Tim Kaine

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I have 6 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Auto Reenroll Act of 2022, alongside Representative Kathy Manning, who has introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives. Enacting this bill would improve financial security for Americans by strengthening their private retirement savings. Nearly 7 in 10 Americans working in the private sector have access to employer-sponsored retirement plans, but a quarter of those with access do not participate in those plans. This means less money saved for retirement. Often, it means leaving money on the table, in the form of employer-matching contributions. Encouraging more employees to participate in their workplace plans would increase their overall compensation and improve their financial security and retirement outlook. The Auto Reenroll Act of 2022 would boost participation through a simple change to the automatic enrollment safe harbor. Automatic enrollment plans have been tremendously successful at encouraging workers to participate in employer-sponsored plans, but employees who opt out of participating at the beginning of their tenure will likely never reconsider that decision. This bill would build on the success of auto enrollment by having employers reenroll nonparticipants once every 3 years, providing them another opportunity to consider participation. This would encourage those employees to reassess their nonparticipation as their financial situation evolves. I encourage my colleagues to support this commonsense legislation to bolster private retirement savings.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Auto Reenroll Act of 2022, alongside Representative Kathy Manning, who has introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives. Enacting this bill would improve financial security for Americans by strengthening their private retirement savings. Nearly 7 in 10 Americans working in the private sector have access to employer-sponsored retirement plans, but a quarter of those with access do not participate in those plans. This means less money saved for retirement. Often, it means leaving money on the table, in the form of employer-matching contributions. Encouraging more employees to participate in their workplace plans would increase their overall compensation and improve their financial security and retirement outlook. The Auto Reenroll Act of 2022 would boost participation through a simple change to the automatic enrollment safe harbor. Automatic enrollment plans have been tremendously successful at encouraging workers to participate in employer-sponsored plans, but employees who opt out of participating at the beginning of their tenure will likely never reconsider that decision. This bill would build on the success of auto enrollment by having employers reenroll nonparticipants once every 3 years, providing them another opportunity to consider participation. This would encourage those employees to reassess their nonparticipation as their financial situation evolves. I encourage my colleagues to support this commonsense legislation to bolster private retirement savings.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all remaining time be yielded back before the Lee and Cruz amendment votes and that the Senate now vote in relation to the Lee amendment.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to speak in opposition to Senator Cruz's amendment, No. 4927. Everyone in this body who attended school in the United States had to get vaccines to attend school--measles, mumps, rubella, polio, chickenpox. Everyone in this body who sent a child to school in the United States had to make sure that they got their children vaccinated. Is that because of a big Federal mandate? No. All 50 States--Utah, Texas, New York, Maine, Washington, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Virginia--embraced their own vaccine mandates--all 50. There are some variations. Iowa doesn't mandate a mumps vaccine, and Virginia mandates a human papillomavirus vaccine, but we leave it up to local school boards and State superintendents of instruction to decide if a vaccine is warranted. This is unprecedented in this body, an effort by the Federal Government to force local school boards and State superintendents of instruction to not have a vaccine mandate at the cost of taking money away from the students and the teachers and the parents. In Virginia, parents very strongly support vaccination of children. Why would we not listen to parents? Why would we not listen to the local school boards that are hearing from parents about this? I urge my colleagues to reject a massive Federal overreach that would disempower school boards and States and take funding away from their children's education. Please vote no on the Cruz amendment.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, by supporting the development of a workforce trained in in-demand skills, we can accelerate the recovery of our economy. The Nation's continued progress and the socioeconomic mobility of our citizens are contingent on the education and skills of the American workforce and its ability to adjust to and fulfill the needs of the 21st century economy, especially in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and with growing infrastructure needs. Career and technical education--CTE--programs are vital to every student's education, providing them access to the important knowledge, skills, and credentials needed to obtain careers in rapidly growing, high- demand industries. Today, approximately 11 million students across the Nation are enrolled in CTE programs offered by thousands of career academies, comprehensive high schools, CTE high schools, community colleges, and CTE centers. Through applied learning, these students obtain workplace skills and technical training that mirror in-demand positions in the workforce. In the next decade, millions of skilled workers will be needed to fill infrastructure positions in the United States, including jobs related to designing, building, and operating transportation, housing, telecommunication, and utilities facilities. As local governments are able to invest in projects previously put on hold because of the pandemic and with the recent passage of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, there will be even more demand for skilled workers. CTE programs intentionally match skills with workforce demands, lowering the probability of high school drop-out and increasing the likelihood of on-time graduation rates. One study showed that high school students who were CTE concentrators graduated from high school, enrolled in postsecondary education, and were employed full-time at higher rates than their nonconcentrator peers. CTE concentrators also had a higher median income 8 years after graduation. These CTE programs will help fill the estimated 30 million U.S. jobs available with an average annual income of $55,000 that do not require a bachelor's degree yet necessitate some level of postsecondary education. In 2018, Congress affirmed the importance of CTE by passing the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act, which supports CTE programs in secondary and postsecondary education. We also need to ensure we continue reskilling and upskilling workers by supporting workforce development programs. Today, with my Senate CTE Caucus cochairs Senator Portman, Senator Baldwin, and Senator Young and more than two-thirds of my Senate colleagues, I am pleased to again introduce a bipartisan resolution to designate February as Career and Technical Education--CTE--Month. CTE Month encourages students, parents, counselors, educators, and school leaders to learn more about the diverse educational opportunities offered in their communities and recognize the valuable role of CTE in developing a well-educated and highly skilled workforce in the United States. By formally recognizing CTE Month through this resolution, we hope to bring greater awareness to improving access to high-quality career and technical education for millions of America's students and our Nation's ongoing economic competitiveness. S. Res. 517

