John Kennedy

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to talk a few minutes about seafood. In many respects, at least in terms of our physical health, we are what we eat, and Americans have been eating a lot more seafood, which is good for you. A lot of people don't know this. I didn't until I researched. Ninety- four percent of the seafood sold in the United States is imported--94 percent. That is a pretty extraordinary figure. Of the various types of seafood, shrimp represents the highest volume of imports of total edible fishery products. Given that this seafood is imported, we have to be careful. For that reason, Congress created what we call the Seafood Import Monitoring Program. I am going to call it SIMP, S-I-M-P. So if I say ``SIMP,'' you will know what I am talking about. SIMP's job is to make sure that these foreign imports are safe--safe to eat for the American people. SIMP has jurisdiction over 13 different species groups and about-- well, over 1,100 unique species. As I said, that includes shrimp and red snapper but almost all forms of seafood that are grown overseas, are produced overseas and imported--or exported, I should say, to the United States. Now, this sounds simple, but it is not. SIMP's job is to ask questions. SIMP wants to know how the seafood was caught. SIMP wants to know the conditions under which the seafood was farmed, if it is a domestic product. If the seafood has been processed, SIMP wants to know how it was processed, what the final form was supposed to look like and what it actually does look like. SIMP is supposed to keep us safe. Part of the way that SIMP keeps us safe is to inspect the product--not just look at the reporting requirements that the foreign producers give to SIMP but actually look at the product, whether it is the raw seafood or whether it is processed. SIMP inspects it. In fiscal year 2020, SIMP--once again, the Seafood Import Monitoring Program, SIMP--and its auditing team completed 1,131 investigations. That is the good news. The bad news is, that was only 1 percent--1 percent--of all of the imports. Of the audits or investigations--the inspections, if you will--that SIMP did, about 40 percent of those were on shrimp. Of the 40 percent that SIMP did on shrimp, 35 percent were found to be not in compliance with the rules. Thirty-five percent was unsafe. This is serious business. Unlike most of our domestic producers, a lot of the producers in foreign countries try to produce their shrimp or their seafood on the cheap. They raise the product in filthy water. They don't have rigorous standards for processing the product if they take the raw product and turn it into a final product. Oftentimes, many of these foreign producers shoot the shrimp and other forms of seafood, like red snapper, with antibiotics, which, of course, if you eat enough of them, makes you resistant to those antibiotics if you get sick in another way that the antibiotics could cure. I mean, let me just be blunt. Some of this product is unsafe. It will make you grow an extra ear. And that is why we have SIMP, is to say: Wait a minute. You can't sell this in the United States. Once again, of the 1,100-and-change inspections that SIMP did in fiscal year 2020, 40 percent were shrimp, and SIMP found that 35 percent of that 40 percent failed the test. SIMP is able to inspect, as I said, 1 percent of this exported--for us, imported--seafood. One percent. It needs to be doing 10 percent. It needs to be doing 10 percent, and my bill would help them do 10 percent. My bill would provide additional funding for additional seafood inspections on imported seafood, and we would be asking SIMP to go from 1 percent inspections of all imported seafood to 10 percent. Now, there is no free lunch, Mr. President, and you don't get one now. My bill costs money. It will cost $36 million. In the grand scheme of our spending, that is not much, but $36 million is a lot of money. And I didn't want to come up here and just offer a bill that was a money suck; I wanted to come up here and say: Look, we have a problem. It will cost $36 million to solve it, and here is where the money is going to come from. The money, the $36 million, will come from the money that has been appropriated--the extra billions of dollars that have been appropriated--to the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS, believe me, will never miss the $36 million. The IRS wastes that much money between bites of oatmeal at breakfast. If we do this bill, people can enjoy their seafood, and they can appreciate the fact that it is safe. So for that reason, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 3533, which is at the desk--and S. 3533, as I just indicated, is the Seafood Import Monitoring Program Audits bill--and I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. KENNEDY

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

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, so far--so far--the United States is standing behind Israel, as it should, in Israel's fight against Hamas-- so far. Don't go wobbly on us, President Biden. Don't go wobbly on Israel. But some people in Washington seem confused as to why America backs Israel. I am seeing a lot of hand-wringing from folks who like to pretend that there is some kind of--they use this word a lot: ``nuance''--that there is some kind of nuance we need to apply to the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7 before we can condemn Hamas and hold its supporters accountable. President Obama has even suggested that somehow we are all complicit in the bloodshed. Some people promoting this idea of nuance, frankly, believe that Israel got what it deserves. Now, they don't say that, but that is what they believe. They believe that Israel got what it deserved. These folks who believe that also apparently believe in diversity, equity, inclusion, and the right to kill Jews. Thankfully, that is not most Americans. That is a lot of people here in Washington, DC. In Louisiana, however, my State, we understand that the debased people who slaughtered hundreds of young people at a peace concert are the bad guys. In Louisiana, we understand that the odious men who raped women, raped and sodomized women next to the bodies of their dead friends, don't deserve to be on this planet. We in Louisiana understand that the degenerates--the degenerates--who forced kidnapped Holocaust survivors to pose for photos--to pose for photos, for God's sake--next to their terrorist captors are just wrong. Nothing--nothing--that the Israeli Government has ever done or could do warranted throwing grenades at children hiding in a bomb shelter. Why are some people reluctant to admit that? You don't need to read a treatise on the Middle East to know that only monsters--monsters with black hearts--would put a baby in an oven and flip on the switch, as one first responder reported. That is not nuance; that is evil. The evil we saw unfold when Hamas butchered Israeli civilians is indefensible. It is indefensible. Those terrorists brutalized thousands of people, including dozens of our American friends and neighbors. Hearing the stories from the survivors and from the first responders-- it is nauseating. It is not nuance; it is evil. Yet the Hamas terrorists took joy, they yelped for joy, as they massacred civilians. One terrorist called his mom--called his mother-- to brag that he had ``killed 10 Jews with my own hands.'' Who would brag about something like that? Another Hamas official celebrated the violence and vowed to continue to wage attacks like this ``again and again and again'' until Israel no longer exists. No family in Israel will be able to sleep soundly at night until these terrorists are wiped off the face of the Earth. Israel has both the right and it has the responsibility to defend itself. I am proud that the United States of America is supporting Israel. Don't go wobbly on us, President Biden. Stand your ground. Don't go wobbly. I am proud that the United States is supporting Israel. The world will be a safer place for Israelis and Americans alike when Hamas ceases to exist. Hamas leaders told anyone who would listen--anyone who would listen-- they told us exactly what they intended to do and wanted to do and will continue to do. They told anyone who would listen that their goal is to kill as many Jewish people as possible, and that is still their goal. This wasn't a protest against Israel's Government; it was a massacre of Jewish people--the largest since the Holocaust. It is not surprising, then, that some who oppose intervention in Gaza have turned to attacking Jewish Americans. In New York City, those people cornered Jewish students in a library, forcing a librarian to offer to hide the students in an attic. At Cornell University, they threatened to shoot up the kosher dining hall. At my State's Tulane University, activists broke a student's nose because he opposed their anti-Israel demonstration. These protests didn't occur in New York City or Cornell or Tulane by accident; they targeted these areas because they are home to many Americans who happen to be Jewish. That is just a fact. New York is home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. Tulane, in my State, which was the first university in the South to welcome Jewish students, has a student body today that is roughly 40 percent Jewish. It was no accident. When confused activists twist themselves in knots trying to justify the torture and the rape and the killing of Jews in the Middle East, they are feeding the fires of anti-Semitism here at home as well. Unfortunately, we have seen that over the past few weeks. Let's not forget--it is Hamas who is using civilians as human shields. Hamas is the group also hoarding fuel and food as Palestinian civilians starve. Hamas is the group that dug up water pipes to turn them into rocket launchers. The truth is that the Palestine people, the people of Gaza, and the Israeli people all suffer because of Hamas, and any suggestion that Israel is culpable for this suffering plays into the hands of the terrorists. In Louisiana, we can see through the pseudo-intellectual hand- wringing of Israel's critics. The truth is that Hamas brutalized Israeli citizens and then ran home to hide behind their women and children, using those women and children as human shields. They are the lowest kind of pond scum, the lowest kind of sadists imaginable. Over the past week, Hamas has released some hostages as part of a temporary cease-fire. I am happy for that, and the American people are happy for that. I and they hope that every hostage will be reunited with their family soon. We cannot forget, however--we should not forget, however--that Hamas vowed to continue attacking and kidnapping Israeli citizens again and again and again, and the only way to stop this cycle is to eliminate Hamas. I was out of the country, in another country, when Hamas attacked Israel, and I did not know what position President Biden would take. I didn't. He said: I am standing with Israel. I was so relieved. I know President Biden is under a lot of pressure from the loon wing of his party to abandon Israel, to demand a permanent cease-fire, to let Hamas go unpunished. But Hamas doesn't want a permanent cease-fire. Hamas had a permanent cease-fire on October 6, the day before they attacked Israeli civilians, and Hamas forfeited that cease-fire unilaterally. Here is what Hamas wants: Hamas wants to terrorize Israel until all of the Jewish people are dead. Hamas wants to terrorize Israel until all of the Jewish people are dead. Hamas wants to kill Jews. Hamas wants to kill Jews and drink their blood out of a boot. That is not nuance, President Obama; that is evil. President Biden needs to show the world--and, frankly, some members of his own party--that the United States of America and its good people will continue to stand with Israel until Hamas is in ruins, until Hamas is dead and we drink their blood out of a boot, until Hamas's genocidal agenda is abandoned. The world will be safer on that day, and it will certainly be safer because Hamas is not in it. By supporting Israel's efforts, Americans are helping to ensure that an attack like October 7 never happens again, and I think most fairminded Americans understand that. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KENNEDY

