Angus King

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. KING. I am one who signed that letter. First, let's talk about the letter itself. What it says is, ``We are united in our determination to preserve the ability of Members to engage in extended debate when bills are on the Senate floor.'' I agree with that. The proposal that is going to be put on the floor today is one that will allow extended debate. There are two points that have caused me to modify the position that I took on this letter. One is the nature of the issue that is before the body. If we were here talking about immigration or gun control or any of the other many issues that we consider, I wouldn't be taking the position that I am. I believe that the rules of the Senate are important and that extended debate is an important part of the Senate process. However, we are talking about fundamental structural changes--not policy changes but structural changes--that I believe, in spite of your comments, that in many States across the country are compromising the ability of our people to express themselves in our democracy. I consider that qualitatively different than a policy difference, and that is why I am here today to talk about revising the rules--not blowing up the filibuster but to get back to what the filibuster actually means, and that is extended debate. I am all for extended debate until we are exhausted, until we have made a deal, until we have come to a compromise. But the problem is, the filibuster, as we define it today, is a distant cousin of the real filibuster. The radical change in the filibuster isn't what is being discussed today. It was made in 1975 almost by accident. In 1975, they were debating whether it should be two-thirds of Senators present and voting or a lower number. And they compromised on 60 Senators, sworn Members. That was the focus of that discussion. I have talked to Parliamentarians who were involved in that question. I asked the specific question: Did they really realize what they were doing by creating the mail-in, dial-in, no-effort filibuster? And the answer was no. They didn't discuss it. They didn't think of it. So what I am talking about here today and what the proposal that will be on the floor later today is to do exactly what this letter says, ``extended debate''--``extended debate.'' And that is why I believe that what we are proposing today is in the deepest tradition of the U.S. Senate. What we are trying to scale back is the cheap, easy, dial- in from your office, 60 votes, de facto, supermajority requirement, which is not in the Constitution, which the Framers expressly did not agree to. They put in a lot of checks and balances. Two Houses of Congress, two-thirds voting on treaties, two-thirds voting on an amendment, confirmation of the President--the President, the Congress, the independence of the courts, all those were checks and balances. One of them was not a supermajority requirement in the U.S. Senate. Hamilton and Madison expressly said that that would turn democracy on its head. Democracy ultimately is about majority rule, and there should be minority rights. The minority should have every opportunity to speak, to offer amendments, to discuss--to offer germane amendments, I might add--and discuss and debate but ultimately not have a veto. That is really what it comes down to here: Do you have a rule that says that the minority actually is in control of the legislative process? That is not what the Framers intended. It is antithetical to what the Framers intended. In fact, one of the reasons for the Constitutional Convention was the dysfunction of the Articles of Confederation, and one of the reasons cited for that dysfunction was a supermajority requirement. So, yes, I voted--what I supported 3 years ago, I still support. The language is ``full, robust, and extended debate,'' and that is what is going to be proposed later on. If you guys will vote for it, this debate can go on, as it should, for weeks and perhaps months because it is that important. But I don't have any apologies to make. If I have to choose between a Senate rule, as it works now--which, as I say, is a distant cousin of the real filibuster--and democracy itself, I am going to take democracy every single time.

Mr. KING. Mr. President, I came here 9 years ago opposed to modifying the rules of the filibuster. Indeed, I signed a letter a couple of years ago saying the same thing. I understand that it can and probably will boomerang, that an elimination of the filibuster--what is today's annoying obstruction could be tomorrow's priceless shield. I get that. I understand that it can also be a spur to bipartisanship. We all saw that several years ago in the CARES Act. The Republican leader submitted a bill. It was voted down on a filibuster initially, and then there ensued a series of negotiations that improved the bill and made it a bipartisan bill that passed this body unanimously. The problem is, if it is being used as a spur to bipartisan discussions, that works. We saw it work with the CARES Act. But if it is used simply to stop something, in other words, if one side or the other just doesn't even want to talk about the subject, what you are talking about is stone cold obstruction, and that is where we are today. Unfortunately, part of this body just doesn't want to talk about the issue of voting rights. How do I know that? Because we brought up a motion to proceed three times, and it was voted down three times--a motion to proceed to have a discussion about this issue. The only reason we are having this debate today is that the majority leader found a rule that, frankly, I never heard of that enabled us to bring this to the floor. It wasn't because the other side said: Oh, let's discuss voting rights. What we have now is not a filibuster. It is a second cousin once removed of a filibuster. It doesn't require any effort. It doesn't require any speeches. It doesn't require to hold the floor. All it is is a dial-in, no-work filibuster. Strom Thurmond would have loved this filibuster. He wouldn't have had to stand here for 24 hours. And I venture to say that if we had the rules that we have today, we wouldn't have the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, because it was too easy to stop anything. That is the problem. We don't really have a filibuster. The real radical change in the filibuster rule was in 1975, when they wanted to go from two-thirds of those present voting to 60 votes, but, inadvertently, we created the no-effort filibuster, and that is what we have now. I would submit that a talking filibuster, which is what we are going to be proposing in a few minutes, would be the real spur to bipartisanship because everybody would want to get it over with. The minority would want to get it over with, and the majority would want to get it over with, and get to a point where there would be discussion. And I believe, listening to the debate today, based upon the discussion today, that I think there may be some areas where we can find agreement. The real spur to bipartisanship would be to return to the old filibuster. This is what we are going to be voting on today. And, by the way, on bipartisanship, I came here to seek bipartisanship. I am all about bipartisanship. But it strikes me as one of the deep ironies of this discussion that we are elevating bipartisanship in this body to this exalted position while these laws are being passed entirely on a partisan basis in all these States across the country. I guess bipartisanship is an important principle in Washington, but in Atlanta and Austin, not so much. I don't get that. I think that is one of the real ironies of this situation. So, Angus, if you came here opposed 9 years ago, why are you changing now? Because what we are talking about today isn't policy; it is structure. It is our democracy itself. Policy can change. If they don't like the policy we pass, they can kick us out and vote other people in. If we change the structure that diminishes the right of people to vote, it is not self- correcting anymore. The system itself is being compromised. That is what we have to talk about. And we are not only talking. All of the discussion or most of the discussion today has been about voter suppression. There is also what I call voter subversion--purging the officials in charge of elections. This democracy, I would argue, was damn near saved by a guy named Brad Raffensperger in Georgia. They purged him--or they are going to. They have already purged him out of the system, and they are going to try to purge him out of his job. That is happening. And we talk about giving people in the legislature--a partisan legislature--the ability to dismiss voting boards because they don't like what they did? We are going to see more and more voting boards, voting commissioners, certification officials being purged because they don't want to get the results that they don't agree with. The other problem here that really worries me about our democracy is that the former President's efforts to undermine confidence in our elections have already convinced two-thirds of one of our great political parties that the elections were illegitimate and were rigged. Two-thirds of one of our great political parties now believes that. If these laws that are happening across the country--and they are going to continue happening. By the way, if we give them a pass today, it is Katy, bar the door, over the next 6 months. Then you are going to disillusion and anger and loss of trust among two-thirds of the Democratic Party and Independents, and you are going to have widespread distrust of elections as the way we solve our problems in this country. And if you can't trust elections, what do you do? I would submit that we saw it on January 6. Those people had been told that something was stolen from them, and they couldn't trust elections. They couldn't trust the courts. They couldn't trust the media. So they took the law into their own hands. And, sadly, if this continues, we will have a broad widespread loss of trust in our