Christopher Murphy

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Reserving the right to object, first, let me thank the Senator from Florida for doing such great work, along with Senator Merkley and others, on this incredibly important piece of legislation. We are going to be able in a few moments to speak together, Republicans and Democrats, on our commitment to ending genocide in China. I want to thank the Senator for working with me to make sure that, as part of his unanimous consent request, we are going to be able to make sure we have personnel in place to properly implement this policy. We have dozens of State Department and Department of Defense nominees pending on this floor--more so than we have ever had at the end of a first-term, first-year Presidency--and we will, hopefully before we leave--we have to, before we leave, make substantial progress on this list in order to adequately protect our country. At the very least, as we put forward this important new policy, it does make sense to accompany it and its passage with three key personnel who will be in charge of implementing it. I believe we are going to be able to modify this request in the following manner. I would formally ask Senator Rubio to modify this request that he has made to include the following request. Unanimous Consent Agreement

Mr. MURPHY. I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, if applicable, at 4:30 p.m. today, the Senate proceed to the following nominations: Executive Calendar No. 525, R. Nicholas Burns, of Massachusetts, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the People's Republic of China; Calendar No. 626, Ramin Toloui, of Iowa, to be an Assistant Secretary of State (Economic and Business Affairs); and Calendar No. 619, Rashad Hussain, of Virginia, to be Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom; that there be 10 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form on the nominations en bloc; that upon the use or yielding back of that time, the Senate vote without intervening action or debate on the nominations in the order listed; that if the nominations are confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, reserving the right to object, first, let me thank the Senator from Florida and the Senator from Oregon for the really important work that they have done on the underlying legislation. It is of critical importance that this Senate stand together, Republicans and Democrats, against the ongoing genocide that is occurring in China today. And I will say that, despite all the news about division in this Chamber, the coming together around China policies, the coming together between parties over the course of 2021 with respect to the threat that China presents to the United States and the global world order and the threat they present to human rights, both domestically and externally, I think, is important. I support the underlying legislation, but I also want to make sure that we have the personnel in place that can effectuate the policy. Good policy occurs when the Congress steps up and hands the executive branch a tool that they can use, but we need craftsmen who can effectuate that tool set. Pending on the calendar today, I would argue, are over a dozen nominees who would be in charge of implementing policy in and around China: the Assistant Secretary for International Organizations; the Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs; the Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees, and Migration; Ambassadors to Bangladesh, Brunei, Japan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam--all pending on the calendar today. But perhaps the three most important nominees who will implement the policy that Senator Rubio and Senator Wyden are bringing forward today are these: first, the nominee to be the Ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns; the nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs, who would oversee this new policy, Ramin Toloui; and, lastly, the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, obviously critical to the plight of the Uighurs, Rashad Hussain. In particular, Ambassador Burns is uniquely qualified for this post, having been Ambassador to NATO and Ambassador to Greece. At his hearing, he made clear how he would view the Chinese behavior in Xinjiang Province. He said the PRC's genocide, its abuse in Tibet, its smothering of Hong Kong's autonomy and freedoms, and its bullying of Taiwan are unjust and must stop. Having an ambassador in China in place, having an Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs, and having an ambassador working every single day on international religious freedom, hand in hand with this new legislation, gives the tools and the legislative authority necessary to get the United States moving toward the right side of human rights in China. So with that, I would ask the Senator from Florida to modify his request to include the following request. I would ask unanimous consent that, notwithstanding rule XXII, if applicable, at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Republican leader, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations: Executive Calendar No. 525, Nicholas Burns, of Massachusetts, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the People's Republic of China; Calendar No. 626, Ramin Toloui, of Iowa, to be an Assistant Secretary of State (Economic and Business Affairs); Calendar No. 619 Rashad Hussain, of Virginia, to be Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom; that there be 10 minutes for debate, equally divided in the usual form on the nominations en bloc; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate on the nominations in the order listed; that if a nomination is confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order to the nominations; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. MURPHY. Madam President.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, 9 years ago this morning, I was in Bridgeport, CT. I had just done an event with the city of Bridgeport, and I was meeting my wife and, at the time, my two very young children, ages 4 and 1, in 2012 at the Bridgeport train station. We were going to take the train down to New York City, and Cathy and I were going to show our two kids the splendor of New York City. We were going to go see the Christmas tree. We were going to go to the ice rink. And as we were waiting for the train to arrive, I got news that there had been a shooting at a school in Newtown, CT. Newtown is a beautiful community, a quintessential small town, close-knit. The Labor Day parade every year attracts every civic and community group to it, the pride of the community. And I wondered whether I could still continue on to this family trip or whether I needed to wait to find out more. I figured it was a disgruntled employee. A few moments passed as I waited for the train, and the news began to come in that this was much more grim, that there were children shot, perhaps many. And I decided that I should get in a car and head to Sandy Hook. There are a lot of days when I wish I didn't see the things that I saw or hear the things that I heard in Newtown that day. Senator Blumenthal, who is on the floor with me right now, he and I were there, and we were just witnesses. We were just interlopers. Neither of us lost a loved one that day, but it is a day that I will never, ever forget, etched into my brain. And we come here likely every December 14 to memorialize another year having passed since Sandy Hook. And, of course, at some point, you come to a loss for words. You can't figure out what new to say to your colleagues to try to explain what has happened to these families, to this community, why there is such an aching for action, a disbelief that this country refuses to stand up and do something about the safety of our kids--because, well, Newtown caught the Nation's attention for good reason, twenty 6 and 7-year-olds vanishing from the Earth in an instant. Every single day, there are mothers and fathers who are losing children to gun violence--gun violence that is completely preventable. A few weeks after Newtown, I was in a community center in the north end of Hartford with parents who were furious that the country was just waking up to this epidemic of gun violence after White children were shot in Newtown because it had been happening to their Black children for decades. And so, today, I want to do something very simple for my colleagues and for the country, I want to just explain to you what the grief of these families feels like, what it looks like when you lose a child, whether that child is 6 or 7 or 16 or 17. When you outlive your child, when your child doesn't even make it to adulthood, there is an all- consuming grief that is inescapable. One of the emotions that is connected to this grief that I have learned about is the tendency to deny the reality that has become your surrounding. That is logical, to momentarily, either purposely or subconsciously, try to figure out a way out of this world that you are living in without your child or without your son or daughter whom you had planned to spend the rest of your life with. And so I want to talk a little bit about that emotion today. I live now in the South End of Hartford. I live just two blocks from the intersection of South Prospect and Shelby Street. I think I live there intentionally, because I know this story so well, and when my family and I were looking for a house in Hartford and there was one available just two blocks from this intersection, I think there was probably something intentional about the choice we made. On and at that intersection, just two months before the Sandy Hook shooting, Shane Oliver, a young African American, 20 years old, was meeting a couple of acquaintances. He was transferring a car that he had fixed up to this other group of individuals whom he knew in passing. He was there with his girlfriend, and during the exchange of this