James Lankford

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.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, I have 8 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the majority and Minority Leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate. committee on banking, housing, and urban affairs The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, August 5, 2020, at 2 p.m. to meet in Executive Session to vote on the following nominations: The Honorable Hester Peirce, of Ohio, to be a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission; Mrs. Caroline Crenshaw, of the District of Columbia, to be a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission; and Mr. Kyle Hauptman, of Maine, to be a member of the National Credit Union Administration Board. committee on commerce, science, and transportation The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, August 5, 2020, at 10 a.m. the committee will hold a full committee hearing titled ``Oversight of the Federal Trade Commission.'' committee on energy and natural resources The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate in order to hold a hearing on Wednesday, August 5, 2020, at 10 a.m. The purpose of the hearing is to examine Federal and industry efforts to improve cyber security for the energy sector, including how to improve collaboration on various cyber security and critical infrastructure protection initiatives.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, we have been talking here in the Senate for months now about what needs to be done to respond to COVID-19. Right now, we are debating behind the scenes a fifth bill dealing with COVID-19. We have already passed four through the House and the Senate that the President has signed. Many Americans know the effects of those previous bills. They have received deposits from the Treasury of $1,200, and they have received assistance from the Paycheck Protection Program. Their schools have received assistance. Their hospitals have received assistance. Their States have received assistance. Their local jurisdictions have received assistance. There has been wide support in multiple areas--for housing and for health, for testing and for vaccines. All of those things have happened in the previous four bills. Yet, when we passed the last set of bills, there was a lot of thought about what would happen next. How would the virus spread? How long would this last? Would Americans continue to just stay sequestered in their homes, away from everyone else? Now, after months of dealing with this COVID-19, not only in the United States but globally, we know a lot more about not only how we are going to respond and treat the disease but also about what we are dealing with, for COVID-19 doesn't affect everyone in the same way health-wise or economically. There are some people who get COVID-19, and they, literally, never know it--they experience no symptoms at all--while others end up in a hospital, in the ICU, or on ventilators. There are even fatalities. Economically, we are at the same spot with COVID-19. Some businesses in America and some individuals in America are, literally, making more money now than they ever have before. They are in one of those businesses that is in high need--maybe home improvement. Since lots of folks are staying at home, they are doing home improvements. The price of lumber has skyrocketed and the price for replacement windows. All kinds of people are installing pools at their homes. They aren't going on vacation this year. So they are doing things to fix up their homes. Construction and home improvement have skyrocketed. Retail sales and craft businesses and things to do at home have skyrocketed. A lot of other businesses that we have seen have actually increased dramatically, not just grocery stores and department stores and such, but online retailers. They are doing really good business. In my State, the incomes from many small towns to their communities are higher now than they ever were in the history of their cities because people aren't driving to other towns to shop. They are staying at home and are shopping locally or online. So that tax revenue is going back to the cities. Literally, they are doing better now than they ever have done. For other communities and other businesses, there have been horrible effects during this time period, if you are a hotel or a convention center or a restaurant that surrounds a convention center. If the businesses deal with travel, transportation, or vacations, all of those are struggling horribly during this time period, and there are multiple others. Here is the challenge that we have: Should our response now be the same as it was in March--to just pretend that this has struck everyone exactly the same--or should we pay attention to the realities economically around the country? I think we should be more strategic and understand that what we are spending is other people's money. It is not just printed monopoly money that we can just throw out of here. It is debt on our future or it is, literally, taking money from the person next door or from your house. So what do we need to do in a bill, and what are the needs at this point? Some of them are very obvious. For the next bill that is coming, we need to focus in on vaccines, tests, and therapeutics. What are we going to do with telehealth? How are we going to be able to help? This is, first and foremost, a health crisis, and it is amazing to me the number of topics that are being discussed for the next bill that have nothing to do with COVID-19--nothing to do with it. My friends on the other side of the aisle came forward with the Heroes Act--a great name. It is a $3 trillion bill, and a full $1 trillion of it has nothing to do with COVID-19. Unrelated completely is $1 trillion of it because it is a big bill, and we want to get other things in. We want to just throw it in there. Why don't we start with this as a health crisis, and let's focus in on the health issues there--vaccines, testing, therapeutics, telehealth. What can we do for rural hospitals? What needs to happen at urban and suburban hospitals? Those are basic questions that should be there. One of the most successful programs that we put forward in the CARES Act was the Paycheck Protection Program. Now that it has had its headlines, as some folks have said, there are people who have abused it. Well, welcome to government. Every single program that comes out of government will be abused by someone at some time. We have seen that in the unemployment system. Unemployment insurance has gone out, and it has been widely abused. Well, so have some portions of the Paycheck Protection Program, but we have all seen the long lines at unemployment offices around the country. The reason this was put in place--the Paycheck Protection Program--was to do whatever we could to help shorten those lines at unemployment offices, for people to not have to leave and go on unemployment but to stay connected to their small business or not-for-profit. That has worked. In my State, 65,000 businesses and nonprofits have taken advantage of the Paycheck Protection Program--about $5.5 billion of assistance just in my State. But there are some things that need to be dealt with. The forgiveness system on it is just coming out--much delayed, much to our frustration, but there are some straightforward things that can be done. If you are an entity with a loan that is $150,000 or less, there should be a very straightforward process of testimonial--a single page to fill out to complete this. We want to see this. We want to see businesses with the highest need--let's say businesses with a 35-, 40-percent, 50-percent--some of them, 70-, 75-percent loss in revenue from the previous year should have an eligibility to get through this. Now, some businesses took the Paycheck Protection Program, and they had a 5-percent loss over last year. To me, that is fine because at the beginning of this, no one knew who was going to survive. Many of those business owners were in the process of saying: I am going to have to lay everyone off or I can keep them on the Paycheck Protection Program. They kept them on the Paycheck Protection Program and that helped those families have a stable time, where they knew where their check was coming from. It helped those businesses reopen, and many of them are reopening now. It kept them off the unemployment assistance. Now, if we do a second round of paycheck protection, it really needs to be focused in on those businesses that are significantly off on revenue that will not survive without some additional help. We need to be attentive to how we actually handle this and be more strategic. We are not in the same situation that we were in March. We need to also look at businesses that were funded with private equity. It makes no sense to me that if a business started and got their loan from a bank, they can get a Paycheck Protection Program, but if they got their capital from private equity, they are not eligible for this. The employees that work there don't know where the capital came from to start the business; they just know they work there. But for some reason, there is a continual pushback to say: Well, if they were funded with private equity rather than a bank, then they are evil. No, they are startup companies doing technology, innovation, healthcare. Those are the kinds of companies that are out there that are being funded with private equity, but yet we have told their employees: You can just go to unemployment, and, literally, the business next door to them: No, you get paycheck protection. That makes no sense. We should fix that. We should put into this next bill some help for schools that are reopening. Now, not every school is reopening. They are not going to need the same level of help. Some schools are not reopening or they are choosing not to. I understand that. We gave additional funds--$30 billion of funds--across the country from the previous CARES Act to help schools transition to online learning, to help them get through the process of finding cleaning supplies, do additional training. That was $30 billion that was sent out to do that. Additional dollars should be helping those schools that are reopening that will have additional expenses. They are going to have to run additional bus routes to make sure they keep kids separate. They are going to have to do A and B schedules to open up their classrooms. There are going to be greater expenses for them, so we should help those schools that are reopening through the process. That is common sense in this. There has been a big request for an additional assistance check for those that need additional assistance. There are some families who are struggling to make their payments and are going to be evicted. The $1,200 that was sent out earlier this year went out to help stop that early in the year, and some families are still unemployed and still struggling through this. What are we going to do to help them? There are some strategic ways to get out some additional assistance, but we should target it to those families of greatest need, and that should be the same with their unemployment assistance. Unemployment assistance passed in March. There was an additional $600 per week, per person that was sent out on unemployment assistance in addition to the normal State unemployment assistance. For many individuals in my State, that meant you made more on unemployment than you did on employment. That is a problem long term. Now, this program was set up to be short term; that it would be assistance through the end of July, which has now passed. It was a week ago. But individuals applying for unemployment assistance this week are still getting unemployment assistance in my State, exactly as they were in February of this year, exactly as they were in November of last year, exactly as they were in August of last year. Unemployment assistance is still happening in my State, just like it is happening in every other State. But the debate is, do we want to go above and beyond unemployment assistance that literally takes people to the spot where they make more staying at home than they do at work? Now, there are some folks who are saying: Well, that doesn't actually deincentivize work. Really? Tell that to the folks whom I have talked to who work in manufacturing, who are there at the job working every day, and the person who usually works a pod away from them is at home because they have talked to them, and they are saying: I will come back once my unemployment goes away. So this person is busting their tail working, making less than the person who is staying at home, and the person staying at home is telling their friend: I will come back when the benefits run out. That is not right for either one of those folks. That tells that person working: You are a sucker for not just staying home and getting somebody else's money. We should not incentivize for not working. We should help people get through a very difficult time, and that is what this is, but not discourage engagement in work. That is not fair to the guy or the lady who is still working. That is not fair to the employer that has opened up and saying: I have got jobs available but no one will apply. And that is not right for that family who is staying home, taking money from their neighbors, when they know they could come back and work. Now, the law says that if you are offered a job and you are on unemployment, you have to take it. But we know of way too many cases already where individuals are not taking the job they are offered, and the employer knows it is one of their employees who is a good employee, and they want them to come back, so they hate to turn them in. So it puts everyone in a quandary--the employer and the employee because the employee is breaking the law by staying home, teaching their family to do the wrong thing, because it gets them more money. We shouldn't put them in that spot, and we shouldn't encourage people to be in that spot. In this bill, we should deal with unemployment, but we should make sure we are helping people through this season, not incentivizing them to break the law. We should deal with nursing care and senior living. We should deal with hospital care in this bill. Those are the areas that have been the hardest hit in all of America. The largest number of fatalities that we have had and the greatest amount of expense are in that area. We should do something to come alongside them. We should do something in this bill about liability protections. I have letters and phone calls from universities in my State and from businesses in my State saying they are terrified to reengage for fear of what is going to happen with lawsuits coming in the days ahead that they can't stop. They want to be able to serve their students at school, they want to be able to serve their customers in their business and the families who depend on that, but they are afraid of an entrepreneurial lawyer that will file lawsuits and will push them to settle or push them into bankruptcy at a very difficult time for them, only because this body will not step up and do basic liability protections. Now, if there is gross negligence, we should never protect that company. But if they are doing the best that they can, why wouldn't we have basic liability protections for our universities, our schools, and our places of business? We need to have in this bill some help for the postal system. There is a lot of debate about what that should be. Is it total reform of the postal system? No, that is not what this is about. But just like we helped the State Department in the CARES Act, we should help USPS in this bill as well. We have had some pushback on helping some of the areas on immigration. Many of the entities in immigration are totally fee-based. When someone applies to come into the country with our visa system, they pay a fee to do that. Well, obviously, they are not coming in right now, so those areas of our immigration policy are really struggling right now. We should come alongside and help. That is a unique situation in a Federal agency. We should deal with election issues--maybe not like some people in this body want. In the CARES Act, we included $350 million to the States to help them in their elections for this fall--$350 million. Almost none of that has been used by States because in the bill itself it also required the State legislatures to add matching dollars to be able to come into session, and when we put that out from this body, those State legislatures were going out of session or they were locking down because they didn't know what their expenses would be. So almost no one has taken those funds because their legislature wasn't in session to vote for it and because they didn't have any ability to anticipate what funds would be needed this session, and so there is $350 million of unused money from the last bill that we should just take the strings off of and make it clear to States: You could use these funds for the election coming up this fall. Now, there is a big push to say: Let's add another $350 million. Come on, people. Let's