overcome the obstacles we face to support students, teachers, and schools as we work to recover from this pandemic and move forward. With that, I ask my colleagues to support the nomination: Miguel Cardona as Secretary of Education.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I wanted to join Senator Blunt in thanking the JCCIC staff. I see them up there, all 6 feet apart. They are incredible and did such a good job in a really difficult circumstance with this inauguration. I want to thank Senator Blunt for his great leadership through thick and thin. There were a lot of hard decisions that had to be made, and he made the right ones. We worked together really well, and the sky was blue when the new President got inaugurated. Somehow he pulled that off as well. So I thank the staff and thank Senator Blunt for his friendship and his great leadership. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, the Committee on Rules and Administration has adopted rules governing its procedures for the 117th Congress. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, on behalf of myself and Senator Blunt, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the committee rules be printed in the Record.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, on behalf of myself and Senators Casey and Brown, I send a question to the desk.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

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

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, today I rise in support of my friend and fellow Minnesotan, Denis McDonough, as President Biden's nominee for Secretary of Veterans Affairs. And no one knows but you, the Senator from Illinois, Madam President, about how important this job is for our veterans. Denis grew up in Stillwater, MN, which is right near the Wisconsin border. He is a grandson of Irish immigrants, the son of devout Catholic parents, and brother to 10 siblings. He attended St. John's College in Collegeville, MN, and in addition to graduating summa cum laude, he played safety on the very proud championship St. John's football team. I have been privileged to call Denis a friend for years, and I know he will serve our country well as the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. As he has done his whole life, he will honor the promises our country has made to our veterans and their families. Denis's commitment to our Nation's veterans was clear during his time as President Obama's Chief of Staff, where he made sure that every decision impacting our servicemembers, veterans, and their families was befitting of their sacrifices. Showing respect and gratitude for our Nation's veterans is not something Denis just prioritizes; it is a value for him. As we know from his time as President Obama's Chief of Staff, he is an adept manager who understands how to tackle complex challenges throughout our government, which will be vital for the next Secretary. As we also know, the VA is facing a number of challenges, from helping veterans to stay safe during the pandemic to improving the quality of care for veterans around the country. These are not simple problems, and these are not simple challenges, and they will require, as you have shown, Madam President, true leadership and vision, whic has been, again, the hallmark of Denis's time in public service. I also know that he will work tirelessly to find bipartisan solutions, and I think you see that from the support that he has gotten throughout the country as well as on the Veterans' Affairs Committee, where I was honored to introduce him when he started on this journey of Senate approval, and it has never been more important than ever to unite our country and get that kind of support. So much of our work with our veterans is about keeping our promises and showing respect, not just in words but in actions. What other Senators who don't know Denis as well or are new to Washington--what they may see as time goes on, they will see the qualities of honor and loyalty in Denis's commitment to his family, which also includes his family in Minnesota. I know this firsthand. He has so many relatives that you can't go anywhere without running into some McDonough. You see it in how he has treated everyone he has worked with, when he worked in the Senate, when he worked as President Obama's Chief of Staff. I also will assure my fellow Senators that he will listen to Senators. He will have respect for the people who work here. You see it every day in how he always puts his country first. During his distinguished career, Denis has approached each and every job with the spirit of respect, honesty, collaboration, and a willingness to make himself accessible to his colleagues and his team. He is deeply committed to supporting the workforce at the VA. I want our veterans to know he will do two things so well: He will listen, and he will get things done for you. One of my favorite stories about Denis involves this--listening and then getting things done. We were having a lot of trouble up in northern Minnesota with the iron ore mines closing down, as you all remember, kind of coming out of the downturn. It never really bounced back. Then we had the steel dumping going on from China and other countries, the illegal steel dumping, and that really spread through the country and led to the closure of many of our mines. We tried to introduce legislation, and finally I asked Denis to come up to northern Minnesota, since he was from our State, as President Obama's Chief of Staff and sit down with a bunch of mayors from northern Minnesota, from Minnesota's Iron Range, with workers and with mine owners. There was this long, long table, and nearly everyone had spoken. Near the end, a miner named Dan Hill was the last to go, and he said: Well, everything has been said, so I will just tell this story. He said that he was out of work, and he said that his son had just graduated from preschool. The teacher asked them at the graduation: What do you want to do when you grow up? The kids were saying all kinds of things--that they wanted to play basketball or they were going to fly an airplane and all kinds of cool things--and Denis's son looked at the teacher and said: I want to be a miner like my daddy. At that moment, Dan Hill took this steelworker T-shirt that he had in his hand and he threw it across the whole long table. And I remember sitting next to Denis thinking, you were a football player; catch the T-shirt. And he caught the T-shirt. Dan Hill said: Mr. McDonough, make it come true. Make it come true. Denis listened, but then he acted. He went back to Washington and he didn't just ignite a fire under the Commerce Department to get them to do even more work than they were already doing on enforcing tariffs and going after this illegal dumping and bringing things to the International Trade Commission, he also looked at other agencies, and he helped us, along with Sherrod Brown and so many others, to pass legislation that made a difference. All of this happened, and Dan Hill got his job back. Then I invited Dan Hill to come to one of the last State of the Unions for President Obama, and Denis invited Dan Hill to the White House, and Dan Hill got to meet practically everyone surrounding the President. That is Denis McDonough. He listened, but he didn't just say ``Oh, I got there. I went. We will try our best''; he actually followed through the minutia of government to get things done. I am going to end with the words of a poet whom President Biden happens to love. Given Denis's Irish roots, I can't think of a better person to quote from today, and it is Mr. Heaney, who once wrote: ``Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.'' So Denis will not just say words to the veterans of this country; as your Secretary, he will get things done. With that, I ask my colleagues to support the nomination of Denis McDonough as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

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

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I first would like to say I appreciate the words of our leader, Senator Schumer, as well as Senator McConnell's call for a higher calling. January 6 is not typically a day of historical significance for our country. For centuries, this day is simply the day that we receive each State's certified electoral votes, and it has come and gone without much fanfare. In fact, this is only the third time in 120 years that the Senate has gathered to debate an objection, and as Senator Cruz well knows, both times these objections were resoundingly defeated. The last time the vote was 74 to 1. Why? Because Senators have long believed that they should not mess around with the will of the people. They have understood the words of our great former colleague John McCain from the State of Arizona, who once said that nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself. In this case, my colleagues, our cause, despite our political differences, is to preserve our American democracy, to preserve our Republic because, as someone once said long ago, it is a republic if you can keep it. Now, I appreciate all my Democratic and Republican colleagues who have joined our ranks of coup fighters, who have stood up for our democracy, who stand tall for our Republic, and who believe in an ideal greater than ourselves, larger than our political parties. That ideal is America. And Senator Cruz, he knows this: On January 20, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be sworn in as President and Vice President of the United States. He knows that President-Elect Biden won more votes than any President in history and more than 7 million more votes than President Trump. Despite the unfounded conspiracy theories Senator Cruz tells, he knows that high-ranking officials in President Trump's own Homeland Security Department have concluded that the 2020 election was ``the most secure in American history.'' If he wants to improve the numbers in his own party that he just mentioned of people believing in our elections, maybe he should start consulting with them or maybe he should start consulting with former Attorney General Barr, who said that he has found no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. We don't have to go back to 1877, my colleagues. Senator Cruz knows that 80 judges, including conservative judges, including judges confirmed in this Chamber, nominated by President Trump, have thrown out these lawsuits, calling them baseless, inadequate, and contrary both to the plain meaning of the constitutional text and common sense. And he knows that all 10 living Defense Secretaries, including both of Trump's Defense Secretaries--Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, William Cohen--he knows that all of these leaders have come together to say that these scurrilous attacks on our democracy must stop and we must allow for a peaceful transition of power. Senator Sinema will fill you in on the specific facts as to why this election was sound and true in Arizona, but a summary: President Trump received 1,661,686 votes in the State; President-Elect Biden won 1,672,143 votes, meaning that he won the State by 10,457 votes. On November 30, after Arizona's Republican Governor, the secretary of state, the attorney general, and the conservative chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court certified the results of the election, the Governor actually said: We do elections well here in Arizona. The system is strong. Eight postelection lawsuits brought in Arizona to challenge the results were dismissed by judges. Nine Members of the House from Arizona were elected in the same election, including four Republicans. Colleagues, I did not see Senator Cruz over at the swearing-in at the House of Representatives last Sunday asking for an audit. He did not stop their swearing-in because there was no fraud, and he did not ask for an audit because we had a fair election. I will end with this. My friend Roy Blunt, my fellow Rules Committee leader, many years ago found a statue, a bust of a man at the top of a bookcase. He did research. He went to the historians. All he could find out was that no one knew who this guy was except that he was a cleric. Hence, the statue is called ``The Unknown Cleric.'' Now, at the time, our leaders thought this man important enough that they would warrant a statue for him, but today no one knows who he is. Senator Blunt's message to schoolkids and Senators alike that visit his office, when he shows them the statue: What we do here is more important than who we are. Senators, what matters is not our futures, not our own short-term destinies. What matters is our democracy's destiny because I think many of us know people will not know who we are 100 years from now or 200 years from now, but what they will know is this: They will know what we did today, how we voted today. That is more important than who we are. It is a Republic, if we can keep it. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to thank all of my colleagues who worked so hard on the bill that is coming to the floor today, the pandemic relief package. We know all the top priorities in there--the vaccine distribution-- and I want to thank Senator Schumer and leaders and those on both sides of the aisle who put more funding into that. I want to thank the group who has worked so hard on this agreement and this negotiation in the Senate for their work, including Senator Manchin and Senator Romney and Senator Warner and Senator Shaheen and Senator Hassan and Senator Durbin, as well as all of their Republican colleagues, Senator Collins and Senator Murkowski, Senator Cassidy, who worked so hard on this original agreement, with many others who joined in as well. This bill contains such important priorities, including unemployment and help for our hospitals and help for our rural areas--housing, rent, small businesses, unemployment, the direct checks. I think we all know that there is more work to be done, including next year, including for our cities and our States, but it is so important that we get this done by the end of the year. I wanted to focus on something that I have worked on for quite a while with Senator Cornyn from Texas. We have done this on a bipartisan basis from the beginning, and it is the Save Our Stages Act. When we first introduced it in July, we knew that it was going to be a long road, and we also knew that the only way we would get this done is by sticking together as a team and by working with other Members of Congress from red and blue States. And by the end--this bill is included in full in this package--we had 57 Senators who sponsored this bill out of 100, with many more supporting it. We had over 200 House Members. We worked so hard to make this about America and American music and American theater and American culture. We all know that you can't go stand in a mosh pit in the middle of a pandemic. These live entertainment venues were among the first businesses to close, and they will almost certainly be among the last to reopen. This was about, yes, Nashville and New York, but it was just as much about the Fargo Theater or a small, small country music venue in Texas. And while we see the light at the end of tunnel with the vaccines, we know that it will be quite a while before these businesses, which operate on such thin margins as it is, can keep going. I think we also know the importance of the arts and music, not only as a cultural icon in America but also as an economic driver. It is one of our No. 1 exports, when you combine all of it. And the fact that we were able to stick together with not only the nitty-gritty of this bill and this coalition and actually add partners as we went along is a tribute to all the musicians out there, all the venues, all the lighting operators, all the truckers--everyone who came together and said: We are going to get this done. I know when Senator Cornyn and I first introduced this, people kind