vehicle, an argument broke out. It started because of something untoward that his sellers said about his girlfriend. It was essentially an argument over a girl that turned into a fistfight that then prompted Luis Rodriguez to go back to his car. Inside that car was an illegal gun. He walked out of the car with a gun. Shane Oliver tried to run, and he was shot in the back. He died that night at a Hartford hospital. His mother, for a good deal afterward, would wake up in the middle of the night, awaken from a deep sleep, put her clothes on, get into her car, and start driving. She would do this night after night. She would drive from her home to the corner of South Prospect and Shelby Street, where her son died. And when she got there, she would shift her transmission into park and she would turn on the high beams and just wait for hours--the car in park, the high beams on-- ostensibly, waiting for her son to come back. It is impossible. Shane Oliver had died months ago. He wasn't coming back. But his mother, consumed by this grief, consumed by this need to deny what had happened, sat there in her car. Around the same time, one parent whom both Dick and I have gotten to know very well in Sandy Hook came up with her own trick. She would pretend that her son who had died that day at Sandy Hook wasn't dead. In fact, he was just visiting a friend for the afternoon. She was trying to figure out ways to just get some housework done, to just tidy up the place, to make some phone calls that she needed to in order to get her family's business done, and the only way that she could do that was to imagine that her son was at a play date and that he would be coming home soon. And, of course, that dream would vanish, and she would once again come to grips with the reality that her son was never, ever coming home. But that need to deny that reality, even for a few hours, was what was necessary for her in order to get through the day. I just tell those two stories because I want people to understand how desperate your life becomes when you lose a child. We lost 26 individuals--20 kids and 6 educators--9 years ago today in Sandy Hook, and the families of all 26 of these individuals--the parents, the brothers, the sisters, the children--their lives will never, ever be the same. Newtown will never, ever be the same. Many of these kids lived within a block or two of each other. Everyone in Newtown knew one of these families, two of these families. Half of these kids all went to the same church. The funerals that we went to over and over again were at the same place, with the same priest presiding over funeral after funeral, wake after wake. And so sometimes those of us who work in and around this issue of gun violence get angry at our colleagues, because how can you listen to these stories of grief--and they happen in every State--and choose not to act? Lastly, I want to do something that I have done several times on the floor, because I am running out of ways to express what happened in Sandy Hook and why our inaction is inexcusable. I am running out of turns of phrase to do it myself. So maybe the words of a parent will help you understand why we need to act. So I am going to read a few excerpts from testimony that our friend Neil Heslin gave before the U.S. Senate just 2 months after Sandy Hook occurred. Neil is a complicated guy, a good friend who had hard times in his life. But his best friend was his son Jesse Lewis. And I will end by reading what he wrote to the U.S. Senate 9 years ago. On December 14, Jesse got up and got ready for school. He was always excited to go to school. I remember on that day we stopped at Misty Vale Deli. It's funny the things you remember. I remember Jesse got the sausage, egg and cheese he always gets, with hot chocolate. And I remember the hug he gave me when I dropped him off. He just held me, and he rubbed my back. I can still feel that hug. And Jesse said ``It's going to be alright.'' I mentioned that his father Neil had a rough life. He had a hard time, like a lot of folks. And Jesse said ``It's going to be alright. Everything's going to be okay, Dad.'' Looking back it makes me wonder. What did he know? Did he have some idea about what was about to happen? But at the time I didn't think much of it. I just thought he was being sweet. He was always being sweet like that. He was the kind of kid who used to leave me voice messages where he'd sing me happy birthday even when it wasn't my birthday. I'd ask him about it, and he'd say ``I just wanted to make you feel happy.'' He had so much wisdom. He would know things, and I would have no idea how he knew. But whatever he said, it was always right. He would remember things we'd done and places we'd been that I had completely forgotten about. I used to think of him as a tiny adult. Other people felt it, too. Teachers would tell me about his laugh, how he made things at school more fun just by being there. Jesse had this idea that you never leave people hurt. If you can help somebody, you do it. That's what Jesse thought. If you can make somebody feel better, you do it. They tell me that's how he died. I guess we still don't know exactly what happened at that school. Maybe we'll never know. But what people tell me is Jesse did something different. When he heard the shooting, he didn't run and hide. He started yelling. People disagree [about what he said]. . . . [But] ten kids from my son's class made it to safety. I hope to God something Jesse did [that day] helped them survive. . . . What I know is that Jesse wasn't shot in the back. He took two bullets. The first one grazed the side of his head, but that [probably] didn't stop him yelling. The other hit him in the forehead. Both bullets were fired from the front. That means the last thing my son did was look Adam Lanza straight in the face. . . . Jesse grew up with guns, just like I did. I started shooting . . . when I was eight years old. My dad was a vice president for years at a local gun club. He started taking me shooting when I was eight. . . . He taught me to respect guns, just like I taught Jesse. Jesse . . . had an interest in guns. He had a bb gun. I watched over him like a hawk with that. I taught him gun safety. He knew it. He could recite it to you. Some guns just don't have any place in the hands of civilians. The assault weapons we're talking about today, their sole purpose is to put a lot of lead out in a battlefield quickly. That's what they do. That's what they did at Sandy Hook Elementary. I wish I wasn't here with you today. Neil writes: The best day of my life was the day my son was born. The worst day was the day he died. I don't want to relive that day by talking to you here about it. It would be easier for me just to stay home. But I know that's not what Jesse would do. Jesse died screaming at a man with a gun. He died yelling at the top of his lungs so maybe some of his classmates could get to safety. I'm not real political. Half the time I think it doesn't matter which group of you guys runs things out here, no offense. I've always thought it wasn't a real good idea for people to be walking around the streets with military weapons, but I probably wouldn't have said anything about it. So the reason I say this isn't about politics is because what I felt on that day, and what I've felt since, doesn't have anything to do with politics. In politics, people like to debate and say if we banned the weapon that Adam Lanza used would he just find something else. Let me tell you, when you're sitting at a firehouse and it is one in the morning and you are hoping against hope that your son is still hiding somewhere in that school, you want any change that makes it one bit more likely you'll see your boy again. Before he died, Jesse and I used to talk about maybe coming to Washington someday. He wanted to go up the Washington monument. When we talked about it last year Jesse asked if we could come and meet the President. I said earlier that I can be a little cynical about politicians. But Jesse believed in you. He learned about you in school and he believed in you. I want to believe in you, too. I know you can't give me Jesse back. Believe me, if I thought you could I'd be asking you for that. But I want to believe that you will think about what I told you [here] today. I want to believe that you'll think about it and then you'll do something about it, whatever you can do to make sure that no other father has to see what I've seen. Dick and I were at that firehouse all day and all night, and I will never, ever forget that when all the parents had gone home, having told what happened, the first responders had almost all left. Sitting in the middle of the firehouse all by himself was this one man. And it was Neil Heslin. I left that firehouse--I can't remember--at 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock at night. And Neal was the last person I talked to. And, as he tells you in his testimony, he didn't leave until 1:30. If there was any chance that Jesse was coming back, that he was running around in the woods, he was going to be sitting there at the firehouse. It gets harder every year, and I have no personal stake in this. I went home that night to both of my kids, who were sleeping safely in their beds. What the hell is going on in this country that we sit here and memorialize year after year since those 20 kids died and we don't do anything meaningful about it? Next December will be 10 years, and I am just going to tell you how hard it will be for so many of these families to live through a 10-year mark of Sandy Hook with no action from this body. We have a year to get our act together here to make sure that in some small way we can honor these children with action. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, it is not often that you get the Business Roundtable, which is an organization representing some of the biggest private-sector companies in the world; the largest labor unions in the country; and the American public all on the same page on a policy. But that is what is happening with respect to the President's requirement that big employers in this country either test their employees regularly for COVID or they get vaccinated in order to stop the spread of this insidious disease. This is a very popular proposal, and it is popular for a simple reason: People are exhausted with having their lives fundamentally changed, turned upside down by a pandemic that we have the power to stop. We have the power to stop it because of researchers and scientists who discovered a vaccine that is wildly more effective than the vaccines that have been invented to attack other diseases--90 percent effective, if not more, against COVID. If everybody got vaccinated in this country, we could all take off our masks. If everybody was vaccinated in this country, we wouldn't have to be passing emergency relief bills to keep the economy afloat. If everybody got vaccinated, we could open back up all of our restaurants. That is what Americans want. That is why this policy is so popular. And I understand what my friend from Oklahoma is saying, that they are not arguing over the efficacy of the vaccine, they are just arguing over the constitutional powers of the Presidency. But come on. Come on. We understand the power of our words in this place. Republicans know that when they come down to the floor and attack the vaccine mandate day after day after day, they know they are giving fuel to the fire of the anti-vaccine campaign. They know that they have become an extension of those that are trying to convince Americans that the vaccine has a microchip in it, that the vaccine kills you. It just strains credibility for my Republican colleagues to suggest that there is no connection between the anti-vaccination campaign in this country and those that are every single day on the floor of the Senate talking about how dangerous it is to require that people in this country get the vaccine. There is a connection, and the growing movement of people in this country who think that the vaccine is some conspiracy to hurt people--well, this movement to try to end the vaccine campaign by the President, it is wind underneath their wings. But let's talk about what this policy really is because it is actually not a mandate for vaccinations. It is a testing mandate. Right? That is what it is. What it says is that everybody in these big employers has to get tested once a week, and if you don't want to get tested, then your employees can get vaccinated. Let's be clear. This is a testing requirement, not a vaccination requirement, and that testing requirement is totally consistent with the history of OSHA. In fact, OSHA is in the business of mandating testing. OSHA mandates blood testing for industries with high exposures to lead. OSHA mandates hearing tests for industries with high noise level exposure. OSHA mandates testing for exposure to silica in industries that are working in and around silica. OSHA requires testing all the time. So that is what they are doing here--yes, on a bigger scale and, yes, also with an ability to avoid the testing if you get vaccinated. But that is what this requirement is really all about. And it is working. It is working--the numbers going from 50 to 96 percent in a company like Tyson Foods after the vaccine requirement. Lastly, let me say this: This general lack of seriousness from our Republican colleagues about a plague that has killed 700,000 Americans, it is just stunning to me. It is just stunning. These aren't bee stings. These aren't knee scrapes. This is a deadly pandemic that has ended the lives of 700,000 of our mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers prematurely, hundreds of thousands of Americans who should be sitting at the Christmas table, who should be at Hanukkah celebrations with their families this month. And they are gone; 700,000 Americans have disappeared. But apparently, the inconvenience of a weekly test is so odious, is so revolting, that it is worth another 700,000 people dying--because that is what we are talking about: a weekly test. The OSHA rule does not mandate the vaccine; it is a way out of the weekly test, a weekly test that is a little swab swirled around your nostril five or six times for 30 seconds. That is the requirement. That is the cost, the sky-high, Constitution-violating, unpatriotic cost the Republicans have been down here on the floor railing against for a month. Estimates suggest that that requirement can save thousands of lives. But apparently, the cost of a nose tickle is too great a cost to pay to save thousands and thousands of Americans from dying from a preventable pandemic. I urge my colleagues to oppose this effort. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, let me concede that there are some laudable pieces to this legislation. It is not new to the body. As Senator Grassley mentioned, this is something that has received a vote. But in large part, it is a massive contraction of the universal background check system rather than what Americans support, which is an expansion of the background check system, and let me give you just two examples. In this legislation there would be a change in law, such that for individuals who are subject to psychiatric confinement, the minute they leave that confinement, they get their gun rights restored. That is not the existing law. The existing law says that if you are so mentally ill that you have had to be inpatient, you don't get those gun rights restored unless you petition. Second, this bill would say that for individuals who have been judged mentally incompetent--this is a regulatory term, not my term. But for individuals who have been determined mentally incompetent by a Federal Government Agency, they would have their gun rights restored. Right now, those individuals are not allowed to possess guns, but they would under this proposal. So this amendment, while it has some, I think, important pieces to it, in large part is a pretty massive contraction of the number of background checks that would be done in this country, and for that reason I would object.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I know the Senator has his own UC request. I will just say two things very quickly. I am not surprised, but still disappointed, in the objection. I take the Senator's advice seriously. We need 60 votes in order to pass legislation like H.R. 8 before this body, but I think, as the Senator knows, with Senator Durbin's guidance, I have been involved in multiple rounds of talks with Republican Senators throughout the year about trying to find some common ground. I think anyone who has been part of those talks knows that I have been willing to bend; I have been willing to compromise. I am not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good when it comes to saving lives. And if the Senator is making an offer to join those talks or to sit down, then count me in. But so far, a year into maybe the most deadly year in my political lifetime with respect to gun violence, I haven't been able to find one Republican taker for a compromise on the issue of background checks. And then I will gladly send to the Senator the reams of data showing that background checks, in fact, do make a difference. As I cited, just in 2020, we see the difference between States that have background checks and those that don't. I look forward to continuing that conversation. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am on the floor today to ask for unanimous consent from my colleagues to proceed to H.R. 8, the House- passed, bipartisan, comprehensive background checks bill. I want to tell you why I am making this request. I understand the low likelihood of success, but I hope many of my colleagues took a minute to watch cell phone video from the school shooting in Michigan yesterday--on Tuesday, excuse me. It is absolutely terrifying to watch in real time children fleeing their classroom in fear that their lives were about to be ended. One hundred 9-1-1 calls came into the police during the shooting. Surveillance footage reportedly shows the gunman entering the bathroom with a backpack, then exiting a minute later without the backpack but with the handgun. He then started firing at students. When they started to run, he ``methodically and deliberately'' walked down the hallway and aimed his gun into classrooms at students who were unable to escape. We think about the damage done and the number of lives lost--four so far--and those who were injured, but, really, the damage is so much broader because all of those kids who fled that violence, all of those kids who now don't think of school as a safe place--they are going through trauma and will go through trauma that may take a lifetime to address. Multiply that times millions because that is what is happening to kids all across this country who don't feel school is a safe place any longer, who don't think their neighborhoods are a safe place any longer, who grow up in parts of this country in which everyday gun violence is routine. They don't believe they will live past the age of 25. The damage happening across this country is acute. It is real. It is pervasive. This is an epidemic of gun violence that exists in the United States and nowhere else. The risk, though, is that this country thinks about gun violence only when there is a mass shooting or only when there is a shooting at a school. On Tuesday, the same day that the country was captivated by these terrifying images out of Oxford High School, in Taylor, TX, four bodies were found at a home in that town after an apparent murder-suicide. Police said that Anthony Davis, 57 years old, shot and killed his wife, his wife's stepchild, and the stepchild's romantic acquaintance--four people dead in Taylor, TX. Nobody knows about that nationally. Nobody knows about the other 50 to 100 people who died of gun violence on Tuesday. This happens every single day in this country at a rate 10 times