read the last bill that we wrote and bring it forward into this bill and fix the problems from the last one. It shouldn't be that difficult. Our States are going to need help on the elections this year. There will be much greater expenses, but we want the election to go smoothly. We have already allocated them the dollars. Let's allow them to actually use it in a way that they can during this session. But that shouldn't be for just mass mailing of every ballot. Just printing off ballots and mailing it to every house doesn't solve the issue; it complicates the issue. But we should help people with their election systems. And while I speak on State funding, this whole issue of State funding does need to be addressed. During the CARES Act that passed in March, this body gave the States $150 billion. There was also an allocation for healthcare of $260 billion. There was an allocation for education of $30 billion. Why do I bring that up? The three most expensive aspects in any State budget are education, public safety, and healthcare. Those are the three most expensive portions from any State budget. This body allocated $260 billion toward healthcare, $30 billion toward education, $150 billion toward public safety and COVID expenses. Just to put that in perspective, the total budget for every State in America is $900 billion. Every State's total budget combined spending that they do in a year--$900 billion. My Democratic colleagues want us to give almost $1 trillion to the States for COVID expenses. The total budget for every State in the entire country for the entire year is just over $900 billion, and they are going to give $1 trillion to them on top of it. That is more than replacing every State budget in America. That is absurd, and that is why these negotiations are so difficult--because it is not reasonable. They can just throw a number out and say everybody needs this. Replacing the budget of every State in America is reasonable? I don't think so, especially when we have already allocated $260 billion toward healthcare, $30 billion toward education, and $150 billion toward public safety and COVID response. The real issue is with the public safety and the COVID expenses because so many of the States--now with this whole ``defund the police'' movement--don't want to allocate their public safety dollars toward public safety. They want to be able to use it for other things, not public safety. Well, that is a decision States can make, but they have the flexibility already to use those dollars. Literally, they could pay for every single law enforcement officer in their State--their salary and their benefits would be fully taken care of--but they are saying: I don't want to pay our law enforcement. I want to use it for other things. Well, those funds have been allocated, and they need to make a decision on what they are going to do with it. Now, there is a lot that could be done with this bill, but my challenge for us is, let's focus on the things that are essential to be done, not the long wish list of what people want to cram into a bill because it is getting big, and they can hide something in it. Let's keep it focused and let's continue to remember this is a health crisis and it is a season during which we should work across the aisle to solve things that are common sense and not ignore the problem. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, on February 21, 1940, John Lewis was born in Troy, AL--a son of sharecroppers, born to be a person to bring good trouble to the Nation. He grew up on his family's farm and attended segregated public schools in Pike County, AL. As a young boy, he was inspired by the activism that surrounded him-- the Montgomery bus boycott and the works of a leader name Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He attended Fisk University, and he organized sit-in demonstrations in segregated lunch counters in Nashville, TN. In 1961, he started participating in the Freedom Rides. He was just a young man. He would get on board a segregated bus, and he would dare to sit in the ``Whites Only'' area just to make a simple statement--that any person of any race should be able to sit anywhere they choose to sit in America, and it would be OK. He literally risked his life just riding on a bus in the wrong seat. He became best known in 1963 when he helped to organize the March on Washington. He was part of what they called the Big Six in the civil rights movement. He was nationally recognized. We lose track of the fact that in 1963 he was one of the keynote speakers in the March on Washington. He stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial at 23 years old. His focus on nonviolent protests, his focus on training people on how to speak out for what is just and for what is right, his focus on challenging people to rethink justice and to be able to see all people as being created in the image of God, all people equal, was a message that our Nation needed to hear and was a message he delivered over and over again. From his youngest days, he brought good trouble, as he said, to our Nation to awaken us. He led 600 peaceful, orderly protesters across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL, on March 7, 1965. They were going to march from Selma to Montgomery to demonstrate the need for voting rights changes in the State of Alabama, but Alabama State Troopers met them there in what is known as Bloody Sunday. He and other peaceful protesters, simply marching, were attacked and beaten for doing what is just. It was a telling thing to see John Lewis's body this past week cross that historic bridge one last time, and as he crossed, to have Alabama State Troopers stand on the bridge and salute his body as it went by because John Lewis brought change to America. John Lewis was elected to Congress in 1986 in Georgia's Fifth Congressional District, where he served faithfully. He was affectionately known as being the conscience of the Congress. He was trained in religious teachings. He had a theological degree. He was often called ``the reverend.'' He never lost track of his faith. He treated people with respect. Even people he disagreed with and voted differently from, he would treat them with respect in a way that would honor God and honor them and honor his own family. What is interesting, some of the statements John Lewis has made over the years always struck me. His quiet demeanor and his stern way of addressing justice always came back to his faith. A statement he made in 2004 really sticks with me. He said: I'm deeply concerned that many people today fail to realize that the movement was built on deep-seated religious convictions, and the movement grew out of a sense of faith-- faith in God and faith in one's fellow human beings. Many of us who were participants in this movement saw our involvement as an extension of our faith. He said: We saw ourselves doing the work of the Almighty. Segregation and racial discrimination were not in keeping with our faith, and so we had to do something. And he did. Representative Lewis left a long legacy as a civil rights leader. He will not be forgotten in our Nation. The Big Six leaders made significant changes. I think about those changes he saw just in his lifetime and the changes that he, personally, was engaged in making in our Nation. Representative Lewis once made the statement: ``When people tell me nothing has changed, I tell them, come walk in my shoes and I will show you change'' because Representative Lewis, just in his lifetime, in the battles he fought, led, and changed, changed segregated schools in America; took away segregated water fountains in America; took away segregated movie theaters in America; took away segregated public transport in America; changed how people applied for jobs, got jobs, enjoyed their jobs; changed the opportunities for a person being able to live wherever they wanted to live in America; changed even how we vote in giving equal access for every American to be able to get to the ballot and vote. That is just in John Lewis's lifetime. He left a legacy of change. His nonviolent protests, his training in leading people, stands in stark contrast to what I see some people who call it protests are doing right now. When I see what is happening right now in Portland every night and watching individuals gear up and literally attacking Federal law enforcement, throwing Molotov cocktails at them, pointing laser pointers at their eyes, shooting large-scale fireworks at them, trying to set a building on fire--when I watch that and those individuals trying to say they are protesting for justice--they are not protesting for what is just. John Lewis was protesting for what is just. John Lewis made the change in America, led a Nation and led a generation, even as a young 23-year-old man, to do the right thing in the right way. The change that he brought is a gift to the generations for millennia in our Nation. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, Senator Durbin and I have worked for months on an issue on rural healthcare. Whether it is in rural Illinois or it is in rural Oklahoma, there is a challenge dealing with rural hospitals and sustaining their viability. So Senator Durbin and I partnered together to determine what is the best way to get a solution that is a long-term solution to what they are currently facing with COVID-19. While COVID-19 has impacted all types of businesses, rural hospitals have uniquely dealt with some very difficult challenges. Getting PPE early on in the process was much more challenging for rural hospitals than it was for urban--keeping doctors, managing separation, getting airflow areas in hospitals to manage the flow of the virus through areas, and also managing just patient count, where, for many rural hospitals, they just shut down because all elective surgery was stopped and such, and so they lost all of that income, though they still had all the employees. It was an exceptionally challenging thing, but it is challenging on top of the challenge that they have already faced for decades in just surviving in rural America. So what Senator Durbin and I have brought is a reasonable, nonpartisan solution to how we can deal with not only COVID-19 but to help rural hospitals long term. Decades ago, Congress established something called the critical access hospital and made sure that those hospitals that were designated ``critical access hospitals'' would receive proper reimbursement from the Federal Government for healthcare services. Many individuals in rural areas--in fact, the dominant proportion in many rural areas receiving healthcare are receiving it through Medicaid or Medicare. We want to make sure that those providers providing those high-need areas are reimbursed appropriately. But, in 2006, Congress shifted the designation for critical access hospitals and took away something called the necessary provider, giving the flexibility to the States. As a result of that action in 2006, we have seen the closure of 118 rural hospitals nationwide since that time period. The ``critical access hospital'' designation was created because of a string of hospital closures in the 1980s and early 1990s. Yet we have not responded in the way that we should from the change in statute in 2006. Simply what we are trying to do is to give that flexibility back to States again. If they have a hospital in a rural area that is the only provider in that community that is a Medicare-dependent hospital or is a very small hospital with fewer than 50 beds, that area has to be an area that is designated as a rural area. It can't just be any suburban area or any other type of hospital. It has to be a rural hospital in particular. It has to have a high percentage relative to the national average of individuals with income below the poverty line. Those hospitals in those locations could be designated by their States as a necessary provider and be treated as if they are a critical access hospital. What would that do? That would be a lifeline for reimbursement because now we have some rural hospitals designated as critical access and some hospitals that meet all the other criteria, but they may be 34 miles away from another hospital, so that hospital in that county dies while the other hospital survives. In my State, we have a critical access hospital 34 miles away from a hospital across the border in Texas, so the hospital in Oklahoma can't get the critical access designation and can't survive because 34 miles away there is a hospital in another State that has the critical access. We need the flexibility in our States to be able to do this kind of designation. Senator Durbin and I have run this through a lot of places and a lot of people, and we have gotten a lot of technical input in it to make sure this actually works for our rural hospitals and provides not just a short-term survival through COVID-19 but also provides long- term stability for them. This is the kind of work we should do together to make sure we stabilize those rural hospitals. They are a lifeline to people in rural America. They are a lifeline of employment, and they are a stable feature in every community. Without them, those communities dry up because people need access to healthcare, and this is the way that they can get it. I am glad to partner with Senator Durbin on this issue, and it is our hope to get this into the next bill dealing with COVID-19 in the days ahead. Quite frankly, it was our hope to get it into the last one--we didn't get it--and into the one before that. Surprisingly enough, everyone seems to be nodding their heads on both sides of the aisle saying: That is a good idea. That will be effective. We want to move it from ``that is a good idea'' to ``done'' for the sake of rural hospitals across the Nation. With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, reserving the right to object, Senator Durbin knows extremely well that unanimous consent is trying to get all 100 Senators to agree on something. Senator Durbin has done remarkable work for years advocating on the issue of immigration, and he knows exceptionally well what a difficult issue this is. He has been involved in countless debates and negotiations dealing with this issue, and there is certainly not 100 percent agreement on a House bill that passed in 2019 on how to solve immigration. So it is not going to pass. I certainly will object in a moment to this This bill far exceeds just dealing with DACA. As this body knows very well, there were four separate votes dealing with immigration in February of 2018. At that time, three of those dealt with the issue of DACA, and none of those actually were able to get 60 votes to be able to pass. The Trump administration was very engaged in those negotiations, and the White House itself brought a proposal to deal with DACA and multiple other issues with immigration. It failed to get 60 votes to move it in 2018, and the Court at that time swooped it up and said they wanted to be able to look at it. Now 2 years later, the Court finally responded, putting it back into the administration's hands and, quite frankly, back into Congress's hands. I will tell you, I wish the Court had not engaged in 2018 because there was a lot of engagement from the Trump administration, from the Senate, and from the House to be able to come to a point of resolution, but that has to begin again with bipartisan negotiations through a very complicated issue. President Trump has stated numerous times in public interviews and in private conversations that he wants to do something to take care of those kids in DACA, but that is not what this particular bill does. This particular bill far exceeds just the DACA population. In fact, the DACA population is defined as the group that was 16 years old and in the United States before June 15, 2017. This bill deals with 18-year- olds in the United States just 4 years ago and before, greatly increasing the population in the conversation. So this is not just a DACA conversation; this is a much larger bill than just a DACA bill in that sense. While I do agree we do need to continue bipartisan conversations--and President Trump has expressed a desire to engage in that--I think this is something the White House, the House, and the Senate should work out and not try to have all 100 Senators agree on something that comes to the floor today that has not gone through the proper debate and does not have all three bodies engaged in the process. With that, I would object.