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

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to talk for a few minutes today about elementary and secondary education, more specifically about school choice. School choice is inextricably related, in my opinion, to social justice. Put another way, I just don't understand how one can be a fairminded person and believe in social justice but not support school choice. In Congress, of course, we seem to face a new crisis every week, and while we need to respond to them, I think it is important that we not lose sight of what I call the foundational issues that ensure that our country is free and democratic and aspirational and prosperous for our children and our grandchildren. One of those issues, one of those foundational issues, is education. Right now, the American people are focused on the border, which is an open, bleeding wound; they are focused on inflation; they are focused on crime; they are focused on turmoil abroad. I don't blame them, as we need to be focused on those things, but while we focus on those things, it is a fact that the quality of our students' elementary and secondary education has been steadily slipping, steadily slipping. And it is clarion clear. Unless you have been living in your parent's basement, it is clarion clear that the status quo of education in America isn't setting our kids or our country up for success. I take no joy in saying that, but sometimes you can't look reality in the eye and deny it; you have to admit it. Here are a few examples of how America's and Louisiana's pre-K to 12 students are falling behind. The numbers are the numbers: Math and reading scores among American 13-year-olds are at their lowest levels in decades. That is not my opinion. That is according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. As the Presiding Officer knows, that is a study done annually, known as ``The Nation's Report Card.'' On ``The Nation's Report Card,'' just 35 percent of American fourth graders--35 percent--are proficient in math. Only 32 percent of American fourth graders are proficient in reading. American students are slipping globally as well. In 2008, the IMD World Competitiveness Center ranked American students first in the world. By 2023, the United States had slipped to 10th overall. In science, American students ranked 11th. In math, American students ranked 30th. In Louisiana, I regret to say that roughly half of my students in Louisiana in grades K through 3 are not reading at the grade level-- half. Only one-third of my kids in grades 3 through 12 are at grade level in the four subjects that the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program--we call it LEAP--tests. In fact, we have, in Louisiana, 24 school systems--24--in which fewer than a quarter of our students-- fewer than a quarter--have proficient LEAP exam scores. Now, I have said this before on the Senate floor, and I am going to say it again: The American people can do extraordinary things. We can unravel the human genome; we can take a diseased human heart and replace it with a new one and make it beat; we can send a person to the Moon. But we can't seem to figure out how to teach our children how to read and how to write and how to do math when we have 18 years to do it. And there is no excuse because all children can learn. I know it is complicated, and there are a multitude of reasons why our children may be struggling. For over 15 years, I have been a volunteer substitute teacher in our public schools. I went to a public school. In Louisiana, we need substitutes so badly that they will even take politicians. I try to do it three times a year--sometimes more, sometimes less. Every time, I learn, but I am always reminded every time I substitute teach of the fact that it is much, much harder today to be a teacher than when I was in a public school and that it is also much, much harder today to be a kid. So I have some understanding of the challenge. The evidence is also clear now that closing schools during the pandemic made matters a lot worse. We in America made a mistake. Some States did better than others, but most of them got it wrong. But, you know, we can't keep blaming things on the pandemic. It has been a few years since our schools reopened, and our scores are nowhere near where they need to be. The truth is that pre-K to 12 education in America and in Louisiana was in trouble well before the pandemic, and we all know that. Yet leaders in many States remain hesitant, to say the least, to change anything--anything--about our public school system. We have all heard the famous definition of ``insanity.'' The definition of ``insanity'' is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to get a different result. It is a cliche. Cliches become cliches because they are true. We need to follow the law of holes: When you are in one, stop digging. When you are in one, stop digging. We need to stop making excuses about pre-K through 12 education; and we need to stop doing things that don't work and then doing them again. You can't expect to fix a broken status quo--to magically fix it--and to magically fix our broken schools and equip struggling students if you keep doing the same thing. The fact--the unhappy fact, the miserable fact--is that too many of our schools in America and in Louisiana are failure factories--they are failure factories--where violence is common and learning is rare. But there are a few States that are bucking the status quo, and they are doing it in part by adopting school choice programs. So far, they have seen a lot of success. School choice programs--``school choice,'' I realize it is a broad term--school choice programs can take many different shapes, but they all boil down to one thing, one foundational principle: Parents should be allowed to take their kids out of failing schools. Parents should be allowed to take their children out of failing schools and put them in schools that can help those children thrive and certainly do better. It is not complicated. You know, American parents today, they can go to the grocery store, and they can choose from 40 different--maybe more but certainly 40 different breakfast cereals to feed their child in the morning, but in many States, those parents have absolutely no control over which school their child can attend. Children are stuck in schools, too many of them assigned by their parents' ZIP Code, and there is little that most parents--too many parents--can do to change that even though it is patently absurd to force children to attend failing schools when parents could enroll those kids and invest the money that pays for their education in better schools. That is where school choice comes in. In practice, schools facilitate, they implement school choice by tweaking how they fund school systems. For those of you who are unfamiliar with school funding schemes, most public schools have three main sources of funding: Federal dollars, State dollars, and local dollars. The exact breakdown of that money varies by State and by school system. In Louisiana, for example, the average school district gets about 11 percent of its money from Federal funding, 44 percent of its money from the State, and another 45 percent from local government, so 11, 44, and 45. Local dollars typically stay with the school system in a particular town or parish. We call our counties parishes. But officials, public officials in Louisiana, have the right and the ability to allocate those State and Federal dollars the way they want to. When States adopt school choice policies--here is how it works-- parents typically get to decide which school will receive their child's share of State and Federal funding. The local dollars stay local, but parents can redirect the Federal and the State money. There are two ways in which States that implement school choice reallocate that money, the Federal and the State dollars. The first is education savings account, and the second is--you have heard of it-- vouchers. Education savings accounts are government-funded savings accounts that take all or a portion of the Federal and State dollars allocated to each student and give it to parents to use for their kid's education. Parents can use the money a multitude of ways. They can use the money to pay for tutors, to purchase textbooks for homeschooling. Parents can use the State and Federal money to subsidize private school tuition. If a student and a parent have money left over when the student graduates from high school, that student can even use the funding to help pay for college. It is called an education savings account. Other States use a voucher system. Under a voucher system, parents typically do not receive money directly. Instead, they get to choose. They tell the school system which school their child is going to go to and tell the school system to send the Federal and State money to that school. So the money follows the children. The parents can take that voucher to a traditional public school. The parents can take that voucher to a private school to pay private school tuition. The parents can take that voucher to enroll the kids in a charter school they would like. Charter schools, as you know, are tuition-free, publicly funded schools that operate independent of the State. Rather than taking marching orders from the government, charter schools are able to design their own