electoral process, and that is when democracy starts to fall apart. Finally--my wife says I say ``finally'' too much and it gets people's hopes up. Finally, there are some deeper constitutional issues here. The Framers knew fractions. They said it takes two-thirds to pass a treaty. It takes two-thirds to impeach a President. It takes two-thirds to pass a constitutional amendment. It takes three-quarters of the States to pass a constitutional amendment. They knew fractions. They didn't apply any fractions when they talked about the passage of legislation. Why not? Because they knew it would be a disaster to have a supermajority requirement in one of the Houses of the national legislature. How do I know that? Because Madison and Hamilton said it explicitly in Federalist 22 by Hamilton, Federalist 58 by Madison. Madison said: The fundamental principle of free government [if you have a supermajority requirement] would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority. You can't have it both ways. It is either majority rule or its minority rule, and the filibuster was not part of the Constitution. In fact, they expressly and explicitly rejected that idea of a supermajority requirement. It flips democracy on its head. I think we are at a hinge of history, Mr. President. I think we are at a hinge of history where our fragile experiment--and Senator Murphy is right, we are an anomaly in world history. The norm is pharaohs and Kings and dictators, and now we call them Presidents for life. And once people seize power, look at what--and this isn't an academic discussion. This has happened in Hungary, in Turkey, and Venezuela--in Russia. It has happened right in our personal experiences. It can happen here, and it starts with undermining free and fair elections. In the winter of 1891, the House passed a protection act for Black voters in the South. The bill was to deal with the egregious voter suppression that was then sweeping the South in the wake of the Civil War. The bill came here and died due to a filibuster. That filibuster echoed in this country for 75 years. It took 75 years to correct the mistake that this body made with that filibuster in the winter of 1891. We are not talking about abolishing the filibuster. We are not talking about a carve-out. We are talking about allowing this body-- requiring this body--to debate, to argue, to make their arguments as long as it takes, and then, at the end, when the debate is exhausted, when all of us have had the opportunity to speak twice, then we have a vote, and we pass legislation on the same basis that it has always been passed--by a majority. Cloture has nothing to do with the passage of legislation. It has always been by a majority. I pray that we don't look back on this day and realize the level of the mistake that they made in 1891. Abraham Lincoln's words ring today as they did when he came to this body in December of 1862. He said: Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. ``The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.'' I yield the floor.

Mr. KING. You are young.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, today I wish to recognize LT Sean McDonald, U.S. Navy, for his outstanding work on behalf of the people of Maine and the Nation as a 2021 Department of Defense Legislative Fellow serving in my Washington, DC, office. Lieutenant McDonald has been integral to shaping my foreign policy and national security priorities and helped secure a number of provisions in the fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act--FY22 NDAA--that will make our country stronger and safer. Lieutenant McDonald's contributions, both to office morale and to our collective work product, are representative of his good character, competence, and strong work ethic. Throughout his tenure in my office, Lieutenant McDonald demonstrated a level of professionalism and hard work I have come to expect--but that I do not take for granted--from Department of Defense Legislative Fellows. Indeed, Lieutenant McDonald follows a long line of accomplished U.S. Navy and Marine Corps officers who have made impactful contributions to my office and to U.S. national security policy. Over the course of the year, Lieutenant McDonald prepared and personally advised me on wide-ranging and complex matters under consideration before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Lieutenant McDonald brought his naval expertise to bear to help secure authorization for the procurement of additional Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in the FY22 NDAA, a critical capability for the U.S. fleet and a boon to the Maine shipbuilding workforce. He also helped guide my work as chairman of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces during my inaugural year in this position, helping craft policy on nuclear and strategic forces, missile defense, and space programs. Further, during the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Lieutenant McDonald provided clear-headed and thoughtful analysis on the withdrawal and liaised with representatives from the White House, State Department, and Department of Defense to convey my positions and concerns. His candor and honest assessments provided critical insights during this challenging time, and our Nation is better because of it. On behalf of my colleagues and the U.S. Congress, I thank Lieutenant McDonald for his dedicated service to my staff, the U.S. Navy, and the Nation. I wish him all the best and know that he will excel in his next endeavors.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Go ahead.

Mr. KING. I thank the Senator, and I particularly want to thank Senator Casey for his steadfast, dogged perseverance in pursuit of this issue. He has stayed with it. He has advocated for it. He has been persistent and persuasive, and I just want to thank you. You have really exemplified what this body should be all about. It should care about the American people and should take steps to alleviate their pain. When they are in trouble, they have a friend in Pennsylvania. The people of America have a friend in Pennsylvania, and I deeply appreciate it. Madam President, I used to teach a course in college called Leaders and Leadership. I used case studies of different people, and it was a very eclectic group. It ranged from Ernest Shackleton to Joshua Chamberlain, to Winston Churchill, to Margaret Thatcher, and to a guy named Jack Welch who was the President of General Electric and one of the great business leaders of the late 20th and early 21st century. One of Jack Welch's favorite quotes, which is also one of my favorites, is that ``the essence of leadership is to look reality in the eye and then do something about it''--``look reality in the eye and then do something about it.'' I want to talk about some realities this afternoon. The reality is that we are an aging population. Ten thousand people a day qualify for Medicare--10,000 people a day. We are an aging population. My State of Maine is, in fact, the oldest State in America. How old are we? Our junior Senator is 77. The State of Maine and the country are aging. That is a reality. We can wish it away and act like it is not really happening, but that is an enormous demographic wave that is coming at us right now. As the baby boomers retire and enter their sixties and seventies, this is a reality that we have--10,000 people a day. Another reality is that more and more of these people require care. That is in the nature of our physical being. The older people get, they require care. So the real question is, How are we going to care for these people? Thousands of them--hundreds of thousands--end up in nursing homes, in long-term care, and those facilities do a yeoman's work, and they take wonderful care of people. But 60 percent of the people in long-term care are paid for by Medicaid. Sixty percent of the people in long-term care are paid for by Medicaid. That is important because I am going to be making the argument that the investments that we are making in this bill are, in fact, investments that will actually diminish expenditures in other areas. Here's another reality. It costs about $26,000 a year to provide home- and community-based services for a person with disabilities or a senior who needs those services--$26,000 a year. Long-term care in a nursing home is over $90,000 a year, almost four times as much. So let me add one more reality and then I will come to the conclusion--not the conclusion of the whole remarks. I don't want to get your hopes up, Madam President--but my conclusion on this point. Part of the reality is that most seniors don't want to go to nursing homes until they have to. I used to go around Maine with my commissioner of human services with groups of seniors and say: How many of you want to go to a nursing home? No hands went up. Not that nursing homes don't give good care or provide an essential need, but most people would like to stay in their houses, in their homes, close to their community, close to their family as long as they can. So if you take the financial reality that it is almost one-fourth, 25 percent or maybe 30 percent, as expensive to keep them in their homes, the taxpayers are paying 60 percent of the cost of nursing homes. People want to be home. All of that argues in favor of enabling people to stay home. Every day that someone stays out of a long-term care facility it saves the taxpayers about almost $200, every day for each day. So if you can keep people in their homes longer, it is a good financial investment. It also provides preventive care and services. That is one of the realities. The other reality, as Senator Casey mentioned, is people with disabilities, people who are trapped. As he was making his remarks, I was thinking about the fundamental promise of America and the Declaration of Independence--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Abraham Lincoln once said that every political opinion he had derived from the Declaration of Independence. In my case, every political opinion I have is derived from