of patted us on the head and said: Oh, this sounds nice. But I think when people started to hear the facts and how much this matters to economies and even small towns, it made a difference. In the end, to quote Minnesota's own Bob Dylan from ``The Times They Are a-Changin,'' he says: Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call Don't stand in the doorway Don't block the hall No one blocked the hall. I want to thank my colleagues, and I want to especially thank Senator Cornyn. We have led many bills together, and we had to go back and forth a lot. I want to thank Dayna Frank, who is the head of First Avenue in Minnesota, made famous, of course, by Prince. Prince wouldn't be Prince if not for First Avenue. Everyone in our State, when they think about First Avenue, they think about Prince. She is the head of the National Venue Association. She called me one night in the beginning of the pandemic and said: I just can't make it through this without some help. They already received PPP loans, but that is not enough for these venues because of the unique circumstance where they can't partially open. You can't go to a theater right now and sit elbow-to-elbow with your friends and family. I also want to thank my legislative director, Doug Calidas, who has worked on this from the beginning, including all the last month's late- night negotiations. He did a wonderful job. I want to thank Senators Schumer and McConnell and Representatives Speaker Pelosi and Leader McCarthy for getting this over the finish line--Senator McConnell for putting it in his original bill and Senator Schumer, who cares so much about this because of all of the great music and acts and everything coming out of New York State. It was certainly very, very helpful--and that would put it mildly--to have Senator Schumer in the room where it happened, where the last negotiations were made. I also want to thank Senators Shaheen and Collins, who worked on this in the original negotiation; Senators Cardin and Rubio with the Small Business Committee, who made this a priority; and finally, our House authors, our bipartisan House authors out there, Representatives Welch and Williams, for their work. So how this works--the Small Business Administration will create a new $15 billion grant program to help venues cover 6 months of expenses and make it through this pandemic. We are very hopeful that once the summer comes, we are going to see more and more openings because of the vaccine, because of what I hope will be, with a new administration, an increased emphasis on testing, and that we will see more and more venues able to open. The grants can be used to cover all the major costs the venues have to pay to stay in business, including rent and mortgage, utilities, employee wages, key benefits, maintenance costs, State and local taxes, payments to contractors, and purchases of protective equipment. Venues that are at the greatest risk of closing--sadly, we have already lost a number of our venues--will have priority access to the majority of the grant funding. All venues will be able to apply within 4 weeks of the program's launch with the Small Business Administration, but in the first 2 weeks, those venues that have suffered 90 percent revenue loss over the year before will be the first to be able to apply for these grants. So we in Congress don't want to let the music die, and we don't want that to happen to any of our other places of culture in America either. That is why over the last month or so, we have worked with the museums and with the zoos, and I want to especially thank Senator Schumer for his work on that, as well as Senator Blunt and many others who worked with us--as well as the movie theaters. We wanted to make sure that if we expanded our coalition, that we didn't hurt the originals, which were these small, small theaters and small music venues across the country. We did not do that, because this new program will be a lifeline for small entertainment venues across the country, such as First Avenue and the Bluestem Amphitheater in Moorehead, MN. It will also help the millions of Americans who work behind the scenes and who have been sidelined, from the engineers and truckdrivers to the ticket takers and the designers and the spot operators. It will help revive the local economies of neighborhoods and small towns across this Nation. It is not every day that a coalition sticks together from beginning to end, that they kept with their original purpose, haven't been picked off, haven't gotten into infighting, but this group did it. Maybe it is because so many Americans at home right now cherish music and entertainment and that part of America like they have never done because they are watching things alone. They are listening to concerts by themselves. They are listening to them with their iPhones, or they are listening to them on their computers, and it is not quite the same. We also know that all of these artists don't exactly get a big boost up by themselves with huge funding when they first start out. So many of them start out at these little venues--a country music band playing at the Bluestem Amphitheater; a little local theater troupe trying out a new play in Lanesboro, MN. They can't do it without these venues. So today we celebrate the fact that we held together. Not only are we passing this bill as a part of this package, we actually brought in friends, and we brought in partners, and we made it an even bigger deal than it was to begin with. So as I began by quoting the great Bob Dylan from Minnesota, I will end. He once said: Well, I sing by night, wander by day. I'm on the road and it looks like I'm here to stay. Finally, we are reaching out to this group of employees and these businesses and saying: We want you to be here to stay. So thank you to Save Our Stages and to all of our colleagues who worked so hard on this, and special thanks to my friend Senator Cornyn. Again, when we did this, we didn't know if we would be able to mount this grassroots effort, but it happened because artists and fans just wouldn't give up. So thank you very much. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise to honor and pay tribute to our Senate colleagues who are departing at the end of this Congress. I was able to work with all of them in different ways, and we are going to miss them. Before that, I did want to mention the importance of the continuing negotiations on end-of-the-year pandemic relief. I have been involved in those, and I want to thank those Members who have been at the forefront of this all through the weekend, all through the last few weeks. I cannot stress how important it is right now. My State just got through a spike in COVID. We lost so many people. We have so many small businesses, like so many States in this country, that are closed down. While we see the light at the end of the tunnel with the vaccine, I talked to a friend of mine whose husband is an infectious disease doctor, and she said when she saw those trucks rolling out in Michigan, she just started to sob just seeing it on TV. I think that is how a lot of people in this country feel, but it is on us right now to make sure we get the funding so that vaccine gets distributed as it should and to also ensure that our economy is in a place that when we start going back into the workplace--not just virtually--we will be able to bounce back as we should, and that means pandemic relief at the end of this year.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, today I rise to honor and pay tribute to Sid Hartman, a sports journalist and a Minnesota legend who passed away on October 18, 2020, at age 100. Born in 1920 on the north side of Minneapolis, Sid Hartman was born to be a newspaperman. He began selling newspapers when he was 9 years old and even pioneered the use of newspaper boxes where customers would pay by leaving coins in a change box. Sid would ride his bicycle to Newspaper Alley, where he would buy 100 copies of the Minneapolis Star, the Journal, and the Morning Tribune for $1.10 and then sell them for two cents apiece. That is how Sid got his start in business, but his big break came when Dick Cullum, the sports editor at the Minneapolis Times, hired him to work on the sports desk in 1944. And during his tenure, Sid's columns were a big reason why people bought the newspaper. Sid went on to become the unofficial general manager for the Minneapolis Lakers and helped secure a Major League Baseball team for Minneapolis. Since 2010, a statue of Sid holding a newspaper and microphone has stood near the corner of Sixth Street and First Avenue North in Minneapolis, a fitting tribute to his legacy outside of the Target Center and the Minnesota Twins' Target Field. Sid was also a popular radio personality on WCCO Radio. I know I will never forget the day at the Minnesota State Fair WCCO Radio booth when we both appeared on the Dave Lee show for the annual ``Minnesota Hospital'' soap opera spoof skit, where I was given the role of Nurse Helen and Sid played the infamous ``Dr. Kidney Hartman.'' Sid knew everyone. His 1996 autobiography, titled: ``Sid! The Sports Legends, the Inside Scoops and the Close Personal Friends,'' was endorsed by some of the biggest names in sports, from legendary Vikings coach Bud Grant to Arnold Palmer, Wayne Gretzky, Ted Williams, Bob Costas, and George Steinbrenner. Nobody had better relationships in the sports world than Sid. Ten years after the book's release, the Star Tribune published ``Sid Hartman's Great Minnesota Sports Moments'' featuring this quote from Tom Brokaw: ``I grew up on Sid Hartman columns about my Midwestern sports heroes and I still think of him as a Hall of Fame newspaperman.'' My dad, a future newspaperman himself, first met Sid in 1945 while Sid was covering the Minnesota high school basketball championship game. My dad was playing for his hometown high school team Ely, a small town on Minnesota's Iron Range, and they were up against Patrick Henry High School, a powerhouse that had only lost one game that season. As soon as my dad got off the bus, Sid stuck a microphone in his face and said, ``You don't have a chance. How are you going to win?'' Sid was right, and Ely lost 66-35. Years later, my dad started writing for the Associated Press and then for the Star Tribune. He and Sid got to know each other well. They were fierce competitors, but had respect for each other's drive and work. Throughout Sid's career, he never had any plans to quit. He was always driven to get the scoop. He was relentless. At the time of his death, he was still writing three or four columns a week. In fact, Sid produced 21,235 bylined stories from 1944 to 2020. In his final column, he wrote: ``Writing a column as I turn 100 years old is hard to believe.'' But for all who knew Sid, it wasn't hard for any of us to believe. My prayers and condolences go out to Sid's son Chad, his daughter Chris, and his entire family. It is hard to be surprised when someone dies at age 100, but Sid was someone who just never stopped loving his work and our State. We miss you, Sid. Thank you.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I come to the floor today following my friend, the Senator from Maine, at a critical moment for our country and for the United States. Americans, as we know, are facing an unprecedented health and economic crisis that has gripped our country for over 9 months. But, sadly, that is not what brings us to the Senate floor today. It is not why the Republican leader has called the Senate into session. Is it to pass the legislation that we need to pass, to carry on the work of the CARES Act, to help people out in our country right now when nearly every State is starting to see increases in this virus again? That is not why we are here. On this rainy, cold Sunday in October, instead of meeting to debate and vote on a comprehensive bill to provide relief to the American people during this soul-crunching pandemic, we are instead here today because our Republican colleagues insist on rushing through the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to be an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, to fill the vacancy left by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Let me start with Justice Ginsburg because that is really where it all starts. Justice Ginsburg was an icon. She was celebrated well into her eighties by people young and old. I will never forget my own daughter when we were at an event and got a photo with Justice Ginsburg. My daughter was just in college. We had that nice photo of the three of us, and she said to me: Mom, I am going to cut you out of this because I want to put it on Facebook, and the ``Notorious RBG'' is just so cool. Justice Ginsburg made justice cool because Justice Ginsburg understood that justice is supposed to be about people, and it is supposed to be about the Constitution. She started when no one gave her a chance, going to law school when there were hardly any girls going to law school. In fact, they told her not to, and she ends up graduating first in her class. She then comes up with landmark theories on equal protection, and she is told maybe a man should argue these cases because they are so important and a man would have a better chance of winning them. She said: No, I will do them myself. And she wins five out of six cases. She ends up on the Supreme Court, writing landmark opinions and infamous dissents. At her memorial in the Capitol, it was the rabbi--and I was so honored to be there, a moment I will never forget--and the rabbi said: You know, those dissents, those weren't cries for defeat, they were blueprints for the future. That is how I must think of this moment in time, as we are in the middle of voting, as over 50 million Americans have already cast their ballots, making their voices heard, that you can't take away the fact that this nomination was plopped down in the middle of an election, which is what I have argued from the beginning. This will not be a cry of defeat for the people of this country who care about Justice Ginsburg's legacy--her legacy on protecting women's rights, her legacy on voting rights, her legacy on so many other fundamental issues to the people of this country. We know what her last fervent wish was. Those were her words, ``fervent wish.'' Only Justice Ginsburg would use those words at the end of her life, but she did. She said that her last fervent wish was that the next President--the President who wins this election--should be able to pick the person to take her place. That is what she asked for. That is what so many Americans--the majority of Americans--think should happen there. But that is not what is happening. We are not doing what we should be doing, and people are watching. More than 220,000 Americans have lost their lives. So many families have lost loved ones. Millions more have gotten sick or no longer have jobs. People are scared for themselves and their families. Moms are trying to balance their toddlers on their knees and their laptops on their desks. They are having to teach first graders how to use the mute button. But instead of working to pass a relief package--something that 74 percent of the people want us to be doing right now--that is right, when they were asked, Do you think we should be pushing through a judge or working on pandemic relief, 74 percent of the people said: You should be working on pandemic relief. But instead, we are here, not in a rush to justice but a rush to put in a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. The President has made his intent clear. In fact, he, in his inimitable way, sent out a tweet on his intent. He said: If I win the Presidency, my judicial appointments will do the right thing, unlike Bush's appointee, John Roberts, on ObamaCare. This is no surprise, I guess. The Affordable Care Act is something my Republican colleagues have been trying to repeal for 10 years. Just 1 week after election day, the Court will hear a challenge to the