James Lankford

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, about 4 weeks ago, it got cold in Oklahoma--really cold. My house was at negative 14 degrees. Now, Senator Steve Daines from Montana is used to that, but in Oklahoma we are not used to negative 14 degrees. It was overcast, snowy, cold. Then, the sun broke through, and we had a day when it got up to 30 degrees. It was like everyone was going to the park. It felt so nice because the sun was out, even though it was cold. Sunshine has a great way of making everyone lift and look around and say: Where has that been? I think that happens in the Federal Government as well. I thank Senator Joni Ernst for hosting what she is calling Sunshine Week to be able to say: What are we doing to put a little light into the Federal process to be able to make sure people can see into some of these programs? Because all the time I hear from people, and when something comes on the news, they will say: Where did that come from I will say: That was poked in some bill that probably no one read. I will give you an example of it. Two weeks ago, when the ``COVID'' bill passed with almost $2 trillion in spending, I already had folks come back to me saying: I am grateful for that $70 million for the Small Business Administration to increase some of the loans by $70 million. I said: Great. Do you know how much the administrative cost was on that $70 million program? The answer is $390 million in administrative costs, $70 million in loans. That is in the bill. Everyone looks at me and says: Oh, I didn't know that. In lots of States around America right now, their legislatures are meeting, including mine in Oklahoma. They are suddenly finding out that that bill that was for ``COVID-related'' mandated that no State in America could reduce taxes on anyone. Lots of States are saying: Wait a minute; we were planning on reducing taxes on working families in certain targeted areas. They are finding out that you can't do that, and they will say things like: I didn't know that was in the bill because there wasn't any sunshine on that bill. I worked for years to pass a bill called the Taxpayers Right-To-Know Act. It is a commonsense bill. It asks a simple question: What programs do we do in the Federal Government? This body has heard about me talk about it year after year after year. Contrary to popular belief, it is not easy to actually move a bill in this place. Some things that are very commonsense take forever. This was my simple bill. In the Federal Government, every Agency has to list every program that they do, how many employees they hire to do that program, what is the cost of the program, and is the program evaluated? If it is, just put the evaluation numbers with the program. Why would I say that? Because I talk to Agency heads that start a new program and they get 2 years down the road from starting a new program and they find out a different Agency has already done that for 5 years. Then we get together and find out a third Agency started that 10 years ago. None of them knew about the other program. Before you think that doesn't happen, oh, yes, it does. It happens all the time. Not only that, but I want to ask a simple question to say: How many options do we have for whatever it may be? How many programs do we have for STEM education, for instance? How many different incentives have we put out there, and how many Agencies are helping to provide greater STEM education? The Agencies can't tell me. They could eventually tell me what is in their Agency, but they don't know what other Agencies are doing. And when I go to the GAO, the Government Accountability Office, and ask them, their answer is: I will get you an answer back in about 18 months--months--18 months before they can tell me how many STEM programs we have in the Federal Government. I should be able to do an internet search and get that in 18 seconds, not 18 months. The Taxpayers Right-To-Know bill requires the Office of Management and Budget to actually work with every Agency to get a master list of every program across the Federal Government--how many employees they have, if it is evaluated, and what it does. It is pretty simple. It is basic transparency, but it allows any American and all Members of Congress to be able to see what we do and if we have duplication in government. Again, you may think that is simple and straightforward. It is, but it took years to actually pass. We finally got that passed and signed into law last December. I met with Gene Dodaro, who heads up GAO, and asked him about it because he has also been an advocate of that for years. He said: We need an ``unequivocal commitment from the Office of Management and Budget to implement it properly'' because we have to actually get this done. Sunshine helps. We can see how money is spent. We can see how duplication actually functions. We can't reform what we can't see. The American people perpetually get frustrated with what they didn't know was in a bill and find out later, and they don't like it. In the days ahead, I will release my annual ``Federal Fumbles'' book, as we do every year. In that ``Federal Fumbles'' book, this year, we are going to outline where our debt comes from because I run into so many people who say: We have debt. Who is our debt? Is it all China? I will say: Well, actually, $1.6 trillion of it is from China, and we are paying them interest every single year on that debt. But it is in a lot of other places. A lot of people misunderstand what government debt really is. This needs some sunshine because if we are going to solve this, the American people have to be able to see it and so do we I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, on January 20 of this year, President Biden declared the repeal of an emergency action at our southwest border. He withdrew that and said there is no emergency that currently exists there and paused all funding for the border wall system construction--stopped it. Wherever it was that day, it ended that day. The same day, he announced a 100-day moratorium on deportations in the country--stopped that. Within a few days, the courts stepped in and a Federal court said that you can't just stop actually executing faithfully the laws of the United States. The court halted then his halt of a moratorium on deportations. In this case, his actual request for a moratorium on deportation halt was for those who had actually gone all the way through the court system and a Federal court had asked them to be removed from the United States. That is what President Biden was trying to stop. Federal courts then stepped in and said that when the courts said they had to be removed, the executive branch can't just ignore that. They have to actually be removed. That opened the flood gates. Those two announcements together--that we are not going to do any more border construction, that we are going to stop that, and the announcement of the moratorium--started the process of a stir in Central America among the human smugglers to get the word out to say this President is going to allow to let people in and it is going to be different. Why would I say that and why would they say that? Because even in the time when I was sitting down with now Secretary Mayorkas in his hearings before he was actually confirmed, I asked him in those hearings: If there is a caravan coming to the United States right now with hundreds of people in it and growing, what is your message to them if you became the Secretary of DHS? What would you want to make sure those folks heard? His response to me in that hearing was: I would tell them to wait. Not yet. Not yet. The coyotes didn't hear it that way. They accelerated pushing people. What is actually happening on the border? Last weekend, I spent the weekend in Arizona just south of Tucson in Nogales, a small little town of 26,000 people that sits right on the border with Mexico. It is 26,000 on the American side, but on the Mexican side it is a city of 450,000. It is a very large community on that side and, literally, they have built up the community directly against the border. Much of that border fencing has been there a very long time. They built properties directly against that fence. They are Mexicans. They can do that. That is their property to be able to do that. That is not the issue. The interesting thing was to visit with folks from HHS taking care of the unaccompanied minors in the area, to visit with Customs and Border Protection that are actually handling the cross-border transition, and with Border Patrol leadership to go through that area and see it. Let me tell you a couple of things I saw this weekend to help you get the context. The folks who I visited with at HHS, who are there taking care of the unaccompanied minors coming in--and we are seeing a significant surge of unaccompanied minors because the Biden administration has changed the policy and said that if you are 18 years old and up, because of the pandemic, we are not going to allow you in. It is called title 42 authority. The Trump administration actually put that in place and said: During the time of the pandemic, we are trying to limit cross-border traffic. You can't just come in. The Biden team changed that and said: If you are 18 and up, you can't come in immediately. If you are 17 and down, you can So we are seeing a massive surge of unaccompanied minors right now. It is literally an invitation to say: You can come, but don't bring your family with you. When I sat down with the folks at HHS there, who are doing a fantastic job with the best they can to be able to take care of those kids, I asked them: What are you seeing? The vast majority of the kids that they are seeing coming across the border are 16- and 17-year-old males. When you hear the term, ``We've got all these kids coming across the border,'' sometimes, as Americans, we think these are 5-year-olds crossing the border. They are not. The vast majority of them are 16- and 17-year-old males coming across the border. They are also being transported to individuals who are here in the country who are family members and who are already present here in the country. Most of those are also illegally present in the country. They are uncles and aunts. They are cousins and brothers and sisters who are already here because we have separate categories of how we actually transition those kids to someone who can take care of them before we have the court hearing. Most of those court hearings will take 2 the years. They are crossing the border, these 16- and 17-year- old males, and being connected with an uncle who is already here and many times, illegally, as well. They will have the next 2 years to be here before they have a court hearing and be able to go through the process--if they come to the court hearing. When I visited with the folks at Customs and Border Protection, they were frustrated with the lack of funding that has been given to them to be able to take care of the needs for that particular facility and help manage the number of people who are coming through. They need additional assistance because in that very old facility, they need additional barriers to just help them manage the flow of people as they come through. When I visited with Border Patrol, we drove just a couple of miles out into the desert, just to the west of this town of 450,000 people, to go see the new fence that is being constructed. It may be hard to see it in this, but miles and miles of new fencing are going in. But on the day of January 20, construction was halted. In this particular area, there are miles and miles of fencing except for these gaps in the fence. Those gaps were put in there to be gates. So if they have to take care of the fence, they can get access to both sides of this. These miles and miles of fencing are done except for the gate area, and, literally, the steel for the gates are laying on the ground. Why in the world would you do construction and have it stop to say you can build everything except close the gates? The Border Patrol team has literally drug over some of the steel just to be able to stack it in front of the gaps that are in the fence here to keep vehicles from driving through and try to put different barriers there and try to slow down the traffic. For every one of these gaps along these miles and miles of fence, they are having to assign a Border Patrol agent there just to be able to sit at that gap because it is the obvious place to literally be able to walk through the fence. There is only one reason that you would have a fence like this for miles and miles and leave it open as a gap--to allow people through. Worse than that, all the way through this construction area is just a dirt path they used for construction. But in the contract itself, it was set up to allow for the fence construction first. Remember, this is a wall system. There is technology and wall. Walls are medieval, I get that, but there is a reason we still use fences in our backyard and still a reason we use fences as barriers because they work. They slow people down from actually crossing that barrier. But it is a wall system in place. For miles and miles and miles in the contract and as it is written, they put up the fence first, close up the gates second, and then they finish the road so Border Patrol can actually pass through here, even when it rains in this area, to have a simple road passage there. Then they put in ground-based sensors so they can detect when people are walking across. Then they put in lights and cameras--all the technology we talk about in this room. I can't remember how many times I have heard my Democratic colleagues say: Fences are old. Let's just do the technology. Technology can help manage this. In this situation, the contract is out and done. The fence is already installed, except for the gates, but no technology is there. So, literally, the Biden team stops before what even they claim is the effective part to stop people illegally crossing the border. The $1.6 billion was paused--that $1.6 that goes to simply closing the gates and installing the technology. That is what remains. This is nonsensical. I understand the Biden team and some of my Democratic colleagues want a more open border. They have been clear on that. This does not provide security for our Nation. This is the result of saying: I don't want any more wall. This is a nonsensical system on our southern border, with literally open areas that you could drive a truck through and where Border Patrol agents have to then sit at. Rather than monitor large areas, they are stuck monitoring the open door. Listen, we can have arguments about immigration, but, supposedly, we all agree we should have border security--at least we used to. This doesn't make sense. But this is now the reality, and it will sit like this for we don't know how long--maybe forever--until we as a nation determine this has to change. It is an open invitation. Have things really changed significantly on the border? Let me give you an example that is pre-COVID--pre-COVID, February of last year, before COVID came through. So don't say that things have changed in COVID. In February of 2020, we had under 40,000 people who were apprehended crossing our southern border that month--under 40,000 pre- COVID. That is a transition and an arrest process. This February, with the only thing changing being the change of Presidents, we had over 100,000 people illegally crossing the border. One year later, we go from less than 40,000 to over 100,000. This is a manufactured crisis that is happening on our border: a halting of closing up the holes in the fence; statements that we are going to do a moratorium, that we are not going to have anyone deported anymore; changing the rules on unaccompanied minors to basically invite them to come into the United States; and, again, statements like, ``Caravans, I will just tell them to pause; we are not quite ready for you yet.'' That is really not going to be a pause at all. That is going to be an invitation. That is not me saying that. It is the thousands and thousands of people who are coming to be able to connect with relatives who are already here and to be able to walk through a process, to be able to go around our visa application process and go around legal immigration. I remind us as a country that we allow a million people a year to legally come to the United States and become citizens--a million people a year. We are not a stingy nation in engaging with legal immigration. There is a right way to do it, and we welcome people to do it the right way. This is welcoming people to do it the wrong way, and that does not help our security as a nation. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, we are a year into the COVID epidemic--a year. If you think about it, this week a year ago, in Oklahoma City there was a basketball game going on between the Utah Jazz and the Oklahoma City Thunder. They were 2 minutes away from tip-off, and the announcer came on the speaker and said: Ladies and gentlemen, there has been a case of COVID-19 that has been discovered by one of the players. This game is postponed. And with that one announcement, a year ago this week, all professional sports stopped across the entire country, and the country, for a moment, woke up and realized: This is more serious than we thought. And everything shifted. Within a week, the United States had shut down for 8 weeks, and we went into lockdown. At the beginning point of that, this Congress came together in a bipartisan way and passed something called the CARES Act, $1.6 trillion, an enormous relief bill, because we were walking into uncharted territory. We created things like the Paycheck Protection Program. We created ways to be able to assist behind the scenes. We even created a way to be able to help not-for-profits, knowing that if the not-for-profit sector collapsed, there is no way government could possibly keep up. Lots of work went into that, in a bipartisan way, to be able to resolve that, and that CARES Act stabilized our economy--$1.6 trillion. It was one of five bills that we passed in this body last year, all bipartisan, all of them with us working together to try to find out what are the essential things we have to do, knowing that every single dollar that was spent on COVID was not budgeted. Every single dollar was borrowed, all of it from last year, a total of $4 trillion. Only $3 trillion of what was actually allocated last year has actually been spent. There is still $1 trillion allocated in last year's five bills that is still unallocated--$1 trillion. Over the weekend, this body passed on a straight partisan vote--and then the House did the same--to be able to add another $2 trillion to the spending for COVID-19. But this bill was different. There was no bipartisan conversation. In fact, 10 Members of the Republican conference went to the White House and tried to sit down with President Biden and say: Let's do a bipartisan issue. There are issues that are unresolved. But, thankfully, we are on the back side of this pandemic. We are not at the same spot we were a year ago. We can now see the end. We know that we are going to have every adult have access to the vaccine by the end of May. The economy is turning around, and things are shifting dramatically, thankfully. So let's do the things that we have to do now and keep the same commitment we had last year. Last year's commitment was simple: Do the things we have to do, knowing every dollar was borrowed, but not more than we have to do because none of this is budgeted, and none of this has gone through committees. Let's try to do what needs to be done and not more than what needs to be done--until now. Starting the next couple of days, the Treasury will begin to process borrowing another $2 trillion. I had an Oklahoman whom I talked to this morning who said: How are you doing spending my money at this point? I laughed, and I said: Actually, this time, it is not even your money. It is not even tax dollars that are coming down; it is borrowed money--from the Chinese, from the open market, from everywhere that we can go get $2 trillion of additional spending to be able to spend it. While many people will be eager to be able to receive a check for $1,400, because there are a lot of people having a hard time right now coming out of the back side of the pandemic, getting back to work, paying some bills--they may be a little surprised to be able to find out that they are getting a $1,400 check, but so are prisoners. They are also getting a $1,400 check. They are also finding out that people who are not legally present in the country are getting a $1,400 check. There was an interesting interchange here on the floor on the night of that debate on whether people were getting checks or not getting checks who are not legally present, and so Newsweek magazine did a fact check on, are people not legally present getting a $1,400 check? Just yesterday, they published their fact check and came out--true, people not legally present in the United States are about to receive $1,400 checks in the mail based on the bill that was just passed on a partisan basis. There are billions of dollars in this bill that are allocated for vaccines. Republicans were audacious enough to be able to raise their hands and say: What are those billions of dollars going towards? It says vaccines, but the problem is that the Biden team has already announced they have done the purchase for every single vaccine for every single adult in America. In other words, for every single person who can actually get the vaccine, the vaccine purchases have already been done. Those are set and ready to go by the end of May because we still have $6 billion left in the vaccine fund from last year. But this bill that just passed this week, adding another $2 trillion in debt, also includes tens of billions of dollars for vaccines. So the immediate question is, Is that for international vaccines? No; that is a different account. There is money for international vaccines to be sent out, but this is supposedly for the United States, for the purchase of vaccines. Where is that money going when we have already purchased ahead of time all of the vaccines for every single adult in America? We don't know. Unfortunately, this bill was not taken through committee, so no one even had the conversation or time to even find out why. There is a lot of money for education in this bill, and there is a lot of need in education across the country. In fact, the bill that just passed, this $2 trillion, actually spends almost three times--in this one bill, almost three times--for education what typically the U.S. Federal Government does for the entire year for education. I would say there is a great need, except when you actually look at the unspent money for education from the five bills that were passed last year, there is still $68 billion unspent from the education funds from the five COVID bills last year. There is no requirement that the schools actually open or use that money to open the schools. In fact, 95 percent of the money allocated for COVID relief for education CBO has said can't even be spent this year at all. The earliest it could even be spent would be next year. And it is well in excess of $100 billion. There is a provision in this. The Small Business Administration, as I was reading through the 600-plus pages of this bill--that is a real picture of really what this bill is shaped like. One provision of the Small Business Administration allocates $390 million to administer the loan program, but the loan program itself disburses $70 million. Let me run that number past us again. The program cost for the administrative Washington, DC, cost of running the program is $390 million; the actual amount that they anticipate that they will actually distribute is $70 million, totaling a $460 million program total. Just $70 million of it actually gets to people; $390 million of it stays in Washington, DC, for the bureaucracy. All of those things could have been fixed if we actually went through committee. In this COVID bill, there are things like new customs duties for South Korea. I have yet to figure out what South Korea and customs duties have to do with COVID. There is also slipped in, for the first time ever, Federal funding for abortion. I have yet to see what abortion has to do with COVID, but this bill, for the first time in 44 years, uses Federal tax dollars to start paying for abortion. That has not been done before. In fact, when Joe Biden used to sit in that chair right over there, he often spoke about that we should not use Federal funds for abortion funding. Yet, in the COVID bill, somehow abortion funding has become relevant to fighting off COVID. I have had some people ask questions about whether this bill could have been better if we had actually done it in a bipartisan way. It could have been significantly better. If you ask how I know that, it is because I saw the five bills we did last year, and they didn't have problems like this in them last year because we worked it out together. This one is different. This bill could have been significantly improved in a major way. One of them is the way we deal with charities. You see, in previous bills, we sat down and talked about our not-for-profits. I have a very strong belief personally that we have three safety nets in America. Families are the first safety net; nonprofits, churches, faith-based houses of worship are the second in society; and the third safety net is government. Government can never keep up with all of the needs in America. If families collapse and if our not-for-profits collapse, government will never be able to keep up. So in previous versions, we have actually addressed that with not-for-profits. We did that in the Paycheck Protection Program to make sure that not-for-profits could get assistance and get help to be able to survive through this. We also added in a way that we would encourage individuals to be able to donate to not-for-profits. We gave them a write-off. In the very first bill, we added in $300. If you gave to a not-for-profit, you get to write that off your taxes right away. In the December bill, we reupped that--$300 for an individual and $600 for a family that you could write off on your taxes immediately if you would donate to a not-for-profit. Why did we do that? Well, I brought that issue up, quite frankly, and we had wide bipartisan agreement to say that was a good idea because we should encourage not-for-profits because we need them for that safety net. Not-for-profits are the faces that take care of the hungry and the homeless and the hurting in our society, and we need them to be strong. But in this bill that came out, we didn't address the not-for-profits. We didn't have the option to be able to bring it up and debate it and say: What should we do? So it just got left out. Why should we continue to be able to push on this issue? Because we need them to be strong. They are a remarkable part of our economy, our safety net, and our community. They are Americans doing what we do best--serving each other, serving our neighbors, and helping in every possible way that we can. So a group of us have gathered together to be able to drop a bill dealing with these not-for-profits and encouraging us, again, to accelerate this issue of giving Americans the ability to be able to write off on their taxes, whether they itemize or not, a below-the-line deduction for their taxes to be able to make sure that we encourage people to be able to give to not-for-profits. And it matters. If you want to be able to help do something significant, help those close to you and the ongoing work that they are doing. Those folks have felt it a lot. According to a study by Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, between March and May of 2020, our nonprofits have projected job losses around 1.6 million workers. They leaned in and helped anyway, even though they were in real trouble. As of December 2020, the nonprofit workforce still remained down by about 930,000 jobs. We have a long way to go to have that sector actually fully recover. They are such a significant part of our economy. According to the latest data--again, available from Johns Hopkins--it was found that nonprofit organizations employed the third largest workforce in the U.S. economy; nonprofits, a group that people just drive past all the time, but many people drive to or walk to because they need real help. What happened when we actually passed the CARES Act and we added this deduction in and encouraged Americans to start donating to not-for- profits to help them survive this year? What happened with that? Well, I can tell you what happened because now we can look back and see the data. The most recent data we have for the fundraising effect for this project shows that there was an increase in the third quarter of 2020 of charitable giving--a 6-percent increase in donors and an 11-percent increase in new donors when compared to 2019. We put that incentive out, and people saw the need across the country and the opportunity to do that, and people gave. We saw increases in all donor categories in the third quarter of last year, the largest increase in giving coming from donors giving $250 or less. That increased by 17 percent just in the third quarter of last year. I understand there are a lot of factors to that. There were a lot of needs, and people were doing what they do best and engaging. But we need to continue to encourage the strength of our not-for-profits because if there is a focus to say ``Well, government should do that,'' government can send checks, but government has a hard time actually meeting human needs. That requires a face and a person and a commitment, and that is done differently when it is a not-for-profit. We have great Federal workers all across the country who work really hard, but they also work often from a distance. Local not-for-profits in small, rural communities will have a much greater connection to individuals to be able to help in their time of crisis than someone 1,000 miles away who means well but doesn't see them on a daily basis. If we want to help human needs, we will find ways to be able to help not-for-profits. Tuesday of this week, Senator Coons, Senator Lee, Senator Shaheen, Senator Scott from South Carolina, Senator Klobuchar, Senator Collins, Senator Cortez Masto, and myself--we all introduced the Universal Giving Pandemic Response and Recovery Act. We are just asking a simple question: Can we continue to strengthen our not-for-profits and encourage Americans to give to those not-for-profits with their time, with their money, and with their passion and joy? When you actually engage with a not-for-profit, you will find you are the one who really receives. There is not a moment that I talk to somebody who serves in a not- for-profit that they don't tell me how hard the work is and how draining the work is, and then with a smile, they will say how rewarding it really is. There is not a time that I walk into a homeless shelter or a food bank and they don't tell me about the people they meet on a daily basis and the joy for them going home, talking to their own family, and remembering the blessings that they have, and the joy they have to get up the next day to be able to help those in greatest need. Let's encourage that. If you want to have a Biblical example, Biblically, the calling for government is to encourage those who do good and punish those who do wrong. We have a lot of nonprofits around the country that are doing good. Let's encourage them, and let's encourage Americans to be able to be engaged in volunteering and in giving. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