Abraham Lincoln, but the Declaration of Independence talks about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If you are disabled--if you can't walk up these stairs and you don't have some help--you don't have much of a life, and you certainly don't have liberty. All we think of as liberty is to be able to walk out your door, go to the store, go to church, interact with our children. If you can't do those things, you don't have liberty, and you certainly don't have much happiness. So we are talking about the fundamental promise of America--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It simply means giving people the help they need, and they need it through no fault of their own. It is nobody's fault when they get older. That is not your fault, and disability isn't your fault. The fellow who Senator Casey talked about who was injured while playing football in high school wasn't at fault. He wasn't at fault. This kind of thing can happen to anybody. So that is really what we are talking about. The reality is that we have a demographic tidal wave coming at us, and the question is, Are we going to deal with it actively and confront it or are we simply going to sit back and say, you know, ``It is like it has always been''? It is not like it has always been. We have never had a demographic boom in the seniors like we are going to have in the next 20 years. Our generation--my generation--is the pig and the python of the demographics of this country, and we are going to have to confront it. So how do we confront it? We confront it in a number of ways. We confront it in several ways. The home care provisions of this bill are one of the ways to confront it. There is also a hidden economic benefit here. If people need care, they are going to get it one way or another. They may well, in many cases, be getting it from their children who then can't go to work. We desperately need workers in this economy right now, but they are locked up because they can't leave home. They can't leave their elderly moms. So to have the home-based services liberates people in order for them to participate in the economy. What can we do about it? We can do something about the wages of these people--of the people working in this industry who are providing this essential care--who are making $12 an hour. They are among the lowest paid in our society. How do we know that the pay is inadequate? When a 50-percent turnover in a home-based care company--in a home-based care exercise--in the community is considered good. To have 100 percent turnover in a year is not unusual. That tells you there is a real problem in the compensation of the workforce. So this bill provides funds to improve the living standard of the people who are providing these services. It provides training. It provides a career path. It provides hope for people, not only those who are giving the services but those who are needing the services. I believe this is an investment. This is the right investment in the right people at the right time, and I deeply hope that our colleagues will come together to support this investment in a timely way and not wait until it is too late. Why wait until thousands of lives are restricted and constrained? Let's do the right thing now. We know what the reality is. This bill provides us a golden opportunity to meet it. I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination, Calendar No. 475; that the Senate vote on the nomination; the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; that no further motions be in order to the nomination; that any statements related to the nomination be printed in the Record; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session, all with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. KING

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

Mr. KING. Mr. President, I have the responsibility and the privilege to be the chair of something called the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services. Strategic forces is a euphemism for nuclear weapons, and it is one of the most serious threats that we continue to face. We face threats all over the world from pandemics, from terrorism, from a rising China, from a belligerent Russia, but one of the most serious that sometimes gets lost in the discussion is the unthinkable catastrophe that would be a nuclear exchange. Throughout the last 70-plus years, our principle strategy for dealing with that threat has been deterrence, the idea that if you use nuclear weapons against the United States of America, you will pay the heaviest of prices, and that deterrence has worked. There hasn't been a use of nuclear weapon since 1945, and there are now several--I can't say the exact number for classification reasons--but there are a number of nuclear countries in the world, nuclear-armed countries, China and Russia among them. China is expanding its nuclear capability exponentially. Over the past several years, they have been embarked on an enormous buildup of their nuclear capability. But I want to talk about a nuclear threat today in the context of the nomination that I am going to move in a few moments that, to me, is one of the most terrifying because it is a nuclear threat that deterrence doesn't work on--a nuclear threat that deterrence, the fundamental strategy of our prevention of nuclear conflict for 70 years, doesn't work. What is that threat? The threat of nuclear terrorism. If you are not representing a country and if you don't care about dying, then the idea of a nuclear response doesn't scare you. It doesn't deter you from taking that kind of action. How do we defend against that? What is deterrence 2.0 in the current world where international terrorism--although it has not been on the front pages recently--is still there? ISIS-K, ISIS, al-Qaida, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula are all still there. Boko Haram in Africa--they are all still there. They are all plotting. They are all working on ways that they can attack the West and the United States of America. If they could get ahold of the nuclear technology and nuclear building block, which is enriched uranium, they would use it. The terrorists who killed 3,000 people on September 11 would kill--would have killed 3 million if they could have. And so keeping nuclear materials and nuclear technology out of the hands of terrorists is, to me, one of the most important functions that our government can perform. And that brings me to the nomination of Corey Hinderstein for the position of Deputy Administrator for Nuclear Nonproliferation. She is immensely qualified and has worked in this field for almost 20 years; has worked on nuclear proliferation and nonproliferation issues for most of those years, both in the government and in the private sector. I would venture to say there is probably no one in the United States who knows as much about this subject as she does. Ms. Hinderstein will be responsible for a major part of the budget-- $1.9 billion--but she is responsible for controlling the proliferation of nuclear materials, and that is so critical in light of the threat of nuclear terrorism. The only way we can keep them from attacking us is intelligence, knowing what is coming, and keeping these materials out of their hands; and that is why this job is so important. She was approved by the committee and recommended to the Senate 40 days ago. It is time to move this nomination. Nominations can be held up for a variety of reasons and some policy reasons, and I understand that, but not in this case. And I am happy to report that it appears that this nomination will not be held up because I think all of our colleagues realize how important this function is in the government. The most--the best nuclear strike is the one that doesn't occur. The only way to prevent that is to stop the proliferation of nuclear materials. This problem is only growing. We know that Iran is now enriching uranium to a much higher extent than they did under the JCPOA. We know that North Korea is pursuing its own nuclear ambitions. India, Pakistan both have nuclear programs. So this is a clear and present danger to the United States of America, and that is why this nomination is so important.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KING

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

Mr. KING. Madam President, I want to talk about the national defense bill, but first I do want to respond just in one particular to the comments of the gentlelady from Tennessee because I have heard this before, the idea that the infrastructure bill isn't infrastructure. I don't get how anybody is making that claim. Here is the list: roads and bridges, highway safety, public transit, rail, broadband, ports, airports, the electric grid, water, and Superfund cleanup. Yes, there are some items for EVs and for the facilitating of the electrification of our transportation system, but the vast bulk of it is what anybody would call infrastructure. Infrastructure is something you can kick. Infrastructure is something you can feel. And that is what we are talking about here--roads and bridges, ports, airports, rail, broadband. That is the infrastructure of the 21st century. This is an infrastructure bill, and it ought to be recognized as such. There are plenty of things we can argue and differ with around here, but this shouldn't be one of them. And people are confused about it because they are being given confusing information. They are being told it is not an infrastructure bill; there is no infrastructure. I have heard that. It is simply not true. So let's argue about the things that, you know, we have genuine policy differences, but let's not talk about things that just aren't the case. Ports, bridges, railroad, public transit--and, yes, public transit is infrastructure. It may not be in Tennessee. It may not be so much in Maine, although I suspect there is some in Tennessee and there is some in Maine, but public transportation is critical to our citizens. Broadband, airports, electric grid, water--that is infrastructure.