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, the world is watching and dealing with COVID-19--the economic effects and health effects. It has affected every single one of our families in some way. While the world is watching and we are dealing with all those issues here in the United States, we can't lose track of what is happening on the world stage because China is using this moment when the world is distracted to push its way into Hong Kong and to break its word. When we deal with China, we know what they have done, the predatory tactics they have taken either on their own people or on countries around the world. The United States of America--when we do foreign aid, we go help other countries gain more freedom, more security, more stability, and more economic growth. We don't ask anything in return. We engage with them to help them. China is working with developing countries around the world by moving into different countries and taking collateral of their ports, of their airports, and establishing military bases around the world when poorer countries default on the loans they give them. They are not helping other countries; they are taking over other countries. They are stepping into country after country and offering them great new technology from Huawei to help their cell phone systems. They are establishing security systems around their banks. But what they are really doing is monitoring their people and gathering data on people all around the world. The security systems aren't there to set up and prop up dictatorships in poor countries; they are there for the dictatorship of China to track what is going on there and any international development. We should be aware of what China is doing, and we should not ignore this moment for the free people of Hong Kong. Today, many Americans are aware of how China has handled the issue of protective equipment. The medical equipment that we desperately needed in March, April, May--much of it manufactured in China--we could not get because the Communist Government of China kept the materials from American companies that were manufacturing in China. The Chinese Communist Government wouldn't allow the exportation of that, and they just took that equipment over, putting all of the schedules behind. Suddenly, Americans woke up and understood that our supply chains are at risk. Our pharmaceutical supply chains are at risk, and our PPE supply chains are at risk. What many people don't know is that our rare earth minerals and critical minerals supply chain is at risk. Lots of folks really like the solar panels and electric car batteries. Well, great--except we are completely dependent on China for the rare earth minerals that are in those. If we don't develop our own sourcing for those rare earth minerals-- and we do have those same rare earth minerals here--if we don't develop our own supply chain, if we don't develop our own manufacturing for pharmaceuticals and for the precursors of pharmaceuticals, we will continue to be vulnerable to the Chinese Government, and at the moment the Communist government determines, they will take over that supply, and we will be at risk. For decades, the Confucius Institutes have thrived on college campuses, spreading a Communist philosophy all through our college campuses. It is now at a moment that college campuses and leadership in colleges are starting to wake up to say: Why are we allowing Communist indoctrination on our campuses? It is a bill that I have pushed, that I will continue to push to be able to wake up our universities, to say: Why are we allowing this on our campus? It is an issue that I have pushed for years, dealing with Chinese Communists spying on American technology, stealing technology, and also stealing our science and inventions. They come over with a grant from the United States and say they are going to send over researchers, when really what they are doing is harvesting the research and taking it back to China. They take materials, whether it be music or movies or any items of production, and all that manufacturing that comes to China, they then take that same technology, move it to a different factory, and literally compete against the first company, because to do business in China, you have to turn over all your intellectual property to the Communist government, which then takes it and uses it on their own. The Chinese Communist Government is not the ally of freedom for the world, and we should be aware of that. Certainly the people of Hong Kong are aware of that. In 1997, after 150 years as a British territory, Hong Kong became a part of China under the Joint Declaration. It was one country, two systems--that Hong Kong for 50 years would remain autonomous and free. Well, just over two decades later, the Chinese Government has broken its promise, and Hong Kong is no longer free. While the world is consumed with what is happening with COVID-19, the Communist government has moved into Hong Kong and has taken it over. They passed a law in Beijing that they sent over and declared in Hong Kong that they can't have any of what they call subversion, organization or perpetuation of what they call terroristic activities, collusion with a foreign country or an external element, which I will explain later. This new security law literally was delivered to the people of Hong Kong at midnight, and it went into place immediately. Then the next step was that the Chinese Communist police--military law enforcement-- moved into Hong Kong to begin to implement this. Free speech immediately stopped. Those protesters who were out on the street just wishing to be able to vote and to speak their mind were immediately rounded up. Teachers and academics have been arrested or fired or threatened. Communist Chinese leaders have contacted them to reprimand them about teaching about human rights in their classrooms, remembering that in Hong Kong it was required--it was a required class in Hong Kong just weeks ago--to learn about human rights and freedom, and now the Chinese Government is removing those teachers and threatening any other teacher who teaches about human rights that they will be removed. Faith leaders have been squashed. You see, under this security law that has passed, you can't have any external element collusion. They define ``external element'' as any kind of worship of God as well that does not align with the Communist Government. So any faith-based group who is there in Hong Kong is immediately being squashed. The Muslim Uighurs are gathered up in Communist China and put in concentration camps to reeducate them on how to be more Chinese. Now the people of Hong Kong are experiencing that same type of oppression as the first step has stepped in to take away their right to free speech, their right to gather and protest, and now also their right to have freedom of faith. Leaders of the democracy movement have already been rounded up and arrested. This is something that we should not ignore. We have said as a world ``Never again,'' and we should engage. I know many people in my State say we should focus on COVID-19, and we should. There is much that needs to be done. We cannot take our eyes off of freedom around the world, as well, and the people of Hong Kong. As they lose their freedom, the world loses freedom, and China sees it can move into one more place one more time. Taiwan is next, and they will continue to move in this same way. We should stay engaged. There are multiple bills this body has already done on sanctions, and we should continue. We should continue to press in and speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves in Hong Kong. They are being isolated. Senator Tim Kaine and I just dropped a bill yesterday dealing with internet freedom for the people of Hong Kong, saying that the American Government should be engaged in trying to break through what is called the great firewall in China. We know they will extend this firewall into Hong Kong, as well, and will prevent the people from Hong Kong from access to social media, information with each other, or information from the outside world, just as they have with the people of China. But the people of Hong Kong have grown up and lived in freedom, and they know what it means to get outside information, and the Chinese Government is actively working to shut that down. We should actively work to push back on that to make sure the free people of Hong Kong continue to communicate with each other and with the outside world. We can stay engaged with that basic function of human rights. That is why Senator Kaine and I are so passionate about this. We should engage as a government to make sure that they can continue to have the free speech that we have. When anyone loses their human rights and dignities, the world loses human rights and dignities. Again, I am aware that there are many things that need to happen with COVID-19 right now, and we are actively working on those things as well, and we should. But we should not lose track of freedom. Freedom is our responsibility to model and to live and to help other free people to guard. Let's stand with the people of Hong Kong. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, 2 days ago, at 3:30 in the morning in Tulsa, Officer Zarkeshan did a routine traffic stop. He got backup coming to him, who was Sergeant Craig Johnson, and dealt with a person who would not get out of their vehicle. Twelve times they said to this person: Get out of your vehicle. Trying to figure out what to do, they worked to deescalate, and they realized he was not going to move. After the back-and-forth conversation there in the street, the individual got out of his car with a pistol and shot both officers multiple times in the head, jumped in a second car, and drove away. Seven hours later, both those individuals were apprehended. While the flippant national conversation in this room and across the country continues about defunding the police, two officers in Tulsa are clinging to their lives in a hospital right now. I think our Nation loses track of exactly the sacrifices that law enforcement makes every single day. Their families hugged them before they took off for the graveyard shift and said: See you in the morning. Officer Zarkeshan had been on patrol 6 weeks. He graduated from the academy in May. I am grateful there are men and women across our country who continue to put on the blue uniform to serve and protect us because there are people on the streets who mean to do our community harm, and when given the opportunity, they will take that opportunity. If the Presiding Officer doesn't mind, I would like to pause and pray for just a moment for the families and for them. Father, we do ask Your help for Sergeant Johnson and Officer Zarkeshan, to intervene in a way that only You can. Help the doctors and nurses. Give them wisdom. Give a sense of peace to those families as they struggle for answers. Pray for Chief Franklin and for all the Tulsa PD. God, they need Your help in these moments. I pray that You would bring peace as only You can. In Your Name I pray. Amen.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, we just finished up a vote on the Senate floor where we fell four votes short of opening debate on a bill to deal with police reform--four votes short. We were four votes short of opening debate to discuss it. Every single Republican voted for this--and a handful of Democrats. But the vast majority of Democrats actually said: No, we don't want to debate this bill. We will only debate the Pelosi bill when it comes out of the House. Well, that is absurd. That didn't happen, I can assure you, when Speaker Boehner was the leader of the House, that the Senate said ``I will tell you what, we are going to wait and see whatever Speaker Boehner sends over to Harry Reid'' and Harry Reid would say ``Oh, yes, please. We will take up whatever the Boehner bill is.'' That was never done, and they know that. This is such an odd, peculiar season in our country politically and a painful season in our country culturally and practically. Our hope was to have a real debate on a real bill. I was part of the team in writing this bill. This bill was a genuine push to reform how we do police work and to increase accountability and transparency across the country. The bill that we just needed four Democrats to join--just four Democrats to join--to be able to open it up for debate would have banned choke holds across the country. It would have required the reporting of all serious bodily injury or death in police custody from everywhere in the country, to start tracking all of this. It would have gathered information on no-knock warrants all around the country to start tracking this information to see if they are being abused. It would have put more body cameras on the street. This bill that we just needed four Democrats to join us on--just four--would have put $150 million more in body-worn cameras on the street. It wouldn't have just put those body cameras on the street; it would have also put in new requirements to make sure they stay on, which has been an issue. This bill that we just needed four Democrats to join us on, just so we could debate it and discuss it and amend it, would have had a whole new system tracking complaints and discipline actions. It would have pulled together records for law enforcement officers to make sure that they would have had those records--their commendations and their discipline--travel to the next department with them. So before an officer leaves one department and goes to the next, all the records are made available to the next department so that we don't have a bad apple moving from department to department. This bill that we just needed four Democrats to join on with us--any four--just so we could open it up and debate it and amend it would have changed the system on a duty to intervene, putting new obligations, new training, and new requirements on an officer who is watching another officer do something they know is wrong to intervene in that process and to stop it. It would have a national commission to pull folks together to get the best ideas from around the country, to gather the best practices that have happened. There is also a new piece that is in this--it is not in the Pelosi bill; it is only in this bill--that deals with giving a false report if you are a police officer, because at times we will have a police officer where--when there is serious bodily injury or death, their written record doesn't match the reality of what really happened, and it is not just that they misremembered; they intentionally turned in a false report. This bill that we wanted to just debate today would have allowed us to be able to add additional penalties onto that, to make sure someone receives the due penalty if they try to lie on forms. This bill would have dealt with mental health. This bill would have dealt with deescalation training. This bill was designed to help get additional training. This bill has a section on it using the Museum of African American History to design a curriculum that we could put out to every department around the country on the history of race and law enforcement. It is modeled after what was done with the Holocaust Museum to deal with anti-Semitism. That is what this bill was designed to do. We just needed four Democrats to join us. Instead, they dug in, did press releases, and said: That bill is terrible. It is awful. It has no teeth in it. That bill is unsalvageable. I would ask any American listening to me and anyone in this room: Is there one of those ideas you don't like? Then the conversation was, well, we are not going to have an open enough process. Senator Scott, who is our point negotiator in this, sat down with Democratic leadership and said: How about 20 amendments on this bill? If you want to bring something up to amend it, change, it, great. They said no. Their desire is only Speaker Pelosi's bill or nothing. I think that is exceptionally sad. We have been through this journey so many times where we will see a Black man be killed, we will all watch the footage, the whole country rises up, and Congress starts debating, and then it stops. It stops because of silly stuff like this where people dig in and say: If you don't do it entirely our way, then we are not going to do it at all. It is not about solving the problem; it is just about prolonging a problem so you can make it a political issue when families out there want this solved. All of those things I listed are all out there. There are two things I have heard. We are not going to take up your bill. We are not going to debate it. We are not going to discuss it. We are going to block it from coming to the floor--which is what happened today. The two issues I heard are, you know what, I really want us to go to committee. I want a committee to look at this, take some time, go through this. That is a fascinating argument, and I wish it was true. Two weeks ago, the discussion was ``We need to get on this as quickly as possible''--until we actually put out a legitimate bill, and then my Democratic colleagues said, ``Well, there is a problem with how you are putting it out. We are going to debate it on the floor. I would rather debate it in committee and then have the floor bring it but not debate it on the floor. I don't want to debate it out here. Let's debate it over there.'' No one is buying that argument. No one is buying that. If you can put 20 amendments on this, that is what would happen in a committee. Let's bring it. Let's talk about it. Everyone sees what that is. Shuffling bills off to committee is about delaying and stalling and ``Let's delay this,'' because they know we won't get it this week, and they will delay it, and then it will be after the Fourth of July. When we come back from the Fourth of July, we have the