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

Mr. LANKFORD. I ask unanimous consent for 3 minutes of debate equally divided.

Mr. LANKFORD. I call up my amendment No. 1031 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I have a parliamentary inquiry before I begin. Parliamentary inquiry: On page 225, line 23, it appears that the 7(b) disaster loan program allocates $460 million, but only $70 million is for the actual disaster loans. The other $390 million appears to be allocated for administrative costs of the program. Could the clerk please read page 225 line 20 through page 226 line 2 to confirm the administrative cost for this program is $390 million and the grant program itself is only $70 million?

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, millions of Americans see a sonogram, and they see a child. They count 10 fingers. They count 10 toes. They watch that little girl in the womb suck her thumb. They see a child. Science notes that the DNA of that child in the womb is different than the DNA of the mom and different than the DNA of the dad. It is both confirmed by science that is a baby, and it is self-evident by just looking at her in the womb, that is a child. Millions of Americans see that. Because we have such a divide in this Nation where some people see every child as valuable and some people see only some children as valuable, because we have had that divide that is unresolved in our Nation, we have, for decades, in every appropriations bill, had the Hyde Amendment, that did not force Americans to have to pay for abortion procedures for the death of children. We have also had that in all five COVID bills that we have agreed together on in the last 12 months. In this partisan bill, mysteriously, the Hyde Amendment disappeared and suddenly, now, for the first time, Americans who profoundly believe that children are of great value and should be protected will be compelled with our tax dollars to pay for the destruction of life. This simple statement is that we should maintain Hyde protections in this bill as we have in the previous five COVID bills.

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, in the middle of a pandemic, we shouldn't be dealing with abortion funding. So, I would say, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act, I move to waive. Vote on Motion to Waive