Mr. KING. Would the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. KING. Madam President, my recollection is--and we have passed this bill, as we both have recognized, every year for the past 60 years, including over the last 4 or 5 years--in the last several years, there weren't that many amendments. There were a few, and it was always agreed in advance. There was a package, just as we had the other night, but everybody didn't get-- there wasn't an unlimited number of amendments or votes on amendments. There was generally an agreed-upon number of amendments, and it wasn't very many. Is that correct?

Mr. KING. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Cloture Motion

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my military fellow, Sean McDonald, have floor privileges during the consideration of the fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act and any consideration of matters pertaining to national security.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, I rise to discuss the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022. I want to make two basic points at the beginning and then discuss some of the specifics of the bill. The first is the word ``deterrence.'' The cornerstone of our defense policy is deterrence. The best battle is the one that doesn't occur. The best war is the one that doesn't occur. And there are those who will say that this bill authorizes a very large amount of expenditures. I can assure you that war would dwarf the expenditures in this bill. And deterrence is the whole idea of having a force that would convince any potential adversary that attacking the United States is a losing proposition, that it would cost them more than they would ever gain. That has been our strategy for many years. It is our strategy going forward, and I will talk about it in some specific terms with regard to this bill. But it is important to understand that that's why we are doing this defense bill, is to provide and strengthen and ensure that this country has the forces and the weapons that are necessary to deter any potential adversary. The second concept that, generally, I want to discuss is consensus. When I go home to Maine, people are amazed that we do anything together, because all they see on the TV news and read in the newspapers is about conflict--bickering, arguing, differing. Why can't they get anything done? What they don't know is that we do get a great deal done, and a lot of it is by unanimous consent, by consensus. This bill is a good example. This is the 61st year that the National Defense Authorization Act has come to Congress, and we hope it is going to pass this year. For the past 60 years, every single year, we have passed a National Defense Authorization. And we usually--well, not usually, not almost always--we always pass them on a bipartisan basis. This bill came out of the committee 25 to 1. That is pretty close to unanimous. And we always get substantial support in our committee, the Armed Services Committee, but also on the floor of the United States Senate. Why? Because the Members of this body, just as the people across this country, are committed to those who serve in uniform, and they are committed to the idea of peace and the idea of deterring adversaries and avoiding conflict and war. They all think that all we do is argue, and this bill is proof that that is not the case. When I first got here, my first two chairs of the Armed Services Committee were Carl Levin and John McCain, Senators who represented, in my mind, the best of the tradition of this Senate. They argued fiercely in favor of their positions, worked hard to resolve conflict within the committee, and were absolutely committed to the values of the United States of America. Despite all the partisan differences that exist in the country, this bill is an example that we are still united when it comes to the defense of the United States. It comes on the heels of Monday's signing of the historic bipartisan infrastructure bill. I think it is interesting that the bill has in its name--it has a name, I am not even sure what it is, but everyone refers to it as the ``bipartisan infrastructure bill'' because it was supported by bipartisan majorities in both Houses. And in this bill, we are coming together to do something similar, to support our country and, particularly, to support those who put their lives on the line to defend this country. And I want to stop there for just a second. We all go through life getting various jobs, signing up for jobs, applying, and then you sign a form and you join the company. There are very few jobs in our society when you sign on the dotted line, you are literally putting your life on the line. Members of the military and first responders are the only people I can think of that do that. It is something we need to remind ourselves. In addition to all the other responsibilities that you are taking on when you join the military, you are literally signing to commit your life, if necessary, in defense of this country. I believe this bill is essential to protecting our servicemembers, the industrial base which serves the defense of our country, and, collectively, our national security. The Armed Services Committee has produced a bill that will make our Nation safer and stronger. For example, taking care of our servicemembers: 2.7 percent pay raise for military servicemembers and the Department of Defense civilian workforce. That pay raise is important, and if this bill doesn't pass, it won't happen. So that is one of the immediate reasons that we need to pass this bill, to provide a pay raise to our military personnel. They will also receive 12 weeks of parental leave for birth, adoption, and foster care placement of a child. One of the provisions that I am interested in is that there is substantial support in this bill for our naval infrastructure. It authorizes funding, for example, to Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, which Bath Iron Works in the State of Maine will be able to compete for, and this, in furtherance, supports our Navy's ability to deter adversaries around the world. It is no secret that the Pacific is an important area of potential conflict. And the Pacific is an ocean and it requires ships in order to project power, and those ships are built here in America. And this bill demonstrates Congress' intent to support the Navy, to support shipbuilding, and to support the industrial base. One of the things the bill does is provide for a new--what they call a multiyear contract, where the Navy commits to buying more than one ship at a time, which gives them a better price per ship. That is good for the taxpayers and also gives some assurance to the industrial base that the jobs will be there and the work will be there in order to maintain the support. We often forget that the companies that do these--produce these amazing products cannot be turned off and on like a switch. I have visited shipyards. I visited in Norfolk; I visited in Maine, Portsmouth, and at Bath Iron Works many times. And these are amazingly complicated pieces of machinery. I believe that the destroyers built at Bath Iron Works are quite possibly the most complex product built in America. And the people who build them have to know that they are going to have a job a year from now and 2 years from now. We can't go herky- jerky from one year to the next. Once you lose a welder who goes somewhere else, it is hard to get them back. So the maintenance of the industrial base, whether it is in shipbuilding, aircraft, humvees, whatever the vehicles are, whatever the platforms are that support our military, it has to be done on a consistent and predictable basis so that those factories, large and small--and, by the way, there are thousands of small businesses that support these larger industries. They have to know that there is some future, and that is why things like a multiyear procurement is very important. This industrial base is not something that you can turn off and on. There is a research provision in this bill that is very important. University of Maine is one of those universities that provides vital research to the military, because we always have to be thinking not about the last war or the last conflict, but the future. And everybody in this room knows that the future is going to be based upon newer and newer and newer technologies. So research is an essential part of building the strength of this country. I worked for the last 2 years on something called the National Cyberspace Solarium Commission. Our job was to come together to form and recommend--recommend--a national strategy in cyberspace to defend this country, which we did in March of 2020. A number of the recommendations of our commission were enacted last year, either in the National Defense Authorization Act or in other areas of legislation that we passed. And, this year, there are some really crucial ones in this year's National Defense Authorization Act--crucial provisions to defend this country in cyberspace. The next 9/11 will be cyber, and if we are not ready for it after all the warnings that we have had, shame on us. Worse than shame on us; it will be destructive of this country. And that is why I am so proud that there are provisions in this bill that will help us to respond, that will help us to understand what is going on, will help the private sector and the Federal Government to work together to meet and defeat this 21st century challenge. In many ways, cyber is a new manner of conflict. We have to reimagine conflict. Traditionally, we think of conflict and war as Army versus Army and Navy versus Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard, and now the Space Force. But cyber is all about the private sector. Eighty-five percent of the target in cyberspace is in the private sector, and they are not going to have their own army. So that is where there has to be a new relationship of trust and confidence between the private sector and the public sector in order to successfully defend this country in cyberspace. And, indeed, there is a provision, hopefully, that will enter this bill through the manager's package that will deal exactly with that subject. This bill also secures the future of the nuclear triad. Strategic forces, otherwise known as nuclear weapons, are hard to talk about. They are hard to think about because they are so horrendous. But to go back to the beginning of my remarks, the issue here is deterrence, and we have had a deterrent strategy virtually since 1945, and it has worked. Thank God there has not been a use of nuclear weapons since 1945. Why? Because of the strategy that every adversary knows that they will pay an awful price, if they attack us, using nuclear weapons. As chairman of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, we have had hearings, we have had discussions, we have had readings on how do we successfully modernize our nuclear triad--bombers, submarines, and missiles--in such a way as to ensure the vitality of the deterrent strategy. The problem is that all