Mitch McConnell

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 189, submitted earlier today.

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, last night, President Biden delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress, and today marks his 100th day in office. President Biden is a likeable person. Many of us remember serving with him in this Chamber. But while the tone of his remarks were understated, the content was anything but. He talked at length about competing with China without mentioning that he wants to cut U.S. defense spending after inflation. Exactly what we cannot do if we want to keep pace. He talked about immigration without taking any responsibility for the border crisis that has his administration packing unaccompanied children into facilities and releasing arrivals into our country. And the President talked about unity and togetherness while reading off a multitrillion-dollar shopping list that was neither designed nor intended to earn bipartisan buy-in, a blueprint for giving Washington even more money and even more power to micromanage American families and build the country liberal elites want instead of the future Americans want. Think back to the start of this administration. Remember its day one priorities: axing a pipeline project that would have supported thousands of jobs; freezing the exploration behind America's energy independence; and re-signing the climate agreement that has gotten less emissions reduction out of China, which is inside the deal, than the United States achieved on our own, outside the deal. The approach has remained equally radical since. Even after the CDC's own experts showed months ago that schools are safe, the administration's partisan COVID bill threw money at districts without requiring prompt reopenings. As a humanitarian crisis mounts at the southern border, the President's team has offered mixed messaging and ineffectiveness. While Iran keeps ramping up nuclear rhetoric and financing terror across the Middle East, this White House keeps downplaying the Iranian terror. And they appear eager to squander sanctions leverage just to climb back into a failed deal from back in the Obama era. And again, as Russia and China fast-track military modernization, President Biden turned in a defense spending proposal that would put U.S. forces behind the curve. That was the backdrop for last night's speech. But instead of practical plans to fulfill these basic responsibilities, America heard a lengthy liberal daydream. We heard about the so-called jobs plan packed with punitive tax hikes at exactly the time our Nation needs a recovery. Ivy League experts say that it would actually leave American workers with lower wages at the end of the day. We heard about the so-called family plan, another gigantic tax-and- spend colossus. Instead of empowering all kinds of families with flexibility, this one would just subsidize specific paths that Democrats deem best so Washington can call the shots from early childhood through college graduation. But wait. There was more. There was hostility toward the Second Amendment rights of American citizens. There was support for Democrats' sweeping election takeover bill that would neuter voter ID in all 50 States--oh--and, by the way, make the Federal Election Commission a partisan body--oh--and legalize ballot harvesting, where paid political operatives can show up carrying stacks, stacks of other people's ballots. Here is the bottom line. Recall that more than a year ago, at the outset of the pandemic, a top House Democrat said this crisis provided the left ``a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.'' Well, last night, President Biden said much the same: that his administration intends to turn ``crisis into opportunity.'' The far left certainly gets the message. Some of the most liberal Members of Congress have gone out of their way to say they are surprised and delighted--delighted--by the President's willingness to do things their way. Even a neutral wire report explained yesterday that the Biden agenda seeks to ``fundamentally transform and expand government's role in the lives of everyday Americans.'' Let me say that again. A neutral wire report explained yesterday that the Biden agenda seeks to ``fundamentally transform and expand government's role in the lives of everyday Americans.'' It is an attempt to continue dragging a divided country farther and faster to the left. This administration wants to jack up taxes in order to nudge families toward the kinds of jobs Democrats want them to have, in the kinds of industries Democrats want to exist, with the kinds of cars Democrats want them to drive, using the kinds of childcare arrangements that Democrats want them to pursue. These plans aren't about creating options and flexibility for Americans; they are about imposing a vision. Instead of encouraging work and rewarding work and helping connect more Americans with opportunities to work and build their lives, this administration is working overtime to break the link--the link--between work and income. They want to break the link between work and income. Outside observers across the political spectrum agree these Democrats are unlearning the commonsense, pro-work lessons of bipartisan welfare reform from back in the nineties. This isn't what the American people voted for. This country just elected a 50-50 Senate, a very closely divided House, and a President who talked a big game about cutting deals, bringing people together, and building bridges. But even on subjects as historically bipartisan as pandemic relief, voting rights, and infrastructure, our Democratic friends have become addicted to divide-and-conquer. As our distinguished colleague Senator Tim Scott put it last night: They won't even build bridges . . . to build bridges. It doesn't have to be this way. Republicans support actually competing with China. Republicans support actually helping working families. Republicans support actual infrastructure. Ranking Member Capito and a number of our leading Republican colleagues have rolled out a multi-hundred-billion-dollar targeted infrastructure proposal. Today, in fact, the Senate is set to pass bipartisan legislation to help States and localities to provide clean and safe drinking water. Our President will not secure a lasting legacy through go-it-alone radicalism. He won't get much done that way. It won't be good for the country. And whatever the Democrats do get done through partisan brute force will be fragile. The American people need us to find common ground and to move this country forward, and they would like for us to do it together.