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, Senator Scott, Senator Ernst, and I are not trying to ask for something that the American people aren't already asking for as well and, quite frankly, the Senate and this White House haven't already said that they wanted to be able to do: basic transparency, efficient spending. It is Wednesday afternoon right now. We are about to take up a bill for, we think, $1.9 trillion. And I say ``we think'' because none of us has seen the text of this bill yet, not one of us on either side of the aisle. And the debate was supposed to begin on it today, but none of us has seen the text for this. Supposedly, we are supposed to start voting on it tomorrow night, though no one has seen the text of the bill yet. In addition to that, last year, this Congress, on a bipartisan basis, passed five COVID relief bills totaling over $4 trillion. Every dollar of that $4 trillion was borrowed, every dollar. None of that was budgeted. But there was bipartisan agreement as we walked through the process to determine that this is an emergency; this is a global pandemic. To help stabilize our economy from going into free fall, we have to do some very difficult things. But in the middle of all of that, we also said we don't need to borrow a dollar more than what we need to borrow. Let's borrow what we need to but not more than we need to. Interestingly enough, of the five bills and $4 trillion that was allocated for COVID last year, only $3 trillion of that $4 trillion has actually been spent yet. We still have over $1 trillion unspent of the money from last year. But before that last trillion dollars, which imagine just how big that really is--to give you an example, every single Agency in the Federal Government, the total budget for a year, is $1 trillion. So this ``little $1 trillion'' that is left would cover the total budget for every Agency in the Federal Government for all of next year. With this $1 trillion that is still unspent, the Biden administration and my Democratic colleagues are saying: We want an additional $2 trillion. Basically, near the end of the pandemic, they want a bill as large as what we had the very first month of the pandemic a year ago, when we knew we were in economic free fall. All we are asking are a couple of things: One is, hey, can we read the bill? No. 2, can we get real numbers of what is unspent and anything that is unspent that we can reallocate for something in the future? Let me give you an example. The best I can tell, we have about $6 billion still left in the vaccine line item left over from last year--$6 billion just for vaccine, and that is vaccine purchases. There is another $17 billion left over just for all the distribution process for vaccines. That is a lot of money. Just yesterday, President Biden announced we will have all the vaccines available for every adult in America by the end of May. It is paid for, set aside, ready to go. Yet this bill that I understand is coming tomorrow--maybe later today--has tens of billions of dollars more in vaccine money. Why are there tens of billions of dollars more in vaccine money, when just yesterday the President announced we have all the purchases done all the way through toward the end of May to vaccinate every adult in America? And there are billions of dollars still left over in the two vaccine accounts even after that. Why are we asking for tens of billions of dollars more? Where is that money going? That shouldn't be an unreasonable question. That should be a question everybody should ask. Why are we asking for tens of billions of dollars more in vaccine money when we have already purchased everything related to vaccines? Is this foreign aid vaccines? We don't know. There is $170 billion being requested for education expenses. All of us want to take care of education, but $170 billion is twice as much as what the American people spend on education in a year. The total education budget is $67 billion for the entire year for all of the Federal education budget--$67 billion. This is now very close to three times what the annual budget is for all of spending just for COVID. And, by the way, still unspent in the education amount from last year's budget, we understand, is about $68 billion. So there is still $68 billion unallocated in education entities that hasn't even been touched yet. Hey, listen, before everybody jumps up and says, you Republicans are just being a blockade, can we just ask a question? How much money is unspent, and what is the money going toward that we are asking for? That shouldn't be an unreasonable question. That should be a reasonable question. We are not trying to be obstructionists; we are just trying to get information. And, quite frankly, when our team calls over to the White House and says: Can you give us the details of what is unspent in this amount--I know it is early in their Presidency, and they are still getting organized, but most of the time their answer is: We will get back to you, and they never do. We need to know what is still left over of this $1 trillion that has already been allocated before we allocate another $2 trillion, knowing every single dollar of that is borrowed from China or somewhere else. This is a real issue. We should resolve this before we move to spending another $2 trillion. And I thank very much Senator Scott for his leadership in this area and asking some very basic questions.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, last week we paused as a Congress to recognize half a million people who have died in the United States due to COVID. Unfortunately, that number is still climbing. Half a million. That is a lot of families that are affected. Those are a lot of lives lost. That is a lot of pain that we have experienced as a nation, and obviously that is a global pain that is being experienced. Over the last now 11 months, this Congress has gathered in a bipartisan way five times, with wide bipartisan majorities, to be able to address the issue of COVID-19. We have allocated $4 trillion, all of it borrowed, all of it--none of this was budgeted money--all of that borrowed money, with a common agreement that this is a pandemic and a crisis and that to be able to stabilize the American economy, we have to do what we have to do, but we should not do more than we have to, knowing that every dollar we are spending is borrowed. Last year, at almost this exact same date, this Congress gathered together and put together a $2 trillion CARES Act package. It was an aggressive package because we saw the shutdown of the American economy. Quite frankly, we saw the shutdown of the world's economy at that time period. Literally, the world seemed to stop by the end of March, and we all went into seclusion. We saw dramatic spikes in unemployment and desperate need around the country, but we all knew this was a crisis moment and we would get through it and we would get out of it. Now, almost a year later, where we saw unemployment soaring to 15 percent-plus across the country, we are now at 6.7 percent unemployment. Every State is opened at some stage, and some States completely opened. Many schools are open. Some schools continue to stay closed and say they are afraid and that they are not going to reengage, while thousands and thousands of other schools around the country are open and taking care of their kids in person. We have seen this patchwork of response, but one thing is very true about right now versus 11 months ago. We are in a very different place now, as an economy and as a nation, than what we were 11 months ago. But the strange thing is, now, 11 months later, my Democratic colleagues are putting forward a $1.9 trillion package, almost the exact same size of what we had getting into the beginning of this. They are doing it. As just about everyone sees we are at the end, they want to borrow another $2 trillion. It is not just $2 trillion to be able to spend toward COVID. I wish that were so. One percent of this package actually goes toward vaccines. Five percent of this package actually goes toward public health. In the school funding portion of it, 95 percent of the funding in the school funding portion of it, which is $170 billion for school funding, won't even be spent this year at all--at all. Let me run that past you again. Ninety-five percent of the $170 billion allocated for funding for schools won't be spent in the year of the pandemic at all. It is future spending. To give you a picture of how big $170 billion is toward education, the total U.S. education budget for the entire Department of Education this year is $66 billion. For the entire year, for all of education in the whole country, it is $66 billion, and my Democratic colleagues say: But we need to spend $170 billion just for COVID, which, by the way, we are not going to even start spending until next year. Do you know why? Because this bill is not about COVID. I wish it were, because there is real need out there. I wish it were. This is for things like $350 billion to go to cities and States, to be able to bail out some of their pension funds and other things that are there. Why do I say that? Because when you look at the statistics of the revenue loss for the States--across the entire United States, the revenue loss for all States is .1 percent from last year--.1 percent-- not 1 percent, .1 percent change, because almost every State is dependent on property tax, and as people who pay property tax know, you are still going to have to pay your property tax. So the revenues, quite frankly, continue to stay strong. In many of the cities that I have in Oklahoma--in fact, one of the cities in my State just last week reported their revenue for sales tax revenue is up 20 percent--20 percent, in their revenue--because people are staying home and shopping more. They are doing more shopping online, so the tax revenue is actually coming back into their States and their cities even more in many of these communities. But there is $350 billion allocated to these cities. You would think, well, there will be some fair distribution. Actually, that would be nice, but it is not true. They set up an unemployment formula that is based on, those States that shut down the longest and kept everything closed the longest, they are the ones that actually get the most money. So, in other words, if you reopened your economy and you worked to get your schools opened and you worked to get jobs opened, you get a chance to have very little support. If you stayed closed and kept your schools closed and kept your businesses closed, well, then you will get additional dollars coming in, regardless of what your revenue is--even for big States like California that their revenue actually went up last year. Let me run that past you again. California's revenue went up last year. They get $27 billion out of this, after their revenue went up. Remember that, in the CARES Act last March, this Congress added $150 billion to cities and States, $150 billion, and spread that around the country to be able to cover it because there was a panic to think there were going to be major losses, but at the end of it, .1 percent off of the previous year. This has additional funding for Planned Parenthood. I am not sure why abortion is needed for COVID relief, but they have additional money for Planned Parenthood included. They have a tunnel for San Francisco, which clearly is not COVID related, a bridge in New York State, $50 million for climate justice grants. There are--on and on and on--all these additional things that are just stuck into the process. And I would say this Congress has been active to be able to do what it takes to be able to help in every moment, but we have also tried to be wise in the process to say let's spend what needs to be spent when it needs to be spent. Let me give you an example of that. As I mentioned, for vaccines in this particular bill, 1 percent is set aside for vaccines. That would be interesting except for the fact, in vaccines, the CDC has distributed only $3 billion of the almost $9 billion that Congress has allocated to the CDC for vaccine distribution. They still have almost $6 billion remaining for vaccines right now. They have spent only $20 billion of the $37 billion allocated for the vaccine treatment and development and testing--only $20 billion of the $37 billion for the actual development and treatment--still another $6 billion remaining for distribution. And on top of all that, today the Biden administration said they have struck new deals with vaccine folks so they can get vaccines to every single American by the end of May. They already have all that they need for vaccine distribution, development, and purchasing, yet this particular bill asks for billions more in vaccine because that sounds like a good idea--except, when you check the facts, they already have all they need for the vaccine purchase, development, distribution. But it sounds good, kind of like, we need more money for education. It sounds good when you say you need more money for education, except for the vast majority of the education funds, like around $86 billion, is still unspent from the previous bills in education money that was sent. For the ag money that has been allocated, $26 billion for ag just done in December, only $24 billion remains of that $26 billion. In other words, ample funds are still sitting there for ag, for assistance for schools, for vaccines, for testing. There is $14 billion still remaining in the fund for testing, untapped. But my Democratic colleagues can go to the microphone and say we need money for schools and for vaccines and for testing. And everyone is like, ``Oh, my gosh, certainly, we do,'' until you check the facts and find out this is not about vaccine and testing and schools at all. It is about all the pet programs that go with it, and it is about allocating billions and billions and billions of dollars to agencies so they can hold them and use them for other things. That is what this is about, and it hides under the cloak of COVID, and it hides behind the pain of half a million Americans who have lost friends and family members. Don't use their pain to be able to amp up government. Let's have the debate about issues that we need to have on government, but don't abuse the pain of Americans and pretend you are trying to fix something that we are not trying to fix. I yield floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, in 1932, 11 years after the Tulsa Race Massacre, Maxine Horner was born in Tulsa, OK. She was Maxine Cissel at the time. She grew up in segregated Greenwood, a district recovering from the devastating effects of the massacre, just a little over a decade before. Her parents were exceptionally protective and instructed Maxine and her siblings not to go into certain stores in downtown Tulsa, knowing their children wouldn't be welcome. They didn't want their children to experience the pain and humiliation of being told to leave a store or to not sit at that end of the counter. Her mother once told her, though: Never let the color of your skin get in the way of achieving your goals. If you put your mind to it, you can do anything and be anyone. Maxine was part of the first class to graduate from Booker T. Washington High School, which, at the time, was an all-Black school. She was proud of the education she received at Booker T. and spent 2 years studying at Wiley College before returning back to Tulsa. She got a job working for Congressman James Jones, an opportunity that sparked some political ambitions in her. In her fifties, she returned back to school and received a bachelor's degree from Langston University in 1985. Despite being decades older than her fellow classmates and occasionally being mistaken to be the professor in her class rather than one of the other students, she finished her education. In 1986, she ran for the Oklahoma State Senate and became one of two women to be elected for the first time into the Oklahoma State Senate as an African American. Maxine was a true trailblazer. She worked hard for her constituents, and she championed education and the arts. Her life was full of some poetic justice, quite frankly. She grew up in the Greenwood District in the wake of the Tulsa Race Massacre, but in the late 1990s, she sponsored the State legislation that created the Tulsa Race Riot Commission. She also cofounded the Greenwood Cultural Center. After she left office, she continued to fight for the victims of the massacre and chaired the committee overseeing the search for the burial sites--work that is still going on today. As a young teen, she recalls going into the Tulsa Union Depot and seeing drinking fountains labeled ``Colored'' and ``White.'' But as a State senator, she sponsored the legislation that created the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame, which now occupies the old Tulsa Union Depot building, where they don't have drinking fountains labeled ``Black'' or ``Colored'' and ``White.'' As a student, she attended segregated schools. As a Senator, she championed the Oklahoma Higher Learning Access Program or what we now call Oklahoma's Promise--a scholarship program for low and middle- income students in Oklahoma. Oklahoma's Promise helped over 75,000 young Oklahomans pursue higher education. She left quite a legacy. Two weeks ago, on February 8, Oklahoma lost this transformational giant. Maxine Horner passed away at the age of 88, and she will be certainly missed by her families, and she will be missed by Oklahoma