curriculum and their own standards to help meet the needs of each student. So whether it is through vouchers or education savings accounts, States that have embraced school choice have steadily climbed the ranks as the best States in this country for elementary and secondary education. That is just a fact. Look it up. Take Florida for example. Florida has had school choice for a long time--decades. It is not mandatory, but it is an option. A lot of parents love that option, and they use it. Graduation rates in Florida have steadily increased year after year after year. Florida's fourth graders rank third in the country in reading and they rank fourth in the country in math according to ``The Nation's Report Card.'' Other pro-school-choice States, including Iowa, North Dakota, and Utah, to mention a few, have all landed in the top 10 States on ``The Nation's Report Card.'' School choice works. Even States that have traditionally struggled with respect to education are seeing improvements. Take Louisiana's neighbor, Mississippi. Mississippi overhauled its pre-K to 12 system in 2013 to help parents get their kids out of failing schools. The State implemented a voucher program for kids with dyslexia and low-income students to ensure that parents could find a successful school that would meet their children's needs. Mississippi also implemented a law requiring schools to hold back students who cannot read at grade level in the third grade and give them additional instruction. In other words, if you are in the third grade and after several chances, you can't read at grade level, you are not socially promoted to grade 4. You are kept in the third grade until you can read, because kids drop out of high school in the third and fourth grade. If they can't read, they have no chance. Since Mississippi did all of this in 2013, Mississippi has jumped from 50th in education to 35th. In 2023, student achievement levels reached an alltime high in Mississippi. Graduation rates climbed from 75 percent in 2011 to 87 percent by 2020--well above the national average. Mississippi managed all of this growth--all of this growth-- while spending less money per student than all but four States. It is not just money; it is how you spend it. This year, we are doing better in Louisiana. This year, Louisiana followed the lead of Mississippi, and we passed a law called HB12--I have talked about it on the floor--to ensure that all third grade students can read at grade level before they can move on to the fourth grade. Fortunately--and I thank him for doing it--Governor John Bel Edwards did not veto the bill. I was afraid he would. He signed it into law, and I want to thank him for that. But when it comes to school choice, Governor Edwards has opposed it at every turn--every turn. He blocked two bills last year that would have established voucher programs for my kids in Louisiana. If those two bills had passed, parents of students with special needs or students who could not read at grade level by the third grade could have taken their State money, the State-funded education dollars--not the local, the State dollars--to a different school that could better address those children's needs. But the Governor opposed the bills, and they didn't make it. Those bills would have provided a lifeline to parents--a lifeline to parents--who were desperate and still are desperate to help their children succeed in school, but Governor Edwards opposed it. He opposed allowing these parents to find better alternatives for their children. The good news is that Louisiana is about to have a new Governor, and the good news is that Louisiana is about to have a brandnew legislature. I can't speak for our new Governor, but I know our legislators. I have supported many of them. We made some wholesale changes. I hope my friends in the Louisiana Legislature are anxious and eager and enthusiastic about giving parents, finally, the power to remove their children from failing schools. Parents overwhelmingly support school choice. In Louisiana, 75 percent of parents with school-age kids support school choice. Nationwide, that number has gone from 64 percent in 2019 to 71 percent today. So you are asking yourself, who can oppose school choice? Many--not all but many--teachers unions and many--not all--of the administrators in failing schools; the adults, not the kids--the adults. Our schools are supposed to be about our kids, not the adults. Many--not all but many--of our teachers unions worry that giving parents the choice to pick a different school will result in more students attending nonunion schools, such as charter schools. Many--not all, many--administrators in failing schools hate the idea that they will need to compete with other local schools to attract kids and earn the State and Federal dollars that follow those kids. It is called competition. As I am sure you have noticed, both of these fears I just referenced for some--not all--of our teachers unions and our administrators focus on what is best for them and the school system and the adults, not on what is best for the parents and the kids. Competition makes everybody better. Competition makes everybody better, and that is true of our schools too. The United States has a highly competitive higher education system, and in return, our universities are the best in the world. They are. I have been to a school in another country. It was a good school. But as a group, American universities are the best in all of human history. Now, they have some problems, as we all know about, but they are still the best in the world. There is a reason that most wealthy and well-connected people around the world want to send their children to an American campus to get their degrees. The excellence of American universities is driven by the fact that students can choose to go elsewhere if a university stops delivering a quality education. The students and their parents can vote with their feet. It is called choice. It is about as American as you can get. And that same competition, that same choice, will help restore K through 12 schools to excellence as well. Americans don't need to watch the status quo fail their children. They don't. States throughout this country are empowering parents to take control of their kids' education, and the whole country stands to benefit from their leadership. When it comes to education, now, I am an all-of-the-above guy. I don't care if it is public schools, charter schools, private schools, vouchers, savings accounts, or pixie dust. If it will help our kids learn better, I am for it. I don't care who gets mad. And that is why I am very optimistic about the leadership changes in Louisiana and the good news it could mean for our elementary and secondary education and for our parents and our children. I am not saying that school choice alone is the silver bullet. We have other problems in Louisiana. We need to expand access to education programs for at-risk children from early age to age 4. We need to do a better job there. We have a shortage of qualified teachers. We need to find out which of our teachers can teach and pay them like the professionals they are and find out which of our teachers can't teach and either teach them how or tell them to find a new line of work. We have got too much truancy among our kids. Forty percent of our K through 8 schools grade A or B; but, somehow, magically, 70 percent of our high schools are graded A or B. We know that is not right. We have watered down our standards. Also, college costs for our kids and our parents have doubled in the last decade. So we have other problems, but school choice will help. And I believe, as much as I am standing here, that America's future and Louisiana's future can be better than our present and it can be better than our past, but not if we don't improve our schools. And no one is coming to save our schools in Louisiana but ourselves. And with new leadership and school choice on the horizon, the future of elementary and secondary education in Louisiana can be and is, to me, promising. So I end as I began. No fairminded person, in my opinion, can say he or she supports social justice if they don't support school choice. I neglected to mention, Mr. President, that with me today are two of my colleagues from my office: Ms. Maddie Dibble and Mr. Christian Amy. I wanted to recognize them. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I don't intend to try to match the eloquence of Senator Warnock, and I am certainly not going to repeat what he just said. Senator Warnock and I have introduced--as he said--the Affordable Insulin Now Act of 2023. It would cap the price of insulin for people with private insurance and people who don't have any insurance at all at $35 for a 30-day supply. I have noticed that nobody in Washington ever stands up and says: I have got a lousy idea, and I need money for it. It is always: I have got an extraordinary idea and an important idea and an effective idea, and we need to do this. We need to spend money. And in almost all the cases, the people making that assertion are in good faith. They really believe that. And in many cases, it is true. They have a great idea. And a lot of what we do, as you know, is we make decisions, but we really--that means we balance interests. We have got a finite amount of money. We can't keep borrowing at the rate we have been borrowing. We have got a finite amount of money, and we have got to make hard decisions on what to spend that money on. And the traditional dichotomy is, well, guns versus butter, domestic needs versus defense needs. But it is more complicated than that. Sometimes it is butter versus butter. And those are hard decisions to make, and I realize that. The second point, I guess, I would make is that we deal with so many problems in the U.S. Congress that, frankly, we don't know how to solve. We are doing the best that we can, but we are really nibbling at around the edges. I don't know how to make a parent love their child. We all know that if a parent doesn't show the parent's love for a child, the child is not going to stop loving the parent; the child is going to stop loving himself. And we know what that leads to. And I don't know how. I don't know anybody who really knows how to make a parent love a child and support their children. That is one of those problems we deal with all the time. It is hard to solve. We don't really completely understand how to successfully help an addict stop being an addict. I wish we did. And there are things we can do to help the addict, but we don't really have the answer. Sometimes we pretend we do, but we don't. We don't have the answer. I don't have the answer to stop people from hurting other people, from taking their stuff and doing it repeatedly. And I could continue. All the easy problems are solved. And I make these two points that we have a