higher than any other country in the high-income world. It only happens in the United States of America. And we let it happen as a body. We let it happen as a body because it is not that we are unlucky in the United States; this is a policy choice that we make. Let's be honest--the reason that we can't get anything done in the Senate is not because there is a disagreement amongst our constituents about what to do. Our constituents, Republicans and Democrats, support measures like universal background checks. In fact, there is almost nothing in the political world that enjoys such high support as universal background checks. Eighty percent, ninety percent of Americans--the majority of Republicans, Democrats, gun owners, non-gun owners--support universal background checks. But we can't get it done because it seems as if many of my colleagues here care more about the health of the gun industry and their profits than they do about the health of our kids. Gun industry profits are being put ahead of the safety of my children, of our children. Shooting after shooting. Republicans in this body have refused to do anything meaningful that would reduce this pace of carnage, both in our schools and on the streets of America. As I said, it is not as if we don't know what the answer is. Let me give you a remarkable statistic. In 2020, we saw a pretty substantial increase in violent crime all across the country. That increase was about 5 percent, and a lot of that was gun crime. Gun crime went up by 25 percent during 2020. But let's break down that number between the States that have universal background checks and the States that don't have universal background checks. There was a 5- percent overall increase in violent crime in the United States, but in 2020, in States that did not have and don't have universal background checks--meaning a criminal can get a gun at a gun show or online without any background check--in those States, violent crime went up 8 percent higher than the national average. What about the States like Connecticut that have universal background checks, where we make sure everybody gets a background check before they buy a gun? In those States, violent crime went up in 2020 by less than 1 percent. That is pretty stunning. On a percentage basis, violent crime goes up by eight times the level in States without universal background checks as in States with universal background checks. I can just run through the litany of studies that show the difference in murder rates, in gun crime between States that have universal background checks and those that don't. One of the most recent studies from 2019, a Harvard study, shows a 15-percent difference. Now, that is surprising because no matter how strong Connecticut's background checks law is, States that don't have background checks end up allowing people to buy guns there, and they come into Connecticut. So until we have a national requirement that everybody go through a background check before, at the very least, they buy a gun at a commercial sale, there is nothing Connecticut can do to make itself completely immune to the epidemic of illegal guns. That is why we are on the floor today, myself, Senator Blumenthal, and Senator Durbin, to ask our colleagues to pass into law a bipartisan piece of legislation that has already passed the House of Representatives. This is a bill that would expand background checks to all sales in this country, with certain exceptions for transfers between immediate family members. This is a bill, as I mentioned, that is supported by the vast majority of Americans--one of the most popular policy proposals that exist in this country today. And it will save lives. I mentioned the shooting in Texas because one of the critiques of this proposal often is, well, it wouldn't have stopped the last mass shooting. I don't claim that this proposal nor any other proposal to change the Nation's gun laws will have an effect on every single shooting, but the data is the data. These are the statistics. This proposal is the most impactful when a State takes it. Universal background checks save lives, decrease gun violence, decrease violent crimes. The loss of life, when it is a shooting on the streets of New Haven, one person being shot, that is just as shattering to the lives of the people who love that victim as is a mass shooting. So I am hopeful that the Senate will make the decision today to pass this bill into law. I understand the chances are slim to none that this unanimous consent request will be adopted, but I am at my wit's end. I am at my wit's end. I am prepared to use whatever means I have as an individual Senator to come down here and press this case forward. I ask at this point, knowing the Senator from Iowa is on the floor, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021, which was received from the House; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Peters.) Without objection, it is so ordered. Gun Violence

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, our collective heart as a nation is breaking for your State. At Oxford High School today, reports suggest that a 15-year-old turned a semiautomatic weapon on his classmates. Three are dead. Eight are injured. Our hearts are breaking a little bit harder in Connecticut because we know the pain that ravages a community when a shooting happens at a school. Newtown, CT, will never be the same after what happened there now almost a decade ago. Reports are that at Oxford High School nearly 100 911 messages came into police during the time of the shooting. It gives you a vision into the terror that happens inside a school when a classmate opens fire. I think about this, first and foremost, as a parent of a seventh grader and a fourth grader who are part of a generation that accepts as part of their childhood the risk of not leaving school at the end of the day because of a violent attack. That is the reality of being a kid in school today. I am angry about it as an American, but I am angry about it as a parent, that my children have to go through active shooter drills because this has become a regular facet of being a child in America--exposure to gun violence. It sickens me to think that my fourth grader has to worry about this when he goes to school every day. I understand that my Republican colleagues have very strong views on issues related to abortion, but I listened to my Republican colleagues come down here one after another today and talk about the sanctity of life at the very moment that moms and dads in Michigan were being told that their kids weren't coming home because they were shot at school due to a country that has accepted gun violence due to Republicans' fealty to the gun lobby. Do not lecture us about the sanctity, the importance of life, when 100 people every single day are losing their lives to guns, when kids go to school fearful that they won't return home because a classmate will turn a gun on them, when it is in our control whether this happens. You care about life? Then get these dangerous military-style weapons off the streets, out of our schools. You care about life? Make sure that criminals don't get guns by making sure that everybody goes through a background check in this country. This only happens in the United States of America. There is no other nation in the high-income world in which kids worry about being shot when they go to school. It happens here in America because we choose to let it happen. We are not unlucky. This is purposeful. This is a choice made by the U.S. Senate to sit on our hands and do nothing while kids die. It doesn't even involve any political risk. The changes we are talking about in order to make our schools safe places, they are supported by the vast majority of Americans, Republicans and Democrats. And yet the gun lobby and the gun industry is more important to half of the Members of the Senate than is the safety of our kids, and that is infuriating. Make no mistake about it, there is a silent message of endorsement sent to would-be killers, sent to individuals whose brains are spiraling out of control when the highest levels of the U.S. Government does nothing, shooting after shooting. Somewhere in these broken brains, they have convinced themselves that they can right perceived wrongs by firing a gun into a crowd. And when Congress--when the highest, most important, most powerful leaders in the land do nothing, shooting after shooting, you can understand why those broken brains imply that as endorsement. We have become part of the problem. Our silence has become complicity. And I am here to tell you that there is a very low likelihood that your child will die in a school shooting. It is still a very, very infrequent occurrence in this country, given the number of kids who walk into a school every day. But the very fact that every child fears for their life, the very fact that every parent thinks about this when they send their kid to school, that is both a moral and practical stain on this country because kids' brains can't learn when they fear for their lives. No parent should have to sit down and talk to their kid about why, even though you see this happen in Newtown and you see this happen in Parkland and you see this happen in Michigan and you see this happen in California, it won't happen to you, dear. Because when these kids see it on TV every single day, you can't blame them for coming to the conclusion that it may happen to them. I remember watching on TV once a young woman in the aftermath of a school shooting. There are so many of them now that I can't even remember which one this was. And she said to the TV reporter who was interviewing her: I just assumed that it would happen at my school eventually. What a sad state of affairs that this is what it has come to. I am beyond my tipping point, but I needed to come to the floor today because having sat in that chair listening to my colleagues tell me how much they care about human life--well, you have an