law coming out of the State of Texas that millions of people are depending on for healthcare--especially during this pandemic, after we learn more and more about people who have gotten COVID, who then end up struggling later. Of course, what would that be called? That would be called a preexisting condition. Yet this is what this President and my Republican colleagues are focused on. The American people--Democrats, Republicans, and Independents--are continuing to face reality--not this reality in this Chamber tonight, but the reality in their lives--once again, misplaced priorities in a rush to do what the President wants. The coronavirus is, in fact, still raging across our country because of the President's failed leadership. That is true. His lies, his refusal to listen to science--cases have been up, as I noted, in about two-thirds of the States in just the last few weeks. The President was first told about the potential for this virus in January. He was telling people he knew, behind closed doors, that it was airborne and it was deadly. He knew that back in February. He said it would go away, though. To the public, he said: This will go away by Easter. He said: People will be back in church by Easter. There are people who went to church around that time in Minnesota who died. He said it would go away with warmer weather. We all know that these things did not happen. For me, this is personal, like it is for so many Americans. My husband got sick with coronavirus. He got really sick. He ended up with pneumonia in the hospital, on oxygen, for over a week. Why is this so personal for me, what the President says about this? Because back then, we were just cleaning off every surface in our house, which, of course, is still important now. But we thought, oh, that is good. We will just clean off everything, wash everything. But the President, we now know-- we found out about a month or two ago--back in March, he knew it was airborne, but he said he didn't want to tell the American people because--well, he thought it might panic people. He didn't tell you the truth. Now, we know that at least 130,000 American lives could have been saved if the President had taken real action early on. That comes out of a new study from Columbia. That is 130,000 families who would still have their mom or dad or grandparent with them at the table, with them at the table this Thanksgiving--if the President had done what we needed to get testing in place, to do contact tracing, to listen to the experts. And, no, it is not just the Big Ten football, as much as we love Big Ten football in Minnesota. It is not just those players who should be able to have that testing. It is not just the people in the White House who should be able to have that testing. There are consequences of this failed leadership. The American people who are dealing with this pandemic are not concerned about the false claims in the President's 3 a.m. rants or his attempts to relitigate the 2016 election right now. They are just trying to make it through the day. They need help. But instead of giving them that help, here we are, once again, jamming through a nominee. In fact, according to reports, Senator McConnell is actively telling the White House not to negotiate on a bipartisan package, just so the Senate would do this. They have broken promise after promise. They have blown every precedent. They have ignored all logic and taken on every risk, just to push this nomination through. Why the rush? Well, I can give you some ideas. One, as I mentioned, just 1 week after the election, just 2 weeks from now, the Supreme Court will consider the future of the Affordable Care Act. We also know--and this is coming directly from the President, via tweet--that he wants the Justices to potentially count the ballots--those are his words, not mine--and that he wants nine Justices on that Court. No, I will not concede that this election will end up in Court, not the way people are voting, not the numbers we are seeing out there, not the reality that people are facing, but that is what he wants in place. Everything is on the ballot, but many of these things end up in Court. We know that. And during the Judiciary hearing, many of my colleagues would act like the Supreme Court was some far away, distant ivory tower institution, debating things and talking about things, and in their words, like the Dormant Commerce Clause. That is true, they decide cases on the Dormant Commerce Clause. What else do they decide? They decide who you can marry. They decide where you can go to school. They decide if you can use contraception. They decide all kinds of things. They decide if you can vote. They decide if you can have healthcare. All those things are decided in the Supreme Court. What is on the ballot when it comes to healthcare? What is before us with this Justice? The Affordable Care Act. What is this about? I still remember the day that we passed the bill. I was here early in the morning on Christmas Eve. And I also remember the day when our colleagues tried to repeal the bill, and my friend, Senator McCain, actually whispered to me what he was going to do before he did it. But he came in, and he put a big thumbs down while he himself struggled-- struggled--with his own life. What did the Affordable Care Act mean to people? Millions of people got coverage and millions of people who weren't able to get coverage before--and then for everyone, even people who had coverage before, they got something that they so badly needed, and that is, protection from being kicked off your health insurance for preexisting conditions. What else did it mean? Young people can stay on their parents' insurance until the age of 26. What a difference that makes. It makes a difference for people like Evelyn and Maraya, identical twins from Cambridge, MN, honor roll students and star athletes. They play basketball, and they also play softball. One is a pitcher and one is a catcher. One of them was born and early on got severe diabetes when she was very young. Does it matter which one, the pitcher or the catcher? They both deserve good healthcare, especially now when they both know they have diabetes. But early on, did it matter which one? They both deserve good healthcare. There are people like Steve, a senior from Tower, MN, who has a heart condition and relies on his prescription medication to stay alive; like Elijah from St. Paul, who was born with cerebral palsy, and because of the Affordable Care Act, is now 16 and a proud Boy Scout; or Christie, a mom from Bloomington whose daughter had a tumor; like Casie, whose brother lives in Alexandria and has chronic kidney failure and needs a transplant. Without the ACA, her brother will die waiting for a transplant. And then, like Emily, from Minneapolis, whose mom was diagnosed with breast cancer; or Burnette from the suburbs of St. Paul, whose daughter has multiple sclerosis and depends on the ACA; or Janet from Rochester, whose brother has a mental illness; or Liliana from Fridley, who has a 21-year-old son with autism and needs her children to be able to stay on her insurance until they are 26; or Melanie, a senior from Duluth, who is treated for ovarian cancer and needs access to healthcare. Repeal after repeal after repeal attempt, that is what has been happening here. And none of that worked. So what happened? A case was brought in Texas, and the administration is now before the Supreme Court arguing that the entire Affordable Care Act, not just one provision, they are arguing--and let me be clear about this--that the entire Affordable Care Act, all those provisions and all the coverage I just mentioned, should be thrown out. During Judge Barrett's hearing, there was a lot of talk from my colleagues on the other side about the doctrine of severability, which the Supreme Court has said includes the presumption in favor of throwing out part of a statute in order to save the rest. Their point, I suppose, was that the American people shouldn't actually be worried about the case pending before the Supreme Court. It is OK. So I asked Judge Barrett whether the brief that was filed by the Trump Justice Department, which argued that the entire Affordable Care Act must fall, represented the President's position before the Supreme Court. She confirmed, as a former clerk of the Supreme Court to Justice Scalia--she confirmed that it did, and she confirmed that if the President believed that the Court should throw out just part of the Affordable Care Act and save the rest, well, he could direct the Justice Department to withdraw the brief. That has not happened. That is not the position of this administration. They have told the Court that they want to throw the whole thing out, and now they are rushing to confirm the President's nominee with the hope that she will cast a deciding vote to strike down the ACA. For me, as I noted at the hearing, it is about following the tracks. No, the nominee didn't give us a sense of pending cases. We know that. But she didn't even give a sense of what she thought about existing laws that are on the book or about certain fundamental rights that other nominees have discussed. So I followed the tracks, just like we do when we go hiking. When we would go hiking in Northern Minnesota when I was growing up, my mom would always say: OK. That is a deer track or that is an elk or, if we were really lucky, that is a bear. And you would follow those tracks down the trail or down the road, and then you would get to the corner and maybe you would see that deer. Every so often, you did. We would follow the tracks. So that is what we must do--ordinary citizens and U.S. Senators--to try to figure out where this Justice is going to be on these fundamental cases that are in front of the Court. You have got to follow the tracks. So what do we have? Well, we have got the fact that President Trump promised that his judicial appointments would do the right thing and overturn the Affordable Care Act. He tweeted that it would be a big win if the Supreme Court strikes down the healthcare law. And if that wasn't clear, he just went on ``60 Minutes''--he released the tape himself on Thursday, and then it was on tonight--and he said it will be so good if the Supreme Court overturns the Affordable Care Act. OK. So this isn't something from 3 years ago. No, no, no. This is something that we all saw tonight. Then, on September 18, when the Nation was mourning the loss of a judicial giant, President Trump saw his moment, and on September 26, at what became a superspreader party at the White House, he announced his nominee. So here is what we know as we follow the tracks. In an article Judge Barrett wrote for the University of Minnesota Law School journal called ``Constitutional Commentary,'' in 2017--the same year that she became a judge this was published--she wrote that Chief Justice Roberts--these are her words--``pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute.'' That was a case called NFIB v. Sebelius that she was writing about--``pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute.'' That is direct criticism of the Chief Justice's decision to allow the Affordable Care Act to stand. And in a 2015 NPR interview on King v. Burwell--this is a different case, but it involves the Affordable Care Act; another case where Chief Justice Roberts cited in favor of the Affordable Care Act--there, Judge Barrett acknowledged that the majority's holding is good because millions of people won't lose their healthcare subsidies. Yet she praised the dissent by Justice Scalia saying it had the better of the legal argument. Now, remember, she spent all her time in the hearing saying: Whatever the policies are don't matter. What matters is the legal argument. What matters is the law. And her position, which I don't agree with, but her position was that Justice Scalia had the better of the legal argument. That is one big track to see where she is coming down. When she accepted the President's nomination at the White House, she made clear that she considers Justice Scalia, one of the most conservative judges in our Nation's history, as a mentor. Those are our tracks. But it is not just on healthcare. What other tracks do we have to follow? Well, she signed her name to a public statement featured in an ad calling for an end to what the ad called the ``barbaric legacy'' of Roe v. Wade, which ran on the anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court decision. There is your track. She wrote her own dissent disagreeing with longstanding Court rulings on gun safety, expressing her legal opinions that some felons should get guns. She once discussed the dissent in the marriage equality case of Obergefell v. Hodges, asking whether it was really the Supreme Court's job to make that decision. Those are the tracks that lead all of us down that path to the point where you go around the curve, and you realize at least one thing for sure, and that is that Judge Coney Barrett's judicial philosophy is the polar opposite of Justice Ginsburg's. Voting rights. Here is another example. Given the timing of this nomination and the fact that we are just over 1 week from election day, when I asked Judge Barrett would she say that mail-in voting is essential right now, even though the coronavirus continues to spread and people are having to choose between their health and their vote, she instead called it, well, it is a matter of policy. When I asked her, she would not say that voter intimidation is illegal, even though in Minnesota, an outside contractor was recruiting poll watchers with Special Forces experience during the judge's hearing. That is clear voter intimidation. I was not asking her about an ongoing case. I was actually asking her just if it is against the law. It is. It violates 18 U.S.C. section 549. And while in the case of Minnesota, the company has now agreed to cancel its plans after Minnesota Attorney General Ellison opened an investigation, we are seeing threats to the right to vote in States across the country. And when I asked, Judge Barrett even refused to acknowledge that the Constitution empowers Congress to protect the right to vote. So the inescapable conclusion from these tracks is that Judge Barrett, again, would be very different than Justice Ginsburg. Justice Ginsburg was a champion of voting rights. When a 5-to-4 Court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, Justice Ginsburg wrote in her famous dissent that the Constitution uses the words ``right to vote'' in five separate places, and in each place, it reaffirms--these are her words, Justice Ginsburg--``Congress holds the lead rein in making the right to vote equally real for all U.S. citizens.'' Justice Ginsburg understood that voting--you don't just say it is a fundamental right. It is how you protect it. How do we do that? By standing up to voter intimidation and voter suppression, by protecting our democracy from a President who tries to undermine free and fair elections, by protecting the millions of people who are going to the polls right now during this pandemic, some risking their lives to cast a ballot. And during her hearing, Judge Barrett did not make these simple commitments. So I am very concerned about this fundamental issue of voting rights. The stakes have never been higher than they are right now. Look at what is happening. In Texas, they are trying to force each county to have only one ballot drop box, including Harris County, which has 4.7 million people, one box. A judge stepped in and said: No, this is wrong, and then three Trump-appointed judges on the Fifth Circuit vacated the district court's order. No matter what the size of your county, you just get one box. In Tennessee, Republicans have tried to prevent ballot drop boxes, and they have argued in court that COVID-19 is not a valid excuse to vote by mail. In South Carolina, the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month reinstated a South Carolina requirement that mail-in ballots must have