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am glad that a number of my Republican colleagues are in the Chamber because I am going to speak very briefly just to reassure you that I am not so immodest that I believe I am going to persuade you, but I do want to try to reassure you. We are going to take up a rules reform proposal that will not blow up the Senate. We are going to take up a rules reform proposal that will not abolish the filibuster, that will not weaken the filibuster. We are going to take up a proposal that will show you, even if you are not persuaded, that we have been listening to you, that we have been listening to all of our colleagues, as we try to come up with a rules reform proposal to let us address the voting rights issue. I am glad to see Senator Collins and Senator Coons here on the floor. They helped put together the 2017 letter that many of us signed. It is very carefully worded, and it is two paragraphs. What they got us to join together as bipartisan Senators to express was our united determination to preserve the ability of Members to engage in extended debate when bills are on the Senate floor--extended debate when bills are on the Senate floor--and that is what our rules reform proposal will do. The simplest way to understand it--and Senator Merkley is going to go into more detail--is that it switches the current secret filibuster into a public filibuster and makes both parties have to work on the floor. The majority has to work and the minority has to work on the floor to get the kind of extended public debate that we joined together to seek in the letter in 2017. Let's face it. We don't really do this. The current rules are an obstacle to extended debate because you just vote down the motion to proceed, and you can't even get on a bill. Then, if you do get on a bill, the 60-vote cloture threshold is used, with confidence, by a filibustering minority. You don't even have to show up to debate because there is an awareness that you can't get 60 votes to terminate debate. So, instead of trying to change the rule about terminating debate--which, as my colleague Senator Manchin pointed out, to terminate debate has always required more than a simple majority--we are going to restore actually having debate, and when debate is finished, the rules of this Senate have always been, when debate is finished, even after a long time, passage is by a simple majority. Our proposal is to restore a talking filibuster, which has been the history of this Senate over the vast majority of our history, and to make a simple change to make it public rather than secret so that our colleagues and the American public can understand and then hold us accountable for our actions. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am so glad to be with my colleagues on the floor on this most important day discussing a most important topic, and I want to say particularly that I am glad to follow my friend from Texas. The senior Senator from Texas is a friend. We have traveled together. We have legislated together. But friends can disagree, and on this topic we disagree strongly. Life throws ironies at us. The Senator from Texas inhabits the seat that was held by Lyndon Baines Johnson--Lyndon Baines Johnson--the towering figure who helped usher through the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I inhabit a seat that for years was called the Byrd seat in the Senate, inhabited for 50 years by Harry Byrd, Sr., and Harry Byrd, Jr., who were known for their virulent efforts to deprive African Americans of civil rights, including frequent extended filibusters on this floor against voting rights. LBJ is held in high regard today because of his passion for voting rights. Harry Byrd--I was at the State capitol in Richmond on Saturday to see our new Governor inaugurated, and I walked by the spot on the capitol grounds where a Harry Byrd statue used to stand. It was removed 6 months ago. The Harry Byrd Middle School in Henrico County was renamed 5 years ago to the Quioccasin Middle School. The Harry Byrd, Jr. School of Business at the Shenandoah University in Winchester, their hometown, had that name stripped off the building a few years ago. And I stand to follow the Senator who holds LBJ's seat--the Senator from the Byrd seat--to today argue that the time has come for us to protect voting rights. I am just happy to be on the floor talking about a bill. I mean, for gosh sake, we have been able to talk about voting rights in the morning hour. Mr. Leader, I have been here since January of 2013. This is the first time since then that we have been able to get a bill on the floor to talk about voting rights. And I am going to admit something to you guys that will not surprise you because you know me: I am incredibly naive. At age 63, I am still incredibly naive. I came to the Senate in 2013. One of the first things that happened was the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby v. Holder case. It happened when I had been here about 6 months. And the Supreme Court said: But Congress can fix this. Preclearance is fine. You just shouldn't use a geographical requirement that dates back to 1965. Just come up with a new standard for which jurisdictions should have to preclear voting changes, and make it even-steven. So we quickly did come up with something: You only have to get preclearance if you have had a history of voting rights problems in the last 10 years. If you don't, no preclearance. We will treat every ZIP Code--north, west, east, south, midwest--exactly the same. We came up with it, and we went to Republicans. We went to Republicans knowing they were a great voting rights party--the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment, the 19th Amendment. The women's vote happened in a Democratic administration but with Republican support. The 26th Amendment--so 18-year-olds can vote--happened in the Nixon administration. But especially the Voting Rights Act, it wouldn't have happened without rock-solid Republican support. It was always reauthorized with Republican support. So at this moment when the act is gutted, we go to Republicans and say: All you have to do is be consistent with the history of your party and help us fix the Voting Rights Act. One. In the House, in the Senate, where is this 150-year history of supporting voting rights? Only one--only the senior Senator from Alaska, Senator Murkowski, would join in this effort. I was so naive. I was so naive. But we are here today, and we have an opportunity. Why are we here? We know why we are here. After preclearance was struck down, there began to be an escalating avalanche of laws to make it harder for people to vote. Then we had a President who did a frontal assault on democracy itself: demeaning the democracy; attacking election officials; trying to dig up dirt on a Presidential opponent from a foreign country; refusing to concede; filing meritless lawsuits; bringing about threats against election officials; violence in the Capitol, against the Capitol, against these Members, against the staffers, against Capitol Police, against our democracy; repeated efforts in States around the country to roll back; violent threats against election officials that persist even to today. That is why we are here. We are standing exactly in the same spot as that Senate stood in 1965: disenfranchisement efforts, coalesced by a galvanizing action of violence--the beating of John Lewis on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL. We have an avalanche of disenfranchisement galvanized by an act of violence--the attack on this democracy, the physical attack on January 6. The time to act is now. Let me respond quickly to some comments I have heard from colleagues this morning, particularly Senator Cornyn. You have heard again and again this theme that the bills we are attempting are a Federal takeover of elections. They use that--federalizing elections, a Federal takeover of elections. So here comes the history quiz part of my speech. Both Senators Durbin and Klobuchar have referred to this and read it, and I am going to do it again: ``The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.'' How many times--how many times in the Constitution--can you read the phrase ``at any time''? The Constitution gives enormous powers to Congress in article I, enormous powers to the President in article II, powers to the judiciary in article III, powers to the States, powers to voters. It is sort of assumed, when those powers are given, that they can be exercised at any time. But in one occasion--in one occasion only--the Framers decided: We had really better spell out ``at any time.'' The only use of that phrase in the Constitution is to put an exclamation point, essentially, after the notion that Congress must be able to act at any time to alter or make regulations with respect to the Federal vote. Senator Cornyn said that 94 percent of people were happy after the November 2020 elections. Then why has the GOP decided to systematically weaken votes, take votes away, put obstacles in the path, kick out duly-sworn election officials, and put decisionmaking in other people's hands? Senator Cornyn said that this was a partisan effort. Partisan? Partisan? One of the chapters of our bill is nonpartisan redistricting. That is partisan? Another part of our bill is complete transparency in all campaign contributions. How is that partisan? Go poll any Republican, Democrat, Independent populous about what they think of transparency in campaign contributions. It is overwhelmingly popular. We have made some of these changes in Virginia. Thank goodness that this bill would allow it. We just had a Governor's race. Turnout went up by 20 percent, and a Republican won. It wasn't my candidate. It was good for democracy. This is not a partisan bill, even if the Republicans won't stand up for it. Finally, the Republican leader and Senator Cornyn started off with a lengthy ``Well, why won't you work on other stuff, like stuff about COVID, stuff about the economy?'' My memory is pretty good. I think we were here in March dealing with a significant bill that was about vaccinations and COVID and support for small businesses and a whole series of things--hospitals, educational aid. How many Republicans voted for that bill, the American Rescue Plan--you know, the one that was COVID and the economy? None. Why don't we pay attention to some other stuff? Well, we have been, generally with little support. I will close and say this: Congress may at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations--at any time. If not after the Supreme Court cuts the heart out of the Voting Rights Act, when? If not after an avalanche of State legislation carving back voting rights, when? If not after a violent attack, unprecedented in the history of this country, on the Capitol of the United States to disenfranchise 80 million people and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, when? If not after subsequent Big Lies leading to action in State legislatures all over this country, when? We may act to protect Federal elections at any time. We are here for such a time, and the time to act is now. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE. Senator Cotton, what Angus said. And I am so glad that Senator Lankford has stayed in the room because you have been saying we changed our position. You just really need to read the letter. And I do appreciate that you put it up because others were referring to the letter without doing that. The operative phrase is exactly what you read: ``We are united in our determination to preserve the ability of Members to engage in extended debate when bills are on the Senate floor.'' We couldn't even debate this bill. You guys wouldn't let us. You kept using the 60-vote block on the motion to proceed so that we couldn't get on the bill. In the 5 years since 2017, many of us have come to realize, this is what we want, but the current abuse of Senate rules is blocking us from having discussions about voting rights or about matters that you think are important. This is still what we want. We want the ability to have extended debate when bills are on the Senate floor. That is what the motion will eventually be about when we vote on it later today, to move to a talking filibuster instead of a secret filibuster. The way to look at the rule change that we are going to contemplate later is, if you really love the filibuster--and the word ``filibuster'' isn't in this letter at all, but if you really love the filibuster, do you demand that it stay secret or should it be carried out open, publicly, in view of the voters and your Senate colleagues? That is what the vote will be. We have listened to those of you who have said don't abolish the filibuster, don't nuke the filibuster, don't blow up the filibuster, don't weaken the filibuster, and the only change we propose is that the filibuster be a public filibuster, not a secret one. So you stood on the floor and asked if we would join you in that operative phrase, ``engage in extended debate when bills are on the Senate floor.'' The combination of the block on the motion to proceed, together with the paper pocket filibuster, where people do not have to show up to speak, much less to vote, we can restore the filibuster, frankly, to what it was during the vast majority of the Senate's history and require that people actually do it and be accountable to their colleagues and to the public. And that is what we propose to do.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, if I might respond.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Madam President, one of the things that I sometimes regret about this body--and especially after hearing such an eloquent presentation from my colleague from California--is that we don't do enough dialogue here; it is a lot of monologues. Often, some of the best speeches that I have heard in this Chamber have been delivered to nearly empty Chambers because we don't sit and listen to one another, answer questions, engage, find the greater wisdom. I am excited that tomorrow will give us an opportunity to do that. I expect 50--hopefully, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100--Senators on the floor for a discussion about voting rights, which we have not been able to have since I joined the Senate in January of 2013. This is an enormously important topic. We have not had a floor debate on any voting rights bill since I came to the Senate in 2013. In this spirit of dialogue, I wanted to basically come and talk about Senate rules to respond to a question or a challenge that Republicans were making on the floor last week. They pointed out that I, along with a number of Democrats, had signed a letter in 2017, arguing, in their view, that we should not change the filibuster on legislation. They cited that, and they said: How can you stand on the floor now and contemplate changes to the filibuster rule? So what I wanted to do tonight is come to the floor and talk about 2017, talk about things that have happened since 2017, and, frankly, explain why I haven't really changed the position that I articulated in the letter, but I have changed my views about whether the filibuster accomplishes the objective or cuts against it. Finally, what I want to do at the end of that, of answering their question about that letter, is to reassure them--to reassure them that what we will reach for tomorrow is not a blowing up of the filibuster. I heard my colleague from Alaska today say we wanted to blow up the filibuster. No. Let me reassure all Republicans that that is not what they are going to be asked to vote on tomorrow. They are going to be asked to restore the filibuster to what it was during the vast majority of the history of this body. Here is the operant quote from the letter of 2017 that I signed. It was in April of 2017, shortly after the Republicans had changed the Senate rules to ram through Neil Gorsuch after they had refused to even entertain the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. It was a bipartisan letter. ``We are united in our determination to preserve the ability of Members to engage in extended debate when bills are on the Senate floor''--``extended debate when bills are on the Senate floor.'' Well, what has happened since that letter was written in April of 2017? First, those of us in the room know, as for extended debate on the Senate floor, are you kidding? It almost never happens. The filibuster rule that some of us hoped might facilitate that has become an obstacle to it. In fact, you can't even get a bill on the Senate floor because the filibuster requirement, which was initially something about final passage, has been now imported even into proceeding to legislation. So when a majority of Members of the greatest deliberative body in the world decide they want to talk about a topic, they can't. It is like the 21st century's version of the gag rule, which prohibited discussions in Congress on items related to slavery during the 1830s and 1840s. There has been a gag rule prohibiting discussions of the voting rights bill and other civil rights legislation and other important priorities because you can't even get on the bill, much less have extended debate about it. When you do get on the bill, how many bills around here do we have extended debate on? Mostly, we are in a Chamber like this, with three people, and there is no real debate that is going on because the abuse of the filibuster leads a party to say: Well, gosh, if they can't get 60 votes for something, we don't even have to show up. The old public filibuster of ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'' days has now turned to a secret, private filibuster where people can stay in their offices and never show their faces on the floor. So that notion of naive Senators like me in 2017, wherein we are determined to preserve the ability of Members to engage in extended debate when bills are on the Senate floor, has been undermined by the filibuster by making it hard to get bills on the floor and then guaranteeing, when they are on the floor, that nobody needs to show up. Other things have happened since 2017. I needn't go over them at length, but I will go over them. I didn't imagine that we would have a President who would lead an assault on American democracy, who would lie and claim he won the popular vote in 2016 when he didn't, who would claim there was massive fraud in the Virginia election in 2016 when there wasn't, and who would go to a foreign country and try to dig up dirt on a political opponent he feared in 2020. I didn't imagine that those things would happen. I didn't imagine that the President, having lost an election in November 2020, would encourage his followers to gather in DC to be wild. I didn't imagine that he would call the head of the Georgia elections and say: You have to find me thousands of votes so I can win. I didn't imagine those things. I didn't imagine that there would be a violent attack here that would injure 150 police officers, that there would be an effort to disenfranchise 80 million Americans and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. I didn't imagine those things. I didn't imagine that States would do what my colleague from California has suggested: Look at what happened in 2020, embrace the Trump Big Lie, and decide then, boy, we have really got to carve this back. We have got to carve this back dramatically and make it harder for particular groups of people who live in particular cities or counties, based on whom they vote for, to vote. I didn't imagine those things. I will tell you something else I didn't imagine. I didn't imagine that we wouldn't get any help from the Republican Party in addressing these problems. The Republican Party throughout most of its history has been a great voting rights party. The 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment only passed with Republican votes to guarantee people equal access to the ballot. When the 19th Amendment was passed, guaranteeing women the right to vote, it was in a Democratic administration, the Wilson administration, but Republicans were solidly on board. When the 26th Amendment passed to give the franchise to 18-year-olds, it was in the Nixon administration, and Democrats and Republicans were on board. The Republican Party, from its origins, right before Lincoln was President, was always on the march and, frankly, usually leading the march to expand people's ability to participate in voting. There is no example that is more dramatic than the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. There was a 60-day filibuster here