coronavirus bills, as they know, and we have the appropriations bills, as they know. So it is like, OK, so it will not happen there. So then there is the August gap, and then it will move to September. What they are trying to do is get it closer and closer to the election and then make it a big election issue, saying: Those crazy Republicans will not resolve this. Get it close to the election and make it an election issue. Hello--why don't we just solve this instead of dragging the country through something we all know key ways to be able to solve? Two issues we know of--one is a purely political issue: stall, delay, try to get this closer to the election, and then divide the country. The second one deals with an issue on whether police officers should face not only criminal liability, they should face civil liability as well. You hear this get kicked around all the time with all different kinds of terms. Speaker Pelosi's bill says: Not only put that police officer in prison, which they deserve--if they murder someone, commit a crime, a police officer is as liable for the law as everyone else is, and if they are not, they should be, and we should fix that. Speaker Pelosi's bill says: Not only put them in prison but also civilly take their home and their car and their pension away from their family. Make sure we leave them destitute and their family destitute, as well as put them in prison. That is what their bill is all about. It is the reason why so many police officers are so frustrated and furious with the bill they adamantly want to put on the floor, because they are saying that if they did something wrong, they should face the consequences for it, but don't punish their family. Speaker Pelosi's bill says: No, the police officers should be in prison, and their families should have their home taken away from them and their police pension taken away from them and everything else. Do you know what we have talked about? We talked about a police officer facing criminal penalties, as they do now, as they should. If there is a civil case, why don't we bring it against the department that didn't train their officer, that didn't supervise that officer? Instead of attacking an officer's family, why don't we hold people accountable to actually supervise people better and push the city and the department to do the right thing: to train and to equip people. If someone is a problem, don't leave them out there on the street with 18 discipline records; take them off the street. If you don't, the whole city is going to be held to account for it. That is trying to end this. That is trying to push toward more supervision, not just trying to be punitive. Those are the two differences that I can pick up: political and civil. Otherwise, a lot of what I mentioned that is in our bill is in their bill as well. Tim Scott made a very simple statement: Why don't we put this on the floor? Why don't we actually debate the differences that we have? Why don't we have a vote, and then why don't we finish this? Leader McConnell dedicated this week and next week to this bill on police reform to give 2 weeks to do all kinds of amendments, all kinds of debate, but instead, the conversation was ``No, don't want to do that; it is Speaker Pelosi's bill or nothing'' or ``Let's just slow the whole thing down and send it to committee and delay, delay, delay this.'' Why don't we deal with this right now? There are 2 weeks that have been set aside to do it. There is plenty of time for amendments. Why not do that instead of just blocking the bill? I don't know a lot of folks who say to me: I really don't want there to be more body cameras on the street. I don't want any more oversight on law enforcement when they turn in a false report or when they turn off their body camera. I don't run into a lot of people who say: I want to just go ahead and leave the system the way it is. We really don't know what is happening in a police department when there is bodily injury and harm. I meet a lot of people who say: Those things make sense to me. Why don't we do it? Unfortunately, that is my same question today standing on the floor of the Senate: Why don't we do it? With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I am reserving the right to object. No person should be discriminated against in America. No one. It is a basic constitutional principle. We are all equal under the law, all of us. We have different ideas about music and food. We have different ideas about sexuality. We have different ideas about occupations. We have different skin colors. We are the tapestry that we talk about, and we are working to make a more perfect Union. I absolutely believe that no person should be discriminated against in America. The Equality Act doesn't just make everything equal, though. It has a great title. Who can oppose equality? No one. It is a basic principle of American values. We don't oppose equality, but we do oppose when, through legislation, you take the rights of one and dismiss the rights of others and say: Your rights don't count, only this group counts, and only this person counts. We, in America, have tried to work together, in all of our differences, for over two centuries, to learn better how to hear the rights of another one, to accommodate, and to find those spots where the rights of two individuals collide and to work it out among each other. The Equality Act does not do that. I wish it did. It changes things dramatically. Let me just give you a few examples. It reaches into high school sports and says for male and female sports, that individuals' sexual orientation and gender identity can move between those. There is no standard for testosterone. There is no standard for moving through transition surgery. There is no standard at all set on it. It opens it up for any male--biological male--to step into female sports on the high school level or in the college level or in the pro-athlete level and be able to move into that sport. That grossly disadvantages girls in sports, but their rights are denied. We have already seen this in several States where State record holders for track, for instance--someone who was a biological male competing in women's athletics denying the other girls who were competing in that from opportunities for scholarships to college, to be able to move on to other athletics. Their rights were ignored because these rights were prioritized. In adoptions, we need more adoption areas. We need more foster care in America, not less. The Equality Act says that if you are a faith- based adoption agency that only places children in a home where there is a mom and dad there, then you either have to change your faith or close. You have no other option. The Equality Act says to that institution: I would rather have fewer adoption agencies in America than have you open. That is not protecting the rights of all Americans. That is not learning how to accommodate together. Why can't we have adoption agencies that do adoptions in LGBT homes and some that do adoptions that don't? Why can't we have both? Why can't we accommodate both? The Equality Act does not allow that The Equality Act treats every job in America exactly the same and says that an individual who is qualified for that job should be able to take that job, regardless of any issue. Let me give you a first example of that. If you have an individual going through TSA--and what a lovely experience that is for all of us--this Equality Act would say: When your alarm goes off and you have to get the full-body pat-down, a transgender individual could be your TSA person giving you the full- body pat-down. They would be required to not prohibit that. Now, for some people, they would be like: I don't care. It is a pat- down. I don't care. For other people, it would be like--there is a reason why TSA has done pat-downs of a man for a man and a woman for a woman because there are many people uncomfortable with someone of an opposite gender who does that to them. They just are. Maybe you call them prudes, but we have honored their rights. The Equality Act does not. It ignores their rights and says that you no longer have the right to disagree with this, and you have to just accept it. It also dramatically changes hiring in America in a way that is unexplored. There is a reason we send bills through committee, not just bring them to the floor and demand that they pass on the same day they land on the floor without going through committee. There is a reason we do that--because this bill changes the way hiring is done in America in a way that has not been tested for everyone. This adds a new feature to title VII, where it says, in title VII, that you can't discriminate based on race, on sex--that has now been redefined, obviously, by the courts--on religion, all these things. It clarifies. You can't discriminate based on that. But it adds a new phrase on this. ``Perception or belief'' is the new phrase. This is how that would be applied in courts. If I go to an interview in a job and I am not hired, I can sue that employer because I perceived they were thinking I was gay and so they didn't hire me, or-- because it applies to all of it--I could, actually, because this does expand this significantly, if I go in to get a job and I am not hired, I could sue them for not hiring me because I perceived that it was because I was a Christian and they didn't hire me. I perceived that it was because I was White that they didn't hire me. I don't have to prove anything. It is based simply on my perception or belief. That is an untested expansion. Now, this term ``perception or belief'' is lifted right out of our hate crime statutes, but hate crime statutes, on their face, are all about the motive for it, and you are trying to read into a crime the motive for that crime. Now we are trying to literally read someone else's mind in a hiring situation and to say that I perceived it, so if you don't hire me, I can sue you. Why are we doing this? That opens up litigation all over the country on every area, not just on this issue of LGBT rights--on every situation and every hiring because it is very expansive. We probably should slow down and look at that before we open that floodgate in America, but this does not. Today is about demanding that it passes right away. Interestingly enough, as some of my colleagues have mentioned, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is wiped away in this and ignored. Interestingly enough, the Supreme Court stated just this week that on this issue, Congress should apply this. Let me read what Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan wrote this week, along with Roberts and Gorsuch. They said this: Separately, the employers fear that complying with Title VII's requirements in cases like ours may require some employers to violate their religious convictions. We are also deeply concerned with preserving the promise of the free exercise of religion enshrined in our Constitution; that guarantee lies at the heart of our pluralistic society. They go on to speak of we will have a case dealing with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Equality Act, instead, says: No, never mind, Supreme Court. I know that you are concerned about religious freedoms--Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Roberts--but never mind. Congress is not concerned with religious liberty like you are. Come on. Let's work together. We don't want anyone to be discriminated against--anyone. We can do this in a way that accommodates everyone, and then we can actually work toward agreement. To say it in the words of J.K. Rowling this past week where she wrote, ``All I'm asking--all I want--is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.'' Let's work together to get equality. This bill does not do it in this form; therefore, I object.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, first, I would like to associate my remarks 100 percent with everything Senator Scott just said. Somehow I am supposed to speak after he just said it. The frustration that I have had over the past couple of days as we have worked very hard in pulling the legislation together is we have talked to people all over. I have talked to people of all backgrounds all over Oklahoma. I have talked to members of the community. I have talked to law enforcement. I have talked to leadership in law enforcement. We have worked to build a coalition of ideas, things that would pass, answering the question that Tim Scott started with: Could we pull together a piece of legislation that would actually help--not to just pass something so we can walk away, pat each other on the back and say ``We passed something,'' knowing quietly that it really isn't going to make any difference? Is there something we could do that would actually make a difference? Over the weeks we have worked to identify what could pass, what could make a difference, what answers the questions everyone is asking. We didn't look at whether it was a Republican or Democratic idea. We just asked the question, what would make the difference, because I don't believe equal justice under the law is owned by a party. It has been fascinating to me, the questions I have had over the past couple of days as members of the media would quietly pull me aside and say: Hey, are Republicans going to be able to pass a bill on race? Quietly, they are asking the question: We know all those Republicans are racist, so are you going to be able to pull something off? That is really what they are saying in the background. Over and over again, I heard it through the media and have seen it put out there: You know those Republicans are all racist. I don't think they are going to be able to pass something dealing with race. As this dividing message continues to go out, we continue to do our work because we also believe in equal justice under the law. As a friend of mine said to me a couple of weeks ago, we also believe we should be able to work toward a more perfect Union. For me, it is not only a practical issue, not only a family issue; it is not only a friendship issue; it is not only a basic freedom and liberty issue; it is not just a constitutional issue. For me, it is also a Biblical issue. You can go back as many pages as you want to in Scripture and work your way from beginning to end, and you are going to find some very consistent themes. Throughout the book of Deuteronomy, there is a statement about how God's affection is ``for equal weights and measures.'' His first challenge to government when literally the Jews were establishing their first government, God spoke to them, saying, make sure there are equal weights and measures. It is a simple way of saying, whether you are rich or poor, whether you are a foreigner, whether you are a member, whether you are in or out, everyone is to be treated the same, equal weights, equal measures. Find that passage over and over and over again through the Old Testament. Read it all the way to the Book of the Revelation at the end. At the Book of Revelation at the end, there is a gathering around the throne that is pictured. At the very end, there is the gathering of the Kingdom of God. As they gather around the throne, it is described as every tribe, every nation, every language, every people, all gathered. For me, this is a Biblical issue as well as being a personal issue, but for us as a nation, it is a legal issue. It is about where we find inconsistencies in the application of the law, we are to correct it, and we do what we can to make it right. This bill is designed with a simple statement in mind. How can we provide accountability, transparency, and training in law enforcement so that the good cops shine and those who are bad apples in the mix, the light shines on them. That is all we are asking. We want to see things change. People in my towns across my State want to see things change and want to know that this is not just a vote that is a partisan vote; it is a vote to actually get something solved. It wasn't that long ago that this body was gathering and voted unanimously on an almost $3 trillion bill dealing with a major problem in America, COVID-19. Why don't we get together again, hash out the issues, and unanimously come to some decisions again on a major problem in America, injustice? We can't pass something that bans racism. I wish we could. We would have all taken that vote. We can't ban racism. That is passed on through families and individuals. Children are not born racist. They are raised racist. Families have to make a decision about what they are going to do in their family. The national conversation about race doesn't happen in this room. The national conversation on race happens in kitchens and dining rooms. We can do something about justice. There are simple things we tried to gather, a set of ideas that aren't partisan. They are ideas and solutions that have come from all over the place, some Democratic and some Republican, and we pulled these things together, and we are asking a simple question: Will our Democratic Members take a vote with us next week to move to this bill to amend it, debate it, talk about it, have a real dialogue, and