a witness signature, so voters in South Carolina are going to be forced to go out in the middle of a pandemic and find someone to witness their ballot. And as we saw last Monday, in a case that went to the Supreme Court from Pennsylvania, Judge Amy Coney Barrett could in fact be the swing vote on a case like this. This is a case where last week the Supreme Court issued a split 4-to-4 decision that let stand the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's ruling allowing election officials to count mail-in ballots received within 3 days of the election even if they are not postmarked. And just last Wednesday, the Supreme Court blocked curbside voting in Alabama, which was intended to help whom? Voters with disabilities. In dissent, Justice Sotomayor quoted Howard Porter, Jr., a Black man in his seventies with asthma and Parkinson's, who said this: So many of my [ancestors] even died to vote. And while I don't mind dying to vote, I think we're past that--we're past that time. That is how I feel a lot about what this judge who is before us now, her views on originalism, her views on not changing with the times, like so many other Justices interpret the Constitution to mean, so that it matters to everyday people--but not this judge. Some of my Republican colleagues, as I noted, think that this is something distant and far away. As I noted, we cannot divorce this nominee and her views from the election we are in now. The last time we had a vacancy so close to a Presidential election was in 1864. Then President Abraham Lincoln did the wise thing, the right thing, and he waited until after the election to fill the vacancy. And in 2016, when Justice Scalia died about 9 months before the election, Senator McConnell said this: The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President. That is what we are talking about with the unfairness of this, with the sham of this proceeding, and I laid out for you tonight the reasons I believe that this has become such a high priority instead of passing pandemic relief. During the week of Judge Barrett's hearing, more than 220,000 more people got COVID-19. At least 2,700 more people died from it. Nearly 800,000 people filed for unemployment. More small businesses closed too. According to one study, actually, recently, around 800 small businesses are closing every day. In my home State, one in five small businesses say they will be forced to close if we don't do something about it. Let me give you an example. Jose Frias from St. Paul is one of them. He is a third-generation business owner who owns Boca Chica Mexican family restaurant, which includes a fast-food taco house, restaurant, and catering service. He started as a manager at 20 years old and worked his way up, taking over 2 years ago--his dream. The future looked bright, but then the virus hit. Jose was forced to go from 98 employees to just 48. His guest restaurants closed entirely and revenue from catering is down 90 percent. In his words, the business, which he has been running with his sisters, aunts, nieces, and a few remaining staff, was his ``whole life . . . and it [has] come to a standstill.'' This is happening all over the country. On October 6, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell made clear that it would be tragic if Congress fails to pass an economic relief package. We have startups that were already in a slump before this and numbers are plummeting more. Small businesses are closing. A conservative Supreme Court that has done nothing when it comes to antitrust--nothing--yet Justice Ginsburg, she always dissented. She made the cases for those small businesses. But the Trump Justices, they have gone the opposite way. I want to end with this. America, you deserve better. You deserve leaders who will put you first. You deserve leaders who will protect your jobs, your families, and your healthcare. You deserve a Supreme Court nominee who will speak truth to power or at least acknowledge when basic precedent exists, even if it is inconvenient to the President who nominated her. There may be nothing we can do any longer to stop this confirmation, but there is one thing you can do to determine the future of this Nation--those blueprints for the future that Justice Ginsburg would refer to--you can vote. And when you cast your ballot, remember where those tracks lead. There is another way other than this administration and this hypocrisy we are seeing and this gridlock that has taken over this U.S. Senate. It is spelled out right there in the first three words of the Constitution. We can be a nation in which ``We the People'' truly means all the people--a nation in which the people have a say and in which the people determine the future. Remember, this isn't Donald Trump's country. It is yours. This shouldn't be Donald Trump's Justice. It should be yours.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I am here today to make clear what is at stake if the Supreme Court overturns the Affordable Care Act in the middle of this global pandemic. This is something the Trump administration has been trying for, for years. It came out of a case in Texas, and they brought it all the way now to the U.S. Supreme Court. It has been over 9 months since the United States had its first confirmed case of the coronavirus. Now we have over 7 million cases and, tragically, over 200,000 people have died. It has been 9 months but still we do not have a national testing strategy in place--something that would not only save lives but also would be a great help in having the ability to open our economy again. We don't have sufficient contact tracing or clear guidance to schools and businesses of how to keep their students, employees, and customers safe. Nearly 30 million people are out of work, and today many are still struggling to pay their rent and put food on the table for their families. Millions of kids are sometimes going to school in hybrid models--in for a few days, out of a few days. They are learning to use Zoom. First graders--one of my staff members in Minnesota, her first grade daughter is learning the mute and unmute button. But instead of being honest with the American people about how serious this was, we have had a President who hid the truth about how deadly the virus is and how it spreads. This is personal to me. When the President was telling the American people that this was all going to go away; that it was going to go away by Easter, at the same time that he knew, we now know, that it was deadly; that he knew that it was airborne, when my family was just trying to wash off all of the counters and wash your hands, which is still a good idea, but we thought that would be the way to keep ourselves safe, this President didn't share that information. And my husband, early on, got very, very sick from the virus. He ended up in the hospital with severe pneumonia and on oxygen. So, for me, it is personal. But guess what. It is personal to nearly everyone in America because they know someone--a friend, a family member who has died or who has gotten sick. Now, in my husband's case, thanks to the brave frontline workers and the nurses and the hospital and the doctors, and thanks to the fluke-- it is just serendipity if people are able to survive this or not, depending on how hard-hit they are. Our story isn't unique, and many other people who went to the hospital didn't come home, and we now know this has inordinately hit frontline workers and inordinately hit people of color. So here we are, so many months later and well over 100 days after the House first passed the Heroes Act--legislation to provide true funding for testing, help State and local governments go through this time, to make sure our elections are safe during this pandemic--and still we wait. And while I am encouraged that Speaker Pelosi is, once again, negotiating after she and Senator Schumer had met with the White House, met with the majority leader of this Senate, offered to go halfway, that was rejected, and still people kept dying. I think something like 800 businesses closed a day. Hundreds of people are dying a day. So now they are at it again. Speaker Pelosi is coming up with a new plan that is significantly less funding but one that we hope has a glimmer of hope. But this has not been a priority in this place. Instead, the plan is to spend the next few weeks jamming through a nominee to the Supreme Court. What is the rush? Why not focus on working together to help the American people get through this pandemic? Why not focus on getting a bunch of the bills done that have been sitting on the majority leader's desk, like the Violence Against Women Act? That is sitting there. Why not take some action on climate change? That is sitting there as the fires are blazing on the west coast. Why not do something about pharmaceutical prices--something the President has claimed to be trying to do something about in the last month of his administration. Well, another challenge to the Affordable Care Act is going to be back up before the Supreme Court just 1 week after the election on November 10. Do you think that has anything to do with this rush to a Justice? Is that what it is? Because it is right after the election. Otherwise, why wouldn't you wait? See who wins the election. That is what Abraham Lincoln did--the only time in history a Justice died this close to an election. He waited to see who won. But, no, we are told this has to happen now, despite the fact that only a few years ago a completely different precedent was set by the majority of people who are serving in this Senate right now on the Republican side of the aisle. But what is coming up November 10? The case. The Affordable Care Act or, as they like to call it, ObamaCare. I always love that President Obama was more than happy to adopt the name for the bill, given that the bill has become more and more popular, given that it has helped hundreds of thousands of people to get insurance, given that it has helped, more than that, millions of people to not be kicked off their insurance. You don't have to be in one of those exchanges to be protected by the Affordable Care Act, which basically says that if you have a preexisting condition, whether it is diabetes, Alzheimer's, or cancer, that you cannot be kicked off of your health insurance. That applies to everyone in America, with that bill. There are people in the Senate, right here, who have been trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act--trying to do it for years. They had a big debate over it. That didn't work. That didn't work because John McCain walked in. I can still picture him right now walking in that door and saying no. All he would say was that he wasn't going to deny healthcare coverage to people because he had it himself. So then they tried again--went down to Texas and found a court down there maybe that they thought would be helpful. And guess what. Then it gets struck down there--not just a part of it. They said no, no, no. They made it the whole thing. That is what is coming up to the Supreme Court on November 10. So if you can't get your way one way, the administration decided they were going to try it in court. It is their lawyers--their lawyers--who argued this, Donald Trump's lawyers. They have been trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act and the protections it provides for people with preexisting conditions for years, but have we seen an alternative plan from this President? No, we have not. That last time, when we saw that effort by my colleagues to repeal the healthcare law, it would have kicked 11 million people off of Medicaid, it would have let insurance companies charge people more if they got sick, and it included an age tax, where an older person could have been charged five times more than a younger person. That was the plan we saw before. That plan was opposed by every major group you trust when it comes to your healthcare, the largest groups of doctors, nurses, seniors, hospitals, people with cancer, Alzheimer's, lung disease, heart disease, diabetes. They said it was the worst bill for the people of this country. There was never even a vote on that bill because it was so unpopular. That was, of course, just months after that previous effort I just described where John McCain walked into the Chamber and gave the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which would have taken healthcare away from so many Americans, a big no. Senator McCain believed that courage is not just standing by yourself, giving a speech to an empty Chamber, like I happen to be doing right now, so thank you, the 10 people who are here. It is not just that. It is whether you are willing to stand next to someone whom you don't always agree with for the betterment of this country. But that is not what we are seeing here. Indeed, my colleagues have not been able to succeed in repealing the healthcare law using the legislative process. The administration has turned to the courts. Let's look at the track record. I like looking at evidence, as a former prosecutor. Even before he was elected, the President promised that his judicial appointment ``will do the right thing'' and overturn the Affordable Care Act. He has criticized the sitting Chief Justice, Justice Roberts, for upholding the law when it was last before the Court. Just days ago he said on Twitter that it would be a ``big win'' if the Supreme Court strikes down the health law. Now, with Americans already voting, the President is trying to jam through a nominee who has already voiced serious opposition to upholding the Affordable Care Act. The same year that this nominee became a judge--that would be in 2017; she was confirmed in October-- she published an article with the University of Minnesota Law School Journal--a pretty good journal--writing that she believed Chief Justice Roberts--this was her criticism of the Chief Justice--``pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute.'' If President Trump's nominee is confirmed before oral arguments on November 10, yes, she could easily cast the deciding vote to strike down the law in its entirety. The American people know what that will mean to them. To start, protection for people with preexisting conditions like diabetes or asthma would be gone. More than 100 million Americans have a preexisting condition, and the Affordable Care Act makes sure they cannot be denied insurance coverage or charged significantly higher premiums. Before the ACA--and I remember this because we debated it in this very Chamber--43 States allowed insurers to charge higher premiums to people with preexisting conditions. We can't go back to that. Without the Affordable Care Act, health insurance exchanges, and the support for States to expand Medicaid, it is estimated that 20 million Americans would lose their insurance. The ability to keep your kid on your insurance plan until they are 26 years old would be gone. How many parents are using this right now in the middle of this pandemic? I don't know the number, but I know it is a lot. The work we have done to close the Medicare doughnut hole coverage gap for prescription drugs would be gone. The provisions that would help people buy insurance on the healthcare exchanges would be gone in the middle of a global pandemic. Over 7 million Americans have been infected by the coronavirus, and the cases are rising. That is 7 million people who, without the Affordable Care Act, could be found to have another preexisting condition, and that is 7 million people who may have recovered from the virus, but, as Dr. Fauci has warned, they continue to struggle with a range of long-term effects that require comprehensive healthcare coverage. So why? Why ram this through in 2 weeks? Is it because that case is coming up--if you read the President's tweets, it makes you think it has a lot to do with it--or is it because of the alternative theory he has put out there that he wants to make sure the Supreme Court is in place in order to decide the election result? Neither of those theories is a reason to jam through a nominee, and my colleagues know it. I know that the people of this country see through this raw use of political power. They know their healthcare is on the line. They know it is on the line. They know our environment is on the line. That is why they are voting. They are voting in droves. They are voting as we speak. They are casting ballots with each and every second we stand here in this Chamber. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I thank my colleague from New Hampshire for her beautiful words. I rise today to join my colleagues in celebrating the life and legacy of a hero, an icon, and a woman way ahead of her time, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was a trailblazer who exceeded all expectations and, through her example, helped young people, young women across this country believe that anything and everything is possible, and it is my hope that this Chamber can follow in her footsteps and exceed expectations when it comes to this precious democracy that we are supposed to hold and that we are supposed to take care of. A few years back, my daughter Abigail and I got to see Justice Ginsburg--and I had met her a few times--but we were at an event, and we had our photo taken with her. Now, as you know, Abigail was in her early twenties, and Justice Ginsburg had become a cult figure at that point in her eighties-- something we all aspire to--to the point where she had her own hashtag. So we had our photo taken, the three of us. Afterward my daughter came up, and she said: Mom, I got a photo of the ``Notorious RBG.'' I am going to put it on my Facebook page. But, Mom, I hope you don't mind; I am cutting you out. I just want one with RBG up there. Justice Ginsburg literally made justice cool for a lot of young people out there, and that legacy--that legacy, with all the people, the outpouring of love and support you see at the courthouse-- continues. When people told Justice Ginsburg that she shouldn't go to law school because she was a woman, what did she do? She went to Harvard, became the first woman to work on the Harvard Law Review, and then went on to graduate from Columbia at the top of her class. As has been recounted many times, she literally was called before the dean of Harvard Law School, along with the eight other women who were in that class of all of those men, and asked why they would be taking the seat of a man. But that didn't stop her. Nothing stopped her. When law firms in New York wouldn't hire her because she was a young mother, what did she do? She became one of only two female law professors at Rutgers University where she then wrote the brief that led the Supreme Court to decide for the first time that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution should protect against laws that treat people differently solely on the basis of sex. When they told her that despite her expertise and her novel theories of how to advance equal protection, when they told her that she shouldn't argue equal protection cases before the Supreme Court, that maybe the chances would be better if a man would do it, what did she do? She argued six cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court and leaves with five out of six victories. But she didn't stop there. She was nominated as the second woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court after Sandra Day O'Connor. She was confirmed in the Senate by a vote of 96 to 3. She served on the Supreme Court, the highest Court in the land, for 27 years, standing up for equality and justice, and, as I noted, she became an international icon well into her eighties. She did all that by never giving up, and that inspires me as we deal with what is in front of us right now with this assault on our democracy. When the odds don't look that good, you never give up. One of her important majority opinions on the Court built on her work on equal protection as a young attorney. In United States v. Virginia, Justice Ginsburg wrote for a 7-to-1 majority that struck down the male- only admission policy at the Virginia Military Institute. So she not only wrote the opinion, she got a number of Republican-appointed Justices to join her. When she announced the opinion in Court, she said that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits any ``law or official policy that denies to women, simply because they are women, equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in, and contribute to society.'' That opinion was joined by Justices appointed by both parties, including Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and Justice Kennedy. It was an example of the principle that guided Justice Ginsburg, in her words, to ``fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.'' But she was also known for the opinions she wrote in dissent and not only because she would wear what was sometimes fondly called her ``dissent collar'' when the opinion was announced at the Court. In Shelby County v. Holder, a 5-to-4 majority struck down important parts of the Voting Rights Act that required jurisdictions with histories of racially motivated voter suppression to seek court or Department of Justice approval before changing voting laws, a process known as preclearance. Justice Ginsburg authored the dissent, joined by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, arguing that ``[t]hrowing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.'' After she finished reading her dissent in Court, she quoted Martin Luther King, Jr., saying that ``the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice'' and adding her own caveat that it bends toward justice only ``if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion.'' To see the task through to completion is part of our job as stewards of this democracy. We may not see it through to completion, but the least that we should do is do no harm, and the most that we should do is to make it better. That is what she stood for, and that is what I hope my colleagues will consider in the weeks to come. As we gather here tonight, we must also recognize that Justice Ginsburg's work, as I noted, is still unfinished. Many of the values that she fought for--equality and justice--are still at stake. The Supreme Court will continue to make decisions about equal rights for women, LGBTQ equality, access to clean air and clean water, fair elections, and workers' rights. Just 1 week after the upcoming election, the Court will hear arguments in a case challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act which could put coverage for people with preexisting conditions at risk. That is what the court down in Texas held. People's healthcare is literally on the line. If the Affordable Care Act is struck down, over 20 million Americans across the country could lose their health insurance right in the middle of this pandemic because there would be no requirement in place to protect them from being thrown off their insurance. When the stakes are this high, I urge my colleagues to grant what Justice Ginsburg described as her ``most fervent wish'' that she will not be replaced, she said, ``until a new President is installed.'' Those are her dying words. Of course, she used the word ``fervent'' because that is how she approached her life and her work. At its core, Justice Ginsburg's wish is about fairness. It is about what is right and what is just. Four years ago, Leader McConnell created a new rule for Supreme Court nominations. He refused to consider President Obama's nomination, as is well known, of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court because the country was 9 months from an election, and, in his words, ``the American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice.'' So here we are, 42 days until the Presidential election, and people have already started voting. They are voting in my State not only by mail, as we speak, but also in person at early voting places all across our State. It is our Republican colleagues that set that precedent, and now they must follow it. Tonight, I urge my colleagues not to fill this vacancy until the American people have voted. People are deciding right now who should be President. If you go back in history, the only time a Justice died this close to the election was during the time of Abraham Lincoln, when Justice Taney died who was sadly, infamously, known for writing the Dred Scott opinion. He died the closest to an election of anyone until Justice Ginsburg. And what did Lincoln do? He waited until after the election, until after he saw if he won, until after he knew what the makeup of the Senate was. He didn't do it because he was a wise man and because his interest, as we know, was to bring our country together and to do everything he could in his power to stop the divide and to have ``one nation under God.'' My colleagues will have to decide what to do based on their own integrity, their own commitment to justice. As Justice Ginsburg demonstrated, lawyers fight for justice. If you live and breathe that fight like Justice Ginsburg did her entire career, that is our job, too, to fight for justice, but we have an even more extraordinary burden and that is also to uphold this democracy and to keep this country together. Justice Ginsburg did it in her own way, in her own life. Despite having incredibly different opinions about the law as Justice Scalia, they were true friends, and she was able to work with him. Well, we need to see more of that here. It doesn't mean that we have to agree on who the next President is. It doesn't mean that we even have to agree on who the next Justice will be, but our job is to maintain stability in this country, to bridge that divide, to bring people together, and to simply let the people decide. I think it is because of that unique characteristic she had of being a fighter, of being a hero, of taking risks, of never giving up but also doing it in a way where people could feel that they knew her. Even people who disagreed with her--including in this institution--respected her. Well, now the eyes are on this place, and it is our job to earn the respect of the American people. The reason we have seen so many people expressing their grief at the steps of the Supreme Court and across the country is because of that respect. Justice Ginsburg opened doors for women at a time when so many insisted on keeping them shut, and on the Supreme Court, time and again, she made the case for justice. For a woman of so many firsts, it is fitting that this coming Friday she will be the first woman to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol. So let's remember her fight, her legacy, and her fervent wish--all of us-- about securing equality, fairness, and justice for every person in our country I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to honor our veterans and servicemembers. I thank Senator Reed for his beautiful remarks and his service, as well as Senator Carper. I also thank Senator Duckworth, who is leading our efforts today, as she has led for so long. As I listened to my colleagues, I know that many of them were couching their remarks in the history of people. I literally could imagine John McCain right now walking up and down that aisle, crossing the aisle, coming over, working with people, slapping people on the back. That is how much he loved this place and how much he loved our country. I remember the silent, courageous fortitude of Danny Inouye, and I remember so many of those whom I crossed paths with, like Senator Dole. I think the reason we talk about that history is because we know that this argument and this cause is based in history. Our democracy is based in history. The idea that people serve is based in history. They don't serve for themselves. They serve, in the words of Senator McCain, for a cause larger than themselves. That is why I picture those who served before us, just like our soldiers do when they sign up to serve. The brave men and women who have served in our Armed Forces represent the best among us. Whether you served decades ago or you still wear a uniform today, we owe you a debt of gratitude for your service and sacrifice on behalf of our great Nation. All servicemembers and veterans have something in common. Wherever they are politically, they have something in common. Regardless of when and where they served, they have something in common--a deep love of our country and a very real understanding of what it means to serve and sacrifice. They deserve a Commander-in-Chief who loves our country in the same way and for the same reasons and has that same deep understanding of why those soldiers signed up to serve. Unfortunately, as my colleagues have pointed out, the person currently entrusted to be the Commander in Chief of our brave service men and women, according to many, many recent reports, including things he has actually said on TV, has made repeated comments denigrating their service, questioning their judgment, and belittling those who were prisoners of war or who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country. Yes, I will never forget what he said about Senator McCain when he died, as Senator McCain's friend, Jack Reed, just recalled. I, too, stood in front of that cell in Vietnam with John McCain, where he had been held. When you stand there and you think about the fact that he made the decision to allow others to be released before him--that is courage. What does it say to our servicemembers when a Commander in Chief cancels a visit to an American cemetery in France because, according to one report, he feared his hair would be ruined by the rain? What does it say, as reported in The Atlantic, when he questions the value of paying his respects to fallen Americans by claiming servicemembers killed in the service of this country are ``losers'' and ``suckers''? What does it say when he expressed his contempt for not just John McCain, who spent more than 5 years as a prisoner of war, but also accuses former President George H. W. Bush of being a ``loser'' for being shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II? Finally, what does it say to our troops when the President refuses to publicly condemn, warn, or even criticize Vladimir Putin following news reports that Russia offered bounties for the killing of members of our Armed Forces and our coalition partners? Our servicemembers are always there for us, and we must be there for them. Even when our Nation is divided, we must still collectively reject any attempt to diminish their service. We learned that in a big way after Vietnam. I remember standing at one of our Serving Our Troops events in Minnesota a few years ago. That is when our restaurants and the community come together--sometimes thousands of people--to serve the families of the troops who are serving overseas a steak dinner, all donated, and at the same time, the troops are somehow getting the same dinner. It is an extraordinary event. Many of us volunteer to work on the lines. One day when I was there, there was a Vietnam vet, and he was serving up mashed potatoes. He had a Vietnam hat on, and I said: Thank you for your service. He said: When I came home, I was greeted with tomatoes. I don't want this to ever happen to another soldier again. That is why I come here every year to volunteer. We learned back then that you can have major disagreements about war and war policy, but you do not take it out on the warriors on the frontline. Sadly, right now, we have a Commander in Chief who takes out everything on everyone, including personal vendettas against people like Senator McCain. Rather than being silent as, sadly, too many have been in reaction to his comments, I think we must stand up. I think the way that we honor their service and sacrifice is being very clear that we condemn the remarks that the President has made. I will end with this. The last time I saw Senator McCain I was at the ranch. He was in his last months of life. My husband and I went there and sat with Cindy and with John. At the very end, he was getting tired, and he wasn't talking much anymore. He was having trouble talking anyway. He pointed at one of his books. I picked it up, and that is when he pointed, without saying the words, to that sentence: ``There is nothing more liberating in life than fighting for a cause larger than yourself.'' That is what unites our troops when they sign up to serve. That is what should unite us in this Chamber right now. I urge my colleagues to join in this effort so that our men and women in uniform, across the United States and around the world, know that we will not remain silent. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about a focus subject, which is access to broadband. I will say that I know the negotiations between the House and the Senate and the White House are continuing. I think it is very important for the American people that we do this in good faith. I disagree with my colleague from Texas on a few of the descriptions of the bill that came over from the House, which I think the fact that the bill that was first introduced here in the Senate had only 20 percent of the funding for testing that the House bill had is very concerning, when you look at people waiting to get test results, the fact that there was no money to keep our elections safe. You can just go through line by line on the issues and the differences in the bill. But my interest today is not actually emphasizing those differences; it is how can we come together, what are the things we can agree on, and the fact that we cannot just pass a bandaid for the American people when we have learned that the GDP annualized is going to be down 30 percent, when we learned that so many people are losing their homes or being evicted, and so many are filing for unemployment. This is the time for action. Broadband, I would say, has been an issue, especially in rural America, for a long time, and having once traveled to Iceland and having seen how the Icelanders have high-speed internet at every corner of their country, despite the fact that they are a country of lava and volcanoes and volcanic ash, we can certainly do better. The problems I was hearing about for years that we tried to get at slowly but surely with access to internet have become very clear to parents who are simply trying to make sure their children are able to participate remotely in school. While other kids of other parents who happen to have high-speed internet are able to fully participate, others aren't. Sometimes it is because of equipment, but oftentimes, in my State, it is because of a lack of access to high-speed internet. Stories of one girl in Southern Minnesota who had to take her biology test in a liquor store parking lot because that is where she could get the high-speed internet; the doctor--this is prepandemic--who could, yes, access x rays in the hospital, but if, late at night, he had to help a patient in a remote area, he had to go to the McDonald's parking lot, drive in from his home, because he did not have access there. I thank Senator Van Hollen for bringing us together this afternoon and for his work in organizing this time to focus attention on the pressing education priorities in the relief bill. Access to broadband, as I just noted, has become more critical now than ever, as schools and workplaces are closed in an effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus, where teachers, many with preexisting conditions, simply cannot put themselves at risk, and where we know, going forward, we will continue to have a substantial number of kids learning remotely. As I said, even before the pandemic, one study found that about 42 million Americans nationwide lacked access to broadband. Reports have also found that only 66 percent of Black households, 61 percent of Latino households, and 63 percent of rural households have broadband at home of the quality that would allow them to work and to conduct their business and to participate in school and host a meeting in healthcare. In rural areas in my State, about 16 percent of households lack broadband even at baseline speeds. That means we have 144,000 households that don't have access to the internet. One of the saddest stories I remember was a household in one of our Tribal areas that got and paid for their own high-speed internet and the parents looked out the window and saw all these kids in their lawn, and that is because they were trying to get access to the internet from that one household to be able to do their homework. That was a story from Leech Lake Reservation. Many students have shifted to online and will continue distance learning, and we need to make sure that all kids can learn. That is why I wrote a letter to Senators Peters and Tester, urging the FCC to ensure that all K-12 students have internet access to continue learning from home during this pandemic. Following the announcement of school closings in Minnesota and the remote learning, I worked with Senator Smith to urge the FCC to ensure that Minnesota students have access to high-speed internet. I am grateful for Senator Markey's leadership in ensuring students have the connectivity they need. I was proud to join him and 43 of our Democratic colleagues in the Senate to introduce the Emergency Educational Connections Act, to establish a fund at the FCC to help schools and libraries provide Wi-Fi hotspots or other connected devices to students without home internet access. This bill, in fact, as I think of the comments of my colleague from Texas--this bill was included in the Heroes Act that was passed by the House, and it is incredibly important that we have broadband capabilities in the bill that we pass in the Senate. It is not just K-12 students who need help connecting to the internet during this crisis. Colleges and universities across the country have also moved classes online, and many low-income students who rely on campus resources are struggling to continue their education from home and are at serious risk of falling behind. I know for quite a while the White House was hoping this crisis would magically go away, with false claims of improved situations and false claims of chugging bleach and the like to make it go away, but, in fact, I would say the President was accurate a week or two ago in one way when he publicly said that this is going to get worse before it gets better. So the thought that we would allow these disparities to continue, where households cannot get high-speed internet, they are at a complete disadvantage, not just for a month--that might be OK--not just for 3 months but for a year and beyond when it comes to education. Little kids, first graders and second graders, when they are supposed to be learning to read, they can't be apart from teaching for that long a period of time without it having a major impact on their education. Again, that also includes higher education. Not every kid in a college or community college can afford high-speed internet. That is why I introduced the Supporting Connectivity for Higher Education Students in Need Act in May, with Senators Hirono, Peters, and Rosen, that creates a fund at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to help ensure that college students with the greatest financial need can access critical internet services and equipment like laptops and tablets. Our bill prioritizes Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, and other minority-serving institutions, as well as rural-serving institutions. As we continue to confront this pandemic, ensuring that students get internet from kindergarten and preschool on through college and the like is really important. I have spoken with small broadband providers and superintendents across my State who have been working with school districts to connect students to the internet, going that extra mile to help, including providing free internet services and installing public Wi-Fi hotspots in their communities. They helped our kids, but we know we need better long-term solutions. That is why Senator Cramer and I introduced the Keeping Critical Connections Act to create a fund at the FCC to help small broadband providers continue to provide critical internet services. It has been my experience after many years in my State that many of these smaller providers on the ground are much quicker and do a better job of keeping their promises and building out as opposed to some of the big telephone companies--or maybe they don't see this as economical to reach these rural areas. I don't think it is a surprise. So many of my colleagues have had the same experiences listening to people in the rural areas of their States that our bill will now have 34 cosponsors, half Democrats, half Republicans. It would put $2 billion in to work with small providers to give them the funding they need to expand immediately out to these areas. I don't want to hear another story like the high school student taking her biology exam in the liquor store parking lot simply because she doesn't have internet. We also need to make sure people know about existing resources that can help them connect to the internet. Due to job losses or reductions in income during the pandemic, millions of Americans are newly eligible for nutrition benefits and Medicaid and can also get help connecting to the internet through FCC's Lifeline Program to help low-income people connect. Some of these people have never been low income and because of the pandemic they now are. According to FCC Commissioner Starks, only about 7 million of the 38 million households that were eligible for the Lifeline Program were enrolled. That is why in April I wrote a letter to Senator Durbin and Representative Marcia Fudge of Ohio and Anna Eshoo of California, along with 140 Members of Congress, urging the FCC to work with the USDA and HHS to ensure that the millions of Americans who are now eligible for SNAP are informed about their eligibility for the FCC's Lifeline Program. As we work to bring high-speed internet to communities across the country, it is simply critical that we have a clear understanding of where broadband is available. My bipartisan bill with Chairman Wicker and Senators Peters and Thune to improve the accuracy of the FCC's broadband maps was, in fact, signed into law in March. It was not soon enough for this pandemic, but we simply just hear: Hey, we have high-speed internet in our area, which I know Senators Wicker and Thune heard, just like I did, and in fact you go there and that isn't true at all. That is why having these updated maps, as we look at not just what we are dealing with today but the day after tomorrow--which is a metaphor for next year when the vaccine starts coming out, when things start going back to a place where people are out and about freely--well, we have to make sure that if we haven't expanded to everyone with broadband at that moment, that we do it then, and to do that we need accurate mapping. The last bill I wanted to mention is a bill that has passed the House, and that is Representative Clyburn's investment of $100 billion to build high-speed broadband infrastructure in underserved areas, including rural areas, to expand affordable high-speed internet to everyone. I am the lead on the Senate version of that bill, and given that it has passed, it is a part of another piece of legislation, and it is something else we must be looking at as we move forward the next few months. We all depend on reliable broadband, and we must make sure that we get reliable broadband to all. I always believed that when we invest in broadband, we invest in opportunities for every American. If we could bring electricity to everyone's home, even the smallest farms in the middle of areas with very little population, we can do this in the modern era. Otherwise, we are going to continue with the haves and have-nots. It shouldn't depend on your ZIP Code whether your kid can learn to read. It shouldn't depend on where your ZIP Code is to figure out what their homework is the next day. It shouldn't depend on where your ZIP Code is to find out whether you are going to be able to virtually visit your mom and dad in the senior center because some places will have high-speed access that will allow us to do that and others won't. It shouldn't depend on your ZIP Code to figure out if you could actually have your doctor show you an x ray instead of going into a medical setting that maybe you don't feel comfortable going into. All Americans should have access to high-speed internet. This pandemic has put a big magnifying glass on what has been a problem for many, many years, and it is time to act now I yield the floor, and I again thank Senator Van Hollen for bringing us together and thank Senator Hassan from the State of New Hampshire for her leadership in bringing us together.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, today I rise to honor my dear friend, Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Dave Lillehaug, on a distinguished career and well-deserved retirement. I have been lucky to call Dave a friend for 35 years and have seen him not just as a brilliant lawyer but a fearsome litigator, a tireless advocate in the pursuit of justice, and an excellent judge. In fact, the same skills that led him to endlessly prepare for his date with his future wife Winifred somehow also landed him on the Minnesota Supreme Court. Here is the story. Winifred told me that she was more than a little bit unnerved during her first date with Dave--a lunch in Washington after they met when she was selling condos and he was buying one. At lunch, Winifred realized just how much Dave already knew about her. She was from Pittsburgh, and he had read up on every detail about the town, including the latest steel plant closing. In those pre-Google days, 24 hours after meeting her, he had somehow researched every detail about her life so he could be informed and impressive on the first date. She had already been thoroughly ``vetted,'' as if she herself was being considered for a national office. She was a little concerned, so on the next date, she brought a friend who happened to work for the Chamber of Commerce--just so she could get a second opinion. Unfazed, wanting to impress her friend, Dave researched and memorized the entire legislative agenda for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Dave may have overdone it, and Winifred came away from the lunch convinced that he was interested in her friend and not her. Somehow, Dave salvaged it. Winifred and Dave have been happily married for 38 years. Those same skills Dave honed when he dated Winifred served him very well on the bench. I have so many fond memories of Dave, who impressed not just me but my family as well. On the day Paul Wellstone announced he was recommending Dave for U.S. attorney, my mom sent the article to me on my honeymoon with the words ``how exciting is this!'' In addition to the usual newlywed photos, that article made it into my official honeymoon scrapbook. Dave played a very important role in another seminal moment in my life as well. The night I was elected Hennepin County attorney, it was Dave counting the votes late into the night. It was close. Everyone went home--except Dave. And at 5:00 a.m. the next morning, Dave called to tell me I had officially won. I am very grateful for Dave's friendship, his wisdom, and his sound advice and will be forever in awe of his brilliant career--as I know Paul Wellstone would have been. Congratulations to Dave on his retirement.