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, one family in Southcentral Kentucky has waited more than 70 years to give their hero a proper tribute. Last year, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, DPAA, identified the remains of Navy Seaman 2nd Class Howard ``Scott'' Magers from Barren County. Over Memorial Day weekend, a grateful nation will honor this Kentuckian's sacrifice as he finally comes home. I would like to take a moment today to add my personal gratitude for Scott's service and his family's sacrifice. Those who knew Scott remembered a soft-spoken young man with a kind heart and a winning smile. In January 1941, he enlisted in the Navy at the age of 17. Like millions of other men and women of the ``greatest generation,'' Scott put his own ambitions on pause to defend the country he loved. After completing his training and making one trip home to Kentucky before his 18th birthday, Scott was stationed aboard the USS Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. On that Sunday morning, the Japanese forces rained bombs down on unsuspecting American sailors. Torpedoes pummeled the Oklahoma, tearing open her hull and igniting an inferno inside. Within minutes, the massive ship capsized, and more than 400 of its crew plunged into the water below. In the chaos, more than 2,400 American servicemembers lost their lives. The tragic events of that morning elicited a forceful response as the United States entered the Second World War. Over the next 4 years, heroes were forged on the battlefield and at home as our country defeated the forces of tyranny in defense of the American way of life. Like thousands of families, the Magers could only wonder and pray over Scott's fate. Although he would never make it home, he had sent a telegraph before the bombing to his loved ones in Kentucky. In a message delivered on Christmas Eve, Scott shared his love and his holiday cheer. His loved ones held tight to this last compassionate connection to Scott that reflected his best qualities. In the following years, the Navy attempted to identify the remains of those killed on the Oklahoma. Unfortunately, the vast majority couldn't be accounted for and were buried together in 46 plots at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl. In 2015, the DPAA exhumed the USS Oklahoma Unknowns. Using DNA as dental, and other identifying records, they were finally able to identify Scott's remains and give his family the opportunity for proper burial in Kentucky. Over 1,300 Kentucky servicemembers remain unaccounted for by the DPAA. We have never forgotten these patriots, and we will continue searching to bring them home. I am grateful for the ongoing efforts of the DPAA to bring closure to more families like this one. On behalf of my Senate colleagues, I would like to send our sincere condolences to Scott's family and express our thanks for his brave service to our Nation. We are proud this Kentucky hero will receive the honor he earned.

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, tonight President Biden will deliver his first address to a joint session of Congress. I will be there, and, like my fellow Kentuckians watching at home, I will be curious to hear how President Biden tries to square his rhetoric with the administration's actions over the past 100 days. Back in January, many Americans hoped they could take the incoming President at his word. After a year spent beating back a historic pandemic and grappling with civil unrest, President Biden pledged he would be ``a President for all Americans,'' with plans to ``repair,'' ``restore,'' and ``heal.'' The American people elected a 50-50 Senate, a closely divided House, and a President who preached moderation. He promised that his whole soul was committed to uniting our people. Many hoped his administration would reflect that promise, but the first 100 days have left much to be desired. Over a few short months, the Biden administration seems to have given up on selling actual unity in favor of catnip for their liberal base, covered with a hefty coat of false advertising. That is how the so-called American Rescue Plan, a grab-bag spending bill that directed less than 10 percent to vaccines and pandemic healthcare, was marketed as a COVID-19 relief measure. In actuality, it sent sums of money to State governments whose revenues had already rebounded and declared war on the formerly bipartisan consensus that welfare spending should actually be linked to work. Or take H.R. 1, the sweeping effort by Democrats to mount a partisan takeover of all 50 States' voting laws, along with the Federal Election Commission for good measure. After a Republican won the White House in 2016, this was billed as a massive overhaul for a broken democracy. Now a nearly identical plan is, instead, being marketed as a modest dose of preventive maintenance. It is still the same takeover it has always been. And now we have the American Jobs Plan, another multitrillion-dollar smorgasbord of liberal social engineering that would decimate entire industries and spend only a small fraction on roads and bridges. It is being sold as a serious effort to rebuild our Nation's infrastructure. It is pretty brazen misdirection. At both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, Democrats have chosen to live in an alternate universe where both the campaign promises they made and the mandate the American people delivered were actually completely different than what happened right here on planet Earth. Unfortunately, the real-life effects of this false advertising campaign have come thick and fast: pain and uncertainty at home and dwindling leverage and virtue-signaling abroad First came mixed messages on the status of the pandemic. Existing vaccine distribution efforts surpassed President Biden's supposedly ambitious daily target on the day he was sworn in. When their own top health officials accidentally let slip the hard science on school reopenings, the administration bowed to Big Labor and walked back their comments. And the President continues to issue directives that are strangely out of step with the science, like his big announcement several weeks ago that, if citizens behave themselves--behave themselves--he would actually permit them to enjoy small outdoor gatherings on July 4th that the CDC guidance already said would be safe right now. Then there is the environmental policy. On day one, President Biden rushed to cancel a pipeline project that would have employed thousands of Americans and freeze permitting for more safe, reliable domestic energy. He also announced an urgent return to an Obama-era deal that has proven unable to curb the signatories' carbon emissions and unnecessary for the United States to reduce our own. Why would he do that? Because the far left demanded it. In fact, the most radical liberals in Congress have taken credit for the input of their Green New Deal manifesto over this President's new agenda. Meanwhile, Democrats have decidedly avoided taking ownership of the results of their own campaign rhetoric on immigration. Reckless mixed messaging has come home to roost in the form of a humanitarian and security crisis on our southern border. Soaring numbers of migrants are arriving, some wearing Biden campaign shirts, convinced, as one put it, that ``Biden promised us that everything was going to change.'' Among them are record numbers of unaccompanied children, cramped into overflow facilities, who have become the tragic face of this story. Yet through it all, the White House's foremost concern seems to have been to avoid calling this what it is: a crisis. And while broken immigration policy threatens security at our borders, a dangerously misguided foreign policy threatens our safety and standing overseas. Years of carefully assembled multilateral sanctions had created an economic straitjacket around Iran's terrorist state. But in its haste to turn the clocks back to the Obama era, President Biden's negotiators have offered to give up massive portions of this leverage just to get Iran back to a failed nuclear deal. Further east, American forces have been ordered to make a hasty, total withdrawal from Afghanistan; to leave coalition partners and vulnerable Afghans high and dry, especially women and girls; to pave the way for Taliban rule; and to enable an al-Qaida resurgence that could again threaten our homeland. And while national security experts are nearly unanimous in urging the administration to focus on competition with Russia and China, the White House has proposed to cut defense spending after inflation and put our Armed Forces on the back foot--ignoring the facts, passing the buck, and squandering leverage. This is not what the American people bargained for, and they know it doesn't have to be this way. Past Presidents and Congresses have found ways to work effectively to make lasting and bipartisan progress on important issues. For example, when we have crafted smart policies to improve actual infrastructure, big bipartisan majorities have signed on. Just last year, when we worked across the aisle on targeted rescue packages to help American families weather a once-in-a-century pandemic, not one--not one--of the five bills we passed last year earned fewer than 90 votes right here in the Senate. This year, the story has been different. Behind President Biden's familiar face, it is like the most radical Washington Democrats have been handed the keys, and they are trying to speed as far left as they can possibly go before American voters ask for the car back. But it is not too late. This White House can shake off its daydreams of a sweeping socialist legacy that will never happen in the United States. They can recommit to solving our Nation's actual problems, to fostering consensus instead of deepening our divide. That is what the American people want and what they deserve, not an administration that chooses to govern like it owes everything-- everything--to the radical left.