on the Senate floor. At the end, it was broken. Republicans voted for the Voting Rights Act near unanimously. Democrats were strong but not as solid as the Republicans were. Then, over and over again in the years between 1965 and up through 2006, Republicans would vote unanimously or near unanimously to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. But something changed between 2006 and 2013. Something changed at about the time that Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. When the Supreme Court of the United States, in the Shelby case, gutted the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act but told Congress ``You can fix it'' and we went back to all of the Republicans who had supported the Voting Rights Act from 1965 to 2006 and said ``OK. The Supreme Court says here is what is wrong, and we can fix it,'' we have not been able to find any--any--Republican support save Lisa Murkowski of this Chamber, who is a cosponsor of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the restoration of preclearance. When I signed the letter in 2017, I could not have imagined that we could not have found any Republican support on any voting rights issue. I heard my colleague from Utah, Senator Romney, talk a second ago, and he said: Well, how come Democrats didn't do it? I started working with Republicans in July--months before we filed the Freedom to Vote Act. Could you do it this way? Could you do it that way? What about if we completely gave up the idea of any rule or filibuster reform. Would you then engage with us? How about unlimited amendments? How about give us a counterproposal? I have been in these discussions with Republican colleagues for months. Again, save Senator Murkowski on the John Lewis bill, there has been no help forthcoming to save our democracy, to save voting. So, when colleagues ask, ``Well, you signed a letter in 2017, and that letter said that we should preserve the ability of Members to engage in extended debate when bills are on the Senate floor. So why are you now contemplating rules changes?'' my answer to them is that I am contemplating rules changes to do exactly that. We don't have extended debate on the Senate floor. You can't get bills on the Senate floor. Our democracy is under attack, and voting is under attack. Contrary to the previous 150-year history of your party, you won't lift a finger to protect voting rights or protect the integrity of our elections, but because you won't doesn't mean we should not. In fact, if you won't, the burden is on our shoulders even more. Here is something else, I will be honest, that I have come to understand more about the filibuster since 2017. Then I want to conclude by offering some words of reassurance to my Republican colleagues. The fact that the filibuster is now used indiscriminately against everything does not cleanse it of the stench of its predominant use in our history to block civil rights legislation. I mean, now we use the filibuster to block what might be a nonconsequential appointment. We use it for everything. However, when the history of the filibuster is written in this Chamber, the pivotal, epic moments that will get remembered are Robert Byrd's 14-hour-and-13-minute speech to try to filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Strom Thurmond's massive filibuster against civil rights laws, and Senators from Virginia--Senators who held the seat that I now occupy--filibustering against civil rights laws. You don't cleanse the stench from the filibuster by just suddenly using it for everything. You still have to acknowledge it has played a particular role in the Senate. Sadly, that role has usually been to the detriment of the kinds of people who couldn't see anybody who looked like them in the Senate. I occupy a seat that was occupied for 50 years by Harry Byrd, Sr., and Harry Byrd, Jr. It is called the Byrd seat in the Senate because the Byrd machine ran Virginia politics, and they kind of owned it. Harry Byrd, Sr., was Governor in the 1920s and came to the Senate when Carter Glass died in 1933 and stayed until he died in 1966. His son, Harry Byrd, Jr., was then appointed to the Senate until 1983. For 50 years, the Byrds held the seat I now occupy. I was at the inauguration of our new Governor in Richmond on Saturday, and I walked by an empty place on the Capitol Square where, just 6 months ago, there was a statue of Harry Byrd, Sr.--the Governor who was a great highway builder and infrastructure guy; the Governor who came up with the idea and worked with President Roosevelt to build the Shenandoah National Park; the Governor who then, as Senator, led this Byrd machine and was viewed as the dominant figure in Virginia political life during the 20th century, together with his son, Harry Byrd, Jr.--but the statue was taken down. The statue was taken down 7 months ago. The middle school that was named for Harry Byrd, Sr., in Henrico County was renamed 5 years ago to Quioccasin Middle School. Why was that? Highway builder, park developer, dominant political figure, his statue was taken down because of what he did in the U.S. Senate; that he would write the southern manifesto to rally Senators against Brown v. Board; that he would encourage Virginia public school systems-- again, this is as a Senator, not as a Governor; he encouraged Virginia public school systems--to shut down rather than integrate; that he would engage in one filibuster after the next against civil rights legislation, including the Voting Rights Acts, and never apologized, never admit he was wrong, unlike Robert Byrd, who was a Klansman before he was in the U.S. Senate and who filibustered famously against civil rights legislation until he had an epiphany in 1968 when he voted for the Fair Housing Act and apologized for the rest of his life and became a civil rights champion. Harry Byrd, Sr., used the filibuster for, frankly, what it has been used for around here--to exclude people from the democracy. And the tributes to Harry Byrd and the statues and the school names are all coming down. Even at the university in his own hometown, Shenandoah University in Winchester, which had named its business school after Harry Byrd, Jr., they wiped that name off, because the filibuster is not just like a Senate rule that can be used like anything else. It has been used for a particular purpose, and we can't be blind to that. But let me just say this, as I conclude. I want to offer my colleagues a reassurance--those who have asked why we are contemplating rules changes, those who signed the letter with us, because it was a bipartisan letter. It was led by Senators Coons and Collins, and many Republicans signed it. ``We are united in our determination to preserve the ability of Members to engage in extended debate when bills are on the Senate floor.'' For the first time in my Senate career, there is a voting rights bill on the Senate floor, and we will have a rules adjustment vote at the end of the day tomorrow, in all likelihood. And what will that vote be? Will the vote be to eliminate the filibuster? No. Will the vote be to abolish the filibuster? No. Will it be to weaken the filibuster? No. Here is the vote that we will vote on tomorrow: Should we change the secret filibuster that allows Members to just sit in their office and not take the floor and not explain their opposition to their colleagues and not have to face the American public? Should we change that secret filibuster into a public filibuster, the way it was done during the vast majority of Senate history, where Senators who went to block action by a majority should at least have to do the work, should at least have to come to the floor and explain to their colleagues and the American public why the majority should not act? For everyone on the Republican side who signed that letter saying we should have extended debate on the Senate floor and it should not be curtailed, we are giving you a chance to do exactly what you pledged to do. For every one in our own caucus who has expressed reticence about weakening or diminishing the filibuster, we are giving you exactly the thing that you said you wanted--an opportunity to have full debate that could go on for a very long time and not be curtailed. And the only thing we will require is that that debate actually happen in the view of the American public and your colleagues, a fundamental opportunity for all of us to do the right thing by Senate rules to accomplish the right thing for our democracy. I so welcome the chance to finally have this debate on the floor of the U.S. Senate. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am so proud to be on the floor with my colleagues Senator Durbin, Senator Merkley, and Senator Klobuchar to work on this issue of such great importance. I would like to now discuss the John Lewis Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, critical voting rights proposals that the Senate will soon take up and that the Senate needs to pass. We have tried to bring these bills to the floor in recent months. The minority party has blocked the effort to even consider the bills, with the sole exception of one Republican, the senior Senator from Alaska, who has been willing to vote to proceed to consideration of the John Lewis Act. Some of the most epic moments in the history of this Chamber have come as we grappled with voting rights. After the Civil War, the debate surrounding the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were epic struggles about the Nation's new recommitment to the equality principle after the Civil War, and those struggles included dramatic discussions about voting connected to both the 14th and 15th Amendments. The struggle for women's suffrage, culminating in the 1919 passage of the 19th Amendment in the Senate, was also a pivotal moment for this body. I believe the most dramatic voting rights struggle in the Chamber was the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Civil rights activist John Lewis and others marching for voting rights were savagely beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL, in March of 1965. The building frustration of those denied votes in many States, together with that shocking instance of violence, coalesced into a final push to get a comprehensive voting rights bill approved. President Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress on March 15, just 8 days after the attack on John Lewis, and he threw his support behind the Voting Rights Act. The Senate began floor consideration of the bill on April 22. After more than a month of vigorous debating, filibustering, fighting, and amending, the bill passed, and it passed in a dramatically bipartisan fashion. Democratic support was 47 to 16. Republican support was overwhelming--30 to 2. The House passed its own version in July. A conference report was passed and then accepted by both Houses in early August. President Johnson then signed the bill in a ceremony attended by Rosa Parks, John Lewis, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, and many other legislative and civil rights leaders. The Voting Rights Act that was fought for so hard in this Chamber and passed in 1965 is viewed as the most important piece of civil rights legislation in the history of this country. It ushered in dramatic increases in voter turnout, more opportunity for racial minorities not only to vote but also to run for office. Studies have drawn a direct connection between the act and concrete actions to provide more government services to communities that had long suffered from public disinvestment. It is obvious: When all citizens are protected in their right to vote, then government becomes more responsive to all citizens. The 1965 act was strongly bipartisan, both in its passage and in the frequent reauthorization over the years, most recently in 2006. But since 2006--really beginning with the Obama Presidency--the Republican Party has essentially done a 180 in its long support of expanding the franchise. Hostile Supreme Court rulings in Shelby v. Mississippi and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee have put the burden back on Congress to fix the Voting Rights Act. But, in contrast to previous history where Republicans would join with us in those efforts, efforts to fix or improve the act have foundered because now the Republican Party is unwilling to support voting rights. I talk about the 1965 act because it is notable to me for two reasons. First, it came at a time when many States, primarily in the South, including my own Commonwealth of Virginia, were undertaking massive efforts to disenfranchise African-American voters. And there was a culminating event--shocking violence against John Lewis and others as they tried to press for voting rights, and that violence galvanized the Nation and this body into action so we could protect voting and protect our democracy. History repeats itself. Today, we are seeing a full-out attack on voting and our entire electoral system. Now it is not just limited to Southern States. Now it is not just directed solely at African-American voters. Now it is not just an attack led by bigoted State or local officials in one region. The attack emanated from the previous President, with years of attacks on the integrity of American elections--attacks that ratcheted up in the closing phase of the 2020 election. President Trump, after losing that race, then went on a wild search for a way to hold on to power, making up lies about the election, spearheading meritless lawsuits in many States to challenge the result, directly asking election officials to ``find'' him enough votes to win key jurisdictions, and even trying to strong-arm his own Vice President into violating his constitutional oath so that he would deliver a victory to the losing candidate. Just as in 1965, there came an unforgettable episode of violence directly related to the attacks on our system of elections. The Capitol itself was attacked on a particular day and hour for a particular purpose: to stop the certification of the electoral outcome. More than 100 police officers were injured that day as a result of this attack on our democracy. Five Virginia law enforcement officers lost their lives as a result of that day. The violence wasn't just a riot; it was violence designed to disenfranchise the 80 million people who had voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. That singular event ranks among the largest disenfranchisement efforts in the history of this country. History repeats itself, and the attacks on our democracy continue. In Republican State legislatures all across this country, as has been demonstrated by my colleague from Minnesota, efforts are underway to restrict voting, to make it harder for people to vote if they are more likely to vote for Democrats, to make it easier to challenge and intimidate voters with the hope that it will discourage their participation, to interfere with the counting of votes, and to interfere with the certification of elections by duly-sworn election officials. These are partisan efforts only occurring in States with Republican leadership, and they pose a grave threat to our democracy. The violence of January 6 also continues in a tremendous spike in threats to those public servants who serve as election officials-- threats to their lives, threats to their families--all designed to intimidate those who won't bend to the will of the former President and those who have been dragged into his full-scale assault on our democracy. So the Senate stands at the same moral crossroads where we stood in the spring of 1965. There is an assault on voting and elections, on the very system of democracy that distinguishes our Nation. The assault has led to shocking and cataclysmic violence specifically designed to disenfranchise millions of people, and the question for the Senate is, What should we do about it? In the John Lewis Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, we find a solution for the moment, just as the Senate found in the Voting Rights Act a solution for its time. The Lewis Act restores the preclearance process contained in section 5 of the Voting Rights Act by coming up with a fair process for determining which jurisdictions must seek preclearance of voting changes. No longer is preclearance limited to certain geographies or States with long histories of discriminatory electoral practice; instead, every region and community is treated the same, subject to preclearance for a fixed period of years following any voting rights violation and able to avoid preclearance if there have been no such violations. The Freedom to Vote Act sets minimal standards for access to the ballot in Federal elections, mandates transparency in campaign contributions, requires nonpartisan redistricting for congressional seats, and provides remedies to block partisan efforts to take power away from duly-sworn election officials. It is designed for the dangers of the moment and will both protect people's right to vote and give them confidence that their vote will be counted and an election result will be accurate and fair. It is high time we take up these bills and pass them, and the floor debate should be vigorous, with an opportunity for colleagues to make their case and offer amendments. The Nation is watching us and needs to understand where every Member of the body stands on this critical issue. I acknowledge one sad reality of this likely debate. Protecting voting rights is unlikely to attract Republican support as it did in 1965. I hope I am wrong. I would be very happy to apologize for being wrong, but I have had enough conversations with my Republican colleagues, and I watched their votes on the floor as we brought these matters up before. I think I understand what they will likely do. But even if we get no Republican support, we cannot shrink from the task. The stakes are too high and the moment is too meaningful to allow for any evasion. If we pass this bill, it will be good for Republicans and Democrats and Independents because it is good for democracy. As I close, I will just bring up a recent example to show why expanding voting is not just good for one party. We just had a Governor's election in Virginia, November 2021. My preferred Democratic candidate lost, but the election, in a bigger way, was good for democracy because the turnout in the election went up by 25 percent over the turnout in the Governor's race 4 years before. More people participated, and that is a good thing. Why did the turnout go up? The turnout went up because Democrats earned control of both houses of our State legislative chamber and made a set of changes--much like the changes in the Freedom to Vote Act--to make it easier for people to participate and give them confidence in the integrity of the ballot and certification of results. Guess what. When Democrats did that, turnout went up by 25 percent. And the winner wasn't a Democrat; the winner was a Republican. Doing things like the Freedom to Vote Act isn't partisan, even though the vote in here will be partisan. It is good for all. That increase in turnout by almost 25 percent almost set a record in Virginia. There was only one Governor's race where the turnout jump was even bigger, and it was when my father-in-law was elected Governor of Virginia in 1969. My father-in-law, Linwood Holton, had run as a Republican for Governor in 1965 and lost. He ran again in 1969 and won, and the turnout went up by 65 percent between his two races. That is the one that sets the record in Virginia. Why did turnout go up? Because the Voting Rights Act was passed and because the U.S. Supreme Court in Harper v. Virginia in 1966 struck down poll taxes as a precondition of voting in State elections. So fancy that. You make it easier for people to vote, you remove discriminatory obstacles in their way, and more people participate--not necessarily good for Democrats, not always good for Republicans, but always good for the health of a democracy. That is why we need to pass these bills. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am so happy to join my colleagues on the floor in a very solemn effort to think through the meaning, at a 1-year anniversary, of the attack upon the Capitol on January 6. Today is not only that anniversary. Today, in the Christian tradition, is the Feast of the Epiphany. And I remembered, sitting in the Chamber last year, as we were barricaded in, under attack, and with the confusion all around me, at one point I realized: Today is the Feast of the Epiphany--the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6. What is Epiphany? The Feast of the Epiphany celebrates the arrival of the magi at the manger. Wise men of the day saw a portent and disturbance in the sky, and were led to a place where they believed something remarkable would happen. What they found completely surprised them. It wasn't what they were expecting. It wasn't power. It wasn't pomp. It wasn't majesty. It was a tiny baby, born to a family too humble to even get a room at an inn, lying with his mother in a stable, surrounded by barnyard animals. They found something that they couldn't have imagined, and it changed their lives and it changed the world. Why do I reference the Feast of the Epiphany? I reference it because, like many things in the Christian story, it has gone way beyond Christianity. By the middle 1700s or 1800s, the word ``epiphany'' now had a broader use. It was not just about the arrival of the magi at the manger. The word ``epiphany'' now means something much more widespread in the English language. It is defined as a moment in which you suddenly see something in a new or very clear way. The word ``epiphany'' comes from a Greek root meaning reveal. All of us--all of us--no matter how long we have been around, have the capacity for epiphanies--deeper understandings of essential truths that reveal themselves in our lives. I want to talk about January 6 and one epiphany I have had as a result of it. Before I do, I want to acknowledge five people, five Virginia law enforcement officers, who lost their lives in the days after the Capitol attack. I thank my colleague Senator Warner, who talked at really important length about the contributions of the Virginia State Police and the VA National Guard. I want to focus on five people: Brian Sicknick, U.S. Capitol Police, 42-year-old, after service in the military, had been with the Capitol Police for 13 years, dying immediately after the attack because of injuries he received that day; Jeffrey Smith, another Virginian, 35 years old, 12-year patrolman with the Metropolitan Police Department, died after the attack, by suicide; Howie Liebengood, 51 years old, a 15-year veteran of the U.S. Capitol Police, died shortly after the attack, by suicide; Kyle DeFreytag, 26-year-old, 5-year veteran of the Metropolitan Police Department, died a few days after the attack, by suicide; Gunther Hashida, 43 years old, an 18-year veteran of the Metropolitan Police Department, died in the days after the attack, by suicide--all Virginians. I am haunted by these deaths, and I will say, I am particularly haunted by those who died by suicide, whose families are now fighting to get line-of-duty benefits for their deaths. All of us, in our lives, have been affected by suicide in families and friends. And suicide is complicated. There is not a single thing, as you dig into a suicide, but I just use the insights I have gained as a member of the Armed Services Committee, together with you, Mr. President. Over the time we have been here, there has been a slight shift in understanding of causes of suicide within the military. The conventional wisdom about it, when I came here, was that suicide was driven, maybe, as a principal factor in the military and among veterans because of the cumulative effects of trauma. The trauma was so significant that that led to suicide. Of course, trauma is a key factor, but a more recent understanding of suicide suggests that an even more important factor may not be trauma, but a sense of abandonment. I was in a military unit. I had a lot of people around me. They had my back. We were close. We were connected. We were really tight. And then I moved into a civilian world, where I didn't have that connection and people didn't have my back, and I was lost, and I didn't know whom to turn to or who would look out for me. I am haunted by the deaths of these four Virginians to suicide because I wonder if they felt abandoned. Did they feel abandoned by us? They were fighting that day to save our democracy, to save this Capitol, and to save their lives, and yet 147 of the 535 Members of Congress voted with the mob to overturn the election, to throw out the democracy, to do the bidding of a would-be authoritarian. If you are fighting to protect these 535 Members of Congress and this institution and you watch nearly 30 percent of the Members side with the attackers, I would suggest that they might have felt abandoned. When I was here on January 6, I experienced a lot of emotions, and I am just going to describe two: relief and anger. Relief? How could that day create a sense of relief? I was relieved that I had told my staff to stay home. My chief of staff disobeyed me. But I was relieved that I had told my staff to stay home. Thank God, they were safe. I was relieved to look right here and see no pages. I was relieved that pages were not here in this Chamber, because, thank God, they would be safe. And I was relieved not only because my staff was safe, but I was relieved because I didn't want their youthful, altruistic, public- service motivation to be damaged or demoralized by what was happening that day. I expressed this to my staff this morning. I sent a note to them, and I said: In the middle of all these emotions, I was relieved that you weren't here; that I had told you to stay home so you wouldn't be in danger like so many were. But I don't want you to be demoralized by what happened. And I had a staff member come to me right before I came to the floor and said: January 6 didn't demoralize me; it energized me. Thank God for that. The second emotion that was so powerful in me, and even so powerful that I couldn't quite understand it, was anger. Now, of course, anger would be an acceptable and completely understandable reaction to what was going on. And I have known anger in my life, but the anger I felt that day was different than what I had felt in 63 years. There was something different about it. And it took me months--it took me months--to figure it out. Was it just the physical attack? Was it the friends and staff and other people who were in danger? Yeah, that was all part of it. It took me months to figure out exactly why I was so angry. And then I had an epiphany. I had an epiphany. No one in my life had ever tried to disenfranchise me. I am a White male, born in 1958. I am a civil rights lawyer in the capital of the Confederacy, fighting for voting rights for all kinds of people. Of course, voting rights were important. I was passionately committed to it in my professional life before I came here, but it was something that I was sort of, you know, trying to do to help others. No one had ever tried to disenfranchise me. But what was going on on the floor that day was an effort to object to the very first State, as you went through them alphabetically, that had voted for Joe Biden, to object to that State and try to disenfranchise, through that objection and others that were lined up, the 80 million people who had voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. All of us who cast our ballots that way, we were being disenfranchised that day. It had never happened to me before. For some Americans, they had experienced disenfranchisement often in their lives. Some Americans have experienced disenfranchisement during their whole lives. Some Americans have experienced disenfranchisement not for 4 hours but for 4 centuries. It had never happened to me. For a few hours, and just a few--and just a few--I felt the pain of those who have faced disenfranchisement efforts to take away or threaten their vote for their whole lives, and I hated it. I hated that feeling. I hated that feeling. My epiphany was one of empathy: So this is how it feels when others scheme to take your vote, when they try to exclude you, when they try to say you don't count. This is how it feels. It hadn't happened to me before, and for a few hours, it did. The next morning, I walked into the Capitol and the Sun was shining and the threat to me was past. We had finished the work. The insurrection delayed the certification and peaceful transfer of power, but it couldn't stop it. But the epiphany of briefly being in the shoes of those who have been disenfranchised throughout their lives has changed me profoundly. It hasn't changed my personality. It hasn't