three of those legs of the triad have basically been unattended to for 30 or 40 or sometimes 50 years. And as they degrade in capability, so also degrades the capability of our deterrence. If the adversaries look and say, ``They are trying to fly 50-year-old airplanes, or they are trying to defend themselves with missiles that they are unsure of whether they will work,'' then the adversary says, ``Well, maybe we can get away with an attack.'' And therein lies a path to a horrendous nuclear conflict, which has to be avoided. The best way to avoid it is to be sure that our deterrence is credible. The only way to make it credible is to be sure that it is modernized. That is exactly what this bill contemplates. Another provision of this bill that, I think, is critically important is a substantial change in the military code of justice, with regard to sexual assault, that puts in place an independent prosecutor system to take the decisions about moving forward on sexual assault claims out of the chain of command and puts it in a special professional prosecutor's decision. I think that is important not only for the practical effect, but for the message that it sends to soldiers and sailors and airmen and guardsmen that we are serious about this; that they can feel comfortable reporting violations; that they can come forward and that there is no danger that the complaints that they make will be swept under the rug. I think this is an important provision of this bill, and I want to commend my friend Senator Gillibrand, who has spent as long as I can remember--as long as I have been on the committee, which is 9 years, working on this issue, and, in many ways, this is the culmination of her work. Another provision of this bill that I am particularly interested in is that we learn the lessons from 20 years in Afghanistan. Senator Duckworth has proposed the creation of an Afghan war commission, an independent commission, not made up of generals, not made of people who were in Afghanistan, but of people who can take a clear-eyed look at the successes and mistakes concerning our engagement in Afghanistan. I think this commission is an important idea. I was delighted to support Senator Duckworth's proposal. Another provision that we hope will be included within the National Defense Authorization Act this year is the United States Innovation and Competition Act, which we have already passed here in this body, but if we put it in this bill, it will then go to the other body, and there will be consideration there. This is a critical piece of legislation to enable competition with China. And make no mistake, we are in competition with China. So passing that bill as part of the national defense bill, to me, makes total sense because we are talking about national security, and being competitive in areas like AI and chips and quantum computing is as much a part of national security as bombers and submarines. It also includes a provision about competition in the Arctic, which is one of the areas of the world that is opening to competition and, potentially, to conflict. We don't want that to happen. Finally, the bill reasserts the fundamental congressional responsibility--I almost said ``prerogative,'' but it is not. It is a responsibility of Congress to make the decision as to when this country is committed to war. In recent years--well, a little history. The last time the Congress declared war was in 1942. We have had AUMFs, authorizations for use of military force. This bill will repeal two of the early AUMFs that have been used as a kind of blank check by the executive to deploy troops and engage in conflict around the world. In 1991 and 2002, there were AUMFs involving Iraq. If you go back to the debates of the Constitutional Convention, I think it was--I want to say--August 17, 1787, when there was a debate about the war power, and there were those who said the Executive has to have the power to declare war; Congress is too cumbersome; the Executive can only do that. There were others who said: Wait a minute. We rebelled against the King of England because we didn't like the King and the prince being able to unilaterally take us into war. The compromise was to divide the responsibility. The President is the Commander in Chief, but Congress has the responsibility to declare war. This power has not been usurped by modern Presidents. It has been abandoned--it has been given up--by modern Congresses. This bill is a step away from what, I think, is a serious gap in our adherence to the fundamental purpose of the Constitution. So there is plenty of good in this bill; there is plenty to celebrate. I am delighted to be able to support it. I have only just scratched the surface, but it is a kind of truism that you will never be successful in a military context if you are fighting the last war. You have to think about conflict in the future. In Maine, sometimes people say: We have never done it that way before. I am sure the Presiding Officer hears that in Colorado, and you hear it all around the country: We have never done it that way before. If that is our attitude, we are sunk. We have to think about what is coming at us, about what is in the future. Cyber will be part of any kind of conflict we may become engaged in, and I hope we never become engaged in a serious conflict. Again, that is the entire purpose of this bill. It is to deter any potential adversary from thinking that they can successfully attack this country. This bill defends the interests of America. It defends the interests of our military and our wonderful military people who are deployed around the world and, as I say, who are putting their lives on the line for this country. We can come together, hopefully, in the next few days, in a bipartisan way, to pass this bill, to pass the word, in the words of President Kennedy, ``to friend and foe alike,'' that we will accept the burdens of leadership and that we will meet our responsibility to John McCain, to Carl Levin, to all those who have come before us, and to the people of the United States of America. I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize the outstanding career of a leader in economic development in the State of Maine. Steve Levesque, of Greenville, ME, is retiring after 41 years of professional experience in the areas of economic and community progress, land use planning, and environmental services in both the private and public sectors, including when I was Governor as commissioner of Maine's Department of Economic and Community Development. Most recently, Steve has made an indelible mark in his position as executive director of Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, MRRA. From his first days in economic and community development in Maine, Steve has held a number of leadership positions in which he has led and advocated tirelessly for local, regional, and State economies with consistent messages of the quality of the business environment in Maine alongside our quality of life as Mainers. In 2005, there were indications that the Naval Air Station Brunswick, NASB, would be disestablished and Steve, at that time, led the Brunswick Local Redevelopment Authority, charged with overseeing the successful completion of the Reuse Master Plan for NASB. He has been MRRA's only executive director since its formation in 2008. In 2011, when NASB officially closed, there were persistent doomsday forecasts about the hole that was left behind. Steve brought his own brand of fervency to MRRA to realize a dream of the adaptive reuse of the former base, now known as Brunswick Landing. He started by assembling a passionate and hard-working team and began carefully cultivating what would become critical and dedicated partnerships, developed over the years with so many groups: the Navy, the towns of Brunswick and Topsham, the State of Maine, all of Maine's congressional delegation, the FAA, and especially the impressive list of businesses and private developers who have invested in the vision to convert a former Navy base into an economic engine that today holds more than 2,400 jobs, surpassing the $150 million former Navy payroll. When you read the list of other benchmarks at Brunswick Landing, over only 10 years--the creation of TechPlace, a manufacturing business incubator with 35 resident businesses; attraction of over a half billion dollars in private sector capital investment; property sales to more than 20 new property owners, including more than 650 units of workforce housing; more than $150 million in new valuation and $3 million in annual property taxes generated for the Towns of Brunswick and Topsham; more than $40 million in upgrades to Brunswick Executive Airport's--BXM-- infrastructure and buildings; more than $100 million invested in new building construction and infrastructure projects owned by MRRA; creation of Brunswick Renewable Energy Center, including ownership of former Navy electrical grid with 3.5-megawatt load and 2 megawatts of on-site renewable electricity generation; 10 percent annual growth in air operations, based aircraft, and aviation fuel sales at BXM; environmental stewardship and wildlife habitat preservation, including transfer of more than 1,200 acres of open space and trails to the town of Brunswick and local land trust--it is no wonder Steve's leadership has been recognized, not once but twice, as a recipient of the Association of Defense Contractor's Community Leadership Award as well as by many other State development organizations. I join them wholeheartedly in recognizing Steve for demonstrating innovation and excellence in his work. Even in his volunteer time, Steve serves on a number of industry and economic development boards, including the Loring Development Authority of Maine, Moosehead Lake Region Economic Development Corporation, Owls Head Transportation Museum, and the Maine Spaceport Leadership Council, to name a few. Steve has also served his country in the U.S. Marine Corps as an aircraft mechanic. Due to Steve's commitment to economic development and ability to secure funding for a variety of initiatives throughout the years, there has been continued high quality service for new and expanding businesses here in Maine. His ability to coordinate programs and foster partnerships were critical factors in his success, whether it be at the local, State, or national level. As a champion of economic development, I join with his colleagues, friends, and the people of Maine in thanking Steve for his unwavering service to the economic development of our State.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, with regard to the comments of the esteemed Senator from Texas, I say to the Senator: I would suggest, if your colleagues are interested in election reform and election laws, that we have a dialogue and that we have some discussion. I would welcome a proposal from your side of the aisle on election laws and how we deal with efforts to suppress the vote in other parts of the country, and also to change the Electoral Count Act. Is the Senator interested in those and entering into such discussions?