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, our country recently took a long- overdue step toward honoring the courageous Americans who served in the First World War. Earlier this month and more than a century after the formal end of the war, the United States raised the flag over the newly constructed National World War I Memorial. I am immensely proud of this tribute in our Nation's Capital to the 4.7 million Americans who sacrificed to preserve our way of life. Today, I would like give special thanks to a remarkable Kentuckian who became a driving force bringing this memorial into existence. My longtime friend Terry Hamby, from Cadiz, is the chair of the World War I Centennial Commission. He deserves our sincere gratitude for his leadership and perseverance in giving every American the opportunity to honor our heroes. Through the generations, the Hamby family has proudly answered the Nation's call to military service. The noble tradition dates back to the Civil War and Terry's great-grandfather's service in the Union Army. His grandfather and father each courageously defended our country in a global war. Next, it was Terry's turn to wear the uniform as part of a Naval Air Wing in Vietnam. He later joined the U.S. Army Reserves until he retired following 26 years of military service. Terry's son continued the family legacy by joining the Navy in the Persian Gulf. Service and sacrifice are personal to this family. Even when Terry retired from the military, he continued working to support the world's greatest fighting force. His hometown in Christian County, KY, neighbors Fort Campbell, one of our country's premier military installations. Terry founded a contracting firm to provide services to the Defense Department and the men and women stationed at the base nearby, including the famed ``Screaming Eagles'' of the 101st Airborne Division. To know Terry is to instantly like him. I have had the privilege to call him a friend for many years, and I have always been impressed by his love of our country and respect for the men and women who protect it. So when I had the chance through my leadership position to appoint a member of the World War I Centennial Commission, Terry was the clear choice. His family's tradition of service, as well as his civilian contributions to the military, gave him an important perspective for this project. I also knew the commission would benefit from Terry's business mindset as it raised funds to advance its mission. His colleagues on the commission quickly recognized his talents too. They elected Terry to chair the organization and this monumental effort to honor America's heroes. The memorial found a fitting home only blocks from the White House in a park named for General John J. Pershing, the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front of World War I. After an international competition with more than 300 entries, the commission selected a design titled ``The Weight of Sacrifice.'' Terry and his wife, Carolyn, recently took Elaine and me on a tour of the memorial. One of its most striking features is an approximately 60 foot long depiction of ``A Soldier's Journey.'' Dozens of overlapping figures tell the stories of warriors leaving home for the battlefield before their ultimate triumph. It is emotional piece that shows these soldiers' toil and sacrifice to build a lasting peace. Even now that the memorial is officially open to the public, Terry hasn't stopped working to honor the World War I generation. He has turned his attention to gathering support for recognition of female telephone operators called the ``Hello Girls.'' Other than nurses, these were the first women in uniform who played a consequential role in our country's wartime effort. With Terry working for their cause, I am confident these selfless women will receive the national attention and gratitude they deserve. So I encourage my Senate colleagues and all Americans to plan a visit to the World War I Memorial. It is a striking commemoration of our brave men and women in uniform, those who supported them, and the Americans who never came home. Terry Hamby has earned our praise for his unyielding drive to build this tribute. Without him, the United States would still be waiting for a proper memorial to these heroes. Kentucky and our country are proud of the mark he has left on our Nation's Capital.