changed my relationships. But it has changed my priorities. Again, I was a civil rights lawyer doing voting rights work in the capital of the Confederacy. Protecting the right to vote has always been important to me. Protecting the integrity of campaigns and elections have always been important to me. But now it is beyond that. It is not just an important priority, it is an existential necessity that we respond to the mass disenfranchisement effort of January 6, with guaranteeing the franchise; guaranteeing people's right to vote; guaranteeing that, when they vote, they can be secure that their vote will be counted; guaranteeing that they can trust the integrity of the officials that will call the outcomes of elections. My epiphany of empathy has put me in the shoes, for a few hours, of those who have experienced disenfranchisement, and I have concluded that the only response to that has to be--has to be--a concerted effort to protect voting and protect the democracy that relies upon it. I will say this and conclude: January 6 will always be remembered as the attack on the Capitol. January 6 will always be the Feast of the Epiphany. January 6 was a day in our history of epiphanies. But what is the purpose of an epiphany? Is it just to kind of see things a new way? I think the purpose of an epiphany is to change your life; it is to be surprised. Go and see something that you didn't expect, and then be willing to adjust your life and your priority as proof that you were paying attention. We will be faced with a most significant decision in the coming days. Having been the 100 Senators out of the 2,000 in history who have inhabited this Chamber who were here during the attack, will we understand what happened, absorb that epiphany, and then act to protect people's rights to participate in this democracy? I pray that we will. I pray that we will. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, communities of color and those living in rural and underserved areas face significant barriers to healthcare, including physician shortages that have only been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, in many communities of color and rural areas, there are few pathways to enter the medical profession. While medical school enrollment is up by 30 percent, the number of students from rural areas entering medical school declined by 28 percent between 2002 and 2017, with only 4.3 percent of all incoming medical students coming from rural areas in 2017. Similarly, Black, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American students face several barriers to matriculate and graduate from medical school, and there is significant underrepresentation of these students at all U.S. medical schools with the exception of historically Black medical schools. These medical schools represent 2.6 percent of all medical schools but 15 percent of Black medical students, indicating the important role that these institutions play in increasing the diversity of the physician workforce. Health outcomes for patients of color improve when they receive care from doctors of their own racial or ethnic background, and the shortage of providers of color exacerbates the barriers to care that these communities experience. The COVID-19 pandemic worsened long standing health inequities, and it is critical that we expand the diversity of our physician workforce to tackle these rampant disparities and the systemic biases within our health care system. This is why I am introducing the Expanding Medical Education Act, which aims to tackle the lack of representation of rural students, underserved students, and students of color in the physician pipeline by encouraging the recruitment, enrollment, and retention of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The bill would provide grants through the Health Resources and Services Administration, HRSA, to colleges and universities to establish or expand allopathic or osteopathic medical schools in underserved areas or at minority-serving institutions, including historically Black colleges and universities, HBCUs. These grants can be used for planning and construction of a medical school in an areas in which no other school is based; hiring diverse faculty and staff; recruitment, enrollment, and retention of students; and other purposes to ensure increased representation of rural students, underserved students, and students of color in our physician workforce. Our rural communities and communities of color face significant challenges accessing healthcare. It is time our physician workforce reflected these communities. We need to diversify our physician pipeline and change the disparity in representation, and this bill will help get us there. I am proud to reintroduce this important legislation to help us get one step closer to ensuring communities across Virginia and the Nation have access to the medical professionals they need. I hope the Senate passes this legislation quickly.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, communities of color and those living in rural and underserved areas face significant barriers to healthcare, including physician shortages that have only been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, in many communities of color and rural areas, there are few pathways to enter the medical profession. While medical school enrollment is up by 30 percent, the number of students from rural areas entering medical school declined by 28 percent between 2002 and 2017, with only 4.3 percent of all incoming medical students coming from rural areas in 2017. Similarly, Black, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American students face several barriers to matriculate and graduate from medical school, and there is significant underrepresentation of these students at all U.S. medical schools with the exception of historically Black medical schools. These medical schools represent 2.6 percent of all medical schools but 15 percent of Black medical students, indicating the important role that these institutions play in increasing the diversity of the physician workforce. Health outcomes for patients of color improve when they receive care from doctors of their own racial or ethnic background, and the shortage of providers of color exacerbates the barriers to care that these communities experience. The COVID-19 pandemic worsened long standing health inequities, and it is critical that we expand the diversity of our physician workforce to tackle these rampant disparities and the systemic biases within our health care system. This is why I am introducing the Expanding Medical Education Act, which aims to tackle the lack of representation of rural students, underserved students, and students of color in the physician pipeline by encouraging the recruitment, enrollment, and retention of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The bill would provide grants through the Health Resources and Services Administration, HRSA, to colleges and universities to establish or expand allopathic or osteopathic medical schools in underserved areas or at minority-serving institutions, including historically Black colleges and universities, HBCUs. These grants can be used for planning and construction of a medical school in an areas in which no other school is based; hiring diverse faculty and staff; recruitment, enrollment, and retention of students; and other purposes to ensure increased representation of rural students, underserved students, and students of color in our physician workforce. Our rural communities and communities of color face significant challenges accessing healthcare. It is time our physician workforce reflected these communities. We need to diversify our physician pipeline and change the disparity in representation, and this bill will help get us there. I am proud to reintroduce this important legislation to help us get one step closer to ensuring communities across Virginia and the Nation have access to the medical professionals they need. I hope the Senate passes this legislation quickly.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I am honored to join my colleagues today to speak about the child tax credit and to do something similar to what they have done and just make it personal to families. Tomorrow, on the 15th of December, more than 930,000 Virginia families, who together have 1.6 million kids, will receive a child tax cut payment--$300 for a child under age 6 and $250 for each child between ages 6 and 17. Those are big numbers. Those are big numbers-- 1.6 million children; 930,000 families. And I am here joining my colleagues to ask that this payment to parents--this parents' tax cut--to help their children is not the last, because unless we act, the sixth payment that will go out tomorrow will be the last. Now, the numbers are big, but sometimes the numbers can obscure--data and statistics can obscure--what is really at stake. So just a week ago, I put up on my Senate web page a question: What has this tax cut meant to your family? In 1 week we have received more than 200 responses, and I just want to share a few with you. Heather, from Glenn Allen, is a full-time caretaker of her physically disabled daughter. Her daughter started having trouble with the stairs in her home. So they used the child tax cut payment to help them buy a new stair lift so her daughter is still able to navigate the home. Heather wrote this to me: My family deeply appreciates the child tax credit because we routinely incur additional expenses while caring for a loved one with a disability. I take care of our daughter full time, which