Mr. KING. Not to prolong the discussion, but Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution makes it abundantly clear that the responsibility for election administration is a joint one between the States and the Congress, and that the Congress, at any time, can alter regulations or the efforts to control the vote in a particular State. That has been true ever since the drafting of the Constitution. It was true at the time of passage of the 15th Amendment. It was true at the time of the passage of the Voting Rights Act. So I look forward to the possibility of working with any colleague on protecting the sacred right to vote in this country. I will have further comments on this legislation today. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, the United States of America is an anomaly in world history. We are a 245-year experiment in self-government, which is based upon an idea that was radical in 1776. It was tested at Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, and the Wilderness. It was defended at Anzio, Iwo Jima, and Normandy, and was reaffirmed in 1965. It is an idea that the people--all the people--are the ultimate source of power and can govern themselves through their elected representatives. That was a radical notion in 1776. The historical norm is just the opposite--kings; pharaohs; dictators; czars; warlords; emperors; and, more recently, presidents for life. Throughout most of human history, and right up to the present day, in most countries, the people have little or no say in the decisions that determine their fate. And these rulers are rarely, if ever, beneficent. In fact, again, the historical norm is just the opposite--pervasive corruption, the pursuit of power for its own sake, the crushing of dissent, sham elections, and the abuse or even elimination of anyone not sufficiently loyal or useful to the leader. That is the historical norm. There is nothing surprising about this because it reflects human nature. History fairly shouts at us that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Given the consistent history of this experience--of warlords, dictators, czars, and the abuse of their authority--it is clear that what we are doing, this experiment, is fragile. It is not the norm. It is an anomaly. What we have and take for granted is in no way guaranteed. As has been the case for democratic experiments throughout history, it can fail. Rarely can it fail from external attack. Almost always, democratic experiments fail from erosion from within. On the surface, our democratic system protects us by resting upon our ingenuous Constitution, the primary purpose of which is to establish an effective government while at the same time dividing and dispersing power, and in Madison's evocative phrase: Obliging the government to control itself. And of all the safeguards built into the Constitution--and there are many; two Houses of Congress, vetoes, division of the war power, advise and consent, enumerated powers, Federalism, the Bill of Rights--of all of those protections, the most fundamental and essential is regular elections, the clearest expression of the people's will. For most of my life, I have not really thought much about how elections actually work. You go to the town office or the school gym, they cross your name off on a list, hand you a ballot, and you go into a booth and make your choice. You then put the marked ballot into a box or hand it to a clerk--usually it is a volunteer doing their civic duty in my hometown--and then they run it through a counter. Or you can get a mail-in ballot from your town clerk, mark it at home and send it in. Or in my town you can drop it in a drop box anytime of the night or day. It is out in the front of the town office. That is it until later that night, when the results--either from automatic counters or from hand counting the ballots themselves--are announced, precinct by precinct, town by town, city by city, and State by State. And then you go to bed, happy or unhappy, energized or discouraged, either reveling in the victory of your preferred candidates or determined to work harder next time. And thanks to the Framers, there always is a next time, usually in 2 years hence. The next day, you go about your business trusting--trusting--that the system was operating according to the rules and that the announced vote count accurately reflects the preference of you and your fellow citizens. The key word is ``trust.'' The miraculous result of this entire process is something we completely take for granted but is exceedingly rare--exceedingly rare-- in human history: the peaceful transfer of power, whether it is the city council, the Congress, or the Presidency itself. But two interrelated things are happening right now with regard to this system that are unprecedented in my lifetime and have caused me to worry as I never have before about the future of my country. These two things are profoundly dangerous to our fragile Republic. One is the breakdown of trust in the system itself and the other is an overtly partisan attempt to use this loss of trust as a pretext to change the results of future elections by limiting the participation of voters deemed unworthy--although that is rarely said out loud--or unlikely to vote for your particular political party. This discussion is usually framed in terms of election integrity--the prevention of widespread voter fraud--which it is argued is tainting the outcome of our elections. Unfortunately, these so-called election integrity measures almost invariably end up limiting the participation of a substantial number of voters, many of whom have historically been denied the right to vote by one device or another for over 100 years. It is limiting that participation either as inadvertent collateral damage or, more likely, as stone-cold partisan voter suppression. When I used to interact with the main legislature either as a private citizen for many years or as Governor, the inevitable first question from the chair of the committee was: What is the problem we are trying to solve here? You want to change the law; what is the problem we are trying to solve? In this case, is the problem really voter fraud, or is it election results the party in power in a particular State doesn't like? The implicit burden that this question puts upon those who would change a law is to demonstrate by some reasonable and credible evidence that there is a problem in the first place. And simply saying--or endlessly repeating--that there is a problem doesn't make it so. To put it another way, repeating a lie doesn't make it true. Every objective study to try to detect widespread voter fraud in this country has failed to produce credible evidence of anything but scattered and vanishingly rare cases. I am not saying it doesn't exist, but they are scattered and vanishingly rare cases. Even the overtly partisan so-called ``audit'' of the votes in Maricopa County, AZ, failed to find what they were so desperately looking for--failed to find what they were so desperately looking for. The key question is not whether such fraud exists at all but whether it is so widespread as to change the results of an election involving a substantial number of voters. In the wake of the 2016 election, the President convened a commission to assess this very question, but the commission was disbanded within 8 months with no published finding of significant election fraud whatsoever. That was their mission--to find fraud--and they couldn't find it. Further, as I mentioned, I know of no objective study that has ever concluded that such widespread fraud exists anywhere in our country. Even more compelling is that in spite of Herculean efforts by the former President and his supporters over the course of the months following the 2020 election, no credible evidence has yet been produced to support his allegations, and all of the allegations have been rejected by every court--more than 60. They have been rejected by every court that has considered it. The only fraud here is the allegations themselves. In other words, not only is there no evidence of substantial fraud, what evidence there is reaches the opposite conclusion. But here is the problem; here is what is chilling. Fully, one-third of Americans and two-thirds of members of the Republican Party now believe that the 2020 Presidential election was not legitimate, that there was widespread fraud, and that the election was somehow stolen--not based upon evidence, because there isn't any, but based upon the repeated assertions of the former President and his supporters. The problem with this goes well beyond the wave of voter suppression legislation that is sweeping the country. The deeper problem is the massive and unprecedented erosion of trust in the electoral system itself, the beating heart of our democracy. Of all the depravations of the former President, this is by far the worst. In relentlessly pursuing his narrow self-interest, he has grievously wounded democracy itself. And, by the way, I mean ``narrow self- interest'' quite literally. He doesn't give the slightest damn about any of us, about any of us in this body. He will cast any or all of us aside whenever it suits his needs of the moment. Everyone in this room knows this to be true. The reason this is so destructive is that if you can't trust elections, what are your options? What are your options for making the transcendent decisions upon which our society is based? One is to change the rules to discourage your perceived enemies from voting. Check--that is in the works. Another is to change the rules to give partisan