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, it is the end of February. Almost exactly a year ago, America was getting its first cases of COVID-19, and they were being reported in the media. We were learning about it but didn't know much at that point. We knew it spread across China. We knew what was happening there. But in the weeks ahead and by the middle of March, just a few weeks from now, our country started going into lockdown. We experienced something we had never experienced as a country: a mandatory shutdown across the entire country, followed by instructions to senior adults and people with comorbidities to stay in their homes and not get out. For millions of those senior adults, they asked the same question almost a year ago: When can I get out of my home? When can I see people? And the answer consistently was: Once there is a vaccine. When we get a vaccine in place, this will be better. We don't know how long that will take, but once we get a vaccine, we will be able to turn this around. Seniors heard that over and over and over and over again for the last 11\1/2\ months. And, now, thankfully, millions of seniors have been vaccinated. We have 42 million Americans that have gone through the full regimen. In my State, almost 20 percent of the adults in my State have already had their vaccine. We are one of the top States in the country, by percentage, getting vaccines out to individuals. Almost every person in every assisted-living nursing home, critical care facility, staff, and residents have been vaccinated. Almost every single senior adult in my State has been fully vaccinated, and we are into the second round now of teachers and those with comorbidities and other folks that has already begun. But interestingly enough, seniors are still asking the same question. I had my shot. I had my second shot. It has now been the 10 days past my second shot, but nothing is changed. A couple of weeks ago, I asked CDC a very simple question. It is the question that I am getting asked that I continue to ask CDC. When will instructions come out on what seniors need to do now? Can they get out? Can they hug their grandkids? Can they go to Walmart? Can guests come to assisted-living facilities? They were all together during Christmas and Halloween and now Valentine's Day, and they are used to having kids come in and sing songs and people come to visit them. None of that happened last year, and now, they are asking a simple question: When will CDC give guidelines for what happens now? CDC currently has said over and over again: Wait. We are thinking about it. We are researching it. CDC needs to act on this. Seniors have been cooped up for a year. They were told months ago, ``Once you get a vaccine, this will get better,'' and they are now finding they had their vaccine and nothing is getting better. They need hope. They need to know the next step. So my simple challenge to CDC has been: Do for the seniors what you did for the schools. CDC put out extensive guidelines: here is how schools can reopen, it is safe to reopen for schools, here is what needs to be done. Help our seniors out by getting clear guidelines out into the public. Give instructions to assisted- living facilities; give instructions to these grandparents. What do they need to do now that they have been vaccinated? How much travel can they have? What are the risks? And let them make the decisions on it. Folks are counting on them to be able to lay some of the science out there, and it is time to get the information out to those folks so they can make the right decision. CDC, we need you to step up. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. Now, while this was going on, Officer Eugene Goodman responded to the initial breach. You all may have seen footage of Officer Goodman previously, but there is more to his heroic story. In this security footage, you can see Officer Goodman running to respond to the initial breach. (Video presentation of 1-6-2021.) Officer Goodman passes Senator Mitt Romney and directs him to turn around in order to get to safety. On the first floor, just beneath them, the mob had already started to search for the Senate Chamber. Officer Goodman made his way down to the first floor, where he encountered the same insurrectionists we just saw--watched--breach the Capitol. In this video, we can see the rioters surge toward Officer Goodman. Recall that the rioters are in red, and Officer Goodman, in this model, is in blue. Watch Officer Goodman, who backs up the stairs. (Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.) (People chanting: ``USA.'') Unidentified Speaker. That's my muffin. I paid for that. Unidentified Speaker. You work for us. Unidentified Speaker. Where is the meeting at? Unidentified Speaker. Hey, where do they count the fucking votes? Unidentified Speaker. Hey! Hey! Unidentified Speaker. Do it! Do it! Unidentified Speaker. Where are they counting the votes? Where are they counting the votes? Unidentified Speaker. Right there. Hey. Unidentified Speaker. These people. These people. These people. We have no weapons. We have no fucking weapons. Unidentified Speaker. No, no. Unidentified Speaker. Motherfucker. Although they were shouting that they did not have any weapons, we know from the earlier video that that is not true. The second assailant through that breach was the one carrying a metal baseball bat. We know there were other weapons there that day. Did you hear the other shouts? We're here for you. He's one person, we're thousands. And-- Where do they count the votes? They were coming at the urging of Donald Trump to keep Congress--a separate branch of government--from certifying the results of a Presidential election. As the rioters reached the top of the stairs, they were within 100 feet of where the Vice President was sheltering with his family. And they were just feet away from one of the doors to this Chamber, where many of you remained at that time. I also want to show you a different angle from the security footage of Officer Goodman's acts. This video is on the second floor of the Senate wing of the Capitol. The red dot, as you recall, represents the insurrectionists. The blue dot is Officer Goodman, who led the mob away from the Chamber, just minutes earlier. (Video presentation of 1-6-2021.) On the left-hand side of the video, just inside the hallway is the door to the Senate Chamber. And watch how Officer Goodman provoked the rioters and purposefully draws them away from the door to the Senate Chamber and toward the other officers waiting down the hall. The rioter seen carrying a baseball bat in this video is the same one we saw moments ago breaching the window on the first floor. While all of this was going on, Vice President Pence was still in the room near the Senate Chamber. It was not until 2:26 that he was evacuated to a secure location. This next security video shows that evacuation. His movements are depicted by the orange dot in our model. The red and blue dots represent the location where the mob and Officer Goodman were and where Officer Goodman led the mob away from the Chamber just moments ago. (Video presentation of 1-6-2021.) You can see Vice President Pence and his family quickly moved down the stairs. The Vice President turns around briefly as he is headed down. (Video presentation of 1-6-2021.) As Pence was being evacuated, rioters started to spread throughout the Capitol. Those inside helped other rioters break in through doors in several locations around this entire building. And the mob was looking for Vice President Pence because of his patriotism, because the Vice President had refused to do what the President demanded and overturn the election results. During the assault on the Capitol, extremists reportedly coordinated online and discussed how they could hunt down the Vice President. Journalists in the Capitol reported they heard rioters say they were looking for Pence in order to execute him. Trump's supporters had erected a gallows on the lawn in front of the Capitol Building. Another group of rioters chanted: ``Hang Mike Pence,'' as they stood in the open door of the Capitol Building. You can hear the security alarm through the door in the background. And you can hear the mob calling for the death of the Vice President of the United States. (Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.) (People chanting: ``Hang Mike Pence.'') This wasn't an isolated area or incident where that was being told, where that was being said. It was going on everywhere. Here is another example of the crowd outside yelling: ``Bring out Pence, bring him out.'' (People chanting: ``Bring him out.'') (People chanting: ``Bring out Pence.'') After President Trump had primed his followers for months and inflamed the rally-goers that morning, it is no wonder that the Vice President of the United States was the target of their wrath after Pence refused to overturn the election results. Listen to this man explain. (Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.) Unidentified Speaker. While Congress, cowards, hid in their--inside, and were escorted away because of fear of the people. Of course they are cowards. They can't face the people. They can't do the right thing. Pence lied to us. He is a total treasonous pig. And his name will be mud forever. Now the real battle begins. And it looks like the American people are very pissed. So good luck with that. Peace out. ``Peace out.'' Several insurrectionists described wha they had planned to do if they encountered the Vice President or other lawmakers. One of them, Dominic Pezzola, also known as Spaz, is a member of the Proud Boys, as we discussed. Pezzola came to the Capitol on January 6 with deadly intentions. He commandeered a Capitol Police shield, used it to smash a glass window, entered the Capitol, and paved the way for dozens of insurrectionists. As you recall from an earlier video, Pezzola was one of the first wave of rioters to breach the building. On the left, you can see a screen shot from the video of the break-in we showed earlier. And on the right, you can see Pezzola in the mob chase Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman through the building. Pezzola is the man in the center of the photo with the gray beard. Pezzola has since been charged with eight Federal crimes for his conduct related to January 6. According to an FBI Agent's affidavit submitted to the court, the group that was with him during the sack of the Capitol confirmed that they were out to murder ``anyone they got their hands on.'' Here is what the FBI said: Other members of the group talked about things they had done that day, and they said that anyone they got their hands on they would have killed, including Nancy Pelosi. And, I quote: [T]hey would have killed [Vice President] Mike Pence if given the chance. They were talking about assassinating the Vice President of the United States. During the course of the attack, the Vice President never left the Capitol, remained locked down with his family--with his family--inside the building. Remember that as you think about these images and the sounds of the attack. The Vice President, our second in command, was always at the center of it. Vice President Pence was threatened with death by the President's supporters because he rejected President Trump's demand that he overturn the election. The mob also went after the Speaker of the House, who alongside the Vice President, was presiding over the joint session of the certification in the House Chamber. The chilling evidence shows that on January 6, armed and organized insurrectionists trained their sights on Speaker Pelosi. They sought out the Speaker on the floor and in her office, publicly declared their intent to harm or kill her, ransacked her office, and terrorized her staff. And they did it because Donald Trump sent them on this mission. As the insurrectionists got closer, Capitol Police rushed the Speaker from the House floor at 2:15 p.m., mere minutes after the Capitol was first breached. They recognized immediately that she was in danger. The Speaker was not just rushed from the floor; the Capitol Police deemed the threat so dangerous that they evacuated her entirely from the Capitol Complex, rushing her to a secure offsite location. The insurrectionists' intent to murder the Speaker of the House is well documented in charging documents that are now available. We know from the rioters themselves that if they had found Speaker Pelosi, they would have killed her. I have already discussed Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola, who has since been charged with eight Federal crimes for his conduct on January 6. As you will recall, according to the FBI agent's affidavit submitted to the court, the group he attacked the Capitol with confirmed that ``anyone they got their hands on they would have killed, including Nancy Pelosi.'' William Calhoun, a lawyer, from Georgia, also participated in the insurrection that day. And he, too, has been charged for his actions. This insurrectionist detailed his criminal activity at the Capitol online. Calhoun wrote about his involvement on his own Facebook page. Here is the post. Calhoun stated: And get this--the first of us who got upstairs kicked in Nancy Pelosi's door and pushed down the hall towards her inner sanctum, the mob howling with rage--Crazy Nancy probably would have been torn into little pieces, but she was nowhere to be seen. ``Crazy Nancy''--that is Trump's nickname for the Speaker of the House. Then he explains that he and his group only abandoned their claim to the Speaker's office when ``a SWAT team showed up.'' He writes: Then a SWAT team showed and we retreated back to the rotunda and continued our hostile takeover of the Capitol Building. ``Retreated,'' ``hostile takeover.'' He is using military terms for this attack. The mob continued to look for Nancy Pelosi throughout the time they occupied the Capitol, including invading her offices. Watch now how the mob searches for Speaker Pelosi's office, which is marked in red, and the House Chamber itself. (Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.) Unidentified Speaker. Where are you, Nancy? We are looking for you? Unidentified Speaker. Nancy! Oh, Nancy! Nancy! Where are you, Nancy? During the siege, the Speaker's staff took cover in her office, hiding in fear for their lives for hours, as rioters broke in and ransacked her office. As the rioters were breaking into the Capitol, her staff retreated into an interior room. Eight of them gathered in a conference room. About the same time, Capitol Police announced the Capitol had been breached, Speaker Pelosi's staff heeded the call to shelter in place. On our model, you can see the rioters in the Rotunda in red and the Speaker's office, again, in orange This is a security video, so there is no sound. (Video presentation.) As you can see, the staff moves from their offices through the halls and then enters a door on the right-hand side. That is the outer door of a conference room, which also has an inner door that they barricaded with furniture. The staff then hid under a conference room table in that inner room. This is the last staffer going in and then barricading themselves inside the inner office. After just 7 minutes of them barricading themselves and the last staffer entering the door on the right, a group of rioters entered the hallway outside and, once inside, the rioters have free rein in the Speaker of the House's offices. In this security video, pay attention to the door that we saw those staffers leaning into and going into. (Video presentation.) One of the rioters, you can see, is throwing his body against the door three times until he breaks open that outer door. Luckily, when faced with the inner door, he moves on. Another rioter later tried unsuccessfully to break through that inner door. At this point, the mob had already broken into the Speaker's formal conference room that is in the back of the hall at the top of the video. I want to play some audio we have of the Speaker's staff with the rioters at the door that day. You can hear the terror in their voices as they describe what is happening to them as they are barricaded in that conference room. Please listen carefully because the staffer is whispering into a phone as he hides from the rioters that are outside the door. (Text of video presentation.) Unidentified Speaker. They're in the hall. We need the Capitol Police to come into the hallway. They're pounding on doors trying to find her now. You can hear the pounding in the background as that staffer is speaking. One of those staffers explained later that they could hear the mob going through her offices, breaking down the door and yelling: Where are you, Nancy? The mob also pillaged and vandalized the Speaker's office and documented their crimes on social media. They stole objects, desecrated the office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States. As you can see in these photos, rioters broke down a door. They also shattered a mirror. At 2:50 p.m., several rioters, including Richard ``Bigo'' Barnett, entered Speaker Pelosi's office. The world is all now too familiar with the images from these slides. If you look closely, however, at the now-infamous pictures of Barnett with his feet on the desk, you might see something that you didn't notice previously. Here is a better look. As this photo highlights, he is carrying a stun gun tucked into his waistband. The FBI identified the device as a 950,000- volt stun gun walking stick. The weapon could have caused serious pain and incapacitated anyone Barnett had used it against. Richard Barnett bragged about his actions. He was proud of the way he desecrated the Speaker of the House's office. He left a note:

Mr. LANKFORD

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

Mr. LANKFORD. The First Amendment of our Constitution states that Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. This has not been a controversial thing in our history and also does not have an asterisk next to it saying, ``Unless there is a pandemic.'' We don't restrict freedom of religion. We just don't do that. This has been a great debate in our Nation over the past year as we have seen restrictions on churches and mosques and on synagogues. This is a very simple statement. All this is asking for is to make sure that we treat faithbased entities the same as we do secular entities. It is not asking for special treatment. It is saying that if you treat a bar one way, then a block away, you have to treat a synagogue the same way; if you treat a store one way, a block away, if there is a church, you have to treat them the same way; if there are outdoor gatherings that are allowed in the city, there has to be outdoor religious gatherings also allowed. It is asking for the same treatment, not special treatment. That is all that this is--to try to affirm this. I didn't think this would be controversial. Quite frankly, I thought this would be something we could voice vote, but I am understanding this is something we may actually have to take a vote on.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I would like to call up my amendment No. 837 and ask it be reported by number.

Mr. LANKFORD

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

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, 2 weeks ago, I heard these words: History, faith, and reason show the way, the way of unity. We can see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors. We can treat each other with dignity and respect. We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature. For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. President Biden's inaugural address had some pretty glowing terms. I am grateful to hear statements about unity. The challenge now is to actually live that out and see that actually done, because while those words are beautiful, over the past 2 weeks, there have been almost two dozen hyperpartisan Executive orders that have come out of the White House, and there doesn't seem to be a push toward actual bipartisan unity here on this floor. In fact, in the first 10 days of the Biden administration, he has signed more Executive orders than the last four Presidents combined in their first 10 days. President Clinton signed 2; President Bush signed 2; Donald Trump signed 7; President Obama signed 9; and Joe Biden, in the first 10 days, signed 22 Executive orders--22. And some of those Executive orders seem to be purely spiteful, just to say: President Trump put this in, so it must be bad. Let me give you an example. The Trump administration required, through an Executive order, every Agency to compile all their guidance documents into one place so that small business owners and people who work in small businesses could find the Federal requirements from each Agency in one spot. They didn't have to hunt all over the place to be able to find their Federal requirements. Now, that doesn't seem like a partisan statement. That just seems like good government. But in the first 10 days of President Biden's term, he got rid of that good guidance piece and said: No, Federal agencies can go back to playing hide and seek with their rules again, and small business owners will just have to figure out where it is. There won't be one place in each agency to find guidance. Why would you do that, other than just, if Trump did it, it must be bad? Listen, we have to find ways to actually live unity and to be able to do what is best for the American people. We live in a constitutional system. We have more than 300 million people. We have great disagreements on policies, but we come together to work them out. During 2020, in a time of divided government, this body, the House of Representatives, and the White House passed five different COVID relief bills, all with strong bipartisan majorities. We passed all 12 appropriation bills with strong bipartisan majorities. I didn't agree with everything on every one of those bills, but we worked together to be able to resolve it. And now, suddenly, it has become a ``we don't want to talk across the aisle anymore,'' literally 2 weeks after saying: Do you know what we need as a country? Unity. Two weeks later it is: How do we cram through something on a straight partisan vote? How do we block out all Republican voices from the entire country and make sure their voices are not heard? Does that feel like unity, 2 weeks into a Presidency? Ten of my Republican colleagues sat down with President Biden. We appreciate his time, and he gave 2 hours of his time to listen. He has proposed $1.9 trillion in additional spending the very first day on COVID--$1.9 trillion. This is only a few weeks after we just passed almost a trillion-dollar package dealing with COVID. Literally, two-thirds of that trillion-dollar package has not even gone out the door yet, has not even been spent, has not even been allocated. There are billions and billions of dollars still unallocated for vaccines, for testing, for schools--all kinds of different things that we allocated in December--and it is already like: That is not enough. We need more. Literally, the CDC and the NIH have billions of dollars unallocated right now from previous bills that have already been sent. And when my team contacted the White House team and said, ``Hey, we see this big proposal; can you tell me what these dollars are allocated for?'' their response was: It is an emergency. We need a big package. They literally couldn't tell us what the money would be spent for. Now, I have to tell you, this is not just a partisan issue for me. I asked the exact same thing of the Trump administration. When they made a big proposal, I went back to them with the exact same question: What is this money to be used for? They couldn't answer it. So I continued to press for months until we got an answer, until we got a right amount. That seems like a reasonable thing for us to do, regardless of who is in the White House, to say: This is the American people's money. And, in this case, none of it is actually money that is allocated. All of it is borrowed. So before we spend a dime of money that we borrow from China, we should probably know what it is actually for. In the $1.9 trillion package proposal, there is even a section in it that is a $50 billion fund to spend for needs, however the administration wanted to fill that blank in--$50 billion. No, thank you. We have a basic responsibility to be able to ask questions on this. If the reports are accurate, when 10 Republican Senators sat down with the White House to talk about a different proposal to be more targeted toward the actual needs right now, if the reports are correct--I wasn't there at the time, but if the reports are correct-- every time a proposal came up, some of the President's team sitting against the wall facing the President would shake their head to signal the answer to President Biden: Say no to that one as well. We have to find a way to be able to actually work things out. Why is this so difficult when we did it five times with a divided government last year? And now the focus is that we can no longer talk to Republicans. Where did the unity go? Some of these Executive orders require a lot more attention and a lot more conversation instead of just imposing things on the American people because that makes a difficult situation worse. On his first day in office, President Biden dismantled the title IX protections for women and imposed new gender identity requirements. Now, I agree with President Biden, every person should be treated with dignity and respect. But I also believe that extending respect and dignity mean being honest about scientific and biological realities of sex and the differences between men and women. All people--all people--should be afforded equal opportunity, but that also includes women and girls. Title IX was put into place to make sure that we had equal opportunity for women and girls in all areas. And under the guise of ``preventing discrimination,'' suddenly now women and girls are being discriminated against. President Biden's Executive order to ``prevent discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity'' is now a mandate to force school districts to allow biological boys to compete against biological girls in high school sports. You might think: What is the big deal about that? Well, in Connecticut, two high school athletes who were born male, but now identify as female, won 15 women's championship titles that were once held by girls--in fact, 9 different girls. Those titles are gone from those girls. Female athletes are losing medals, podium spots, and chances for scholarships, or chances to play on a team with their peers. Every person should be respected in our Nation, but there is a reason that title IX was created. This should demand more conversation in this body, not trying to impose it in an Executive order. Americans are not united in this issue. We are united that people should be respected and have every opportunity, but don't run over one group to be able to provide special status to another group. I was disappointed, but not surprised, when there was an Executive order that was released on the issue of abortion--in fact, multiple Executive orders--on the week of the 48th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. For unity, President Biden gave the ironically titled ``Memorandum on Protecting Women's Health At Home and Abroad''--once again, message. It is a good message, but it falls short of a standard about unity. According to the most recent Marist poll, 77 percent of Americans oppose using taxpayer dollars to support abortion in other countries. Yet under the guise of unity, we are now spending money overseas on promoting and providing abortion. At a time when we have record debts and deficits, the Biden administration made one of its first priorities in the very first week to take some of the dollars that we do have and spend it to promote and provide abortion overseas in other countries. That is our foreign aid now. As if funding abortion providers at home and abroad wasn't enough, the memo also directs the United States to withdraw from the historic Geneva Consensus Declarations. Thirty-five nations have agreed to four basic pillars. These are the four pillars that we just withdrew from: pillar No. 1, better health for women; pillar No. 2, the preservation of human life; pillar No. 3, strengthening of family as the foundational unit of society; and, pillar No. 4, protecting every nation's national sovereignty in global politics. That was so controversial that the Biden administration withdrew from that with 35 other countries. Ironically enough, while President Biden pulled out of that treaty protecting women's health, he actually installed us deeper into a treaty with Russia. In his first week in office, President Biden agreed to a straight extension for 5 years of the outdated New START Treaty with Russia. The treaty was supposed to manage the proliferation of nuclear weapons between the United States and Russia, the two big superpowers, but it was written so long ago and is so out of date that it completely leaves out other superpowers, like China. So while Russia has to mind an agreement, China continues to accelerate. The current status is that China will double its nuclear stockpile in the next decade, but they are not even in this treaty. In addition to that, multiple areas are not even addressed in this New Start Treaty. That is why there was such a push in the previous administration to renegotiate it, because the New Start Treaty doesn't even include Russian weapons like ``air-delivered ballistic missiles, nuclear powered underwater drones, hypersonic glide vehicles,'' and ``Nonstrategic nuclear weapons.'' They were not even included. So even under this agreement, Russia can accelerate in those areas and say they are still meeting the agreement. And President Biden just extended it for 5 more years and said: We are not going to negotiate it for 5 more years. Let's just keep going. The shift has moved from stopping nuclear proliferation to dealing with climate change. Why can't we do both? Why can't we pay attention to the environmental issues of our globe but also pay attention to the issue of nuclear proliferation? It is not like this is going away. It hasn't. President Biden also took several issues on immigration, specifically border security. Right after the inauguration, speaking on unity, he puts out an Executive order with bizarre doublespeak in it that stated this: ``The United States is a country with borders and with laws that must be enforced.'' But the order itself after that literally put a 100-day moratorium o all deportations. It is like: We need to enforce our laws. And then the first step of it was that for 100 days we are not going to actually enforce our laws. Now, this is not just some crazy piece here. The 100-day moratorium for deportations included individuals who are listed as criminal aliens. It also included people who had what is called a final order of removal from a court. That means that they have gone through every appeal in our court system here and a court has said: No, you do not qualify to be here legally. They have ordered them removed from the country. President Biden said no, we actually want them to be able to stay, even after a court order. There is this great myth that ICE is roaming through cities in America just rounding people up. The fact is, in 92 percent of ICE enforcement and removal operations, those individuals have a criminal conviction or a pending criminal charge--92 percent. But President Biden immediately put a 100-day moratorium on it and said: Those individuals don't need to be deported. We will think about it for 100 days. Now, thankfully, a Federal court has already stepped in and stopped that. Their statement was that this moratorium has--this is the quote from the Federal court--``no reasonable justification.'' I agree. That is not enforcing our laws. That is not engaging in bipartisan unity. The vast majority of Americans want legal immigration. The vast majority of Americans also believe that if someone has committed a crime in our country and they are not legally in our country, they should be deported. But the message that is being sent out is that those individuals won't. As odd as it may seem, on January 26, President Biden instituted a travel ban from Brazil, the United Kingdom, Ireland, most of the EU, from South Africa, and said: Those folks can't come because of COVID threat. But at the same time he said he wants to evaluate title 42, which may allow people to come into the United States from Mexico, and do catch-and-release again here in the United States. So at the same time saying that business travelers from all over the world really don't need to come because of COVID threat, they are also looking at our southern border and saying: Yeah, but people coming from South America, Central America, they may be OK to come into the country and then be released while there is still a hearing pending. May I remind this body, in the past year we have lost 21 people from the Department of Homeland Security along our southern border. Twenty- one agents and officers have died from COVID exposure while interacting with people coming from South America and Central America. Why in the world do you close down the borders to business travelers and then start talking about opening them up to people not legally crossing the border? This is not the America we are looking for. I had a lot of people in my State who were shocked, in the first days of the Biden administration, when he stopped the Keystone Pipeline and then he stopped all energy exploration on Federal lands. Those are jobs in my State. As President Biden likes to talk about, those are union jobs that are all over the country. Thousands of people lost their jobs on day one of the Biden administration with a unilateral declaration: We are not going to do energy exploration, and we are not going to complete this pipeline. What does that mean? That means to the Federal taxpayer, royalties are down because they are not gaining royalties off of the use of that land, so the taxpayer loses. That means jobs are down all over the country, especially in the west. And that means prices will go up for the consumer. We are not running all on electricity right now. We are still running on oil and gas for the vast majority of our vehicles. And while I am all for multiple, different types of energy, that is not what is happening right now. We should address this. We should work for unity. But right now, we are not even having dialogue. We are not even included in the conversation. If we are going to have unity, we have to talk about the hard issues and actually come to a decision on how we are going to resolve those. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