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise to address the impact that the coronavirus pandemic is having on rural America. We know that it affects every area of this country. In the urban areas of our country, we have seen what this has meant to the people who are in crowded housing and to the people who work every day in our urban hospitals. We have seen it in the suburban areas with small businesses and with moms who are trying to figure out how to handle the summer with their kids, but the rural areas sometimes don't get as much attention. The Presiding Officer knows of this in his home State of Oklahoma. He understands this. There are a lot of rural areas in our country that have suffered as well. They have suffered not only because of spikes in the virus, like we have seen recently, but also because of the economic implications--a farm economy that was already in trouble because of the price of commodities, because of world trade barriers, because of weather events. You name it. It has affected rural areas in a big, big way. According to several recent reports, as of July 14, one-third of all rural counties are now considered red zones, places that in the last week of testing added 100 or more new cases per 100,000 people. Between June 13 and July 12, the number of new cases in rural counties increased by 150 percent. That is why we must take immediate action to provide the critical support that the rural areas need. They are areas that may not have easy access to hospitals or that may have smaller hospitals. That is why the issue of funding for State and local governments, as long as we make sure the rural areas are able to share in this funding as well, is so important for the rural hospitals, for their equipment--all of this. This is beyond what we all know already of the food supply chains and our nutrition programs. We certainly don't want a situation in which one can't get homegrown American food. Just as we have learned with the medical equipment supply chain, we can't always get the swabs that we need for so much of our testing and the like. I just want to make clear that people sometimes see rural areas as though they are out there, doing fine--all of these idyllic pictures. I don't think they understand the struggle, the fact that rural poverty for kids is often higher than it is in urban areas, and this was before the pandemic. To me, the pandemic has just put a big magnifying glass on some of these disparities that we knew already existed. There is a more senior population in rural areas, so you have people trying to keep themselves safe. They are isolated in seniors' homes or in areas of smaller assisted living, where they are very, very isolated, even more so than they might be, but where they have their families nearby who can at least visit them through a window. That is even harder. So, really, all of these challenges conspire to make this a topic that we must discuss. The operation of public hospitals, long-term care facilities, and first responder services during a public health crisis requires a significant mobilization of resources, and this relief package that I am pleased we are debating now--I would like to see more movement, but at least the negotiations are ongoing--must include the funding for rural area hospitals as well as for State and local governments. Local governments in rural areas are facing both falling revenues and increased emergency expenses. They have smaller margins under which they operate, which threatens their ability to provide essential public services and their ability to continue paying teachers and first responders. The public health crisis is putting incredible pressure on our public health system, and many rural hospitals and health systems already have limited ICU beds and resources. The disproportionately low number of healthcare providers across rural America has been brought into sharp focus by this crisis. We have already heard stories of the hospitals that were once delivering babies but that lost one OB/GYN doctor and could no longer deliver babies. Then the family has to go miles and miles and hours and hours just to have the delivery of a baby in a safe situation. That is why we need to do much. It is the funding. There is a bill that Senator Grassley and I have that will actually allow some of the smaller hospitals--this was prepandemic--to exist in different circumstances, like emergency room circumstances, so they don't entirely close down. It is why I have led the reauthorization of the Conrad 30 Waiver Program, which has brought in over 15,000 immigrant doctors to fill the gaps. We also know there are issues of personnel in these hospitals--nurses and doctors. This is a program that allows for immigrant students who have gotten degrees from American medical schools to be able to serve out their residencies in underserved areas in America, which sometimes means in urban areas that don't have enough personnel and which, lots of times, means in rural areas. That is why, in fact, the initial author of this bill was Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota. It is because of the problem North Dakota had. As I have traveled through the country in the last year, I have continued to hear about all of the problems we have in our VA hospitals and the like. They want to have these physicians who have been trained in America and have degrees from America to stay and not have to go back to their home countries when, in fact, they want to stay in America. Helping rural hospitals also means ensuring they have vital protective equipment, like masks, gowns, and gloves; and medical supplies, like ventilators. That is why I have urged the administration to deliver supplies from the Strategic National Stockpile and to protect consumers' access to medical and hygiene products. It also means delivering additional resources for testing and for contact tracing, like the $75 billion that the House passed in the Heroes Act, and it means expanding telehealth services, which my bill with Senators Casey and Capito--the ACCESS Act--would do. I recently had the experience of my own dad, at age 92, with coronavirus. He ended up at age 92 surviving it, with just having lost 10 pounds and a very poor appetite, but he came out of it as strong as he went into it. But I didn't know that was going to happen, and I will never forget that moment of our family standing outside the window because, of course, we couldn't go in. We are standing out there en masse while he is in his room--or in a room that they had given him, because he got coronavirus--and they put the telephone on so that he can hear us on speaker phone, but he cannot figure out what is going on. He doesn't really understand, with his disease, why we are wearing the masks and we can't even hold his hand. And you don't know if that is the last time you are going to see your loved one at that moment. As it turned out, it had a happy ending for him, and he is doing fine, but not for everyone else that was in his home. That is why these services, where maybe he could see us on a big TV, instead of maybe on the little iPhone when we do FaceTime, would make such a difference, not just to people in his situation who are in a small assisted living, with the need of services, but if people are there because they wanted to have a living situation where they could hang out with their friends and play bridge and the like. We are going to have to think of those senior facilities and the access we can give not only to doctors to consult with patients, but also for them to be able to see their families. This means broadband. That is why I introduced the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act--comprehensive broadband legislation led by Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina. I was honored that he asked me to carry this bill in the Senate. It would invest $100 billion to build high-speed broadband infrastructure in underserved areas. Underserved areas, a lot of times, as he knows from his State of South Carolina, include a lot of rural areas and rural farmers. In his case, there are so many African-American communities that are underserved by broadband, and it would make a big difference all over the country. Senator Cramer of North Dakota and I introduced the Keeping Critical Connections Act, which, again, is another way of focusing on low-income and on rural areas to help our small broadband providers who, in my experience, have tended to really put their money where their mouth is and actually build out in these areas so that people get high-speed broadband. Our bill now has 34 cosponsors--half Democrats, half Republicans--and I keep working to ensure that students in low-income families, regardless of their ZIP Code, are connected. I don't want to hear another story like I heard of the high school student who had to take her biology exam in the liquor store parking lot in town because she didn't have high-speed access; or the doctor who can, yes, see the x rays at his rural hospital, but if he wants to do work from home, as so many of us are doing in the pandemic, he has to go to the McDonald's parking lot to be able to view these x rays. Iceland can do this. They have volcanoes. They are covered at times in ash, and they have been able to get high-speed internet to every person in their country. We should be able to do the same. Farmers. I spent the morning on a number of Zoom calls with our farmers in Minnesota--our soybean farmers and others--and I have to say that they are in hard times right now. They are in hard times because, as I said, before this pandemic, we were having problems. Our food supply chain has been hit--from the farmers who grow our food, fuel, and fiber, to the workers in the processing plants, of which I have many in my State. I was just in Worthington, MN, which is the home of one of biggest food processing plants that was hit hard by the coronavirus. They have put in place some better safety measures, and they are now operating. There are the truckdrivers and barge operators, who deliver products to stores and export terminals and the families who may be struggling to put food on the table due to sudden unemployment. When many businesses began shutting down in March, commodity futures prices tumbled, given the lower demand for food and fuel. At the beginning of the pandemic, dairy producers estimated that milk prices would drop by $2.85 billion in 2020. Cattle ranchers and hog producers saw the value of their livestock drop by 30 to 40 percent, and the futures price for corn and soybean fell 10 to 15 percent per bushel. These losses occurred as farmers were still recovering from weather conditions that delayed or prevented harvest last year. Many farmers were barely breaking even as it was, and they began this spring planting season behind, and then they confronted the pandemic. In March, we passed the CARES Act. It was not perfect. We all know that, but it provided $23.5 billion in disaster assistance for farmers and livestock producers impacted by the pandemic. The Department of Agriculture began making payments in June, and, as of yesterday, they had processed over $6.5 billion in payments to more than 473,000 producers. But there is still money that has been unspent. That is $14 billion. In addition to funding for the next package, it must reach producers of all sizes. This has been particularly hard in my State, waiting for that help. The House has already taken action to provide additional direct assistance for farmers and dairy and livestock producers. I met with Representative Collin Peterson, who heads up the House Ag Committee, this weekend, when we were both here, marooned in Washington, and went through the work that he had done, and I am very hopeful that we can do something similar in our bill here. While farmers and livestock producers need emergency relief, we also must recognize that the pandemic has placed a significant strain on workers and consumers. We cannot slow the spread of the coronavirus when tests can take as long as 12 days to provide results. A friend back in Minnesota, just a week ago or so, got a test. He felt sick, didn't want to get his family infected, and spent 6 days in the basement not being able to see his family, and it took that long to find the result. And then he found out he didn't have it. Those stories are just as similar but, of course, much more fortunate--but similar to people who wait when they are sick, and they need to know if they are sick. And not everyone has a basement to stay in. So the point of this is that these delays in testing are very, very difficult on our economy. That is why, in May, I joined Senator Debbie Stabenow, the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee and my Democratic colleague on the Senate Agriculture Committee, in introducing the Food Supply Protection Act. The bill would provide support for food banks to upgrade their infrastructure to handle additional demands, strengthen food partnerships to prevent food waste, and protect workers through grants--and here we get to what I was talking about--for protective equipment, test kits, and cleaning supplies. Also, last week, I joined Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas in introducing the Requiring Assistance to Meat Processors for Upgrading Plants Act, or the RAMP-UP Act, that we are doing together The closure of meat packing plants highlighted the need to provide consumers with more choices and farmers with more flexibility when marketing their livestock. Our bill would help small and medium-size meat packers make improvements to their facilities so they can meet the standards necessary for Federal inspections. This will allow them to make sales across State lines and increase market opportunities. These two important pieces of legislation--the Stabenow bill I mentioned and the one that Senator Moran and I just introduced--should be included in the next relief package. Another critical component to the rural economy is our Nation's biofuel industry. In the first quarter of 2020, biofuel processing plants purchased an estimated 1.3 billion bushels of corn and supported over 350,000 jobs. Many of them are based, of course, in rural communities. In fact, a lot of our farmers own the plants. In fact, a lot of our local people depend on these plants for one of the major businesses in their small towns. Even before the pandemic, the misuse of small refinery exemptions under the renewable fuel standard by the EPA had led biofuel plants to shut down. I will never forget visiting a biodiesel plant in Iowa that had been shut down, and there was one worker left. His job was to maintain the plant, and he took me on a tour of the empty plant and then pulled out a coat rack that contained the uniforms of the people--his friends--who used to work there. And embroidered on the uniforms were the names of the workers, with names like Bob, Joe, Salvador. A tear goes down his cheek, and he said: I kept these uniforms. I keep them pressed on this coat rack because I hope they will come back and work here. That was before the pandemic, and that is what we have seen because of some policies by this administration that claim that they wanted to help the Midwest but instead granted wholesale a bunch of exemptions, not just to the refineries. It is in there for a good reason--to help struggling refineries--but they, literally, granted those exemptions to Exxon, to Chevron, to dozens and dozens and dozens of companies. And that is before the pandemic. That is why Senator Grassley and I have taken this on in a big way. These losses--this is, again, prepandemic--have resulted in over 100 biofuel processing plants nationwide idling production or closing altogether. It is combined, prepandemic and during the pandemic. That is why in May I introduced legislation with Senator Grassley to support biofuel producers during the pandemic. Our bill involves reimbursement for their feed stock or commodity purchases through the first quarter of this year. It is also why I led a letter with 19 Senators urging the EPA to deny 52 petitions for waivers that would enable more billion-dollar oil companies to receive small refinery exemptions. The approval of these retroactive exemptions at this moment would only worsen the unprecedented economic challenges facing the biofuel industry. Competition is good in America. That is why we have the renewable