lot of competing interests for the way we spend money and the point that there are some problems we really don't know how to solve. To assert--and you can believe me or not believe me, but if you will read the report that Senator Warnock talked about, you will see that he and I, I believe, are correct. This is a problem we can solve. If I had to pick one health problem that affects the quality of life and costs our country and our system the most money, it would be diabetes. I don't know if you have ever known somebody with diabetes. It is a horrible disease, and it can't be cured. But we know how to treat it. It is very pervasive. In my State, 44 percent of my people are affected by diabetes directly. Fourteen percent are diabetic. Another 30 percent are prediabetic. And Louisiana is not the only State with those kind of numbers. Diabetics account for $1 of every $4 spent, $1 out of every $4 spent on healthcare in the United States of America. Think about that. The average cost of hospitalization for a diabetic--which if they can't pay for it, ultimately we all pay. The average cost of hospitalization for diabetic patients is from $8,400 to $23,000 a year. And medical costs, if you look beyond the quality-of-life issue and the moral issue of just helping people who are sick, if you look at it in terms of dollars and cents, diabetes costs America $327 billion a year. That is in medical costs and lost work and wages and lost productivity. So we know the problem, and we know the costs. And we have a solution: Insulin. It works. It works. So why don't we make insulin available to everybody who needs it, whether they can afford it or not? And that is what our bill does. It is not going to be free. Insulin doesn't cost that much to make, and I don't begrudge the companies who sell insulin. I don't begrudge them making a profit. But it is bone-deep, down-to-the-marrow stupid for us to allow someone whose diabetes can be managed by taking insulin not to take that insulin because they can't afford it. That is immoral, and that makes no sense in terms of dollars-and-cents cost to the rest of the American people. And Senator Warnock and I's bill would address that. It would say: If you have private insurance, great. But if you don't have any insurance at all, if you are uninsured--and a lot of Americans become uninsured every year; maybe they don't stay uninsured, but they become uninsured--and you are diabetic, we are going to cap your out- of-pocket cost at $35 for a 30-day supply. So you have no excuse not to take your insulin to address your diabetes. It is the right thing to do. It is the smart thing to do. And Senator Warnock and I's bill is paid for. We are not suggesting we go out and just borrow more money. This bill, our bill, is paid for. It is going to be paid for by finding other moneys in the budget. Now, Senator Warnock has worked extremely hard. He is the lead author on this bill, and I thank him for his big mind and his good heart and soul on this issue. Others have worked hard too; Senator Collins and Senator Shaheen have a bill, and we are working to try to marry our two bills, the four of us. But, ultimately, what it is going to come down to, in my opinion, is that, Senators being Senators, Senator Schumer is the floor leader. He is going to have to force a shotgun marriage here. He is going to have to take the good work of Senator Shaheen and Senator Collins, Senator Warnock and my work--whether you want to call it good or not-- and say: I am going to take their efforts and put them in one bill. And Senator Schumer's bill will be paid for; otherwise, I am not going to vote for it, but it will be paid for. And his bill--I will wrap it up real fast--and his bill will be paid for, and it will lower the cost of insulin for insured and uninsured. I yield to the Senator from Kansas.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I think we are all aware that parts of our world are on fire. The world is on fire in Ukraine and in Eastern Europe, and the world is on fire in the Middle East. I wouldn't describe the world as being on fire in the Indo-Pacific, but there are certainly embers, and they are smoldering. I think it is clear to most Americans that President Xi in China, that President Putin in Russia, and that the Ayatollah in Iran are working together, and their objective is to have Russia dominate Central and Eastern Europe and to have the Ayatollah in Iran dominate the Middle East. The Ayatollah, of course, is funding and supports Hamas. There is no cause in the world--none--that can justify what Hamas did to the innocent people of Israel. The people of Hamas are so evil they will kill you and drink your blood out of a boot. And President Xi and President Putin and the Ayatollah in Iran are just fine with that. The third objective of China, Russia, and Iran is to allow China to dominate the Indo-Pacific and be free to make moves in Sub-Saharan Africa and in South America. Parts of the world are on fire. America is about to find out what it is made of because the world I just described is not a world safe for America. But as we meet these challenges, Mr. President--and by God, we will meet them. We will meet them. While we are doing that, I don't want us to forget about our homeland. We have a lot of problems domestically, and I don't want us to lose sight of them. I think about them every day. I know you do, too, Mr. President. We still have millions of Americans who are too poor to be sick despite the fact that we have the best quality of healthcare in America in all of human history. Notice I didn't say that we have the best way of delivering that healthcare. But we have the best quality of healthcare in all of human history, but we have people in this country--many of them are middle class--who are too poor to be sick. Since the Affordable Care Act passed, we were told that it was going to make our lives better, that it was going to make health insurance more accessible and cheaper. Since the Affordable Care Act was passed, health insurance premiums have tripled. We also know domestically that our border is an open, bleeding wound. It is an open, bleeding wound, and it is within the power of this Congress to fix that. But none of those domestic problems that I just described--and I could continue with others, as I know you could, too, Mr. President--is hurting the American people as much as President Biden's inflation. Not a single one. President Biden's inflation is gutting the American people like a fish. It is a cancer--a cancer--on the American dream. In my State alone, in Louisiana--we are not a wealthy State. My people are pretty middle class. They get up every day. They go to work. They obey the law. They try to do the right things by their kids, try to save a little for retirement. The median household income for a family of four in my State is $55,000 a year. A lot of States are above us; some are below us. President Biden's inflation, which is manmade--and that man's name is Joe Biden--is costing my people, the average Louisiana family, $806-- not a year, a month, $806 a month. That is $9,700 a year. Now, imagine if you were making $55,000 a year, and you have to come out of pocket with an extra $9,700 a year. You blow through your savings. You max out your credit card. You borrow from your children's college education plan. You borrow from relatives. And then what do you do? I know what some of my colleagues are thinking: But, Kennedy, we are doing better on inflation. We are, and I am so thankful. A year ago, inflation in this country was 8.2 percent. Today, it is 3.7 percent. I am so happy, and I hope it continues to go down, but it is important for us to remember what that means. A reduction of inflation from 8.2 percent to 3.7 percent--which is still, of course, too high--just means that inflation is rising less rapidly. We still have inflation. Prices are still high, and they continue to go up; they just are not going up as quickly as they were. That is a good thing, but it doesn't solve the problem. That is what we call disinflation. When inflation is rising and we stop it from rising so quickly, that is called disinflation. But that is not what most Americans care about, although that is important to them. What they care about is prices going down, and that is deinflation. We do not have deinflation. The point I am trying to make is, we are stuck with these high prices. If they get inflation down to zero, those prices are not going down; they are going to remain the same. They are just not going to rise as quickly. We are stuck. The American people are stuck with these high prices because of the Biden administration. I could cite you all the sterile statistics you would like, but I want to try to describe in specific terms what it is like for my people to go to the grocery store, to have to--this is an exaggeration but not by much--to have to think about, well, do I have to sell blood plasma today in order to go to the grocery store? Do I have to draw down on the second mortgage on my home in order to go to the grocery store? Since President Biden has been in office, consumer goods in the United States of America are up 17 percent, electricity is up 25 percent, eggs are up 29 percent. They are not going down, folks. Even if inflation goes to zero, those prices aren't going down. Potato chips, up 30 percent; bread, up 28 percent; coffee, 30 percent; rice, 26 percent. Flour is up 28 percent; milk, 18 percent; half a gallon of ice cream, 21 percent; chicken, 20 percent. When you look at larger categories, this is what is happening to the American people. Since President Biden took office--since President Biden took office--all goods and many services in the wealthiest country in all of human history are up 17 percent. Food is up 20 percent. Housing is up 17 percent. Clothing is up 12 percent. Used cars and trucks are up 25 percent. New cars and trucks are up 20 percent. Mortgage rates are up 174 percent--174 percent. Some may be saying: Well, but wages are going up too. Thank goodness. In some cases, wages have gone up. But the average wage of the average American has gone down after inflation. The appropriate way to look at wage increases is not to look at the raw aggregate increase; it is looking at the increase after inflation. If you take all of the average wage increases in the United States of America and you looked at the average inflation in the United States of America, workers have actually lost ground. Workers today, in November of 2023, are actually making less per hour after inflation than they were in February of 2021. So don't let anybody tell you that wages have made up for this. They haven't kept up with inflation. Don't let anybody tell you we are winning the war on high prices. We are getting inflation down, no thanks--no thanks--to the Biden administration and, quite frankly, the U.S. Congress. That is thanks to the Federal Reserve. They have tightened interest rates, which has hurt a lot of people, but they have gotten inflation down. They had to do it with one arm tied behind their backs because the other way you attack inflation and the only way we have ever successfully gotten it down is to have Congress do its part and reduce the rate of growth and spending and debt accumulation. But we haven't done that. We haven't done that. In fact, since 2019, the population of the United States of America is up 1.9 percent. Our country has grown 2 percent since 2019. Do you know how much our budget has grown? Fifty-five percent. This inflation is manmade, and the man's name is Joe Biden, and we need to address it. So as we fight a hostile world which day by day is becoming less safe for the American people, I don't want us to lose sight of another problem--an equally important problem--that is stealing the American dream, and it is called President Biden's inflation. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that there be up to 6 minutes of debate, equally divided, prior to the scheduled rollcall vote.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I call up my amendment No. 1354, and I ask that it be reported by number. The clerk will report by number.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, before I explain my amendment, I would like to yield 30 seconds to my good friend Senator Tester.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, there are 16 million veterans in our country. Sometimes some of them need help with managing their financial affairs. When they do, they go to the Veterans Health Administration, and the Veterans Health Administration appoints a fiduciary to help that veteran manage his or her financial affairs. But, under current VA policy, if a veteran who defended this country has to go to the VA and ask for help with managing his or her financial affairs, the VA automatically reports that veteran to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System--we call it NICS--and that veteran loses his firearm. He loses his firearm automatically--no due process, no questions asked. This decision is not being made by a judge; it is being made by a bureaucrat. All our amendment would do would be to say that the VA, just because you have asked for help with your money, cannot automatically take away your firearm or report you to NICS unless a judge has ruled that that veteran is a danger to himself or to others. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, with all the respect I can muster, what my colleague said is inaccurate. Now, I understand this is America; people can believe what they want. There are people who wish we didn't have the Second Amendment. I get that, but we do. And I agree with Senator Murphy. We both agree on this. Chris believes that love is the answer, and I do, too, but I own a handgun just in case. That is my right, and every veteran has that right. We shouldn't take away a person's gun without a judge--not a bureaucrat at the VA--ruling that person to be mentally incompetent. Vote on Amendment No. 1354

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

Mr. KENNEDY

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

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask for permission to speak for up to 20 minutes before the vote.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--we call it the CFPB--has struck again. It has made another bad decision--this by an Agency that has become famous for bad decisions. Here is what is going on. You will remember the Dodd-Frank Act, of course, which this Congress passed after the financial meltdown in 2007, 2008, and 2009. There was a section in the Dodd-Frank Act called section 1071--fairly innocuous. Congress directed certain information to be collected about small business loans. We were curious about small business lending in America, so we directed, in this section 1071, certain covered financial institutions--I call them small banks because most business loans to small business people come from small banks. We directed small banks to start collecting information about their loans to small business people because we wanted to know and see if we could do something to make their services more efficient. We, the Congress, asked that 13 pieces of information be collected. It is the sort of stuff that you would imagine, very routine stuff, like ``What was the date of the loan, the small business loan? How much was the loan?'' that sort of thing. Well, the CFPB has taken our work and totally perverted it. The CFPB has promulgated a rule that totally perverts our intention in section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act. First, we intended for only small businesses to be covered in providing this information. Now, if you look at the definition of a ``small business,'' most people use the definition that has been put out by the National Federation of Independent Business. That is the NFIB. It says that a small business is a business that has 10 or fewer people and sales of about half a million dollars a year--not according to the CFPB. They want to cast the net as far and as wide as they can. Their definition of a ``small business'' will almost double that--more than double that. They say a small business is a company with $5 million in revenue or less from the previous fiscal year, not $500,000 but $5 million. So this is going to throw the net of government much, much wider than Congress ever intended. But, secondly, the most egregious thing the CFPB has done is they took our 13 pieces of information that we asked for, by Congress, and they expanded it to 81. All of a sudden, they want a book. Here are some examples of what the CFPB is going to require small banks to ask of small business women and small business men when they come to the bank and ask for a loan. The bank has to ask the small business person how long it has been in business. That is fair. The bank has to ask the small business woman or small business man about its annual revenue. That is fair. But then it gets a little intrusive. It gets a lot intrusive. The bank has to ask the small business woman or small business man what their race is. The bank has to ask the small business person about their ethnic background. The small bank has to ask the small business person if he is a male. The bank has to ask the small business person if she is a female. It should be obvious to many, but those questions have to be asked. The bank has to ask the small business person if that person is a lesbian. The bank has to ask the small business person if that person is gay. The bank has to ask that small business person if that small business person is bisexual. The small bank has to ask its customer, that small business person, if that small business person is transgender. The bank, according to the CFPB, has to ask that small business person who is applying for a loan, who just came in for a loan for the business, if that person is queer. The small bank has to ask that small business person if the small business person is intersex. Not only does the bank have to ask those questions, those private questions, of the person from the small business applying for the loan, the person applying for the loan on behalf of the small business has to bring in every one of its owners who owns 25 percent or more, and the bank has got to start over with those people. Are you a male? Are you a female? What is your race? Tell me about your ethnic background. Are you a lesbian? Are you gay? Are you bisexual? Are you transgender or are you queer or are you intersex? Give me a break. Then all of this information that is collected, this private information, has to be sent to the CFPB, and they are going to put it on their website. Are you gay? Are you lesbian? What race are you? They are going to put it on their website. Now, the CFPB says: Well, it is going to be institutional-level data, just top-line data fields. Bull. You will be able to take this data, particularly if you are a small bank in a rural area, and be able to-- the snoops will be able to go on that public website and identify small business people in their community--how much money they are borrowing, how they answered the question about whether they were gay, how they answered the question about whether they were intersex. This is incredibly private information. And why? Why would the CFPB need this information? Well, the truth is, they don't, but I will tell you why. The CFPB is setting these small business people--but also these small banks--up for lawsuits. That is exactly what they are doing. What happens if a small business person goes into the bank and the small banker says: Listen, I hate to have to ask you this, but the CFPB says I have to ask you. Are you gay? As if that is anybody's business. The small business person says: That is none of your business, and I am not going to answer that question. I am here for a loan, not to talk about my private life. What I do in the privacy of my bedroom with a consenting adult is my opinion, Mr. Banker. The small banker says: You are right. I am sorry. I had to ask. They made me. If the small business person won't answer the question, the small banker can get in trouble with the CFPB. What has the world come to? And the CFPB doesn't care about the cost. Do you know what this is going to cost to implement every year? Four hundred million dollars. Why? And that doesn't even include the cost of actually setting up this program. That will be hundreds of millions of dollars more. It is not like the CFPB is exactly a wizard when it comes to data security. I mean, yes, it is going to be on their public website, but in terms of the granular information, the CFPB says: Oh, don't worry; we will protect it. Right. Like they protected it a few months ago? The personally identifiable information of 256,000 consumers, which is being held by the CFPB, was breached. And do you know what the CFPB did? They didn't tell anybody for 2 months. They acted like a rock, only dumber. We are not talking about wizards here, wizards of financial data privacy and security. You know, I hear it all the time, and the Presiding Officer probably hears it back in his State, perhaps. But people tell me all the time: Kennedy, what is wrong with Washington, DC? Why is common sense illegal there? This rule. This rule. What has the world come to? So my Congressional Review Act request is to have the Senate tell the CFPB that it is none of their business--none of their business--what a private American does with another private adult American in the privacy of their bedroom. We are free, so long as it doesn't break any laws, to express our sexuality however we want to, and it is none of the CFPB's business. With that, I ask my Senate colleagues to overturn this rule.