pass something that we think will work? Will this bill look exactly like this? It probably will look a lot like this because there are aspects of this that look like this in the House right now. Will there be additional ideas? Probably. Why don't we debate it and talk about it? Why don't we both open it up and discuss it and why don't we actually try to solve it? There are things such as, if there is bodily injury or death in police custody, that all of that information has to come in to the FBI so we can disseminate it and get transparency in the country. In fact, 40 percent of the departments report that, but a lot of them do not. There are a lot of places that do no-knock warrants. We don't have information about that. We know it is happening all over the country, and there is some conversation about maybe we should end part of it or keep part of it. What would that look like? We don't have the information gathered. Why don't we get information on no-knock warrants so that we can make an informed decision and then act on it? Why don't we deal with some basic problems that are out there that we have seen several times in some of the worst moments? Something happens, and law enforcement is not wearing a body camera, and it is one opinion against another opinion. Why don't we get more body cameras in the streets, and why don't we make sure those body cameras are actually turned on all the time? There is new technology in body cameras so that they automatically turn on when there is a call. Law enforcement doesn't have to worry about, ``I forgot to turn it on.'' It turns itself on. Why don't we incentivize it to encourage new body cameras with automatic features to turn it on so we always have footage? Why don't we hold people to account if there is a false police report that is filed? In several cases of late, when the incident was over, a written police report was filed. Later, cell phone video came out that was completely different from the original police report. Well, that is a false report. Why don't we hold that bad apple to account? Why don't we end choke holds? Most departments already have. Why don't we just end it nationwide? Why don't we say to departments: If you want to get a Federal grant for any law enforcement purpose, you can't get that or you get a reduced amount or you get a big deduction unless your department has already banned choke holds. Basically, we lay the marker out there and say: We expect you to take action on this. Why don't we deal with the issues that are before us that people are asking questions about, and where we lack information, let's go get it. It was several years ago that Senator Peters, on the Democratic side, and Senator Cornyn, on the Republican side, put out a proposal to have a Commission study these issues and more, to gather information and make recommendations and to start passing legislation in a unified way. It passed in the Senate unanimously and died in the House. Let's bring that legislation back up. We tried to do some work in the Senate to head this off. Let's do it again and see what we can actually do. Where we find departments that are recruiting officers and the department doesn't match the ethnicity of their community, why don't we provide grants for that community and that police department to be able to have a Black recruiter recruit more Black officers and to help them financially in the earliest days through the police academy to make sure that department profile matches that community? One of the great gains of the last 30 years has been community policing, allowing officers to be able to get out of their car and meet their community and to engage so communities are policing together. Why don't we do that? I did a ride-along with an officer several years ago, and I will never forget it. As we were riding through his community and his neighborhood where he always patrolled, we drove by an elderly lady as sweet as she could be sitting on her front porch. As we drove by I asked: Does she sit out there every day? The police officer laughed and said: Yep, she sits out there every day. I asked: Have you ever stopped to meet her? He hesitated for a long time, and he said: No, I never have. Community policing does make a difference. When you get a chance to meet the people in the community, get to know them, and share the responsibility together for actually working to solve problems that we face. We are laying down a set of ideas that we feel will make a difference, not just make a message. Other people have other ideas. Bring them. Let's open it up. Let's not have heated debate. Let's have debate that solves the problems so that at the end of this, we know what we are solving. We solve it, and then we keep going. I yield the floor

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. ``There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: `How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?' The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: Just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that `an unjust law is no law at all.''' Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an ``I it'' relationship for an ``I though'' relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence, segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong. Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or a power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that State's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured? Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest. I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law. Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience. We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ``legal'' and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ``illegal.'' It was ``illegal'' to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws. I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ``order'' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ``I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action''; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ``more convenient season.'' Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness for the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, the Federal Government currently owns about 640 million acres of land in the United States, which means 640 million acres is owned by the American people, and that is about 28 percent of all the land mass of the United States. If you round the number up, let's say, a quarter of all the property in the United States is owned by the Federal taxpayers. When you can break that down, people immediately think it is all the National Park Service. Actually, the National Park Service is a small amount of that. The Bureau of Land Management holds about 244 million acres, followed by the U.S. Forest Service with 192 million acres, Fish and Wildlife Service with 89 million acres, and then the National Park Service right at 80 million acres. The Department of Defense and some other agencies hold another 34 million acres. All together, there are 640 million acres and growing. This doesn't even account for all of the land that is controlled by the Federal Government. That is the amount just owned by the Federal Government. That 28 percent of all the property in the United States that is owned by the Federal Government doesn't take into account the 27 million-plus acres that are also controlled by the Federal Government. Those are areas where they do conservation mitigation. Those are areas where they have land in trust for other aspects. All told, around 30 percent of the United States is owned or controlled by the Federal taxpayer, by the Federal Government. That would all be fine and good if we were managing it well, but we are not. On those properties right now, we have almost $20 billion in deferred maintenance backlog. That is almost $20 billion just in things that haven't been done and where the Federal Government has proved to be a bad land manager. There is a bill that is coming this week. It is on the floor now being debated. The conversation is about this: How do we get better at maintaining the land that we have and how can we actually purchase additional property? There is something that has been around a long time called the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The Land and Water Conservation Fund has dollars set aside from offshore oil revenue to be able to purchase areas of property. That has happened for decades now. The problem is we haven't maintained that. Even with the property that we buy that has maintenance issues, we don't fix the maintenance issues when we purchase the property. The proposal on the table this week is to double the amount of land acquisitions that we have and to be able to solve the maintenance issue that we have had for a long time. This conversation about the backlog and maintenance has been an ongoing issue. There is finally a resolution to it. Here is the resolution. After years and years of debating a resolution about how to reduce spending in one area so we can make sure we can do the maintenance we need to do, the final decision was made to be able to put a bill together that just says: Forget it; let's just all add it to debt. Let's just completely do debt purchasing of all of our maintenance stuff. We will figure out some decades in the future how to be able to pay for that, rather than discerning how to pay for it now because there is not an offset on how to be able to pay for the maintenance. The maintenance needs to be done. It is not a shock to anyone. I brought proposals to this years ago, saying: Why don't we split the dollars we have in the land and Water Conservation Fund, use half of those dollars to purchase new properties and half of it just to be able to work on maintenance? That was denied. They said: No, that is an irrational approach. We want to buy more land and figure out later how to maintain it. We are at that point where we have to figure out how to maintain it because an almost $20 billion backlog in maintenance is rising up and screaming at us all over the country. Instead of actually deciding how we are going to do it, this is a punt saying we will figure it out later. Here is the fiscally responsible portion of it. We are not going to do this forever just to work on maintenance backlog. This is just for the next 5 years that we will have additional debt. Every single year we will spend about $2 billion, all in debt money, to be able to do this, and then we will figure out in the sixth year how to be able to take care of the rest. The fiscally responsible portion of this is to say we are not doing infinite amounts of debt. It will just be the next 5 years. The problem is that in the sixth year we will still have a maintenance backlog. We will still have issues, and there is still not a plan to pay for the first $20 billion for what is still coming. My challenge is figuring out what we can do with a bill that we need to fix. We need to be better managers of our land, but we are managing our land by not managing our debt and not making the hard decisions that people have to make. At your home, you can't just say: Everything needs to be fixed, but I can't afford it; so I will take out more debt, and I will fix everything. We have to make decisions on what is going to have to wait so we can do this because it is more important. That is the kind of thing I would like to be able to see with this. Let me run through basic ideas. They are all amendments that were already brought up that say: Here are logical ways to be able to fix this, beginning with the most basic of them. Take part of the money that already exists for the Land and Water Conservation Fund to purchase new land, and then split it, saying we are going to dedicate dollars to maintenance and also have dollars to buy new properties. We will not be able to buy as many as fast as we want. We will not be able to fix as many things as we want, but we are not adding additional debt spending to do it. These are the same decisions that families make all the time. I would love to have the nicer car. I can have the nicer car if I just save up for several years to get it. That is one recommendation. There is a second recommendation to this. There is a portion of this that gets into the budget scheming of everything that goes on. Part of what is happening to the Land and Water Conservation Fund is moving it--brace yourself from budget gimmicks here--to what is called appropriated dollars that we vote on every year to mandatory dollars you only vote on once and every year it keeps going. Think of it like Social Security. Social Security was voted on a long time ago and keeps going year after year. We don't vote on it each year. It happens because it is mandatory. The idea in this bill was to move the spending from being appropriated each year like we do with the Department of Defense or Department of Education or Health and Human Services, to take it out of that area and move it toward mandatory. Then they still left the funds over in the appropriated side and said: We are also going to spend those dollars as well. The gimmick that this sets up is it allows those funds that were spent last year to be spent on the mandatory side this year and leaves a big hole on the normal side that will just plus-up to spend for other things. My second idea is this: If we will not split the dollars we normally use for half of the purchase and half to maintain, at least dedicate the dollars that were left and aren't spent on something else and spend those on maintenance, because then we will only have half a billion dollars of new deficit rather than what this does at $2.5 billion of new deficit spending. The first challenge is to split it. The second challenge is take the dollars that were ``left over'' in appropriated dollars and just dedicate that to only doing the maintenance funds that need to be done. The third idea is pretty simple, as well. This has a 5-year tail on it on the maintenance, at about $2 billion a year of additional debt spending. I would just say that if we are only going to do maintenance for 5 years, we should only do the purchasing, which is the big chunk of this, for 5 years, as well, so that we sunset both of them. We are not going to have this big plus-up and more and more purchasing at the same time we have no plan to maintain it long term. As long as we are going to maintain it, we will also do purchasing. Just sunset it. That seems common sense as well. Here is a fourth idea. When you purchase new properties, make sure that with the dollars that are used to purchase it, there are also dollars set aside to fix what is broken on it. We often find that when people want to sell property to the Federal Government, it is because there are major problems on the land already, and they can't get another private seller. So they want to sell it to the Federal taxpayer, knowing there are problems in infrastructure on that property. We buy property with major maintenance needs already on it, and it just backs up our backlog of maintenance even more. Put a requirement in that says when we buy property, part of the purchase of it is also setting aside dollars for maintenance, so we have to fix it right then, rather than add it to the backlog of maintenance issues. That makes common sense. That also is not getting a hearing right now. I think that is a problem. There are commonsense things that don't drive us further into debt, that aren't going to cause years and years of problems in our budget, that maintain the properties that we have--maybe not as fast as we want to, but its starts getting after our backlog of maintenance-- that continue to allow us to purchase new properties, but to make sure that we are actually managing the properties that we purchase. It is a frustration for me that we are not having amendments in this process, that we are not having the opportunity to be able to fix some of the things that are wrong with this bill--because we do need to have Federal lands, we do need to maintain the lands that we have, but we do need to honor our budgets for the future, as well. Why would we say we really need to maintain all of this and purchase this, but we don't have a plan for how to do it now and so we will just wait 6 years? We will have 5 years of debt spending, and then we will somehow figure it out 6 years from now. Five years ago we were talking about this very same issue. We haven't come up with an answer in the past 5 years because no one has been willing to say we have to do less so we can take responsibility for what we have. We just want to do more and not have the accountability. So from 5 years ago to 5 years later now, to 5 years from now, when this bill ``expires,'' we will still have maintenance issues. We need to start making hard decisions. Some of those hard decisions deal with the budget and making choices and saying that there aren't any options to instead saying: There are options that I may not like as well as the ``just do everything all at once'' option. But there are options on how to do this, and we should have this debate to be able to figure out how to manage these dollars better. Maybe we will 5 years from now. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, a week ago, I did a television interview on race relations in America. They asked me to talk a little bit about what happened in Tulsa in 1921. The worst race massacre in American history occurred in Tulsa in 1921. It was May 31, overnight, into June 1. I was on television a week ago, describing the event of how a group of White rioters had marched into Greenwood--what was called Black Wall Street--and had killed up to 300 people there. They had set Greenwood on fire, destroying homes and businesses. Many people at home don't know this, but everyone in this Chamber does. As I was talking, I was just talking to a camera lens and couldn't tell what was on TV at the time. There were pictures of a town in the United States that was currently on fire while I was describing a race massacre that had happened 99 years ago that weekend. We have come a long way with the issue of race in America, but we clearly have a very long way to go. We have four centuries of racial inequality stacked on top of each other. While we break through those things step by step, we have things that we can do. I have been on the phone for days with friends and with people whom I know from all over Oklahoma--from all backgrounds--and have been talking about race relationships and where we go as a nation. Some people throw up their hands and say: I don't know what to do. Many people have an idea, but everyone wants the situation to get better. What is interesting is the dialogue about protesters and rioters and police officers. I share openly with them that I don't judge protesters and rioters the same. Some people do. They throw them all into one big group. I do not. There are people out standing on the streets who just want to be heard, who finally just want things in America to change, for America to fulfill her promise of equal justice under the law in every area, in every community. They are peaceful. They are sometimes loud and brash, but they are frustrated, and they want to be heard. There is another group that breaks through the middle of those protesters. These in this group smash windows, steal shoes and electronics from stores, and spray paint and destroy public property just from their own anger. I don't treat protesters and rioters the same, and I encourage people not to treat all police officers the same. Are there some rioters mixed in with the protesters? Yes. Are there some police officers who need to be confronted for their racial views? Yes. Is that all of them? By far, no. Every person should be judged by his own character--every person. When we as Americans lump groups together and say they are like that, we have divided us even more. It was 20 years ago when my State made it illegal for a police officer to stop someone simply because of one's race. Most police departments in Oklahoma don't allow a choke hold. In fact, I spoke with officers in the Oklahoma City Police Department who have been there for a very long time who said they were never even trained to do that. They were told not to do that. What has happened in other areas and other places has not happened in my State in the same way, but I still have friends of mine who are African American who still catch me and tell me the numbers of times they have been pulled over for driving while Black in places and neighborhoods in which I have never been pulled over but in which they have been multiple times. We still have a long way to go. This legislative body can talk about it--we can share empathy, and we can listen--but we are also called to act. So I bring to this body just a few ideas, some things we can do to engage, things like greater transparency. How can we oppose just getting information out? There are simple things that we are not currently doing, like gathering a Federal database on the use of lethal force by law enforcement. All of that data of whatever police department in whatever place that uses lethal force should be collected and sent to a Federal database so there can be a national tracking of where lethal force is used. What race is the police officer? What is the race of the person on whom lethal force was used? What was the situation? How was the investigation handled? What was the result of that investigation? These are basic details. City councils, city leaders, and city managers should not be afraid to look at the data and ask hard questions. We should not be afraid to look at the data and ask hard questions. Most every community has oversight boards that are citizen boards. Good. Are they empowered to actually engage? Are they involved in the hiring process? Are they involved in the oversight? Do they get a chance to look over their shoulders to evaluate what happens? Do they know when there are reports on the same law enforcement officer over and over again? Are those advisory panels empowered? Are there body cameras? It is not just if there are body cameras, but are they on? This has been our second challenge. Getting body cameras is just transparency. It is just the availability of information so that law enforcement can see and so that citizens can see what is happening. Law enforcement is in very, very difficult situations every single day. When law enforcement officers leave their homes each morning, their families give them hugs and hope they come home that night because, every day, they face challenges. I have great compassion for those folks. Body cameras help everybody, for they provide clarity as to what is going on, but they are not effective if they are not on, and we have had several situations lately in which it seems, conveniently, body cameras have not been on. That is a problem, and it is an area we should address. Mental health training is an area that has come up over and over again and not just recently. This has come up for a long time. This body--the Senate--and the House have passed and the President has signed additional legislation dealing with mental health issues, but States and local areas have to engage in this as well. Even in my own State, law enforcement is responsible for transporting an individual across the State to a treatment facility for mental health or for treatment for substance abuse. My State really does need to determine a better, more compassionate way to transport someone with mental illness or substance abuse rather than in the back seat of a police car. We have to have a better, more compassionate way to do that. Every time this occurs, law enforcement officers are taken off the streets for an entire day because they are transporting someone when someone else could have done that in a more compassionate, less obvious way than in the back of a police car. We have to find a better way to do that. Every time our law enforcement folks transition across the State, they lose the time they could have used for training, for getting out of their cars to meet neighbors and hear stories, for earning trust, and for healing relationships. Every city of any size across America has boards and commissions, but those boards and commissions often have the same people who just shuffle around from the same boards and commissions. They get off one board and move to another board. I find, just by asking around, that many of those on boards and commissions do not match the diversity of their communities. They are groups of wealthy leaders or of activists who are there, but they don't match the diversity, and the leadership of those boards and commissions certainly don't rotate enough to allow the leaders of the boards and commissions that the cities use to have diversity. Every year from this House and Senate, we put out community development block grants. Why don't we just add to the community development block grants that cities and communities can get access to these community development block grants and help improve their situations if they also improve access and opportunity to individuals within the communities so they may also lead in those communities. If your boards and commissions don't reflect the diversity of your community, there is a problem with that city in the way it is actually designing the leadership structure of how decisions are made with Federal dollars. This is not a hard way to be able to raise up new leaders who will get their voices heard at city hall and get their voices heard on how funds are actually used. Oftentimes, big city police departments don't share the same racial diversity of the city itself. Why don't we allow some of the grant money that we have that we already dedicate to law enforcement to be given to recruiters so they can recruit from the same diversity of their communities and actually help to pay the salaries of people who are stepping in during the earliest days in the police academy and as they are starting into the force? That way, the diversity in our big city police departments will also match the diversity of the communities themselves, and if they have a difficult time recruiting, we will allow them to use those funds for recruiters. You see, I really do believe there are things that we can do that will make a practical difference, but I also firmly believe that racism is not a legislative issue--it is a heart issue, and it is a family issue. One of the biggest things we have is the bully pulpit to be able to challenge individuals and push back on individuals. Do, quite frankly, whatever you can to push this. When I started 5 years ago, I was asking people a simple question: Has your family ever invited another family of another race into your home for dinner? It was just a simple question. I have been amazed at the number of people I have talked to in my State--people of all races--when I have asked them: Has your family ever invited another family of another race into your home for dinner, they have responded back to me: I have friends of another race, to which I have always smiled at them and said: That is not what I asked. It is not: Do you have friends of another race? Has your family ever invited a family of another race to your home for a meal just for your kids to sit together and talk, just for your two families to sit and visit like neighbors would do? I have been astounded at the number of people whose thresholds of race are the thresholds of their own homes. Why would that barrier be there, and how do we break that barrier? A friend of mine raised an interesting question to me this past weekend. A couple of years ago, as a law enforcement officer, he slipped into the Museum of African American History and found out that the Metro Police, which is here in the DC metro area, goes over to the Museum of African American History and gets a guided tour through that facility to help new police officers get an understanding of African-American history from a law enforcement perspective and see what has happened to the relationship between law enforcement and African Americans over the centuries. He joined that tour, and his statement to me was, I wish every police department could get that kind of training; that they could go to that museum and could get that kind of context. My statement back to him was that we do that with the Holocaust Museum. The Holocaust Museum does tours and is currently designing a curriculum by which to train trainers and work on anti-Semitism across the entire country. This body helped to get that done. Why don't we do that with the Museum of African American History and law enforcement? Challenge them to take the program they already have and turn it into a curriculum. Train the trainers and then get that out across the entire country. Multiply that out. Why couldn't we do that? Every year when Police Week occurs, why couldn't we have a large contingency of law enforcement go through the Museum of African American History, get that training there, and then take that training back home? Why couldn't that happen? It could if this body were willing to step up and do some pragmatic things--engage in actually finding practical ways to continue the work that our Nation is doing. You see, we are not at the beginning with regard to race. We are four centuries into this conversation. Yet what I will remind everyone is that we are actually trying. There are many places in the world that are not working on race relations at all in their countries. If you are not the dominant race, you are still excluded from the courts, from education, from access. As a country, we are trying, but for those who think we are done, they are wrong. We are not done with the journey. I love pointing out to people: Watch the beginning of the Olympics when all of the countries march in. Almost every delegation under every flag looks alike until the United States marches in, and you see this great diversity of our athletes. It again reminds us that we are trying, but the past 10 days should also remind us that we are not done. Let's continue doing the hard work that needs to be done with our own families. Let's continue to do the legislative work that needs to be done to make progress, but let's keep going until it is done. My friend said to me last weekend that our founding documents are great founding documents. We have just never actually fully lived them out for everybody. I can't wait for us to continue the work in this body toward becoming a more perfect Union. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to complete my remarks before the vote begins.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, in a few minutes, the Senate will vote on the nomination of John Heil to serve as a district court judge for Oklahoma. We have three areas in Oklahoma: the Northern District, Eastern district, and Western district. This judge position covers all three of those, and they move to wherever there is the greatest need, and we are in great need. This is a position that we have needed for a while, and I am proud that John Heil has gone through this process. He was overwhelmingly confirmed in his nomination process through committee. I expect him to have wide bipartisan support when it passes this floor in a few moments and look forward to him transitioning from being a great attorney in our State to being a great judge to serve the people of Oklahoma and the United States on the Federal bench. So I am looking forward to that vote being completed.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Absolutely.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, this has been a busy week, walking through a lot of issues that are COVID-19 related, a lot of individual meetings, committee meetings, walking through what we can get done in preparation for the next step. I met with Francis Collins very early yesterday morning, and we were able to walk through where is vaccine development, what is happening in this current timeline with different treatment options. We are very optimistic on some of the vaccine developments with multiple different lines of vaccines and very hopeful that we will have a vaccine in place by this fall. That is, we could have hundreds of millions--or at least tens of millions of different vaccines that would be ready--well over 100 million that would be ready by Christmastime, it looks like. So we are continuing to push in that direction. I have had an untold number of conversations with the Secretary of the Treasury over the last 5 days, talking through the Paycheck Protection Program, trying to settle this issue of forgiveness. This has been a very big issue with small businesses and not-for-profits in my State and, quite frankly, around the country. There is no closing information on how the Paycheck Protection Program ends. They were very grateful to have the help in the beginning, but it is set up to be a loan unless you qualify for it. A lot of these folks took that loan that will then transition to a grant with the hope that everyone would be treated fairly, but the rules were not set in place. I spent a lot of time this weekend and through early this week with the Treasury Department. They released that finding today in a very simple statement; that if you are a truly very small business or not- for-profit--that is, your total loan was $2 million or less--you will be in what they call a safe harbor. You are not going to have to worry about audits or worry about followthrough at the end of it. It is going to be a very straightforward process for those very small businesses and small not-for-profits, if that loan is $2 million or less. Now, remember, that loan covers their total payroll for 2 months, so that is a truly small entity. Once you get into larger entities, they may have a loan from $2 million to $10 million to cover their entire payroll expenses for 2 months. Those folks will have a good-faith process that is also outlined that is a very fair process that has come out today as well. That is helpful. When I spoke to Secretary Mnuchin earlier today, I thanked him for getting this done. As we have worked through this process, I thought that was the most reasonable solution to provide the greatest clarity and simple paperwork for those very