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, now on one final matter, yesterday I discussed how the Biden administration's wishful thinking has set them up for foreign policy failure in Central Asia and the Middle East. The likely catastrophe in Afghanistan may well consume the administration and distract from the challenges proposed by competition with Russia and China. The President's meager defense budget proposal suggests his administration isn't taking strategic competition very seriously to begin with. Russia and China have spent years--years--investing heavily in military modernization with a specific eye toward threatening U.S. forces. We spent the previous administration repairing the readiness of our forces and beginning to modernize after years on the back foot. A bipartisan Commission concluded we would need sustained increases in defense funding to successfully counter the growing Russian and Chinese capabilities. Yet adjusting for inflation, President Biden's proposal would amount to a reduction in spending. This administration has talked tough with both these rivals, and I have given credit where credit has been due, but when the time came to speak in the language that Putin and Xi understand best--money and power--this White House flinched. Just last week, Russia reminded us of the threat it poses to Europe with a massive mobilization of forces on Ukraine's border. NATO allies are already struggling to meet their commitments on collective security. So you have to ask, Would declining American spending make Putin more likely or less likely to think twice next time? And what about China? Will China be more likely or less likely to respect its neighbors' territorial waters if the United States stops contending for an edge in naval and long-range capabilities and lets ourselves fall behind? The head of the U.S. Strategic Command reported last week that both Russia and China are modernizing their nuclear arsenals faster than the United States. He warned that if we fail to keep pace, we will be ``at risk of losing credibility in the eyes of our adversaries.'' Our nuclear triad has preserved the peace for decades, but crucial components are now decades older than the men and women we have operating them. If we want to maintain effective deterrence, we have to modernize. Whether this administration likes it or not, we are locked in a race with adversaries who plan literally decades ahead. A lack of resolve will compound on itself and invite disaster. Surely that cannot be the legacy President Biden hopes to leave. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, as I noted here on the floor last week, the unaccompanied children packed into overflowing facilities are not the only tragic consequence of our failure to secure the border. In addition to the U.S. mail, our southern border is a major source for the stream of lethal illegal drugs that continue to pour into our country. According to the CDC, more Americans died of overdoses last year than ever before. This health crisis predated COVID-19 and will outlast it, and Customs and Border Protection data tell us a major cause has been a spike in the flow of fentanyl and its analogs produced by chemical companies in places like China. These drugs, which can be hundreds of thousands of times stronger than morphine, are rightly classified on the schedule of controlled substances. There are severe penalties for those caught trafficking them. It is the least we can do to protect American lives, families, and communities. Clearly, on its own, this step hasn't been sufficient, but in a few weeks, even this obvious step is set to expire. Fentanyl analogs would cease being controlled substances in Federal law, making enforcement and deterrence even more difficult. So Congress is faced with what should be a crystal-clear choice. The right thing to do, of course, is to permanently schedule these substances. Only in Washington could this become some kind of intense debate, but alas, some soft-on-crime corners of the political left have convinced some Democrats that this impending expiration is actually, actually a political opportunity. They want the Democrats to only reschedule these analogs for a short period of time, punting this deadline just a few months into the future, which makes you ask, Why? Well, so that Democrats could come back to the table with an unrelated soft-on-crime bill--say, reducing prison sentences for drug dealers--and make that bad idea the price of admission for keeping these deadly poisons illegal. So look, we need to be clear-eyed here. No amount of political spin or inside-the-beltway horse trading can muddy the debate. It is very clear: Congress should schedule these fentanyl analogs permanently-- permanently. It is not complicated. Americans are dying. Communities are drowning. Chinese drug traffickers are getting rich off of our misery. Permanently scheduling these analogs is the very least, the very least Congress can do

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, now on another matter, this week the Senate is set to vote on President Biden's nominee to be Deputy Administrator of the EPA. This nominee actually needs no introduction for my fellow Kentuckians and our neighbors in coal country. But for those less familiar, Janet McCabe was the chief author of the Clean Power Plan that President Obama unveiled back in 2015. Well, 6 years and thousands of coal industry jobs later, Ms. McCabe is set to join an administration whose job-killing policies would make the Obama EPA blush. Of course, President Biden's War on Coal predates his administration. Back in 2008, as a candidate for the Vice Presidency, he insisted there would be ``no coal plants here in America. Build them, if they're going to build them, over there,'' obviously, meaning some other country. Sadly, this was one area where the Obama administration, unfortunately, kept its promises. It was a terrible time to be a working American whose livelihood the Democrats happened to dislike. But our new President's leftward sprint is set to make these bad old days merely the warmup act. Remember, rejoining the Paris climate agreement was a day one priority for this administration--this unenforceable deal whose own signatories largely ignored their commitments for the past 5 years, the deal that proved unable to keep China from significantly increasing its greenhouse gas emissions and proved unnecessary for the United States to decrease our own. We decreased our own. But despite it all, the administration is rushing back in to signal virtue on the international stage. Here at home, they are rolling out policy after policy that would cost American families quite dearly. The President signed away thousands of jobs by canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline. The authors of the Green New Deal boast about the radical social engineering they have seeded into the administration's legislative proposals. The infrastructure plan they have rolled out would pick winners and losers in automotive manufacturing and aim to purge the electrical grid of the most reliable and affordable forms of domestic power. Of course, despite it all, carbon emissions don't respect national boundaries, so all the unilateral sacrifices this administration is eager to impose on blue-collar families won't make a dent in global emissions if our adversaries just keep on roaring right past us. And now the Biden climate team is hoping to add a proven veteran from the War on Coal. The President campaigned suggesting he wouldn't owe the far left anything, but he is choosing to govern like he owes them everything. I will oppose the McCabe nomination and would urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. McCONNELL

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

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, over the weekend, the University of Kentucky's women's volleyball team made history. The Wildcats hoisted the program's first NCAA volleyball national championship trophy after defeating Texas on Saturday night. The falling confetti in Omaha closed out an incredible 24-win season. The Wildcats' unmatched athleticism and resilience fueled their paths to the title. Yesterday afternoon at UK's Memorial Coliseum, enthusiastic fans welcomed home their champions, including Madison Lilley, who was named the tournament's ``Most Outstanding Player.'' So I would like to extend the Senate's congratulations to the players, Head Coach Craig Skinner, and the entire program. Kentucky and all of Big Blue Nation couldn't be prouder.