opportunity to do something about it. You have an opportunity to save lives right now. Kids that are walking into schools tomorrow need you--need you--to step up and pass laws that are going to make sure that only responsible people own guns. And the guns that are used in these school shootings-- the semiautomatic rifles, the AR-15 variants--they stay in the hands of law enforcement. And even if you don't believe that those laws will have the practical consequence of stopping every school shooting, please acknowledge that there is a moral impact of the actions that we take. By signaling to everyone in this country--but in particular these individuals who are contemplating these evil actions--that we don't accept this level of carnage, there will be an impact. And I tell you that because I know history. There are two massive declines in the murder rate in this country in the last 100 years. It is not coincidental to the 10-year period after the two most significant antigun violence measures passed by Congress. The first big decline is in the late 1930s and 1940s, right after Congress passes its first bill regulating the possession of firearms in this country. The second big decline is in the 1990s and early 2000s right after Congress passes the universal background checks law and the ban on assault-style weapons. That is not coincidental. It is because those laws had a practical effect on crime but also a moral effect as well. The proof is right there in front of you of what can happen, of how many lives can be saved if we stand up and act. So, please, I beg my colleagues, if you are going to come down here and talk about the sanctity of life, explain to the American people why the gun lobby matters more than the safety of our children who are walking into school every day fearing for their life. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I will admit that I have some level of confusion when I listen to my Republican colleagues come to the floor and register their complaints when matched against the actual policy positions that my Republican colleagues hold. And I want to present two examples of my confusion this morning. First, I have heard many of my Republican colleagues come to the floor of the Senate and talk about their concern about price increases in the economy today--and then register votes against the measures that would help families afford things. Many of my Senate Republican colleagues voted for the bipartisan infrastructure, but more voted against it. In the House of Representatives, there is discussion of purging from the Republican Party any members of the House Republican conference that voted for the infrastructure; notwithstanding the fact that in that bill is funding that will have a deflationary impact on the economy: money for ports, money for infrastructure, money to be able to move goods and people more quickly across this country. The Build Back Better agenda--the bill that is going to move before the House and the Senate this month with no Republican support--is all about reducing costs for average, regular Americans: reducing the cost of healthcare, reducing the cost of energy, reducing the cost of childcare. Childcare expenses are driving American families crazy today-- absolutely crazy. The Build Back Better Act will reduce the cost of childcare by 10 to $15,000 for families in my State. Republicans oppose the Build Back Better Act because it increases some taxes on billionaires and millionaires. It asks every corporation to pay a minimum amount of tax so that companies, like Amazon and Google, don't get away with paying nothing or next to nothing in tax. The reason why so many Republicans oppose the Build Back Better agenda is because it is about transferring economic power from the haves--from the economic elites to folks who have been getting the short end of the stick, who have been getting fleeced by this economy. When Republicans had the chance to cut costs, they did it only for billionaires and millionaires. Eighty percent of the Republican tax cut went to the richest 1 or 2 percent of the economy. When Democrats have control of the Senate, we deliver tax cuts for the middle class and for the poor. We deliver cost reductions for average American families. Wages are going up higher than the rate of personal consumption inflation. Right? Personal consumption inflation is just under 5 percent. Wages in the last 12 months have gone up by over 5 percent. People are making more money. Part of the consequence of people making more money is that some costs go up. But when Republicans were in charge of the White House and the Congress, we just were, largely, flat. Wages are finally going up. People are making more money. And we are going to have legislation on the floor of the Senate that dramatically cuts costs for average American families, and that legislation likely will get not a single Republican vote. Republicans' priorities, historically, have been to deliver benefits to the wealthy, to the elites, to their corporate friends. And so when faced with a very different agenda--an agenda that is all about cost reduction, tax cuts for average families, for families making $30,000 a year, for plumbers, for teachers, for factory workers, for janitors-- not a single Republican vote. So therein lies my confusion that I hear a lot of my Republican colleagues--Republican colleagues that I like, that I respect--come to the floor and complain about costs and then refuse to deliver a single vote for the most significant legislation to reduce costs for families that this body has considered during my time in the Senate. Here is my second reason for confusion. Now, encounters with migrants without documentation has come down at the border 3 months in a row-- pretty dramatic reduction, in fact, when it comes to unaccompanied minors and families. That is because this President's policies are working. That is probably the reason you don't hear as many Republicans coming down to the floor talking about the surge at the border. But Republicans have been down here consistently for months talking about the crisis they described at the border. And so my confusion here is connected to their avowed concern about the surge at the border and then their decision to oppose a Homeland Security budget that would help us address those escalating numbers at the border. Right now, Senate Republicans are refusing to negotiate with Democrats on a budget for 2021 and 2022. That is what is going on right now. Historically, we always had differences when it comes to our priorities in the budget, but we always sat down and negotiated. Right now, Senate Republicans are boycotting discussions over a budget. And one of the theories is that many Republicans would like to see a continuing resolution--the Trump spending levels continued for the rest of 2021, 2022. Let me tell you what the impact of that would be when it comes to our operations at the border. I want to explain this because I have the honor to chair the Appropriations Subcommittee overseeing the Department of Homeland Security, and we, just a few weeks ago, introduced a budget for the Department of Homeland Security for fiscal year 2022. But if this budget or a version of it negotiated with Republicans doesn't pass, the result is catastrophe at the border. This budget includes $178 million for medicine and medical contracts for unaccompanied children that arrive at our border--desperately needed medical care for all of these children and families that are arriving at the border. None of it would be available if we went on a continuing resolution. We would have a health crisis at the border. There is $130 million for three permanent multipurpose, multiagency facilities, which will streamline the processes of individuals who present at the border. Right now, we have these megaexpensive, inhumane, soft-sided facilities. That significant investment at the border cannot happen if we have a continuing resolution. There is $25 million in this budget for increased transportation costs, allowing Border Patrol to reduce overcrowding in facilities, moving individuals from crowded facilities to facilities that have room. None of that transportation money is available in a CR, which means the overcrowding gets worse. But the crisis is even bigger because without a new budget, we can't pay the Border Patrol. We will have a $770 million payroll shortfall-- almost $1 billion payroll shortfall--if we have a CR in the Department of Homeland Security rather than a new budget. That will cripple our ability to manage the border. That will either mean massive layoffs of CBP personnel, USCIS personnel, or it will mean a massive reprogramming in which the Biden administration is forced to take money from cybersecurity and put it onto the border or steal money from the Coast Guard in coastal defense and put it on the border. One independent study showed that a decrease of just 33 CBP officers at our ports of entry would decrease GDP by $66 million and lead to a loss of over 1,000 jobs. Why? Because at our ports of entry, when you have a massive downsizing of personnel, wait times go up, businesses lose money. If we are on a CR and we don't pass a budget, Coast Guard readiness is compromised. The money in this budget for a new offshore patrol cutter, for national security cutters, for the sustainment of the aging rotary wing aircraft fleet--unavailable. So our Coast Guard readiness continues to suffer, compromising U.S. national security. We all know that cybersecurity is an increasing existential threat to the United States, and so this budget proposes a significant increase in our cybersecurity defenses. How is the Department of Homeland Security, without a budget if a CR is extended through the end of the year--we can't adjust any of our funding programs or priorities when it comes to cybersecurity. We are essentially stuck in a pre-SolarWinds environment in the Department of Homeland Security without the ability to adjust for current threats. Finally, we will just be wasting a ton of taxpayer money. I will give you one example. Right now, we have thousands of empty ICE detention beds--thousands of empty ICE detention beds. We pay contractors to maintain these beds, to staff these beds, but there is nobody in them and there is likely not going to be anybody in those beds for the entirety of fiscal year 2022. But if you are on a continuing resolution and don't pass a new budget negotiated together, Republicans and Democrats, then we are paying for beds we don't need. We are just wasting taxpayer dollars. If we don't pass a budget, if we don't update the appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security, we are going to be gutting our border protection, we are going to be costing the economy billions of dollars, we are going to be compromising the defense of this Nation, and we are going to be wasting taxpayer dollars. We are sent here to be proper and responsible stewards of our constituents'--our taxpayers'--hard-earned dollars. They don't like sending their money to Washington, but they do so under the belief that we are going to be careful about how we spend it. By just extending 2021 spending levels to 2022, especially when it comes to the defense of this Nation, especially when it comes to the protection of our borders, a CR could be disastrous as much as it is wildly irresponsible. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