Mr. KENNEDY

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

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, we have an issue in Louisiana--I wouldn't call it a problem--that I would like to talk about. Perhaps some of our sister States can learn from our struggles in my State. And the issue is education. I can't think of a more important subject. That is the future of my State. I think it is true in many other States. I believe that Louisiana's future can be better than its present or its past, but the key to determining whether that is going to be the case or not is education--and I am talking specifically about elementary and secondary education--because that is what counts. In my State, it is not the price of oil; it is not what the unemployment rate is; it is not who the United States Senator is; it is not who the Governor is; it is education, pre-K through 12. It is frustrating, I know. You know, Americans can do extraordinary things. We can unravel the human genome. We can take a diseased human heart and replace it with a brandnew one and make that thing beat. We can send a person to the Moon. But we in America struggle and we in Louisiana struggle to teach our children how to read and write and do basic math when we have 18 years to do it. I am not blaming anyone. We all share the frustration. And it is not just Louisiana; it is all across America. I understand that. But decades ago in Louisiana, we made a decision. In fact, it was during my first job in government. I was working as legal counsel to a brandnew, reform Governor in Louisiana. He decided, and the people of Louisiana agreed with him--we all agreed on two things: No. 1, every child can learn. Now, it takes some a little bit longer. Kids mature at different times. But every child can learn. The second thing we agreed on was this: That which is measured gets done. That which is measured gets done. We decided to implement, 30 years ago, standards for our elementary and secondary schools. One of those standards was and I think still is--that is the subject of my remarks today; I hope it still is--a graduation exam. We call it our Graduation Exit Examination 21, G-E-E. So if I say ``G-E-E'' or ``GEE,'' I am talking about our graduation exam. We said we are going to get serious about kids. We can't have our children graduate if they can't read their diploma, and so we are going to test them. The test is not terribly rigorous. It is four subjects. It is English, it is math, it is science, and it is social studies. We grade those exams--and you don't have to pass all four. You have to pass English and math and then either social studies or science. So, really, three out of four. There are five different grades: advanced, mastery, basic, approaching basic, and unsatisfactory. Let me tell you what that really means: A, B, C, D, and F. You only have to make a D on your graduation examination. You only have to make a D to pass--not an A, not a B, not a C, a D. So you take four exams. You have to make a D on English, a D on math, and at least a D on either social studies or science. If you don't pass, we will give you another chance, but you have to pass to get a diploma. Now our Board of Elementary and Secondary Education--we call it BESE--which governs elementary and secondary education in Louisiana, has decided to take us back to the Dark Ages. By a one-vote margin, supported, quite frankly, by my Governor, who is lameduck--he will be leaving soon--he makes three appointments to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Everybody in America is entitled to their opinion, but I think my Governor and his team are wrong on this. They are going to send us back to the Dark Ages. Here is the new rule: You have to pass the Graduate Exit Examination in the way I just described--unless you fail. Then you have to go to your teacher, and he or she can give you an extra-points project. Come on. Come on. Who are we kidding here? Now, why do some want to do this? It is not the kids who want to do this; it is the adults, because not only do we grade our kids, we grade our schools, and if schools have kids who don't pass the GEE, the Graduate Exit Examination, it counts against the grade of the school. So this is all coming from the adults. They are putting themselves first, and they are not putting the kids first. This is a massive step backward. This is an announcement to the rest of America that Louisiana has given up, that our kids are not smart enough, they are not good enough, even when we give them second or third chances, to be able to get a D on the Graduate Exit Examination, and as a result, we have to give them a special extra-points project so they can get a diploma that is not really a diploma. The people behind this ought to hide their head in a bag. Our kids are better than that. Every one of my kids in Louisiana can learn. Sometimes they need a little bit longer. But it is not going to do them any good to give them a diploma that they can't read. It is not going to do them any good to give them a diploma that the rest of America and, frankly, the world is going to look at and go: That is not really a high school diploma because we know you failed the exam. You just got an extra-points project so the adults wouldn't look bad. I am embarrassed by this. This isn't the only problem we have in elementary and secondary education. I will give you one other statistic. Seventy percent of our high schools are graded A or B. Forty percent of the schools below that are graded A or B. Seventy percent of my high schools in Louisiana are not A or B schools, OK? I wish they were--not when 40 percent of the lower grades are only A or B. Once again, the adults who don't want to be embarrassed are inflating those grades, too, and now they have started on the Graduate Exit Examination. But this is a bridge too far. All is not lost. BESE, which, as I said, passed this rule change by one vote--and by the way, our superintendent of education was against it. This rule change is going in front of the Louisiana Legislature for an oversight hearing and the Senate Education Committee and the House Education Committee. I hope that either the Senate or House and hopefully both will say no--no--because this change represents what George Bush, President Bush, called ``the soft bigotry of low expectations''--``the soft bigotry of low expectations.'' It has no place in this country, and it has no place in my State. I am embarrassed that the people who are part of the education establishment in Louisiana are telling the rest of the world: Our kids are not good enough. They can't learn. So we are going to give them a diploma that is not really a diploma. Thank you for the time today, Madam President. I wanted my colleagues to know what is going on in Louisiana. We are going to turn this rule back, and we are going to put our kids first in Louisiana, not the adults. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to talk briefly to the Senate today about two issues. With respect to the first issue, I suppose I am talking to my people back in Louisiana as much as I am talking to my colleagues in the U.S. Senate. This is New Orleans. This is the Mississippi River, which, as you know, runs through New Orleans. Much of southeast Louisiana, including but not limited to the city of New Orleans, gets its drinking water from the Mississippi River. Of course, the Mississippi River is freshwater, and the Mississippi River is long, wide, and mighty. The Mississippi River's source is the northern part of our State. It drains a number of other rivers. This is the southern portion of the Mississippi River. In New Orleans, it kind of meanders around and shifts to the east before it hits south again into the Gulf of Mexico, which is, of course, saltwater. You probably never thought about this, Mr. President. Perhaps you have. Most people haven't. Why doesn't saltwater--the Mississippi River runs into the gulf, which is saltwater, and the gulf is a big area. Why doesn't saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico flow up the Mississippi River? That would be a good question. The reason is pretty simple. As I said, the Mississippi River is long, big, wide, and mighty, and it drains a good portion of the United States. When the Mississippi River is at normal levels, it flows very, very quickly and fast, and it keeps the saltwater down here in the Gulf of Mexico at bay. But sometimes the Mississippi River gets low, and it flows less swiftly, and that is the situation right now. When that happens--it has happened I think five times in the last three centuries--sometimes saltwater actually comes up from the gulf into the Mississippi River, which is a problem for my people in southeast Louisiana, including but not limited to New Orleans, because they rely on the Mississippi River for their drinking water because it is freshwater. This red line represents the saltwater intrusion. Saltwater is creeping up the Mississippi River just like a thermometer. We know, based on historical evidence, that it is not likely to go all the way up the Mississippi River, but that doesn't solve our problem in Louisiana because we depend on the Mississippi River for drinking water. If it gets far enough up the Mississippi River--``it'' meaning the saltwater--then we have a real problem in southeast Louisiana. As I say, in the last 25 years, this has happened four times--in 1999, 2002, 2022, and it is happening this year as we speak. I think the time that it happened before was in 1888, if I recall correctly. I am an optimist who worries. I am worried about this because about 1 million of my 4.6 million people in my State depend on this river for drinking water, and we are in the middle of watching the saltwater come up the river, and we don't think it is going to stop coming up the river until sometime around, I don't know, the end of October maybe. We could be wrong. But I want the Senate and I want my people to understand that their local, their State, and their Federal governments are dealing with this problem. First, I want to thank President Biden. President Biden declared a disaster declaration, which allows us to get the assistance of FEMA, and I am very, very grateful for that. No. 2, our Corps of Engineers is involved. They are very able people. Our Corps of Engineers, below the city of New Orleans, has built an underwater dam. That is what it looks like. It is like a dam. They call it a sill. I call it a