small businesses that don't have to worry about having to pull together a ton of documents for them. So, for $2 million or less for the loan, they will all be in safe harbor. Ukraine Mr. President, I even have worked on some non-COVID-related issues this week. Senator Rosen and I made contact with the Ambassador from Ukraine to talk about--in one town in Ukraine, some law enforcement sent out a letter to every person in the town saying, if you are Jewish, we need you to register to make sure that we can deal with crime in our community. That is appalling, so we contacted the Ambassador for Ukraine and said: Help us understand why there is leadership in one of your towns that is trying to register every Jew in your town, saying that it is because of crime issues. They are immediately pulling that back, doing an investigation, and I am grateful to the nation of Ukraine, which has been a very close ally and friend of the United States--especially in our pushing back against the aggressive Russia that is to their east--that Ukraine is continuing to speak out immediately for the basic freedoms of individuals to live their faith and not have to be registered by a local government. We are looking forward to an explanation on that in the days ahead Coronavirus Mr. President, the vast majority of the things I have worked on this week have been related to COVID-19, as we try to walk through the issues of my State, Oklahoma, in reopening. And multiple States around the Nation are slowly trying to find ways to reopen, as we see other nations doing as well. Italy, which was exceptionally hard hit, is in the process of reopening right now. Germany, which was also very hard hit by COVID-19, is in the process of reopening. Spain--now fully half of Spain is in phase 1 of reopening for them as well. South Korea, exceptionally hard hit, is not only reopening, they have already had an election and have had record-high turnout physically at the polls because they set up a social distancing process to do in-person voting. They had a record 65 percent turnout, the highest turnout that they have had in 28 years, in the first election post-COVID-19 outbreak in the country. So that is a very hopeful sign not only that they are returning to life, as we are, but they have also worked out a process to be able to have voting and safe voting processes. The White House has announced a tremendous increase in testing again--last week, with 2 million COVID-19 tests that were done, and the target for May is to do 13 million tests just in the month of May. So it has been a dramatic increase, as we are seeing a doubling of things here. There are now 79 different diagnostic tests that have been authorized. There have been 12 different serology tests that have been authorized. The FDA has granted 92 emergency-use authorizations, so there is pretty fast work to go through the process, knowing that this has only been a few months. So far, a total of $11 billion has been brought in to States and Tribes to offset the cost of testing for them. In fact, Oklahoma has received $87--almost $88--million just to deal with the testing issues in our State as we continue to see a rapid acceleration. In fact, my State is due to receive 90,000 swabs just this month to continue to do the testing there. So we have seen a pretty dramatic increase of engagement on testing, and that is exceptionally helpful for us. For the Treasury, they have made a lot of progress in getting out the economic impact payments to people. They have now sent out 130 million of those. Just in my State, 1.5-plus million of those economic impact payments have been made, totaling about $2.8 billion. That is coming as direct assistance to folks in my State. It has been a significant help to people who need to get it. The Paycheck Protection Program continues to help the smallest of businesses. The economic impact payments have gone out, even as the State is finally starting to come back alive, little by little, as we have worked through phase 1 of reopening and now are headed carefully toward a phase 2. I continue to encourage my fellow Oklahomans to continue social distancing; to wear a mask, which I do, in public; and to continue to keep a good attention to your own hygiene and take care of people who have other health issues or people who have, especially, heart issues or diabetes issues. They know to stay home and to keep themselves protected, and I encourage them to continue to do that. Now, while we are working through all of these things in the Senate and trying to find practical solutions and trying to work through things in a nonpartisan format, which is what we should do right now, taking on COVID-19, I was rather shocked yesterday when the House of Representatives released the details of the bill that they hope to vote on, on Friday. This bill that they hope to vote on, on Friday, is a $3 trillion bill. That is larger than the previous four bills that we have voted on combined. It is a pretty dramatic expansion of a lot of issues that are not COVID-19 related. As we said in the previous conversation just a month and a half ago, what we focus on right now should be COVID-19 related, not trying to say it is a COVID-19-related bill and then stick a bunch of other stuff into it. It is over 1,800 pages. In fact, just the summary of it--if people want to see the summary document of it--is 90 pages long, just to get the summary of it. And it deals with a lot of issues that are certainly not COVID-19 related, and I think a lot of Oklahomans and a lot of other Americans would say: ``Why did they want to stick that in there?'' And they just think, look over here at this big number we are going to give the States and look over here at this big issue and don't pay attention to these other issues. For instance, I understand there are legitimate issues on trying to protect voting and to make sure that the voting this year can go off safely and can go off in a way that we can have great credibility on. That is what South Korea just did with record-high turnout with in- person voting, but that is not what this bill that is coming from the House plans to do this week. What they plan to vote on, on Friday, radically changes voting for the entire country, not for this year--permanently. It prohibits States, from here on out, from imposing any conditions or requirements for eligibility for voting. It gives absentee ballots mailed to every single person. It also breaks down any voter ID laws that are in any State and authorizes something called ballot harvesting, which has been exceptionally successful in California for Democratic candidates. It basically allows someone to come to your door and say: Have you voted yet absentee? If it is no, they can vote on the spot, and the person at your door can then take the ballot from you and say, I will go turn it in for you. Well, obviously, there are lots of moments for fraud in that. This would make that mandatory nationwide. That is a major issue, to change how we do voting forever and to break this down. This is not the time to try to cram this into a bill that is supposedly about COVID-19 and do a permanent change on that. It also does some things that I was rather stunned by, even for some of my colleagues on the House side. It changes the economic impact payments, and it takes away the requirement that they have to have a Social Security number. Well, if you take away the requirement that it has to have a Social Security number, what it allows, then, is for people who are noncitizens to be able to get the economic impact payments--up to $6,000 per household for any individual who is in the country. Well, that is a pretty dramatic shift in what we are doing. It allows people who are not legally present in the country to actually end up with economic impact payments as well. I don't think most people in my State would be someone who would agree with that, and they would want to know why we are trying to stick that in. It also does some pretty massive changes to how immigration is actually handled. It frees a lot of people who are currently under ICE custody right now. It enforces the release of those individuals. It awards Federal funding specifically to sanctuary cities. It prevents the deportation of anyone who is not legally present in the United States. It provides deferred action and work authorization for anyone who is working in a job here, regardless of legal status into the country, so it literally takes everyone who is not legally present here and gives them legal status during this time period. It changes the unemployment insurance in a way that is pretty dramatic. Currently, the unemployment insurance is greatly plussed-up during this time period. There is an additional $600 per week, per person, for anyone on unemployment insurance. That allows an individual in my State to make about $48,000 a year on unemployment assistance. The challenge is, there are many individuals who don't make $48,000 in their normal job, but they are making $48,000 now on unemployment assistance. This bill coming from the House changes that because that extra $600 per week expires at the end of July. It changes the expiration of that deep into next spring of 2021, regardless if your State is open for business or not. So, in my State, in Oklahoma, literally, it would encourage people who make less than $48,000 a year to not go back to work because they could make more by staying on unemployment insurance--not just through July but all the way through the rest of this year and through half of next year--regardless if your State is open or not, regardless if we have a vaccine or not. If we have a vaccine, let's say, in November, as Francis Collins states, you would still get this unemployment protection to be able to make $48,000 per year past your vaccination and deep into next year. I think that is a continual problem. I think that is an issue. In the bill itself, it actually sets up a series of changes in our Federal cannabis laws, at which point I immediately thought, OK, how much information is in this bill about cannabis? Cannabis is actually mentioned in this bill 68 times. I am not sure why that is in a bill dealing with COVID-19, but it does dramatic changes in our Federal cannabis laws. There is a section where it gives tax breaks to teachers, firefighters, and law enforcement folks--OK, that is great, but stuck right in the middle of that section is a tax break for billionaires, which I was shocked. It is an almost $100 billion tax break for the top 1 percent. It is stuck right in the section quietly in there, in the middle of the section for teachers, firefighters, and law enforcement. The student loan section was also interesting to me. It provides $10,000 of loan forgiveness to every single student around the country. I am sure every student would be grateful to have that, and I am sure every family would be grateful to have this, but it was not needs- based. It wasn't anything else. It was just $10,000--a blanket loan forgiveness for every single student across the entire country. Of course, there is no liability protection that is anywhere in it. The Paycheck Protection Program that has been exceptionally important to a lot of small businesses wasn't increased. Some things that are really needed at this time are not even addressed to help small businesses again or to help with liability protections, which so many businesses and educational institutions and nonprofits are asking the question: How do I reopen? What do I do? And how do I deal with the liability issues? That was not addressed at all. I have a lot of concerns about this bill, beginning with just the basics of: Why didn't they even try to negotiate with Republicans and Democrats. It was a straight Democratic bill in a time we desperately need to focus on not putting out a partisan thing and saying look: We are trying to be able to help, but don't look at all these hundreds and hundreds of pages of things that are not related to COVID. Let's try to actually solve the problem that is in front of us. It is serious. The issues we face dealing with health and the individuals who are on the frontlines right now at grocery stores and healthcare facilities and hospitals and truckers and convenience stores and folks who are doing carryout food--those folks are doing remarkable work, and they should be encouraged, not discouraged with a partisan bill that is coming out here that everyone knows is not going to go anywhere. Let's keep working together. What is happening in the Senate to try to establish bipartisan agreements on things, we should continue to be able to do. But flying in to do a messaging bill worth $3 trillion that changes voting in America and changes cannabis laws and does all kinds of other things is not what we need to do right now. Let's keep working, though, because there is plenty that does need to be done. I yield floor

Mr. LANKFORD. The Presiding Officer, the Senator from Arkansas, I believe his birthday is today, Senator Cotton.

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

Mr. LANKFORD. You know what, in a colloquy with my colleague from Delaware, I do know someone who is a Senator--

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I rise to pause and remember March 28, 2020. It is a day that Oklahomans and the Nation lost a patriot and a friend to many. I stand here at this desk that I have used for the past 5 years, but before it was my desk, it was the desk of Dr. Tom Coburn. A few days after we gaveled out in March, Dr. Coburn took his first breath in Heaven, where he was finally cancer-free, finally pain-free, and living in the presence of Jesus, where there is no government waste and no inefficiency, where there is no conflict, and liberty is absolutely eternal. We will miss his sage advice, his blunt perspective, and his steadfast wisdom. Dr. Coburn served in this Chamber for 10 years, from 2005 to 2015, but he also served in the House of Representatives for 6 years, from 1995 to 2001. The one title he carried in both of those Chambers was ``Doctor,'' and that was his preferred term. Thomas Allen Coburn was born in Casper, WY, on March 14, 1948. Dr. Coburn graduated from Central High School in 1966. In 1968, he married Carolyn Denton--by the way, the 1967 Miss Oklahoma. They had three daughters and nine grandchildren. At Oklahoma State University, Dr. Coburn was an honor student and president of the student business council. He graduated in 1970 with a bachelor's degree in accounting. After the family business he worked at was sold, he attended medical school at the University of Oklahoma and received his medical degree with honors in 1983. He interned at St. Anthony's Hospital in Oklahoma City. In 1986, he founded the Muskogee Family Medicine practice, which is still in operation today. His victory over melanoma as a young man inspired him to become a physician. He stated he wanted to give back because he had been given to. Unfortunately, that battle with melanoma when he was a young man was not his last battle with cancer. As a physician, his dedication to his patients was inexhaustible. Over his career, he delivered 4,000 babies and would often see 30 patients a day in his office. After his election to the House of Representatives in 1994, he would fly home from Washington, DC, so that he could continue to see his patients on weekends--a schedule he maintained for the entire 6 years he spent in the House. He was a doctor all the time. It was not uncommon for him to be in a conversation with someone, and right in the middle of the conversation, he would ask them how they were feeling because he had picked up something in their demeanor that he thought was a little bit wrong. Dr. Coburn was a deacon and a Sunday school teacher. In all the story that I have told you, if you are looking for some element of politics in the background, you won't find it until 1994. His decision to run for Congress in 1994 was a long shot. He narrowly won, becoming the first Republican to represent Oklahoma's Second Congressional District in 73 years. He went to Congress as a man on a mission. He was determined to help solve the Nation's problems. His focus was not Oklahoma; it was the Nation. I remember asking him privately before I started serving in the House of Representatives how he made a difference. His answer was that there are two people who make a difference in Congress--the person who studies and the committee chairman. Study more than anyone else, know the issue, and you can get it done. His tenacity on every issue was legendary. POLITICO once summarized it well, saying: ``A typical bill moving through the Senate has a number of institutional hurdles to clear: subcommittee, committee, leadership and Coburn. It's that last one that you won't find in a textbook.'' His staff were wholly devoted to the cause, not necessarily because of him but because of the mission. One of his former staffers wrote this after Dr. Coburn passed: We blocked a lot of bills. We offered a lot of amendments. We lost a lot of votes. We highlighted a lot of wasteful spending. We irked a lot of people. And over time, we started changing how