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order be executed with respect to the reporting of the three amendments under the consent agreement.

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

Mr. McCONNELL

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

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, yesterday, I mentioned that the DNA of the far-left Green New Deal is all over President Biden's spending bills. That wasn't just my opinion; it was the verdict of our colleague the junior Senator from Massachusetts. Today, the President is scheduled to meet virtually with a group of the world's leaders on climate policy. His agenda, reportedly, is to encourage them to expand their countries' Paris climate agreement commitments to meet even more ambitious emissions goals. The problem, of course, as our colleagues, no doubt, remember, is that the hollow commitments these countries made back in 2015 carry no serious means for enforcement. Under the last administration, even from outside this agreement, the U.S. economy proved more than capable of meaningfully reducing CO2 emissions. But many of the signatories within the supposed deal have largely ignored their stated commitments and continue to emit with reckless abandon. As the Biden administration climate envoy, John Kerry, once lamented, ``[M]ost countries are . . . not getting the job done in living up to Paris.'' China, for example, has just kept emitting more and done it shamelessly. Their share of greenhouse gas emissions is now nearly double--double--that of the United States. On a recent trip to Shanghai, Kerry tried to echo President Biden's encouragement on emissions reduction, but the kid-gloves approach didn't seem too successful. China's Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs said: ``I'm afraid this is not very realistic.'' A direct quote from the Chinese Government. Democrats' zeal for imposing costly environmental agendas on our own country is not something our biggest foreign competitors seem to share. If that is true, our colleagues could inflict as many painful policies on American workers and American industries as they want and still not achieve a significant change in worldwide emissions or global temperatures. The cost of these misplaced priorities is already hitting Americans hard. Remember, revoking permitting for the Keystone XL Pipeline and killing thousands of jobs was a day-one priority for this new administration. Now their so-called infrastructure plan would aim at completely decarbonizing our electric grid, which means hurting our coal and natural gas industries and putting good-paying American jobs into the shredder. Borrowing money in order to kill jobs, now, there is a concept. Meanwhile, a mountain of redtape would keep public works projects smothered, literally smothered in endless environmental reviews, and their plan would thrust the west coast obsession with electric vehicles onto the entire Nation, onto rural school districts, onto industries, whether they like it or not. Next week, President Biden is set to address a joint session of Congress for the first time. I expect we will hear more claims like the ones that have been debunked by fact checkers that all this Green New Deal DNA would actually create a lot of American jobs. Fact checkers are debunking that claim. But even the most favorable analyses, even the administration's favorite projections, suggest that the President's plan would be terrible, just terrible at creating jobs. The rosiest numbers you could come up with suggest it might cost American taxpayers more than $800,000 for every job it might create--more than $800,000 per job. And Ivy League economists have calculated that the plan's long-term effects on GDP, capital stocks, and hourly wages would all be negative. Let me say that again. These multiple trillions of dollars would buy us less GDP, less investment, and lower wages. It almost takes talent to craft something that completely disastrous. So this is quite a one-two punch: toothless requests of our foreign adversaries and maximum pain for American citizens.

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, now, on another matter, earlier this week, the Democratic leadership of the Judiciary Committee convened a hearing with the embarrassing title of ``Jim Crow 2021.'' It was the latest effort to use shocking rhetoric to distract from the specific details of actual voting laws in States like Georgia. Amazingly, one of our Democratic colleagues testified before the committee that people actually shouldn't bother combing through the specifics of the law--don't bother reading the actual law. He suggested that ``narrow analysis only obscures the larger, unmistakable picture.'' Put another way, the facts deflate the narrative. Misrepresentations of Georgia's election law have been debunked by fact checkers. The real, unmistakable picture is that the bill would expand early voting and make no changes to current election day hours-- none. Ironically, Democrats' own star witness at this week's hearing once sponsored and supported an earlier effort that would have cut early voting days in Georgia in half. The facts puncture the left's big lie. Much of this overheated rhetoric seems like simple projection because there is, indeed, a piece of legislation that would create a stunning one-party takeover of voting laws and elections in our country, and that would be Washington Democrats' darling, H.R. 1. This is the bill that was first introduced back in 2019, with many Democrats still in denial that a Republican had won the White House in 2016. It was marketed at that time as a wholesale transformation designed to salvage a broken democracy. But now that Democrats got an election outcome they liked better in 2020, what is essentially a xerox copy of the same overhaul is now being marketed, oh, as a modest step, just a modest step to maintain the status quo. The first sales pitch was actually more honest. This 800-plus-page takeover would give Washington Democrats unprecedented control over 50 States' election laws, over a newly--listen to this--a newly partisan Federal Election Commission, over policing America's political speech. That is what it would do. Now, Democrats know that the same Senate rules they happily used for the last 6 years will not make it easy to launch this awful proposal, so there is another important piece in their plan. They are aiming the same wild rhetoric at the Senate's own rules--at our rules here in the Senate. The legislative filibuster which senior Democrats have loudly and proudly defended in the past, which Democrats used repeatedly in recent years, all of a sudden has become an offensive and outdated relic overnight. Isn't it amazing how this new awakening only happened when Democrats felt they had a chance to retake the majority. Now, the American people can see right through this. Nobody is fooled. Nobody is fooled by their desperation to rewrite 50 States' election laws or the campaign to pack the Supreme Court or the attempt to pack the Senate with new blue States, rewriting the rules of American politics to exclusively benefit one side: their side. That was the Democrats' false charge in Georgia, but it is exactly what they are trying to do in this Capitol on a national scale.