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

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, if you buy a new GM car, a Nissan, Honda, Kia or Toyota, even a Hyundai, you will notice they have started installing a new feature in their cars. It is a reminder, when you turn off the engine, to check your backseat. Quite frankly, I rented a car not long ago, and it started dinging, and I kept trying to figure out what I had done and kept looking around until I saw the little monitor on the dashboard. It just said, ``Check the backseat,'' which I thought was great because the makers of those cars all believe every child is precious and they shouldn't be harmed. We have all heard stories like this, but I distinctly remember last summer seeing in the news a story about an infant who died because they were left in a hot car. That is why these carmakers are making this feature now. I remember, as I saw the story on the news, just the reports and how angry people were in the community. And they were angry at the store, and they were upset on the news. They couldn't believe that a mom had left a child in the backseat of a car and they had slowly died in the heat, because no one wants to see a child harmed. Everyone believes that every child is precious. I remember, when I saw the story on the news last summer, turning to my wife and saying: I can't figure out our culture sometimes because that same mom and that same baby could have gone into an abortion clinic just a few months before and that child's life could have been ended, and it wouldn't have made the news. In fact, no one would have flinched. In fact, the very same people who were furious at that mom for leaving her child in the hot car to die would have argued for her right to destroy that exact same child--in fact, would have called it her reproductive right or even the new euphemism out there, ``reproductive care.'' Same child, same mom--nothing was different but a few months in time. ``Reproductive care'' seems like such a nice little euphemism, but what it really means is paying someone in a clinic to reach into the womb with a surgical instrument, to pull the arms and legs off of a child in the womb so that they will bleed to death in the womb and then suction out the little boy or girl's body parts one at a time. That is what ``reproductive care'' means, and I don't understand why that is normal but leaving a child in the backseat of a hot car is a tragedy. Maybe it is because, as a nation, some people are afraid to answer the most obvious question: Is that a baby? That is the most obvious question. That face, that nose, those two eyes, that mouth, that chin, those fingers--is that a baby? That is really the only question: Is that a child? Maybe there is a second question that needs to be answered: Are all children valuable, or are only some children valuable? We seem to have a great deal of debate today in our society--and we should--about facts. People say we can't seem to agree on the same set of facts and truth. You can't have your facts and my facts; we just only have facts. The media, Big Tech, activists have all decried our loss of ability as a nation to just accept clear facts in front of our face--the obvious truth. So let me ask the question again: Is that a baby? Yes or no? Because if we are all supposed to say, ``Let's at least agree to the most basic of facts,'' how about that one? Is that a human child with a future and a purpose and a name? Are all children valuable or are only some? Gold is valuable. It doesn't matter its size. I have gold in my wedding ring. Many people have gold in their wedding rings. If we found a small piece of gold on the floor, it would be valuable. It wouldn't matter its shape. It wouldn't matter its size, small or large. We don't discriminate. Gold is valuable because everyone universally recognizes its worth. Every single Senator in this room recognizes the worth and value of gold. It is around $1,800 an ounce right now to be able to get gold. We all seem, no matter how small or large, to agree gold is valuable, but we can't seem to agree that all children are valuable. Literally, gold is more precious to some people in this room than children are. Children aren't valuable only sometimes or only certain children. Children are valuable. It can't be just that if a mom or dad wants a child, they are valuable and, if they don't want a child, they are not valuable; they are disposable. The mom or dad gets to choose who are precious and who is medical waste. Is that a child? That is really the only question that has to be answered, because everything else flows from that. There are political conversations in this room about the value of children, and every time it comes up, it gets noisy. People will say: Well, you don't fund enough money for education or childcare or healthcare in communities. So you don't love children. I would say I have voted for the exact same bill you did last year, for billions of dollars for assistance in childcare, billions of dollars for early childhood education, elementary and secondary education, higher education. We did additional assistance for SNAP benefits last year and assistance of benefits for moms in need, increased healthcare for all communities, for federally qualified health centers to make sure we get healthcare to every single community. I voted on those exact same things multiple other people did in this room. I care about children outside the womb. But those questions really aren't the question. They are distractions to the question. And I get it, because if I ask, ``Is that a child?'' people will respond: Well, do you spend enough for childcare or healthcare? And I still say: Wait. Stop and answer my first question. Is that a child? Maybe I should ask a more basic question: Does everyone in this room believe in the principle that we should do unto others as we would want done unto us? What would you have wanted done to you when you were in the womb? I don't address this issue lightly. This is a difficult issue for some people. I don't think an abortion is a flippant thing, that anyone walks into an abortion--I don't mean anyone who had an abortion is somehow gleeful about it. Quite frankly, I can't imagine that anyone who had an abortion would ever forget the sights and sounds and the smells of an abortion, knowing that a helpless child is dying at that moment. I grieve for the moms and dads who will never ever forget that they went into a clinic and paid someone to get rid of their child in the name of reproductive care. I can't imagine what their emotion is. But we as a society have to answer this question still for every child who has yet to come. Forty-eight years ago this week, the Supreme Court made a decision that has now resulted in the deaths of 62 million children in America-- 62 million. That is hard to fathom. Unlike so many other Supreme Court decisions, America has not forgotten about this one. Our culture has not just moved on and accepted it. Every year since 1974--the first year after the Roe V. Wade decision--individuals from across the country have gathered in Washington, DC, in defense of the unborn. Friends, families, church leaders, community folks--they have all marched in the rain, in the sleet, the snow. It is cold every year this week in January, but they come. This year will be different. Due to COVID-19 and the ongoing security concerns in Washington, DC, marchers are staying home, and they are engaging virtually. Maybe this is one more moment where even more people can get involved online, because I expect the rally this year will draw an even larger number of people--students, families, people, quite frankly, from all over the world--to ask a simple question: Will we recognize the most obvious thing in front of our face--that is a baby. President Biden this week celebrated the passage of Roe v. Wade by declaring that he wants to pass a Federal law requiring abortion to be provided in every single State in America. It is not just trust a Court decision from 1973; he wants us to proactively require in statute that every State demand abortion in their State and that Federal taxpayers, with hard-earned tax dollars, should actually be required to pay for those abortions all over America. It wasn't long ago that Senator Biden was saying things like, taxpayers shouldn't be required to pay for abortion; they shouldn't be required to pay for something that they find so morally objectionable. It wasn't that long ago that Senator Biden was talking about abortion being safe, legal, and rare. But now, as President, within the first week, he is moving as fast as he can to promote abortion and demand taxpayers pay for it. In fact, painfully so, President Biden's nomination for the Secretary of Health and Human Services has actually no healthcare experience at all. It was a little surprising to a lot of us when we saw it because we are used to seeing the leader of Health and Human Services be a physician or scientist, which would make sense in the time of an enormous global pandemic to have a physician leading Health and Human Services. But he actually nominated someone whose biggest qualification is that he is one of the most radical advocates for abortion in the country. He did it as a House Member. He did it as an attorney general in California. And clearly the promise was made that he will do it if you put him in Health and Human Services. Let me just give an example of what I am talking about for Mr. Becerra. I can't process some of these things. Mr. Becerra, when he was the attorney general for California, actually went to Mississippi to be able to lead a suit against Mississippi--another State, obviously-- because that State was talking about limiting abortion to only the earliest days. Their belief was, after a child feels pain, we should at least not tear a child limb from limb in the womb when their nervous system is developed. Mr. Becerra led a coalition of State attorneys general to fight Mississippi and say: You can't protect children that way. He actually argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit against the Little Sisters of the Poor, trying to require that group of nuns to provide birth-control services--literally attacking the Little Sisters of the Poor to kind of push this whole agenda. When he was a Representative in the House of Representatives, he voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. So if a child, in a botched abortion, is actually delivered instead of destroyed, he wanted to say, no, even after they are fully delivered, that child can still be destroyed, even though they are fully delivered, which would make sense because he also, as a Representative, fought against the partial-birth abortion ban. It was a rare procedure, but it was a procedure where they would deliver the child--all but the head--and then penetrate the head with scissors and kill the child. He fought against that. He fought against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which really is odd to me. All it did was criminalize--if someone attacked a pregnant