legislators the power to override election results they don't like. Check--also in the works. Another is to contrive pseudo legal arguments to justify the corruption of the counting of electoral votes and then to pressure the Vice President, who presides over the counting of the electoral votes, to join in the scheme. Check--we now know this was very much in the works in the days leading up to January 6. Or, finally, tragically, try to change the results if you don't trust elections through violence or threats of violence. Check--January 6 and death threats to election officials of both parties across the country. January 6 was not a random day on the calendar. It was the day appointed by law to finalize the results of the November election. Many of those who came to Washington that day were not there to protest but were there with the explicit purpose of disrupting and stopping this crucial final step in our democratic process. The rallying cry that day was not ``protest the steal.'' It was ``stop the steal.'' And that is exactly what was attempted in this room on January 6. It is important to remember that most failures of democracy, as we look at history, started with legitimate elections. But once in office, the leader manipulated the electoral process to consolidate their hold on power, just as was attempted last winter. And once power is seized, the control and reach of the modern surveillance state is truly terrifying, truly terrifying. Ask the Uighurs in China or members of the opposition in Russia, if you can find any alive. Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, and Hungary are all examples of the slide from democracy into authoritarianism that has happened just in our living memory, just in our lifetimes. This is not a theoretical threat. We have seen it already happen in our lifetimes. Those countries still have elections, but they don't mean much. And what if the current wave of voter suppression legislation succeeds and keeps tens or hundreds of thousands of people from voting in 2022 or 2024? Or what if in 2024 a partisan legislature in a swing State--and they are giving themselves this power right now--votes to override the election results in their State and send their own preferred set of electors to Washington? Then it won't just be Republicans who distrust elections, and we will be left with a downward spiral toward a hollow shell of democracy, where only raw power prevails and a peaceful transfer becomes a distant memory. There has been a great deal of talk in recent weeks and months of a possible constitutional crisis in 2022 or 2024. We don't have to wait that long. We are in the midst of such a crisis right now. One of our great political parties has embraced the idea that our last election was fraudulent, that our current President is illegitimate, that they must move legislatures across the country to ``fix'' the results--to ``fix'' the results--of future elections. Here is the part that I think is the most tragic. A substantial portion of our population has lost faith in our democratic system because they have been repeatedly told that something important was stolen from them, even though that is untrue. And that portion of our population seems prepared to accept some version of authoritarianism. All but the most extreme sources of information have been devalued, and violence bubbles just below the surface. But it doesn't have to be this way. We in this body, perhaps more than anyone else in this country, have the power to change direction, to pull our country back from the brink, and to begin the work of restoring our democracy, as we did in the Revolution, as we did in the Civil War, and as we did in the civil rights struggles of 60 years ago--first, by simply telling the truth and then by enacting a set of basic protections of the sacred right to vote. It won't be easy, and it will involve risk. I am aware of that. I understand that. It will be particularly difficult when we are asked to speak hard truths that many of our most ardent supporters don't want to hear. But the alternative is worse, worse even than losing your job in this body. The alternative is the loss of our identity as a people, the loss of the miracle of self-government, the loss of the idea of America. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that we are at a hinge of history, that circumstances have thrust us--those of us in this body-- into a moment when the fate of the American experiment hangs in the balance. We are the heirs and trustees--I emphasize ``trustees''--of a tradition that goes back to Jefferson and Lincoln, to Webster, Madison, Margaret Chase Smith, and, yes, our friend John McCain. All of them were partisans in one way or another, but all shared an overriding commitment to the idea that animates the American experiment, the idea that our government is of, by, and for the people--all the people. Lincoln thought that the most important word in the Declaration of Independence was ``all.'' ``All men are created equal''--all, all the people. Now is the moment that we are called upon to reach beyond our region, our State, our party, ourselves to save and reinvigorate the sputtering flame of the American idea. Yes, democracy is an anomaly in world history. We have to remember that what we have is unusual. It is rare, and it is fragile. It rests upon the Constitution and laws, to be sure, but it also rests even more on the trust our people place in our democratic system and in us. Deliberately undermining that trust for short-term political advantage, which is exactly what is happening right now--undermining that trust for political advantage in the short term is exactly what is happening right now--is a tragic and dangerous game. No election, no endorsement, no Senate seat, no Presidency is worth it. Nothing is worth destroying what our forebears fought and died for--nothing. Several weeks ago, a bipartisan group of us went to Gettysburg and walked the battlefield with two leaders from the Army War College. I have been there before but have never been so moved by the experience as I was on this trip. The stories of valor and supreme sacrifice--the 20th Maine on Little Round Top, you know that I would mention that; the 1st Minnesota at the exposed center of the Union line; the Iron Brigade on the first day; the colossal losses on both sides, unimaginable losses on both sides in a matter of 3 days--were a sobering reminder of what it took to preserve this country. But we learned something else that day--that it was a near thing. If a Union officer named Strong Vincent had hesitated in moving those three regiments to the top of Little Round Top, or if an officer from Minnesota named William Colvill had hesitated in leading the 1st Minnesota on a suicidal charge--82-percent casualties, a suicidal charge--into the teeth of the Confederate advance, our country would have been lost. It was a near thing. It never had struck me so hard as it did at Gettysburg several weeks ago. And so it is today--a near thing--only, the test is not on the battlefield, and no one here is being asked to give up their lives. We are simply being asked to tell the truth, to recommit to the ideal of democracy, to keep faith with our history and our inheritance. And if we hesitate, all could be lost. This is not speculation. All could be lost. And we now know from the events of January 6 and the relentless attempts to subvert the results of the 2020 election in the last days of the prior administration, it was and still is a near thing. That is what is so chilling and frightening. As it is in the old Protestant hymn I remember from my youth, so it is today: Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide. I believe that this is that moment for each of us. The concluding words of Lincoln in his message to Congress in the dark winter of 1862 have never been more apt. They are eerily applicable to us today. Here is what Abraham Lincoln said: Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. In honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. Indeed, destiny has placed us here at one of history's fateful moments. Our response to it will be our most important legacy. Of all the other things that we have done, this moment will be our most important legacy. I believe we all know our responsibility. And whether we like it or not, history will record whether we--each one of us--meets that responsibility. Madam President, may God, working through each of us, save the United States of America. I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, I rise today in recognition of the 100th anniversary of the Department of Maine, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Maine VFW. Maine VFW was founded in 1921 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving U.S. veterans of overseas conflicts, advocating for all veterans, their families, and their communities, and recognizing the sacrifices America's servicemen and women have made for this great country. Maine VFW, alongside its sister chapters across the United States, represents the oldest war veterans' organization in America. Every year for the last century, it has made a positive and tangible impact for Maine veterans. Maine VFW deserves not only our admiration, but also our gratitude. Since its founding, Maine VFW has secured an array of remarkable victories for its membership and the many communities it serves. Through the Veterans Affairs office at Togus, Maine VFW helps recoup more than $5 million in earned benefits every year. Maine VFW also advocates for veterans and their families at the State and National