Mr. McCONNELL

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

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, early on, a major theme of the Biden administration has been false advertising. We have the so-called COVID relief bill that broke a long bipartisan streak on pandemic response and only spent 1 percent of the money on vaccinations. We have the reintroduction of a sprawling election takeover bill that Democrats wrote years ago under the guise that it is a commonsense voting rights bill. We have a President who ran on protecting norms flirting with proposals to hot-wire the Senate rules and pack the Supreme Court. And then we have the latest example, where even one Ivy League expert says Democrats' spin ``does a bit of violence to the English language.'' They have assembled a patchwork of leftwing social engineering programs and want to label it ``infrastructure.'' Now, as I pointed out before, the first notable thing about the Bide administration's plan is what it doesn't focus on. Less than 6 percent of the alleged infrastructure bill would invest in roads and bridges. The total amount of funding it would direct to roads, bridges, ports, waterways, and airports combined--all together--adds up to less than what it would spend just on electric cars. The far left sees a strong family resemblance between these proposals and their socialist Green New Deal. Yesterday, the House and Senate authors of that manifesto reintroduced it, while noting and boasting that the DNA of the Green New Deal is all over President Biden's legislative proposals. No wonder that White House's document rolling out the President's bill mentioned the words ``climate'' and ``union'' more often than ``roads'' and ``bridges.'' It would pick winners and losers in automotive manufacturing. It would force-feed the electrical grid some of the least reliable forms of energy. It would hector school cafeterias to stop using paper plates and force new standards and mandates on family homes. And the relative pittance this proposal does allocate to actual infrastructure would have to creep through a tangled environmental review process. Without serious permitting reform, it won't build back better; it will build back never. But at least some of these bad ideas have a tangential relationship to the actual concept of infrastructure, not so for some other statements we have heard from actual Democrats in recent days: Climate action is infrastructure. Police accountability is infrastructure. Caregiving is infrastructure. Supreme Court expansion is infrastructure. Now, unsurprisingly, this liberal omnibus is not exactly an efficient engine for driving our economy. The White House's inflated claims of expected job creation have been fact-checked and received Pinocchios from the Washington Post. Even under the rosiest scholarly assumptions--the rosiest assumptions--the White House's own favored estimates, taxpayers would pay more than $800,000 for each job the plan might create. Now, I know a lot of small businesses that could create more than one job if we handed them $800,000. And then there are the tax hikes. This proposal is a Trojan horse to roll back the historic 2017 tax reform plan that helped spur big-time wage growth and the best job market in a generation before COVID-19. So the administration's proposal bears little resemblance to the bipartisan infrastructure bill Americans need and deserve. It just reads like customer service for the radical fringe.

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, now on another matter, over the past few months, Senate Republicans have made clear we believe a President is entitled to choose qualified, mainstream nominees to staff the executive branch and receive prompt and fair treatment from the Senate. I would say the 50 Senate Republicans have treated President Biden's nominees considerably more fairly than Senate Democrats treated the last President's, but the nominee we are considering this week is way outside the mainstream. I will strongly oppose confirming Vanita Gupta to serve as Associate Attorney General, and I would urge colleagues to do the same. Ms. Gupta has spent her career, in large part, as an activist for leftwing causes. Her work for high-profile liberal interest groups and the Obama Justice Department have left a record of astoundingly radical positions. Those far-left positions were loud and proud until this prospect of promotion seemed to change the nominee's tune. Previously, this nominee stated that ``states should decriminalize simple possession of all drugs.'' She said ``states should decriminalize simple possession of all drugs.'' Ah, but now Ms. Gupta claims her position has ``evolved.'' At her confirmation hearing, she refused to say she would accept any--any--limitation on abortions, up to and including partial-birth. That puts her at odds with nearly 70 percent of Americans across the political spectrum. Recently, Ms. Gupta has insisted she can be trusted to oppose efforts to defund law enforcement, but she told the Judiciary Committee just last year that State and local leaders should ``heed calls'' from groups demanding that they decrease--decrease--police budgets. This nomination has revealed a lengthy trail of radical claims and hasty backtracks, but there are also questions of temperament. The nominee has repeatedly amplified leftwing fearmongering toward judicial nominees and sitting Federal judges. She has levied ad hominem attacks on Members of this body. And during the confirmation process, she employed the loosest possible interpretation of her oath to deliver honest testimony, even drawing the ire of the liberal Washington Post for transparent flip-flops and misleading Senators about her own public statements. This nominee contrasts sharply--sharply--with the resume and reputation of Attorney General Garland, whom I voted to confirm. The White House needs to make a better choice for this key post. The Senate should create that opportunity by voting no today.