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

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I would just ask unanimous consent for two incredibly qualified, noncontroversial Administrators at USAID. Isobel Coleman is the nominee to be the USAID Deputy Administrator. She is a seasoned foreign policy professional who has been nominated by the President to oversee and provide strategic leadership over the Agency's programs. She has been previously confirmed by this body by unanimous consent. There are, as far as I can tell, no objections to her candidacy based upon the merits of it; and there were no objections to her candidacy to serve as our Ambassador to the U.N. for Management and Reform in December of 2014. She is a former Ambassador, and she has spent 20 years in the study and practice of global development. She has worked in the public and the private sectors. I ask unanimous consent to proceed to the nomination of Marcela Escobari, the nominee for USAID Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean. Ms. Escobari is a regional expert on Latin America and the Caribbean. She has previously served in the exact same role at the Agency, and she has done really incredible work reinforcing U.S. support work for Peace Colombia. She has been heavily engaged in the long-term development plan for Haiti, as well as in Congress's plans to double funding for Central America to try to stem the root causes of migration. I think it is incredibly concerning that this blockade of capable diplomats, professional diplomats, continues on the Senate floor. By this time in the Trump administration, President Trump had had 22 Ambassadors who had been confirmed by the U.S. Senate, 17 of them by voice vote. Thus far, President Biden has had 4 Ambassadors confirmed. Today, I was asking for consideration not of Ambassadors but of professionals who oversee the expenditure of U.S. taxpayer dollars abroad. There is nothing that Senate Republicans can do to stop the expenditure of taxpayer dollars in the Caribbean or Latin America. What they are preventing is the appointment and seating of individuals who oversee that funding, who represent us abroad. This blockade--this unprecedented blockade--has never happened before in the history of the Senate. This kind of obstruction of standing in the way of the President's diplomatic team being seated compromises our national security. It makes us weaker as a nation. As the President heads to the G20, he doesn't have Ambassadors seated to most of the countries with which he is going to be conducting diplomatic negotiations and relations. USAID, today, only has two Senate-confirmed positions, leaving most of its top leadership positions vacant. So forgive my sense of outrage when I listen to the minority leader come down to the Senate floor and chide the Biden administration for not having a strong enough policy in the Middle East when his minority is using its power to block Ambassadors to the Middle East and is using its power to stop an Assistant Secretary to the Middle East from being seated. You can't have it both ways. You can't come down to the Senate floor and eviscerate the President's foreign policy and then deliberately stop him from having the personnel to conduct that foreign policy. It is like tying your buddy's hands behind his back and then criticizing him for not fighting back against a bully. USAID is at the center of our COVID response. There is no way to protect this Nation from this pandemic or future pandemics if we don't have individuals who are confirmed at the top echelons of USAID. I understand Senator Marshall's objection to be over questions he has about gain-of-function research that may or may not have been conducted in Wuhan. What does Marcela Escobari--the nominee to be the USAID Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean--have to do with gain-of-function research in China? First of all, I can show you fact check after fact check that suggests these allegations about gain-of-function research being funded in China are false, but even if the Senator thinks there is a legitimate question, what does that have to do with our ability to efficiently spend taxpayer dollars in Latin America and the Caribbean? We just had two massive national disasters happen in Haiti. USAID is managing that response. It is spending taxpayer dollars right now. Why wouldn't we want to have somebody overseeing that spending? Why is that a responsible exercise of U.S. taxpayer dollars to deny our taxpayers the ability to know that there is someone, confirmed by the Senate, overseeing the expenditure of their money in places like Haiti? How do you complain about the border and then deny the President the personnel necessary to oversee migration from the Northern Triangle northward to the U.S. border? One of the nominees we snuck through was the Assistant Secretary for the Western Hemisphere, but USAID, right now, is engaged in programming designed to stabilize the economic and security environment in the Northern Triangle. I think both parties agree that this is a key component of our strategy to prevent migration that ends in crises at the border. Once again, the Republicans are denying the President the ability to have personnel in place that will address the border crisis. Once again, the minority is denying the President the ability to have people in place who could oversee our COVID response. Once again, the minority is denying the President the ability to have people in place who will oversee our strategy in the Middle East. This is an attempt to decapitate American diplomacy. This is an attempt to stop the President from being able to conduct the business of the executive branch. Never before has this happened. Never before has the minority used this amount of its power to slow down the confirmation of Ambassadors. Yes, we can spend floor time on every single one of these Assistant Administrators, but we have never done that before. When it comes to somebody like Marcela Escobari or Isobel Coleman--people who are nonpolitical, who are unquestionably qualified to do these jobs--we have approved those kinds of nominations through unanimous consent. They have proceeded by voice vote because to require hours of debate on every single one of these nominees would be to gum up the works of the U.S. Senate. That is why we have had this informal agreement over the years. It is in order to move these kinds of noncontroversial, nonpolitical nominees expeditiously. That agreement, obviously, has fallen apart, and the cost not only comes to the reputation and the comity of the U.S. Senate but to the security of the Nation. You cannot complain about this President's foreign policy, as Republicans, if you are, at the same time, using extraordinary powers to deny the President the ability to have diplomats abroad to represent us. It is making us weaker as a nation, and it should stop immediately. I am very sorry that the Senator from Kansas has come to the floor to object to two incredibly qualified, noncontroversial nominees to USAID. I hope this blockade comes to an end soon. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to seek unanimous consent to proceed to the consideration of two very qualified nominees to USAID. They are the kind of nominees who, in previous Congresses, would have been approved, without debate, through voice vote. I will make the motion, expecting, unfortunately, an objection. Then I will proceed to comments on why I think this is incredibly damaging to the United States to not proceed forward with these nominees. Thus, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate consider the following nominations: Calendar No. 323 and Calendar No. 337; that the nominations be confirmed; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order on the nominations; that any related statements be printed in the Record; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, C.J. Brown was 7 years old. He was a second grader at Clarksdale Collegiate academy in Mississippi. Clarksdale, MS, is a relatively small town of 15,000 people. Everybody knows each other in Clarksdale. C.J. was described as a really bright young student. His principal and director at his school said that he was a great student. He was always cheerful and friendly to his classmates and teachers. Clarksdale is reeling right now because just a few weeks ago, on October 12, little C.J. Brown was sitting in a car outside of a laundromat, and he was shot to death. The owner of a nearby corner store, the Tiger Mart, said that C.J. and his mom and his little sister used to come in all the time, friendly as can be, chatting up a storm. The owner of that little convenience store said that he considered C.J. and his mom and his little sister to be family. You can say that C.J. was in the wrong place at the wrong time--a 7- year-old kid in a car outside of a laundromat shot to death--but he wasn't. He was in the right place at the right time. He was in what should have been a safe place his hometown, just sitting in a car. That day, there were three shootings over 5 hours in this small town of Clarksdale. C.J. wasn't the only victim, but his death made news because he was 7 years old, and now he is gone. The problem is, this story isn't the exception; it is the rule, increasingly so, across this country. For the last 8 years, I have come down to the floor with a chart that looks very much like this. In fact, I think this is the chart that I have displayed for about 5 years straight. I come down here every few weeks--sometimes, in busier times, every month or so--and I tell the story of men and women and children, often like C.J., to try to rattle the conscience of this body to do something about the epidemic of gun violence in this country. These numbers in and of themselves are stunning. This is my old chart showing 36,000 people a year are killed by gunshot wounds--3,000 a month, 100 people day. There is no other nation in the high-income world that has anything approaching these numbers when it comes to gun violence. But these numbers are irrelevant now because what has happened over the last year and a half is a story unto itself. Gun violence rates have spiked during the pandemic. In fact, the increase in 2020 was the biggest in 60 years from year to year. So I now have to bring a new chart to the floor. This one that I have used for 5 years now is irrelevant because no longer are 36,000 people dying a year from gunshot wounds. No longer are we losing 3,000 a month or 100 a day. We are now losing 40,000 a year, 3,300 a month, 110 people a day. You can say: Well, that is a small increase. A hundred people used to die from gunshot wounds a day; now only 110 people a day. That is 10 more families every single day, like the family of C.J. Brown, who have lost a loved one, often in the prime of their life, to a preventable crime that happens nowhere else at this frequency amongst our high-income peers. What is interesting about 2020, though, is that overall crime rates didn't spike like gun homicides did. In fact, over all, major crimes in 2020 in this country went down, but gun homicides went up. There were 5,000 more gun homicides in 2020 than in 2019. What is going on if major crimes are going down but gun homicides are going up? The story is likely complicated, but at the heart of it is this: More guns equals more crime. Forget the mythology that tells you that if you buy a gun, you are going to use that gun to protect yourself, that you are going to use it against an intruder or somebody who is trying to do harm to you. No. The data is the data. You can't get around it. It shows that for every community that has a 1-percent increase in gun ownership, what comes with it is a 1-percent increase in gun homicides. The more guns you have, the more likely that you are to have days like October 12, 2021, in Clarksdale, MS. But there is more data to prove this point. What is interesting is that over the last 10 years, more and more homicides in this country are gun homicides. Ten years ago, about two-thirds of all homicides in this country involved a gun. But we have had more and more and more guns being purchased over the last 10 years. It used to be that maybe only 32 percent of households had a gun. Today, that number is 39 percent. So we have a lot more households with guns. We had record numbers of guns bought in 2020. In March of 2020, for the first time, the background check system registered 1 million checks. Never before has this country had more guns bought and sold than in 2020. Not coincidentally, today, the number of homicides that involve a gun isn't two-thirds any longer; it is three-quarters. It went from 67 percent in a decade to 77 percent. More guns equals more homicides. More guns equals a greater number of violent crimes being perpetuated with guns. The data is the data. You can't get around it. You think you are making yourself safer by bringing a gun into your house, but more often than not, that gun is going to be used to harm you or a loved one than it is against someone who is trying to do harm to you. Many of these guns end up very quickly becoming illegal guns because they may at first be sold through a licensed gun dealer, but pretty soon, they get into the black market. Pretty soon, those guns get into the black internet market, the gun show market, where anybody can buy a gun regardless of their criminal record in many States without being caught, and those guns get trafficked to all sorts of people who should never own them. The data is the data. But here is what we also know about 2020: In States that have tougher gun laws, the rise in violent crime in 2020 was much lower than in States that don't have universal background checks. Now, we make the case here that gun laws matter, that if you take some commonsense steps to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people--violent criminals, people with serious mental illness--you are going to have less gun crime. Well, that is what 2020 tells us. In States that have universal background checks, the violent crime rate just ticked up from 2019 to 2020--just ticked up--but in States without expanded background checks, the violent crime rate skyrocketed. There was a much bigger increase in States without universal background checks than in States with universal background checks. Common sense tells you why. Those States just do a little bit better job of making sure that only responsible gun owners can get their hands on a gun. So we have these two stories from 2020 to tell. The first is a tragic one--a dramatic increase in the number of homicides; new highs in terms of the number of people who die at the hands of a gun every single day. But this second story about how States that have gotten serious about commonsense measures supported by 90 percent of Americans to make sure that only law-abiding citizens have guns--they were able to control these increases much better than the States that didn't implement universal background checks and commonsense gun laws. So I tell the story of C.J. today to try to shake this body into action and to try to make folks understand that we have all the data we need to have to tell us what works. None of it is that controversial. No matter what State you come from--blue or red, Republican, Democratic--your constituents support universal background checks. The data tells us that while 2020 was an awful year for gun crime, it was a lot more awful in the States that didn't invest in that policy. So why not just implement it on a national basis? It is politically popular and impactful when it comes to saving lives. Lastly, even if you don't agree with me that we should make these commonsense changes to try to do something about this rising epidemic of gun violence in this country; even if you don't want to change the gun laws in this Nation, I have another offer for you. I heard Senator Cornyn come down to the floor and talk about all the radical policies that are in the Build Back Better agenda. I have seen the polling on the Build Back Better agenda. None of it looks too radical because the American people seem to really love all the parts of the Build Back Better agenda, from the investments in green energy, to the help for families who are trying to afford childcare, to the improvements in the Medicare system. But here is another commonsense investment in the Build Back Better agenda: community gun violence initiatives. Inside the Build Back Better agenda is $5 billion to invest in community programs that wrap services around at-risk youth to try to stop this cycle of violence that plays out. Now, what is interesting in the 2020 data is that gun crime is becoming much more geographically spread out in this Nation. Ten, twenty, thirty years ago, there was a case to be made for the concentration of gun violence in a handful of cities. That is actually not the case any longer. Today, gun violence happens everywhere. It happens in small towns. It happens in small cities. It happens in the big cities. But it is still true that there are these very, very poor, very, very economically challenged neighborhoods in which there are higher rates of gun violence. What we know is that these community violence programs work. In Connecticut, we had one--before it was defunded--in New Haven, Hartford, and Bridgeport. It identified youth at risk of falling into this cycle of violence. It supports them with programs that give them an alternative to that lifestyle. Between 2011 and 2016, combined gun homicides in these three cities were cut in half. A similar program in New York saw homicides in a South Bronx neighborhood where a program was being implemented decline by 37 percent compared to a very similarly matched neighborhood nearby that was used as a control site. I can give you more and more evidence of how these investments in neighborhoods lift people up economically and help stop the cycle of violence. So I can shower you with data to show you why commonsense changes in our gun laws would do something about this stunning increase in the rate of gun deaths in this country from 2019 to 2020, but we can also just come together around an investment in these communities and these kids and these families that doesn't necessarily have the same high degree of political temperature as the debate around guns does, and it still will have a significant impact. So I will continue to come down to the floor and make this case. I will continue to come down to the floor and try to tell the story of these victims of gun violence--kids like CJ Brown. I hope that this will be the last chart. I hope that the next chart, in fact, will show that these numbers are coming down. But I doubt that I will have that opportunity because until we get serious about making changes in our gun laws, to update them to match with the preferences of 90 percent of Americans, and until we get serious about investments in these neighborhoods--part of the Build Back Better agenda--I fear that these numbers will continue to rise higher and higher. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