fuel standard, because it is a nascent new fuel, and it had to really get into that market in a big way against Big Oil, which gets many more subsidies than the biofuels do. And this is not a time to go backward and shut down every biofuel plant in America, and that is where this administration is headed, if it keeps up these practices. There is much more we must do to help our rural communities. I would note that one of the emerging issues I have heard about a lot in my State is these childcare deserts, and that is that rural families are seeing unavailable childcare. This is, again, prepandemic. It was a big problem, where you would have so many people who wanted to work but were unable to get childcare to be able to do that work. That is not just in my State. It is all over the country. That is why Senator Sullivan and I introduced the Child Care Workforce and Facilities Act prepandemic, which would address the national shortage of affordable, quality childcare in these rural areas to help them expand their childcare workforces. Right now, the economy is slowly but surely starting to reopen, and we know that for families who have been at home and the parents are still working, this has become harder and harder for moms and dads to figure out what they are going to do about childcare. So this should be a time where we step back and say: OK, how are we going to deal with this, not just with the threat moving from the pandemic now, today, but the day after tomorrow? And I mean that as a metaphor for next year. How are we going to make this work for rural areas? And I have gone through everything I think we need to do to get there: the healthcare, making sure that we have healthcare available in rural areas; the broadband, making sure that something we can do is available; the childcare deserts; and the ag economy. I will say that there is a big argument for rural America right now, as we have seen that people are able, with the right connections, to work from home, and we need new ideas and new startups, and it is actually less expensive to start new companies in the rural part of this country, where the cost of living is lower. We know that there are farmers that want to keep farming their small plot of land in places like South Carolina and in places like Oklahoma and in places like Minnesota. But if we just allow rampant consolidation in the ag industry and the tech industry--where there is a hearing going on, as I speak right now, over in the House that maybe a few more people are watching--the point of it is this: We have to also take on consolidation during this pandemic and look at our laws next year. And I am not just going to wait for a bunch of judges to make decisions when they have been going against the antitrust laws now at the Supreme Court level for years--one loss after another. It just so cries out for a change in our antitrust laws. We have adapted these laws over the years. I will end with one story involving that. I was at a small cafe a few years ago in Albert Lea, MN. A woman was there with her farmer husband and her brother-in-law. She turned to me and she said: ``I just saw you on TV.'' I said: ``Was it about Russia and the elections?'' The Presiding Officer and I were doing a lot of work at the time nationally on protecting our elections from foreign interference. I said: ``Was that it?'' She said: ``No. That wasn't it.'' She said that it was on the local station. It was about States. It was about how things are getting too big, and it makes it hard for us. We want to maintain our rural spaces. It is not just a romantic vision of the past. We want to maintain our rural areas for America. It is about having food that is ours, having it made in America so we are not dependent on foreign foods. It is about having our own energy supply, which can be varied and vast. It is about having our own technology and developing the next new idea and the next new iPhone. We are not going to be able to do that if we shut out a big swath of our country. That is not going to work. We actually want to encourage development in rural America. That is what I think we need to do. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, today I rise to honor a leader, a fighter, and a hero: Congressman John Lewis. A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to travel to Selma, AL, with Congressman Lewis to commemorate ``Bloody Sunday,'' when the then 25- year-old activist helped to lead 600 people across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. At the end of the bridge, the marchers were attacked with billy clubs and tear gas. Congressman Lewis's skull was fractured. He bore the scars until the day he died. And that weekend, 48 years later, the White police chief of Montgomery handed his police badge to Congressman Lewis and publicly apologized for the police not protecting him and the Freedom Marchers. Forty-eight years is a long time for an apology, and it only happened because Congressman Lewis never quit fighting for progress, for civil rights, for economic justice, and for voting rights for every single American. It was because of that spirit of persistence and resilience that I will always be in awe of Congressman John Lewis. He never lost his faith that this country could be better, if only we put in the work. He never gave up on justice. He never stopped marching toward freedom. John Lewis was born to sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South and dedicated his life to the civil rights movement. As one of the original 13 Freedom Riders, he took on segregation. Despite being met by angry mobs, beatings, and arrests, Congressman Lewis didn't give up. Wise beyond his years, he was the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, which he also helped to organize. His words from that day have become a rallying cry for all those seeking equality. As Congressman Lewis explained, ``To those who have said, `Be patient and wait,' we must say that we cannot be patient. We do not want our freedom gradually but we want to be free now.'' In 1964, he coordinated efforts for the ``Mississippi Freedom Summer,'' recruiting college students from around the country, including Minnesota, to join the movement to register Black voters across the South. And still, he was far from done. In 1986, Congressman Lewis became the second African-American to be elected to Congress from Georgia since Reconstruction, propelled by the same Black voters he had helped to empower and mobilize. Once in Congress, John Lewis never stopped fighting, for voting rights, for basic human rights like healthcare, and for a more just and equal America. There are so many reasons that we will miss him dearly, his unwavering persistence being just one. But now, it is up to us. To honor his life and carry on his legacy, we must not quit. So let's pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and let's all try and get in some good trouble

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I thank Senator Inhofe so much for his allowing me to say a few words. I know it is his time. And I thank my friend Jack Reed. Today is July 1, which means that rent and mortgage payments are due, and as I speak today, so many families across this country are being forced to make the difficult decision about how they will make this month's payment to stay in their homes. Even before the pandemic began, almost one-fourth of all renters, or 11 million households, were forced to pay more than half of their income for housing--half of their income. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, more than half a million people experienced homelessness on a given night before the pandemic, and that has just gotten worse. That is why I am a strong supporter of Senator Brown's Emergency Rental Assistance and Rental Market Stabilization Act, which will provide $100 billion in emergency funding. I am also proud to support Senator Reed's bill as well as the work of Senator Menendez. The pandemic, as we know, has wide and longstanding racial disparities in housing. We had a 30-percent gap in Black and White ownership rates before the pandemic due to discriminatory practices, and it has only made it worse. St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, a leader and a good friend, has repeatedly reminded us that this means investing in programs like section 8 housing, which still remains unavailable to so many families. Yes, we need to address this shortage of affordable housing. We need to take action now. I thank my colleagues. We have an opportunity. The Fourth of July is at the beginning of July, but by the end of July, we had better have gotten something done, and that means help our State and local governments; that means funding for elections; and that means making sure we are responding to the crisis in housing. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Michigan for her leadership on the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, helping to pass and leading the last farm bill in the Senate, along with Senator Roberts and so many of us who are on that committee. We understand that rural America is hurting right now, and rural America is actually part of the solution as well for so many people who are hungry and who need help. This pandemic and its economic impact has left 41 million Americans unemployed and strained the financial security of hundreds of thousands of families across this country. I have always worked to ensure, from the minute I got on the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, that we focus on nutrition. Programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program--or, as it is known, SNAP--are the place to do this: to provide meaningful relief to families, children, senior citizens, veterans. People all over this country, people who never thought they would be out of a job, people who used to--and I heard this story in Minnesota-- volunteer in food banks, now they are standing in line at food banks because they unexpectedly lost their jobs. Many of us have seen this. I have visited these food banks. Even before the pandemic, more than 37 million people, including more than 11 million children, were living in a food-insecure household. Analytics released by the national nonprofit Feeding America in April projected these numbers to increase this year to more than 54 million people, including 18 million children. The 350 food shelves in my State operated by Second Harvest Heartland are seeing double or triple the number of visitors. So this weekend, on Sunday, I visited one of our biggest food shelves, Second Harvest Heartland, with Director Allison O'Toole, with a number of people who were working there around the clock. They just released a study. What the study said is that before the pandemic 1 in 11 Minnesotans were living with hunger. Now, they project for August--only a little over a month from now--that one in eight Minnesotans will be food insecure-- one in eight. They said, tracking our State's history back to the Great Depression, they have never seen anything like this since the Great Depression--not even the economic downturn 10 years ago, not the ups and downs in unemployment that we have seen in our rural areas, the farm crises up in Northern Minnesota--nothing like they are projecting to happen. July begins with the Fourth of July. The Fourth of July is when we celebrate our country. We celebrate what America means. My hope is that we will end July by actually passing the Heroes Act. I know we are going to negotiate it, colleagues. I know we will make changes over what passed in the House, but we cannot let our States go bankrupt. We must help local areas. I was on the phone today with our friends in the Fargo-Moorhead area, and we have seen it there too. We have seen it all over our State. The SNAP program was originally designed to respond to changes in the economy by expanding to meet increased need during economic downturns and contracting as economic recovery alleviates the need for food assistance. Under the farm bill that was signed into law under Senator Stabenow's leadership in 2018, we preserved this critical lifeline. The conference report, which passed with 87 votes in the Senate and 369 votes in the House of Representatives, avoided making cuts to benefits or changes to eligibility that would take away benefits or create obstacles. At this difficult time, we should ensure that we are getting assistance to all of those who need it, not put up new barriers--not with what we are seeing with more COVID cases in the southern part of this country and in the western part of this country. In fact, the facts and the numbers bear out that we should be increasing those benefits. The House has taken action to do just that by passing a 15-percent increase in SNAP benefits during the pandemic. That is what they did in the Heroes Act. That is what we should do here. At the same time, the middle of a pandemic is the wrong time to be cutting SNAP benefits or kicking participants out of the program, and that is why I have called on the administration to withdraw rules that would take these benefits away from families in need. As for food deserts, again, the pandemic has simply put a big, fat magnifying glass on a problem that already existed, and that is that 23.5 million Americans live in a food desert where the absence of a grocery store within 1 mile of their home makes it more difficult to purchase fresh, nutritious food. Low-income Americans and people of color are much more likely to live in a food desert, and people in rural areas live in these food deserts all over America That is why Senator Brown and I wrote a letter with 20 Senators urging the Department of Agriculture to prioritize these programs intended to minimize food deserts and support local and regional efforts for these projects. We cannot overlook the capacity needs of food shelves, and that is something I talked about with our friends at Second Harvest Heartland just this weekend. The WORK NOW Act is something that--I appreciate Senator Wyden is here as one of the cosponsors, along with Senator Brown and Senator Schatz--supports nonprofit organizations, to make it easier for them to hire people who are actually out of work, who could then help other people. It is why I joined Senator Stabenow and several of my colleagues in the Agriculture Committee in introducing the Food Supply Protection Act to help food banks increase their capacity and strengthen partnerships to prevent food waste while feeding more families. One of my predecessors, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, whose desk I stand in front of today--his name is carved in the desk--served on the Agriculture Committee. He grew up in a small town in South Dakota. He became a professor eventually, but his father was a pharmacist. He understood the importance--growing up in that family, seeing the ups and downs of rural America--of stable government policy for both agriculture producers and families struggling to put food on the table. He was a leading advocate of Federal nutrition programs and played an instrumental role in the passage of what was then called the Food Stamp Act of 1964, which turned what was then just a pilot program into the permanent program we know today. He knew that the moral test of government is how government treats its most vulnerable citizens: those in need, those who are seniors, those with disabilities. He once said this: ``We will be remembered not for the power of our weapons but for the power of our compassion, our dedication to human welfare.'' In these times of uncertainty and with rising food insecurity, we need to work to ensure that the nutrition needs of our most vulnerable citizens are met. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Illinois. Next, we will hear from Senator Warner, who is the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee and a leader in taking on election interference from Russia and other foreign adversaries.