business was done. Bills that added new spending couldn't pass without offsets. Program duplication became part of the lexicon. The practice of earmarking went away. People started paying attention to government waste. Doctor Coburn's annual ``Wastebook'' became one of the more high- profile reports coming out of Washington each year. Over the years, Dr. Coburn and his team highlighted trillions in questionable spending on low-priority items that taxpayers were unwittingly paying for. Any spending that proved to be classic Federal wastefulness, duplicative, fraudulent, or purely ineffective, likely made the list each year. The ``Wastebook'' became an annual rallying cry for taxpayers frustrated by Washington's spending habits. Phrases that are common in American political conversations today, like ``the bridge to nowhere,'' ``shrimp on a treadmill,'' ``term limits,'' and ``earmarks,'' were all battles that he fought to win. In 2010, in a fight over the debt limit increase, Dr. Coburn created an annual report from the Government Accountability Office on government duplication. It seemed like just another government report, but that report--that report that he passed in 2010--has saved taxpayers $262 billion dollars so far. Dr. Coburn and his team were in the fights worth fighting, but they were battling on the playing field of ideas and policy proposals, not against people. In a town that wants to label everything left versus right, liberal versus conservative, Dr. Coburn and his team didn't have any criteria to meet for those who joined them in the fight; they were willing to pull together any ally. You didn't have to agree on everything, but as long as you agreed on a couple things in front of you, that is what mattered. The friendships that were forged in the fight were genuine, true, and certainly unique. He was the chief sponsor of President Obama's USASpending.gov to increase transparency in government spending. He was a champion for HIV/AIDS patients and medical research to save lives. He was a tenacious fighter against Social Security disability fraud, eventually exposing a $1 billion Social Security scam in West Virginia run by a lawyer named Eric Conn, a Kentucky lawyer who filed thousands of bogus disability applications. He was a master of Senate rules--his clay pigeon amendment is legendary in Senate procedure. He was one of the unlikeliest Members to vote for TARP in 2008. It was probably one of the hardest votes that he took, but when he looked at the facts in front of him, he saw that it was the right thing to do. That was ultimately what it boiled down to-- he was willing to do the right thing, no matter what the cost. He opposed what needed opposition, but he would prefer to argue in private to resolve an issue rather than in public, although he was clearly not afraid to argue in public. After years of serving families as their physician--a task he continued on weekends even when he was in the House of Representatives--the Senate Ethics Committee ruled that Dr. Coburn was violating conflict of interest rules by holding an outside job and prohibited him from practicing medicine as a Senator. Dr. Coburn then just stopped taking payment and did his work as a physician pro bono, and the Ethics Committee also rejected that plan and prohibited him from working pro bono, even as a physician. Ironically, I am now the chairman of Ethics for the Senate. The last time I visited with Dr. Coburn at his house in February, in the middle of our long, great conversation, he said to me: Since you are the chairman of Ethics, why don't you get that rule changed and allow doctors to still practice medicine while they are in the Senate? That is wrong. That needs to be fixed. Even in the end, he was still working to right what was wrong. Many people know that when Dr. Coburn left the Senate, he spent his time trying to fix Congress--still working on term limits and a balanced budget amendment. If you have not seen it, you should read some of the things his former staff wrote about Dr. Coburn after he passed away a few weeks ago. Any Senator in this Chamber could only wish that our staff looked up to us as much as his staff looked up to him. I thought the best way to honor Dr. Coburn today, though, was to remind this body of what Dr. Coburn said as he walked out of this body--his farewell speech. Among the many things he said, he challenged the Senate and Senators by saying this: The Senate was designed uniquely to force compromise, not to force gridlock--to force compromise. One Senator had the power to stop everything for the first 100 years but it didn't because compromise was the goal. Our Founders understood there were many differences between the States in size, in geography, economy, and opinions. They united the States as one country based upon the premise that the many are more powerful than the one. As Senators, we have to follow this example. Then, he said this: I've not always done that--I admit that freely to you. I should have. As Senators, we must follow the example and stand for our principles, but working to find those areas of agreement where compromise can be found to unite and move our country forward. Not all the powers of the Senators are exercised on the Senate floor. Each Member of the Senate has a unique role to participate and practice oversight and to hold the government accountable. That is part of our duties, except most often that is the part of our duties that is most ignored. True debates about national priorities would come about if we did effective oversight. It is the Senate, once hailed as the world's greatest deliberative body, where these differences should be argued. Our differences should be resolved through civil discourse so they are not settled in the streets. Just as the Constitution provides for majority rule in our democracy, while protecting the rights of individuals, the Senate must return to principles to bring trust to the electorate, and it can. The theme of his whole farewell speech centered around this one statement: We do not have one problem we cannot solve. There is nothing too big for us. They are all solvable. On this National Day of Prayer, I believe it is entirely appropriate that we pray for Dr. Coburn's family, friends, and former staff, who will miss his friendship and his counsel, and so will our Nation. I pray that Carolyn, their daughters, and their families cherish the memories of a husband, dad, and grandfather. Our State and our Nation will be forever grateful for your sacrifice. I pray that the task Dr. Coburn began would be completed for the sake of our liberty and of our future, and I pray that this body will take up the challenge he left on this floor: to solve the hard problems we face as a nation together. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, we are in the process of passing a very large economic package to help stabilize our economy through the middle of all that is happening with COVID-19 globally and in the United States. The heart of the package we are passing today is almost identical to what we brought Sunday night, which was a bipartisan proposal, which ranking members and chairmen of all the major committees had worked together to get done. The key elements of it are still there. It has unemployment insurance for Americans, including a $600 plus-up to go through the process. There is support for small businesses that will pay the payroll. We don't want individuals to end up on unemployment insurance. It is better if they stay connected to their same company. It has a unique new proposal that is built in to say a small business can go to any bank rapidly to get a loan there, which will convert into a grant if they maintain their current employee numbers. That keeps people connected to their business and keeps people assured of a job at the end of all this when it finishes out. It has a grant program for larger businesses that is designed to say: If you are a very large company, you are not going to get a grant; you are going to get a loan in this process. At the moment you get a loan and, if you don't have capital and you don't have access to it right now because of all that is going on, you could get that. This also has a feature built in where individuals will receive a check for $1,200. Every adult does. That is built in to get immediate economic support to all those folks across the country. All of those features were already in the bill through Sunday night. There have been some tweaks that some folks have brought up that some of our Democratic colleagues wanted to engage in. Many of those changes have been heard and been added, and to some we have said: Absolutely not, it is not connected to COVID-19 at all. There are things that some of our Democratic colleagues wanted to make sure got in. Through all the negotiations, some of these things were changed. For instance, they wanted to make sure that energy companies couldn't get any support. So they fought hard to make sure there is no additional money for the President buying additional oil to put in the strategic petroleum reserve at this lowest price now. So it will actually cost us more money in the future. But it was their intention to say that we don't want oil companies to get any support in this downturn. They also wanted to make sure there was great transparency because they didn't trust the Trump administration. So they built in an inspector general and additional people to watch the Treasury through the process. They put in a neat little feature they demanded, which was that no son or daughter or family member or any individual that works with the Presidency, Vice Presidency, or the Congress could get any of--not the grant programs--the loan programs. In fact, the language they demanded was interesting: No son-in-law could get that. I wonder: Who could that be targeted toward? A particular son-in-law that might be there. Literally, a lot of this fight we have had over the last 3 days is because they were demanding that there was no way the President or any of his family could get any kind of loan or benefit from this program at all. We spent 3 days--3 days of delay--because they had some additional demands for some things they wanted to do, significantly targeted to a lot of the President and his family. I understand they don't like the President. I get that. We want to do everything we can to protect the workers. That is why we had all of these programs in place already and why we had done a lot of bipartisan work to get it done. It is done now. Let's get it going. Our encouragement is to have the House finish this up as quickly as possible and to get the support to the American people. What has been interesting, though, is in the speeches that I have heard on the floor today from my colleagues and from many individuals in releases I have seen, folks have mentioned their prayer. They have mentioned: With God's help, we are going to get through this. They have mentioned the struggle we are going through as a nation and how we are praying for each other. It keeps reminding me of something. It is a very old psalm of ascent, Psalm 121. When the Jews would come into Jerusalem for the different feasts, they would sing these psalms of ascent as they came off the eastern hills and would start rising up toward Jerusalem. The song they would sing, I think, is pertinent for our time right now. Psalm 121 reads: I lift up my eyes to the mountains. Where does my help come from? Remember that the mountains here are the capital city Jerusalem. It is the seat of government for them and the center of worship. But it is the seat of government for them. They would sing: I lift up my eyes to the mountains Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth. He will not let your foot slip. He who watches over you will not slumber. Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord watches over you. The Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from harm. He will watch over your life. The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore. It is interesting to me that the people would come in marching into Jerusalem, the seat of government, singing the song: I lift up my eyes to the mountains. [But] where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord. Of all the things that are going on in Washington, DC, right now, you will hear people repeating over and over: Our hope is not in government; our hope is not in how much money we can spend. We understand full well, when we lift up our eyes to the mountain--to this hill. We understand full well where our help comes from, and it is not from all the folks in this room. Our help comes from the Lord, and we are grateful that He neither slumbers nor sleeps. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, this morning, Technical Sergeant Marshal Roberts of Oklahoma came home. It was a dignified transfer in Tulsa, OK, early this morning. There were a lot of people who wanted to be there but, because of COVID-19, could not. A lot of other folks were. Technical Sergeant Marshal Roberts was killed in Iraq Wednesday, March 11, when his unit was engaged by direct enemy fire while they were sleeping. He was 17 miles north of Baghdad. He was deployed by the 219th Engineering Installation Squadron, the subordinate unit of the 138th, out of Tulsa, OK. He was in the process of building communications infrastructure as part of the fight against ISIS. The operation that Roberts served in, Operation Inherent Resolve, has been a vital part of protecting our Nation and bringing stability to the region. Roberts enlisted in the Oklahoma Air National Guard in May of 2014. He was killed in action as the first Oklahoma Air National Guardsman who has died but the 20th Oklahoma National Guardsman who has died since September 11, 2001. The perpetual comment that I heard from the folks to whom I spoke about Tech Sergeant Roberts was that he was one of the good guys; he was always known for having a smile on his face; he was selfless; and he served others all the way to the end. The night of the attack, there was a truck launcher that fired off 30 Katyusha rockets at their camp as folks were sleeping. Eighteen of those rockets landed inside the camp facility. As the noise happened around them, Sergeant Roberts told his fellow airmen to get up, get going, and get their body armor on. As he stepped away to go warn other people to do the same, the rocket came. But he saved the lives of some of the people standing right there whom he had told to get their body armor on. He was posthumously promoted to technical sergeant. He was born January 29, 1992, in Tulsa, OK. Marshal's parents, Sally and Randy, raised him in Owasso, OK, where he graduated from Owasso High School. He has a beautiful daughter, Paityn, who has been the love of his life. On November 15, 2018, Marshall was married to Krissy Harris. She was also in the 138th. They met and started dating, both being part of the Air National Guard. Their deep love for God, their deep love for their country, and their obvious love for each other was a significant part of the 138th. Everyone who knew them, knew what they were like and were glad to be called their friends. He was a brother, he was a son, he was a father, and he was a husband. Our State and our Nation grieves him today coming home. A fun story about him and Krissy, though, is that they met and started dating, as I mentioned, while they were both serving in the 138th. She had been in the 138th for 15 years. So she had actually been there longer. They dated for 4 years before they got married in 2018. They had been married just less than 2 years. They were both avid football fans, but there was a major problem. Krissy is a Kansas City Chiefs fan, and Marshal was a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. That is a problem--definitely. But he fixed that by proposing to Krissy at the Steelers-Chiefs game. I have to tell you that for the family, for the folks who stood there today in Tulsa as he came home, they found a way to love each other and found a way to serve each other. And to the very end, they are still sacrificing for the country. Because of the COVID-19 that is happening right now, they have chosen not to have a public memorial service--in a close time for the family--and they are delaying that time until it is safer for all of the family and for all of the community to be able to participate. Literally, their family continues the grief and the weight--one more sacrifice for their country and for their community. Today, all of Oklahoma is using a hashtag to share messages with the family--a simple hashtag: ``#TSGT Marshal Roberts''; that is, hashtag Technical Sergeant Marshal Roberts, if you want all of the abbreviations on it--to share a message of support and love for the family. Our Nation is grateful, and we grieve with you for the loss today. Thank you to him and to his family for wearing the cloth of our country and for doing everything our Nation asked of him to the very end. Our Nation lives in freedom because of folks like Marshal Roberts, and we will continue to stand with Krissy and Paityn and with their family. With that, I yield.