level and has helped shape national security and veterans' policy for generations of Americans. In 2020, for example, Maine VFW helped expand the VA's list of conditions for which there is a presumptive service connection for veterans exposed to Agent Orange and has made important strides to support veterans exposed to toxic chemicals in the first Gulf War and the Global War on Terror. Additionally, Maine VFW has worked tirelessly to improve mental healthcare for American veterans and successfully advocated for the John Scott Hannon Veterans Mental Health Care Improvement Act, landmark legislation to increase the VA's mental health workforce and strengthen rural veterans' access to care, which was signed into law last year. Pursuant to its commitment to patriotic service, stewardship, and education, Maine VFW also spearheads a variety of community advocacy initiatives, food and blood drives, and Homeless Veterans Stand Downs to respond to the needs of Maine's most vulnerable populations. On the national level, Veterans of Foreign Wars and each of its State chapters have played a central role in the passage of nearly every important piece of veterans' legislation over the last 100 years, including the GI bills that have helped millions of veterans pursue education and training opportunities since 1944. VFW champions several major youth education and scholarship programs, such as Voice of Democracy, a competitive audio-essay scholarship that awards nearly $2 million annually to students in grades 9-12. VFW and Auxiliary members participate in thousands of community service initiatives and major philanthropic campaigns each year. VFW also performs important work abroad, advocating for prisoners of war and servicemembers who remain missing in action. Throughout our Nation's history, America's veterans have put themselves in harm's way overseas so that we may enjoy freedom at home. A testament to Maine's dedication to this cause is the number of veterans per capita in our State, which consistently ranks as one of the highest in the Nation. Day in and day out, the Maine VFW works to support these veterans and their communities and has done so for a century. On behalf of a grateful nation, I would like to honor and thank the Maine VFW for these 100 years of service. Its steadfast support for servicemembers, veterans, and their families continues to change the lives of Americans at home and abroad.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, I have comments today about an extraordinary member of the Federal workforce, but before I do, I would like to respond to a few of the comments that I heard as I entered the Chamber with regard to Afghanistan. The first is, nobody I know of in any way is denigrating the service of the men and women who served in Afghanistan for 20 years. They served honorably. They served well. They served bravely. They made great sacrifices, and some of them made the ultimate sacrifice. There is no dispute about that. But I think the question of the leaving of Afghanistan is worth a little bit of a broader discussion than what we just heard. No. 1, the decision to leave Afghanistan was made by the Trump administration. Then-President Trump entered into an agreement in February of 2020 with the Taliban that we would leave by May 1 of 2021; all troops would be gone. I have read the agreement. In return, the Taliban said that they would not attack our troops. They also said they would enter into discussions with the Government of Afghanistan and try to effect a peaceful transfer of power. Of course, that didn't happen. But I think it is very important for the American people to realize that the fundamental decision to leave Afghanistan was made almost a year before Joe Biden entered the Presidency. When Joe Biden entered the Presidency, he had a decision to make, and the decision was a very straightforward and very profound one. It was whether to honor the agreement that his predecessor had made and keep the word of the United States or whether to stay in Afghanistan, tear up that agreement, subject our people there to attacks by the Taliban, and then almost inevitably reescalate the conflict. We were down--at the time of the agreement in February of 2020, there were something like 15,000 American troops. By the time President Biden came into office, there were only 2,500 American troops. If he had decided to stay, it wasn't a question of, we will just stay with our 2,500 troops; we would have been at war with the Taliban, and we would have inevitably--he, the President, Biden, would have inevitably been in a situation to increase our presence in Afghanistan once again after 20 years. President Biden decided that our mission there was complete. The original mission, of course, was about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. And he decided that the American people were not prepared to commit to a war that essentially had no end. So that is point one. Point two: There is no question that the leaving was chaotic and difficult and dangerous, but I think it is important to understand some of the surrounding circumstances. For example, I was one who stood on this floor in June and berated the administration for not moving aggressively enough to get those who helped our troops out. The Presiding Officer, I think, took that position. Many of us took that position. We were hammering the administration. But then the President met with President Ghani on June 25 in person, and Ghani specifically said: Please don't start that evacuation in a major way because that in itself will lead to the collapse of our government; it will lead to a loss of confidence. So please don't do that. So then the question became, when, if we withdrew our troops, would the Afghan Government fail? And we are going to be having hearings here this week, next week, the week after, to discuss that very question: What was the intelligence? I am a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, and I can't talk about what I learned from the intelligence officials leading up to August of 2021. But the question is, Did the administration expect the Afghan Government to fall in a matter of days--8 days, I believe? I think clearly they did not. Should they? Was it a failure of intelligence? I don't believe so. Intelligence is about data. It is about how many troops, how many guns? Who has the arms? Who holds what territory? The most difficult intelligence questions are psychological: Will the Afghan Army fight? Will they have the will to fight? Indeed, the Afghan security forces have fought for years and lost thousands. But when President Ghani fled the country, the government simply collapsed, and the Afghan security forces essentially said: Why should we fight if the government has gone? I have heard it said that we left--I think my colleague from Wyoming said we left over 200 Americans or 150 trapped. A hundred or so have left in the last few days, left on a charter flight a couple of days ago. Yes, it is more difficult for them to get out, but the administration is working to get them out. The question is, Should the administration have stayed and triggered a possible conflict with the Taliban and attacks by terrorists, which did occur at the gate of the airport, versus the evacuation of everyone? And it was very difficult to determine, A, who these people were, and B, whether or not some of them wanted to leave. They were dual citizens. So that was a difficult decision. My understanding is that the military advice to the President was that it was in America's interest to abide by the August 31 deadline and continue to work diplomatically to enable American citizens to leave. In fact, my understanding from public reports is the Taliban has essentially said: If you are an American citizen, if you have the paperwork, we will let you leave. So those people weren't trapped. What bothers me about this conversation is the ignoring of the fact that 124,000 people were evacuated in 18 days, the largest airlift in history--124,000 people, including about 6,000 Americans, people from NATO, our NATO allies, and thousands of Afghans who were those people who assisted us. Did we get them all out? I doubt it. But I can remember, as I am sure the Presiding Officer can, earlier this year, we were talking about 18,000 of those SIVs. We got out 124,000 people. It was a logistical-- it was an incredible logistical and diplomatic achievement. There are plenty of questions left. There are questions to be answered. My problem is concluding that it was a disaster, concluding that the President did it all wrong, concluding and reaching conclusions without the facts. Let's have our hearings. Let's find out what actually happened. What was the intelligence? What did the administration know? What was the basis of the military advice to leave on August 31? But also, part of the facts is what was achieved: 124,000 people who are now being housed and fed and vetted and treated for, examined for medical conditions. It is an amazing logistical achievement. If you are talking about the armed services, let's talk about ready, aim, fire, not ready, fire, aim. Let's hold our fire until we understand what actually happened. I believe that is what we should do in this country responsibly rather than immediately going on the offensive and declaring the President incompetent and a disaster and should resign and all of those things. We ought to understand what actually happened, and we will. That is our role. We should work through the process of gaining the facts before we draw the conclusions that I have heard drawn over the last week.