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, my friend Joe Grossman has approached his work for the last 35 years with a head for numbers and a heart for people. As an accountant turned CEO of the largest healthcare organization in Southeastern Kentucky, Joe's experienced leadership has helped improve the quality of life for hundreds of thousands. This summer, Joe will close his chapter leading Appalachian Regional Healthcare, ARH, and a career of excellence and accomplishment. As he begins a well-deserved retirement, I would like to share my congratulations and gratitude for his many contributions to the Bluegrass. For nearly two decades, Joe has been entrusted with key financial and operational positions at ARH. At each step, he has helped the system expand and thrive. When the position opened, Joe was the obvious choice to take over as president and CEO. He pushed ARH to continue growing in service to its patients, employees, and communities. Today, the system operates 13 hospitals in Kentucky and West Virginia as well as 80-plus clinic locations. With a team of more than 6,000 dedicated professionals, ARH serves nearly 400,000 individuals across the region. The system's extensive reach makes a transformative impact on rural Kentucky communities every day and helps make the area a destination for top-tier medical talent. Joe's leadership even contributed to a national magazine naming ARH one of the Top 10 Employers in Kentucky. Overseeing an organization of ARH's size and importance would be a remarkable feat in any year, but Joe exceeded expectations once again during the pandemic. Last month, I visited the ARH facility in Hazard to speak with Joe and his team about the rollout of the multiple safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines. At that time, three of the five counties in Kentucky with the top vaccination rates were in ARH's service area. I was proud to congratulate Joe and his team of healthcare heroes who were getting shots in arms to beat this virus. Joe's contributions to Kentucky extend beyond the hospital doors. He has gone to great lengths to personally partner with the communities he serves. His work with organizations like One East KY, the Hazard-Perry County Economic Development Alliance, and One Harlan County has helped encourage new growth and opportunity. Joe developed a vision for a healthy and successful Kentucky, and he worked tirelessly over the years to bring it closer to reality. So, we are all going to miss working with Joe. But now he gets to spend more time on his most important roles, husband to Leigh, father, and grandfather. Along with Joe's colleagues and friends, I extend my best wishes for a fulfilling retirement. On behalf of the Senate, I would like to congratulate Joe on all of his success and thank him for his leadership in Kentucky.

Mr. McCONNELL

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

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the situation on our southern border is bad and getting worse. Last month saw overall migrant totals hit a nearly two-decade high. More unaccompanied minors arrived than during any prior month on record. These kids, crowded in underequipped facilities, tended by increasingly overwhelmed personnel, have become the heart-wrenching face of this crisis. Yet the most resolve, the most strength that this administration has shown on the border has been their commitment to their talking points, their refusal to call the crisis a crisis. This past weekend, the President of the United States himself slipped up and used that forbidden word. But--get this--he was then overruled by his own staff. Yesterday, his Press Secretary said President Biden actually didn't intend to describe the situation as a crisis. Fascinating. But then, yesterday, at last, we saw this administration take some new action on immigration. Finally, some proactive steps. Memos were issued to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and CBP with new instruction. Were they new policies to stem the crisis? No. Stepped-up enforcement? No. A way to fix the administration's signals that have induced these new waves of vulnerable people to try their luck? No, not this either. Here was the big news: The government will be adopting new, more politically correct rhetoric. Under this administration, we will no longer have ``illegal aliens,'' not because they will secure the border; just because they now will be called ``noncitizens'' or ``undocumented migrants'' and so on. These priorities are almost a parody of leftwing governance: not securing the border, not a better plan for the children, just woke proofreading. This is not going to get the job done. Opioid Epidemic Mr. President, on a related matter, of course, the flow of actual people is not our only border security problem. Americans are dying and communities are being hollowed out because foreign drug dealers and profiteers have taken our opioid crisis as a business opportunity. Fentanyl and fentanyl analogues that pour into our country impose a staggering, tragic loss. In 2020, the CDC recorded more overdose deaths than any year on record. They attributed the spike primarily to synthetic opioids like fentanyl. My home State of Kentucky logged a 50-percent year-on-year increase in overdose deaths. Fentanyl and its constantly changing analogues are as toxic and lethal an illegal drug as there is. We are talking about substances that can be orders of magnitude more potent than morphine. Customs and Border Protection say fentanyl seizures jumped more than 70 percent in fiscal year 2020. They are on pace for another record year in 2021. Much of this poison is manufactured in and exported from China. The scope of this crisis is truly staggering. But incredibly, some on the political left want to respond to this national crisis by letting the criminal status of fentanyl analogues lapse this spring. People want to let these drugs become legal. They actually want to let these drugs become legal. I am not making this up. Fentanyl analogues are poised to fall off the schedule of controlled substances in just a few weeks if Congress does not act, and some corners of the soft-on-crime left want us to do nothing. They are unhappy with the sentences that be can be imposed on drug dealers as a result. These people are seriously arguing--seriously arguing that we should let these substances flow even more freely through American streets and American neighborhoods, costing who knows how many additional American lives to help some drug dealer avoid prison. I understand that even among Democrats who say they don't want to decriminalize these poisons, there is some effort to kick the can a few months with a temporary extension so that a soft-on-crime bill could be crafted and forcibly paired with this step. Look, these are terrible ideas, just terrible ideas. The right thing to do is obvious. This isn't a trick question. We need to permanently schedule fentanyl analogues, take this permanent step to protect Americans, and be done with it. We should not just kick the can down the road for 2 months or 5 months or 12 months. We should not let this commonsense step be held hostage for liberal horse trading. We simply need to do the right thing. Congress cannot hold American lives and communities hostage to try to grease the skids for drug dealers. Continuing to ban these analogues is not even a recipe for mass incarceration. The main effect is to cut down on the incoming supply of these poisons by changing the incentives for producers in China and other foreign countries. The Department of Justice reports that, in the last 3 years, only 8 people--8 people would have qualified for the mandatory minimum sentences that some people are complaining about. More than anything else, scheduling these terrible drugs is a harm reduction and prevention tool. It works upstream. It disincentivizes their manufacture and their import into our country. Too many of our neighbors have already been taken from us. Too many communities have already been hollowed out. There is simply no excuse for inaction. It should not just be a Republican priority to slam the door on the opioid epidemic in every possible way. This should actually be a bipartisan no-brainer. Let's permanently schedule these analogues and keep this poison out of our land and out of our citizens' bloodstreams. Afghanistan Mr. President, now, on one final matter, this afternoon, President Biden is sending his top national security officials to brief Members on his misguided plan to abandon the battlefield in Afghanistan. As I said when this decision was announced, the enemies that threaten America, our allies, and the people of Afghanistan are not vanquished. Taliban retribution and repression and the terror of al-Qaida, ISIS, and the Haqqani Network will likely only grow after we have left. I know many colleagues on both sides of the aisle share my concerns. I expect that the administration's representatives will face tough questions about the rationale behind their plan for a rushed withdrawal. So it is appropriate to ask: Does the Taliban share the administration's commitment to a negotiated solution, to not harming Afghan women or girls or seeking vengeance on those who have worked with the United States to root out terror? Somehow I doubt it. Does the administration have a plan for keeping terrorists off- balance in the absence of troops and leverage in the region? Will it seek to maintain the 2001 AUMF, which authorizes the ongoing counterterrorism operations that have actually kept our homeland safe for 20 years? How does the administration plan to maintain our insight into terrorist activities or our ability to strike them without a presence on the ground, to sustain our partners who are doing the fighting? I worked hard to find common ground with this administration on foreign policy, but if the White House is serious about making America, our allies, and our interests more secure, it will need to start tacking toward a more enduring approach centered on strength, grounded in reality and not wishful thinking. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. McCONNELL