woman and killed her child, they could also be liable for that death as well. He also didn't want to recognize the child as a child even if the mother saw the child as a child. He also fought against crossing State lines for minors, saying they shouldn't have to get their parents' permission if they crossed State lines to go get an abortion somewhere else. As the attorney general in California, he fought to require churches to pay for abortion care in their healthcare plans when it directly violated their religious belief. Unbelievably so, he also fought to be able to require pro-life medical claims, where you could go and say: I don't want an abortion, but I do want a sonogram. I want to be able to get some more information about this child. If you went into one of those pro-life centers and got a sonogram, he fought to require there to be a poster on the wall that would say: If you would rather have an abortion, here is the place that you would go. This is beyond just protecting abortion; that has moved to promoting abortion, encouraging the death of children. It got even so bizarre that in California, when there was a video taken of a Planned Parenthood group of folks who wer trafficking the body parts of children and it was caught on video, instead of confronting the folks who were trafficking the child body parts, he went after the folks who took the video, the whistleblowers, and exposed them. This is not an attack on Mr. Becerra. It is just a shock to me that all of those things seem normal. I don't understand that culturally. I don't understand how the person who is being appointed to lead Health and Human Services can say that children are subhuman: I don't have to recognize that as human, although I am leading Health and Human Services. That is apparently optional tissue, not a human child. I believe that children are human and that we should honor every child's life. It should be baseline for us to be able to say that if a child is actually delivered in a botched abortion and has been fully delivered outside the womb, we should help that child get medical care. I don't understand why that is so hard. I don't understand why it is so hard to say that some people are actually appalled by the taking of a child's life. Don't force them, with their tax dollars, to pay for it. I don't understand why that is controversial. I don't understand why it is controversial that when a child can feel pain in the womb, we shouldn't dismember a child in the womb. I don't understand why that is controversial. I don't understand why it is controversial to some that if a healthcare provider who has sworn to protect life--that that person shouldn't be compelled to take life in an abortion procedure by their employer. I don't understand why that is controversial, but for some reason, it is. Among our most basic rights in America are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One of the most basic things that come out of our founding documents says these things are referred to as ``self- evident.'' Facts are facts, especially when those facts have a face. How can you look at that picture and say that is not a human child? How can we not acknowledge the simple facts? I do understand for some people this is very difficult because they fought for years for abortion, and they don't want that to change because if it changed, they would have to admit there have been the deaths of millions of children on their watch. That is not a simple thing to admit. But please do not tell me you are following the science, because that child has 10 fingers and 10 toes and a beating heart and a functioning nervous system. That child has DNA that is different from the mom's or the dad's. That is not random tissue; that is a separate person, and science would confirm that. So please don't follow tell me you follow the science wherever it goes because some facts are obvious, and the science is clear. This all gets resolved when we answer one simple question: Is that a child or not--because everything else goes from that. For those of you joining the March for Life online this week, good for you. Keep going. Don't give up. Defend the facts that are self- evident. Speak out for those who can't speak for themselves because millions of future Americans are counting on it, and they are watching for someone to admit the facts--the facts that have a face. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. My challenge today is not about the good people of Arizona.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, in America, we settle our differences in elections. What happens if you don't trust the election count or you are concerned that so many courts denied or dismissed cases within hours after they were given thousands of pages of evidence? The reason we have a Congress to settle our Nation's divisions and the rules of the Senate make sure that every opinion in the Nation is heard is so issues like this can be addressed. The constitutional crisis in our country right now is that millions of Americans are being told to sit down and shut up. Their opinions matter. During the electoral challenge on January 6, 2005, Senator Ted Kennedy stood on this floor and said this. He said: I commend the many thousands of citizens in Massachusetts and other States who insisted that treating today's electoral vote count in Congress as a meaningless ritual would be an insult to our democracy unless we register our own protest against the obviously-flawed voting process that took place in so many States. We are hopeful that this major issue that goes to the heart of our democracy is now firmly implanted on the agenda for effective action by . . . Congress. I agree. The U.S. Constitution does not allow me to assign different electors to a State, nor should it. The U.S. Constitution does not give the option to the Vice President of the United States to just unilaterally decide which States are in and out, and it should not. Each State decides its electors through its people. A small group of Senators, including myself, have demanded that we not ignore the questions that millions of people are asking in our Nation, so we have proposed a constitutional solution. Pause the count. Get more facts to the States before January the 20th. We proposed a 15- member commission, just like what was done after the failed election of 1876. We are encouraging people to spend 10 days going through all the issues so States can have one last opportunity to address any challenges. Then the States, as the Constitution directs, would make the final decision on their electors. I have some colleagues who have said that a 10-day commission is not enough time, so they have counterproposed just ignoring the lingering questions. We need to do something. (Mr. GRASSLEY assumed the Chair.)

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Vice President, you said things more eloquently than how we say it in Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, we say something like: Why in God's name would someone think attacking law enforcement and occupying the United States Capitol is the best way to show that you are right? Why would you do that? Rioters and thugs don't run the Capitol. We are the United States of America. We disagree on a lot of things, and we have a lot of spirited debate in this room, but we talk it out, and we honor each other, even in our disagreements. That person, that person, and that person is not my enemy. That is my fellow American. And while we disagree on things, and disagree strongly at times, we do not encourage what happened today--ever. Now, I want to join my fellow Senators in saying thank you to the Capitol Hill Police, the law enforcement, the National Guard, the Secret Service who stood in harm's way. While we were here debating, they were pushing back. And I was literally interrupted midsentence speaking here because we were all unaware of what was happening right outside this room because of their faithfulness and because of what they have done. I want to thank them. Ronald Reagan once said: Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means. The peaceful people in my State of Oklahoma want their questions answered, but they don't want this, what happened today. They want to do the right thing, and they also want to do it the right way. They want to honor the constitutional process, but they also want to have debate about election security because they want to make sure it is right, which is why it is an important issue that still needs to be resolved. Transparency in government just doesn't seem like a bad idea. Obviously, the Commission that we have asked for is not going to happen at this point, and I understand that. And we are headed tonight toward the certification of Joe Biden to be the President of the United States, and we will work together in this body to be able to set a peaceful example in the days ahead. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I will be brief. I did what many of us did today. We spent the day digging through a 5,600-page bill, trying to find out what is in it. We broke it up into hundreds of pages of chunks and separated it among our staff and just started reading through it as quickly as we could, trying to be able to pull out the details. We found a lot of things that we really like. We found a few surprises as well. So help us, we found, right in the middle of the document on tax policy, a zombie--the wind production tax credit. Something that we had heard had died--in fact, something that we had heard died 2 years ago; in fact, something that we had heard died 6 years ago when all of us agreed it should die. In fact, the plan was to take it down a little bit each and every year until it finally got to zero. The problem was, when it got to zero, some lobbyist helped somebody get it back in last year, and it suddenly, after going to zero, reappeared. And then, so help me, it reappeared again. So this temporary credit that distorts the market, that literally changes the prices in all of our energy--whether that be oil or gas or coal or solar or hydroelectric or nuclear--gives a special perk to one, and all of the rest of them get furious. But for whatever reason, this simple credit can't seem to go away. When we agree to something, we should probably stick to it, and we agreed years ago to phase this out. But yet this zombie keeps reappearing and walking the halls of the Senate. Our simple challenge is this. Let's put this zombie in the daylight. Let's have the real argument over it and determine: Is this distorting the energy market for everybody else, including all of our renewables? Is it something we need to keep? I live in Oklahoma, and if you know our song, you know ``the wind comes sweeping down the plains.'' We have been called the Saudi Arabia of wind power. I promise, you can't drive very far in Oklahoma without seeing a field of windmills. We have lots of wind power, and we think it is a great energy source. But it is a mature energy source, and it does not need the wind production tax credit. So let's sunset it. With that, I yield