dam or a levee. It is under the water. It is down below New Orleans. Well, why in the world would the Corps of Engineers do that? Because saltwater is heavier than freshwater and when the saltwater comes up the Mississippi River, it is not coming at the top; it is coming at the bottom. And the Corps of Engineers in a place called Myrtle Grove below New Orleans--by the way, Myrtle Grove is also known for its great fishing, wonderful fishing, and really good people. But at the area in the river next to Myrtle Grove, the corps is coming in, and they built an underwater dam. Now, that is not going to stop all the saltwater. It is just going to slow it down and stop some of it. So some of the saltwater, despite this dam, is still flowing north, headed toward New Orleans. The corps is talking about, if necessary, adding an additional 25 feet to the underwater dam. Right now, the underwater dam is about 55 feet. We add another 25 feet. The river at that level or at this point is about 90 feet. And they are leaving a hole in the dam, in case you were wondering, for ships to come through. No. 3, the Corps of Engineers and FEMA are both prepared, if necessary, to deliver us freshwater, if we need it, by barge. And if you ever wonder about the might of the Federal Government and particularly our Corps of Engineers--again, I can't thank them enough-- they can deliver up to 36 million gallons of freshwater a day. So thank you, Corps of Engineers, and I want my people back home to know that, so they won't be worried. Also, looking on the bright side--put that back up for me will you, Henson--by the way, Mr. President, with me today are two of my colleagues from my office, Mr. Henson Webre and Mr. Christian Amy. I want to thank them for their help. Again, this is New Orleans. Here is the saltwater creeping up. Not everybody in New Orleans and in the New Orleans area and Southeast Louisiana gets their water from the Mississippi River. Some people have well water. So that is a plus. Some facilities in New Orleans have also started installing what is called reverse osmosis filtration machines to take the saltwater out of the freshwater. And we in government stand ready and willing to advise facilities of the right to do that. The other thing we are talking about doing--we are trying to not do this except as a last resort because it is so expensive--as you see here, the red is the saltwater; the blue is the freshwater. Folks who live down here by the saltwater and can't get water out of the Mississippi because it is too salty, we are thinking about building pipelines this direction, going north sort of along the river to get freshwater from a point in the river further up north and take it through those pipelines down south where we need it. Now, that is expensive. It is being looked at by local governments, being looked at by the State government. We are in discussions with the Federal Government about it. It will be a last resort because it is so expensive, and I hope that the saltwater intrusion can stop. We can stop it. Frankly, what is causing this is we are having a drought, and there is not enough water in the Mississippi River. If we could get a little rain up north, that will add to the volume of the river, and it will flow more quickly, and it will push that saltwater out. The final thing, I want my people to understand what we are doing. This is Southeast Louisiana. It is sort of the toe of the boot. Further up here in Louisiana, we have built a minidam. We call it the Old River Control structure on the Mississippi River, and we divert some of the water out of the Mississippi River into another river in Louisiana called the Atchafalaya River. In fact, we do that pursuant to a statute passed by Congress which says that 70 percent of the water at this point, which is way up here, has to be diverted--or kept in the Mississippi River, but 30 percent is diverted further west to the Atchafalaya River. Why do we do that? Because the corps decided years and years and years ago, that river at that point is so strong and so mighty and moving so quickly and so swiftly and that if we did not divert some of that water, the Mississippi would change course and, instead of flowing through Baton Rouge and New Orleans, it would change course and flow this way to the gulf. So years ago, the corps said, We need to take some water out. The corps is thinking about opening that dam up, if necessary, at the Old River Control structure and putting some of that water back into the Mississippi River that it is diverting right now to increase the flow of the river, which will, of course, push the saltwater back out. So I appreciate, Mr. President, the Senate's patience in allowing me to explain this. As I say, I want to thank President Biden for his declaration. I want to thank FEMA. I want to thank the Corps of Engineers. I don't want my people to worry. Your folks in government have pounced on this issue like a ninja, and I am not saying we have it solved, but we are doing everything we can to get us through this.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Senator Feinstein, Godspeed. I had the pleasure of serving with Senator Feinstein on the Judiciary Committee. I also served with Dianne on the Appropriations Committee. In fact, we served on the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee. Dianne was the chair and I was the ranking member. Dianne, you died with your boots on, and I think that was one of the things she most wanted to do. Senator Feinstein and I didn't agree on much, but she was a delight to work with. She understood politics and government, especially today. It takes a big heart and a lot of wind and a thick skin, and that is especially true today. There are some people in this city who didn't want Dianne to finish her term for political reasons. They tried to chew her up and tried to spit her out, and they tried to step on her. But they couldn't do it because Dianne was tough as a boot, and she wanted to die with her boots on, as a Member of this august body. And I am going to miss her. Godspeed, Senator Feinstein. Unanimous Consent Request--S. 2968 Mr. President, I am here today to try to extend the National Flood Insurance Program. It appears to me--I hope I am wrong, and I know, Mr. President, you agree with me--that we are headed toward a shutdown. If that happens, that means that the National Flood Insurance Program will come to a halt. I don't want people to worry too much. If you already have national flood insurance, the program will continue to pay claims. But as long as government is shut down, you will not be able to buy new insurance. That is important because flood insurance is a huge part of the commerce of our real estate markets in America. For most Americans, the purchase of a home is their biggest single financial decision they will ever make. In many areas--not just coastal States but many other States--you cannot purchase a home, if you have to borrow money, without flood insurance. So if we allow the National Flood Insurance Program to expire, it is going to shut down home sales where the entity loaning the money requires flood insurance. It is just going to shut it down. The real estate industry, for a variety of reasons--in part because of President Biden's inflation--is already having a tough time, and this will make it worse. My bill would take the current flood insurance program and just extend it ``as is'' until December 31, 2023. If we don't do this--I want to make this clear, as well. Some of my fellow citizens may be saying: What is the big deal? Just don't buy it from the Federal Government. You can't buy it from anybody else. The Federal program, imperfect as it is, is the only game in town. So if you are ready to buy a home and close on a home and you go to a mortgage lender and say, ``I need to borrow the money,'' and they say you have to buy flood insurance to get the loan, the Federal Government is the only entity you can go to. You cannot buy, for all practical purposes, private flood insurance in America today. I mentioned that the NFIP was imperfect. I understate it. As I said yesterday on the floor, the National Flood Insurance Program, as administered by FEMA, is a mess. As I said yesterday, it looks like someone knocked over a urine sample. FEMA made the program even worse a year or so ago with its Risk Rating 2.0. It went out and hired a consultant to design a new algorithm that made changes in the program without telling policy holders the basis for those changes. I met with FEMA a number of times. I said: Can I see your algorithm? They said: If we show you, we have to kill you--and I am in Congress. We are in litigation with FEMA right now. Let me say it again. Risk Rating 2.0 made it even worse than it already was. Ever since I have been in the U.S. Senate, I have been working with, I don't know, 20 different Senators and probably 50 to 100 House members who are involved to try to fix the flood insurance program, and it has been very difficult. We haven't been able to do it, but we will continue to try. But in the meantime, the only thing worse than a bad flood insurance program is no flood insurance because, as imperfect as it may be, FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program is the only game in town. And if we allow this program to expire, it is going to really, really, really hurt the American people. It is going to really, really hurt the real estate industry. It is going to really, really hurt folks out there who have saved money, and they are ready to buy a home, but they can't do it because they can't purchase flood insurance. For that reason, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 2968--that is my bill that would just extend the current program for flood insurance, imperfect as it may be, until December 31, 2023. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. KENNEDY. Reserving the right to modify or not modify. Senator Paul, as usual, makes some very good points. I agree with him wholeheartedly that the National Flood Insurance Program is a mess. It needs to be fixed. I want to make the record clear that in Louisiana, my people are working people. My coast is a working coast. My people aren't wealthy millionaires who have three or four homes on the beach. These are ordinary people who get up every day, go to work, obey the law, pay their taxes, and try to do the right thing by their kids. They can barely afford one home. It is not only the coast that we are talking about. In 2016, in the middle of my State--again, not mansions, just working-class people--we had 24 inches of rainfall in about a day and a half. The homes that flooded--and many of them did--were not anywhere near a body of water. If you get 24 inches of rain in a day and a half, your home is going to flood. I don't care if you are living on Pike's Peak. So this program is meant to help those people as well. But in pointing that out, I don't want to take anything away from Senator Paul's excellent points. He is, however, mistaken in one critical respect: When you buy flood insurance through the Federal National Flood Insurance Program, the most you can collect on your home as a result of one flood is $250,000. It is not accurate to say that a million-dollar home can collect a million dollars in damages from a flood. That is just not true. If there is a flood and you own a million-dollar home and you own a $250,000 home and the owners of those two homes both have national flood insurance, the most under the policy they can collect is $250,000. So why do you want to tell a person who owns a million-dollar home that they can't insure their home? You are just telling them they can't buy flood insurance, so the flood insurance program has less money to cash flow. It makes no sense. Now, Senator Paul is correct, and it is one of the things we are trying to fix, that there has been abuse in terms of some homes. Senator Paul mentioned the example of Louisiana; but there are other States, many others, where homes have flooded three or four times, and they keep getting flood insurance. If I can say anything good about the current National Flood Insurance Program today, I would say that FEMA has taken steps to try to prevent that from happening so that if you flood a certain number of times, you have to move. And I know the Senator didn't--I don't think I am disagreeing with him on that. I think we are in agreement. But let me tell you the second and main reason I can't accept Senator Paul's change. For me, it has to do with what is right. There are probably 20 different Senators--well, there are a hundred Senators who care about flood insurance, but there are about 20 different Senators who want to be involved in any changes made to this program. And I dare say there are 50 to 100 members of the House. Now, as the Presiding Officer knows, when we bring a bill to the floor for unanimous consent, we don't just walk down here one day and do it. We let all of our Senators--fellow colleagues, our fellow Senators-- know what we are about to do. So if they want to come down and object, they can do that. And that is what I did with my bill, which just keeps the current program and extends it until December 31, so we will get past the shutdown and we won't keep people from buying homes. But Senator Paul's changes have not been sent to all members of the Senate. It is called a hotline. And I anticipate that the Senator will have other changes, and that is fine. The easy thing for me to do today would be to agree with one of his changes. I am not sure it makes that much difference because the amount of damages you can claim on a flood is $250,000, but the easiest thing for me to do today would be to agree to one of Senator Paul's changes, but that would be stabbing my colleagues in the back. Because I can assure you, knowing how many of my colleagues feel about the National Flood Insurance Program, they would want to be here today to weigh in. And I just can't do that to them, even though it would allow me to get this passed. I also think that if we make changes to the National Flood Insurance Program, those 50 to 100 House members that I am talking about are likely--some of them are likely not to allow the changes, and that is why they would object to it. And that is why my objective has been--and I need to stand behind it--to just take the current program and extend it to December 31. So for that reason, I don't agree to the modification.

Mr. KENNEDY. Reserving the right to accept or not accept. Again, Senator Paul--I understand his points, and they are very good ones. I would point out that his proposal--we have about 84.7 million owned or occupied homes in the United States. Let's call it 85 million homes in the United States. Senator Paul's amendment would exclude 52.5 million of them. Five hundred thousand dollars on a home is a lot of money, but I think in places like California and Connecticut and New York, where we have seen cost of living different from my State, there are plenty of ordinary Americans, middle-class Americans, who have scrimped and saved to put together the money to borrow $500,000, and I don't want to hurt them. But the second and the main reason I can't agree to Senator Paul's proposal: I am just not going to stab my fellow Senators in the back. They do not know about these changes that are being proposed. They may be good changes, and I like the way Senator Paul is thinking. But let me say it again, I know of at least 20 Senators, some of whom are not in Washington who care about flood insurance. And if I started agreeing to changes for the short-term satisfaction of getting to pass a bill, it is just not worth it to me. And I am not going to stab them in the back. They have the right to be here and participate in these changes, and they are not here because they don't know about it. So for that reason, I do not concur in Senator Paul's amendment.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. I fear I am not being clear, and I am sorry for that. Let me say it again. If you own a $250,000 home and you own a $750,000 home, neither one of you can buy more than $250,000 worth of insurance, because the maximum amount of insurance that you can buy through the National Flood Insurance Program is $250,000. So what is the point of excluding someone who owns a $750,000 home? I realize it is in vogue to denigrate rich people, but they can't buy any more insurance. It would be different if someone could buy $750,000 worth of flood insurance who owned a $750,000 home, but they can't. It is capped at $250,000. So I have to respectfully disagree with my friend on that. And, No. 2--I don't want to belabor this--I am not going to stab my fellow Senators in the back. The 20-plus Senators with whom I have spoken to try to negotiate a new and better Flood Insurance Program do not know about these changes. And I would like to agree to Senator Paul's suggestions, but if I do, I am stabbing my fellow Senators in the back, and it is just not worth it to me because they don't know about any of this. For that reason, I respectfully object to Senator Paul's amendment.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, if I own a $10 million home--and I assure you I do not--and my neighbor's home is $250,000, that is its value, which is more like it in Louisiana. And we both go to an insurance agent, and we say: We want to buy national flood insurance because we can't get a mortgage without it. Then the insurance agent is going to say: OK. Neighbor whose home is worth $250,000, I can write you a policy, maximum $250,000. And then they are just going to turn to me with my $10 million home-- which I can assure you is fictitious--and the agent is going to say, I can only sell you $250,000. The suggestion that somebody with a $10 million home is being insured for $10 million is just not accurate. It is just not accurate. So what good is it going to do to tell someone in a $10 million home who wants to buy $250,000 worth of flood insurance--the same amount as his neighbor--what good is it going to do to exclude him? Some can beat themselves on the chest and say, boy, we stuck it to those rich people. But they are not getting any more insurance. And what it is going to mean to the program is there is going to be fewer and less premiums coming into the program, which will make it insolvent. You can see the difficulty in trying to reach agreement on the forms. That is why I am going to say it again. And I have proposed a clean, if you will, proposal that will just extend the current program, imperfect as it may be, until December 31. If we don't do this, it is going to really, really, really hurt. It is not going to hurt the rich folks. It is going to hurt the ordinary, middle-class Americans who are trying to buy a home. And the second and final reason, if it were, or the third and final reason, frankly, if it were up to me to get this passed--because I am really worried about it, as you can tell--I would probably agree to Rand's proposal, but I am just not going to stab my colleagues in the back. They don't know about this proposal, and I think that of the 20 or so of my colleagues whom I have met with about changing the Flood Insurance Program, I know they would like to have their say. And if I agree to the Senator's proposal today--because they don't know about his proposal--I would be stabbing them in the back, and I just can't do it, Mr. President. It is just not worth it to me. For that reason, I respectfully object.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, you are getting tired of my saying this, I know. This rich $10 million American that Senator Paul keeps talking about can't buy any more insurance than the American who owns the $250,000 home. He just can't. And I am going to try again. I will be back tomorrow, and like the terminator, ``I'll be back.'' Because in trying to punish the rich, when they can't buy any more insurance than the ordinary American, Mr. President, like you and me-- 250,000, that is the limit for the rich American and the middle-class American--this is going to put the entire real estate industry in jeopardy. And it is also going to put a lot of ordinary, middle-class Americans out there who have scrimped and saved, and they have got the money for the downpayment, and they are ready to buy a home, but they are not going to be able to buy it because they can't get flood insurance, and their mortgage lender requires it. And by the time government opens back up--I hope it is a short period of time, but we don't know--those interest rates instead of 7.5 percent could be 8 percent. And look, I get the politics of beating up on the rich, but the rich have nothing to do with this. This is about ordinary Americans. But I appreciate, Mr. President, your patience in listening to me today. And with that, I think I need to yield the floor, do I not, Mr. President? To whom should I yield it?