makes us a one-income household, so the tax credit helped make a difference. Beatrice from Rockingham, in the Shenandoah Valley, works at Cooks Creek Presbyterian Church, and she sees how the child tax cuts have affected families they work with. One mother of six, whose husband is incarcerated, relies on the payments to help with her child's medical expenses. Another couple that comes to this church, who are in their sixties, are raising their great-nephew because his mother suffers from addiction. The tax cut is helping them cover necessities for this great-nephew. Lawanda--I have a picture of Lawanda and her family. She is a single mom from South Boston, down on the North Carolina border. Lawanda sent me this picture and said: Use this picture. She used the payments to help buy clothes and shoes for her children and to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, which they usually can't afford. I love this picture because this is a picture of people with smiles. These are resilient people, who dream of a better future, and this child tax cut is helping them achieve at something as simple as being able to buy fresh vegetables rather than canned, or shoes. Something as simple as that is what this child tax cut is about. A Virginian from Lynchburg wrote that the tax cut has helped buy healthy food, clothing, and shoes. And then she said this: Children grow so fast now and eat more, which causes many trips to the grocery store. We are senior citizen, retired grandparents with legal guardianship of our granddaughter. With this being the last payment in December, which would be used partly for Christmas gifts for her, we will [really] have to stretch this. Grandparents--grandparents raising their granddaughter and finding in this tax cut the ability to afford Christmas gifts. Nicole from Leesburg is using the tax cut for therapy for her autistic son because insurance no longer covers it. In another picture is Sasha from Midlothian, which is right outside of Richmond. Sasha wrote to me and said this--and this is Sasha and her young one: My husband and I both have secure jobs, but the cost of full-time infant care is very high. We spend 23 percent of our combined monthly income on daycare for one child--our 1- year-old son. We also just paid off my student loans and are saving to buy our first house next year. The child tax credit has allowed us to save more money for that house and to pay off debts. We would like to grow our family but worry about our financial burden. She also wrote: Thank you for working so hard to pass the Build Back Better bill. I am following it closely because it means so much to my family's future. From Alexandria, a constituent wrote: Before the pandemic, the high price of childcare made it difficult to balance my family's budget. Each month we went into debt a little bit more. My husband is a full-time student, and I am the sole breadwinner. The child tax credit helped them start to pay down debt, to begin an emergency fund, and to start a college fund for their son. A resident from Waynesboro: I benefited tremendously with the child tax credit. I am a single parent in every aspect, raising two growing boys. It has helped me out with getting things they need for the school year. Also I saved some to be able to give them a good Christmas. Finally, Laquanda from Roanoke--all she said was this: Please fight for us. Please fight for us. I could go on for a long time with these messages, as could my colleagues, but I will stop there. I have read you stories from people who live in every region of Virginia. I want to thank my colleagues Senators Bennet, Brown, Booker, Warnock, Cortez Masto, and others for leading the charge on getting this policy into the American Rescue Plan earlier this year, and I want to thank all of my Democratic colleagues because this thing passed by one vote in March. If any of us had been absent, if any of us had lost our last race, the American Rescue Plan would have failed, and none of these families would have received the support of the child tax credit. Well, we are going to have that opportunity again, and, given the fact that one party has said they will not support this bill, it is on our shoulders. These families who are struggling and working so hard and who have hopes as high as any of our hopes, they need us. As Laquanda said, they need us to fight for them. Thank you to my colleagues for joining in that. With that, I yield the floor but would defer to my colleague from Colorado.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE. Madam President, in a minute, I am going to ask unanimous consent for the approval of three important nominees who are not controversial. We have been hearing reasons to oppose a nominee who has some controversy, and I am going to raise three who are not controversial. In July, I had the opportunity to travel to Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, and Guatemala as part of a bipartisan congressional delegation. The first question we received in Mexico was not about COVID-19 and not about immigration. It was, When is your Ambassador going to get here? Fortunately, since then, the Senate has approved the nomination of Ken Salazar to be Ambassador to Mexico, but the exchange underscores the importance of having U.S. Ambassadors on the ground and the value that other nations see in Senate-confirmed representatives of the United States. I take the floor today to talk about three noncontroversial nominees: Adam Scheinman, of Virginia, to be Special Representative of the President for Nuclear Nonproliferation; Marc Ostfield to be Ambassador to Paraguay; and Cynthia Telles to be Ambassador to Costa Rica. Mr. Scheinman has had a long history in the State Department and on the National Security Council at the White House on Nuclear Nonproliferation issues. Marc Ostfield is a career Foreign Service Officer with deep experience in the Americas. Cynthia Telles is the daughter of the first Hispanic to be a U.S. Ambassador. Her father was the U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica 60 years ago, and after a very distinguished career, she has been nominated to inherit the post that he ably inhabited. These were all nominees approved noncontroversially by the Foreign Relations Committee on October 19, nearly 2 months ago. I will just mention to my colleagues one thing about Mr. Scheinman. It is particularly important that he be confirmed as soon as possible. An important duty of the Special Representative of the President for Nuclear Nonproliferation is to lead the U.S. delegation to the Non- Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty Review Conference. This conference happens once every 5 years--once every 5 years--and it is going to happen next month. If he is not confirmed before then, the United States will not have an Ambassador-level official to lead the American delegation at this existentially important meeting. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate consider the following nominations: Executive Calendar Nos. 433, 436, and 439; that the nominations be confirmed; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order on these nominations; that any related statements be printed in the Record; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. KAINE. Madam President, we have no interest in silencing Senator Cruz. In fact, the Democrats agreed to allow Senator Cruz to present his amendment on Nord Stream 2 last week, and it was blocked by Republican colleagues. I have made a request for unanimous consent about two Ambassadors to the Americas and about someone who needs to attend a nuclear nonproliferation conference and lead the delegation from the United States. It happens once every 5 years, and it is coming up. The Senator is allowed to speak about Nord Stream 2 for as long as he wants, but he shouldn't interrupt a UC for these three individuals to give a speech that he has given many times and that he is going to continue to give many times, and I am sure we are all going to hear it many times. I would like a ruling on my request for unanimous consent on these three nominees.

Mr. KAINE. Madam President, may I invoke regular order? This is not a response to any of these three nominations.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote not begin until following my remarks.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to support the position of my colleague. When you are unwilling to describe something accurately, it betrays a weakness in your position. I heard my colleagues complain about the vaccine mandate. It is not a vaccine mandate. It is a vaccine or testing mandate. If you don't want to get a test--if you don't want to get a vaccine, don't get a vaccine. Get a test so you can go to work each week without infecting your colleagues with the deadly disease. What my colleagues are asking is that people be protected so that they can go to work with a deadly disease, infect coworkers, and still get a paycheck--and still get a paycheck. If you don't want to get a vaccine, get a test. If you are unwilling to protect your coworkers, don't demand a paycheck. I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, Parliamentary inquiry. This is impromptu because I wasn't aware of this until the Senator from New Hampshire just spoke. Is it the case that a Senator making a live UC on the floor to advance a nomination can be blocked from making a live UC by someone who will not even agree to appear on the floor of the Senate?

Mr. KAINE. I have learned something new about the Senate rules that I wish I did not know. I yield the floor.