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

Mr. McCONNELL

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, time and again, prominent Democrats show they are no longer content to work within the ground rules and norms of our institutions. They prefer to threaten the institutions themselves. We have seen it in Presidential elections when Democrats say our democracy is sacrosanct when they win but illegitimate and broken if Republicans win. We have seen it with the Senate's rules. Democrats just spent 4 years not only praising but using the legislative filibuster. But now that they hold the majority, they say it has actually been intrinsically evil all along and must be scrapped. We are seeing it right now with voting regulations, where the mere fact that sometimes Republicans win elections has Democrats wanting to rewrite all 50 States' election laws right here in Washington and turn the Federal Election Commission into a partisan body. And then there is the judiciary. In recent years, we have seen the Democratic leader stand on the steps of the Court and threaten that specific Justices ``won't know what hit them'' if they didn't rule the way he wanted. We have seen a number of Democratic Senators send a threatening brief suggesting the Court might need to be ``restructured'' if its rulings upset liberals. Last week, President Biden, who was marketed to the country as a moderate and institutionalist, jumped in with both feet. He set up a pseudo-academic commission to study the merits of packing the Supreme Court. It is just an attempt to clothe this transparent power play in fake legitimacy. But alas, the far left cannot even wait for the fake theatrics of the fake study to play out. Today, Democrats in the Senate and the House have announced they will once again threaten judicial independence from the steps of the Court. They are introducing a bill to add four new seats to the Supreme Court so that Democrats can pack the Court, destroy its legitimacy, and guarantee the rulings that liberals want. Across the ideological spectrum, top jurists have been outspoken on what a terrible idea Court packing would be. The late liberal icon, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, explicitly warned against Court packing saying: ``If anything would make the Court appear partisan, it would be that.'' ``Nine seems to be a good number''--Justice Ginsburg. Justice Stephen Breyer reaffirmed his own opposition just last week. The public, by the way, agrees. They see through this discredited concept. One survey late last year showed that a clear majority of Americans opposed packing the Supreme Court. But the farthest left activists aren't interested in the common good. They want power. And the same Democrats and the same corporate media that spent the last 4 years hyperventilating and declaring a new constitutional crisis was under way every 30 seconds seem to be perfectly content to play along. Now, if Republicans had introduced a bill to add four Supreme Court seats for the last President to fill, there would have been weeks of wall-to-wall outrage on every newspaper and cable TV channel nonstop. Now it seems the main strategies are either to shrug off, look the other way, or to actively play along and somehow lend credence. It is not about whether this insane bill becomes law. Part of the point here is the threats themselves. The left wants a sword dangling over the Justices when they weigh the facts in every case. As the Democratic leader threatened just 2 years ago, Democrats want the Justices to know that they will ``pay the price'' for rulings that Democrats don't like. The left wants these swords dangling over the Senate and State legislators and independent judges. The threats are the point. The hostage-taking is the point. And responsible people across the political spectrum have an absolute duty to denounce this. (The remarks of Mr. McConnell pertaining to the introduction of S. 1133 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.''