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

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, Senator Lee is right--the relationship between the United States and Britain is unique, and it is special. They are often the first to come to our aid when we are in need, when we need partners around the globe. So it brings me no pleasure to come to the floor to object to this resolution being passed at this time, partly because I think there will be a right time for the Senate to come together unanimously and express our support for a U.S.-Britain free-trade agreement. But I want to spend 1\1/2\ minutes telling you why this is not the time. We are having this debate because Britain has chosen to leave the European Union. Previous to Britain's departure, we were pushing for a U.S.-EU trade agreement that would have brought benefits to Britain but also to the rest of the continent. Today, we are talking about a bilateral agreement because Britain is leaving the European Union, but they have not yet fully left in the sense that there is an agreement connected to their exit that Britain has not yet fulfilled. One of the most important aspects of that agreement relates to the Good Friday Agreement, the Good Friday Agreement being a seminal achievement of American diplomacy that brought to an end decades of troubles and violence in and around Northern Ireland. The UK and EU negotiated what is called the Northern Ireland Protocol as part of the EU withdrawal agreement. That arrangement was intended to preserve the Good Friday Agreement and to ensure that you would never have a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Under the protocol, it was agreed that Northern Ireland would continue to follow EU rules on food safety and other products standards to prevent those customs checks across the border. The checks, instead, would take place on goods entering Northern Ireland from England, Scotland, or Wales. The problem is that the British Government right now wants to change the deal and to get rid of most of the checks, to reduce customs procedures in order to allow goods to move more freely. But this has created a political crisis because it threatens to reerect that hard border that could unfortunately stimulate a reemergence of conflict. It has already been incredibly destabilizing in Northern Ireland. The leader of the largest unionist party has threatened to quit the government if the current protocol is not replaced. This is not an insignificant risk, and our priority should be, before cheerleading and championing a free-trade agreement, to make sure that Britain's commitment to protect the Good Friday Agreement as part of their departure from the European Union is fulfilled. So I look forward to the time when we can come together, Republicans and Democrats, and support the entering into of discussions for a free- trade agreement between the United States and Britain, but I would submit that this is not the right time. Right now, we need to be firm in our commitment to make sure that the conditions of withdrawal from the European Union specifically with respect the Good Friday Agreement are fulfilled, and only once those conditions are fulfilled should we as a body make that full commitment to this free-trade agreement. Let's make sure that we not do anything to jeopardize what has been decades of productive peace and peace discussions in and around Northern Ireland. For that reason, I would object.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. Yesterday, Tallahassee Memorial Hospital disclosed that 82 people died inside their healthcare system from COVID over the course of the month of September. That is the worst month on record for that hospital system. It is not shocking to anyone because we just went passed 700,000 people who have now been killed by this virus in the United States of America. And this attack that continues to be launched on the Senate floor against science and against sound public health policy is standing in the way of us defeating this virus. Now, I will speak to Senator Lee's objection, but Senator Johnson just came to the floor and opened up his remarks by declaring he that wasn't an anti-vaxxer and then just engaged in a 10-minute broadside against vaccines, citing conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory. The effect will be to undermine America's faith in vaccines that are working. To prove his point, the Senator from Wisconsin read an email from a constituent who got the vaccine and got infected. I am sure that is true. There are, in fact, people who have gotten the vaccine who have gotten the infection. It isn't 100 percent effective. But he didn't cite these statistics: those who have been vaccinated are 10 times less likely to be hospitalized. Those who have been vaccinated are 10 times less likely to die. Here are some numbers from the State of Pennsylvania that I just saw this morning: In Pennsylvania, 97 percent of deaths are amongst the unvaccinated; 95 percent of hospitalizations are amongst the unvaccinated; and 94 percent of cases are amongst the unvaccinated. Senator Lee is right, vaccines work--vaccines work, and I appreciate his statement to that effect. But others, like the Senator from Wisconsin, are coming down to the floor, and their words have the effect of undermining people's faith in science, and that is deadly. That is deadly. As to Senator Lee's objections, I know he makes them in good faith, but my impression is that this Congress and this country decided a long time ago that the government does have a role to play when it comes to the safety of our workplaces. In fact, that is the entire reason for the existence of OSHA. Whether you like it or not, from a policy perspective, OSHA has handed down mandate after mandate about what is necessary for employers to make sure that when you show up to work in a hospital or a factory or a school, that your workplace is safe. Specifically, this country is not a stranger to vaccine mandates. In fact, every parent who sends their kids to school knows all about vaccine mandates because you have to make sure that your child is vaccinated before they go to school. Most of those schools have relatively reasonable exemptions--often, at the very least, medical exemptions; sometimes religious and philosophical exemptions. Let's be clear: President Biden's plan includes commonsense considerations for exemptions. Let's also be clear that, at least with respect to the OSHA requirement, it is a mandate for testing, not for vaccinations. There are other mandates that are requiring the vaccination take place, but the broadest of the proposed mandates is a mandate that everybody get tested; you don't have to get tested if you get the vaccine. And so I am deeply worried about how unserious this country is about the science and about sound public health policy. We aren't going to get over this pandemic--we aren't going to be able to turn the page-- unless people choose to get vaccinated: 10 times less likely to die, 10 times less likely to get hospitalized. Yes, it is true, there are cases in which there may be medical contraindications. President Biden's plan accounts for that. And yes, it is true that there are individual people who have still had breakthrough cases. But this is an effective vaccine. It is a safe vaccine. And the only way that we save lives is if we stop focusing on ideology and keep our focus on science and what works. And for that reason, I object.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I come to the floor to offer some brief remarks today in the wake of the Armed Services Committee hearing today on the evacuation of Afghanistan and the end to U.S. troop presence there. I watched it with some interest. I watched it knowing that three out of four Americans support President Biden's decision to bring U.S. troops home from Afghanistan. We learned some new things today in the hearing. Others were confirmed. First, we learned, once again, of the extraordinary bravery and capability of our diplomats and our soldiers, who worked under incredibly difficult conditions for a period of weeks to airlift almost 130,000 individuals out of Afghanistan. That is absolutely remarkable, especially given, as we heard today in testimony, that the goal at the outset, in the best case scenario, was to get 60 to 70 to 80,000 people out. In the end, the United States of America, our military and our diplomats, got 130,000 people out. We heard, also, about the impossible position that President Biden inherited; that there was a commitment made to withdraw American troops by President Trump but no plan with which to do it safely. We heard about how the Doha agreement decreased the readiness of the Afghan forces, how it weakened their position internally. We heard about the choice that faced President Biden when he came into office. We heard about the fact that, had we chosen to stay, we would have had to surge troops; that the Taliban, having gotten to the precipice of provincial capitals, would have engaged in a level of urban warfare that would have required the United States to increase our troop presence there in order to be able to stand up an effective resistance to the Taliban. To the extent that Republicans view this as a political game and they were looking for points to be scored today, I guess the one point they feel they scored was an admission by the generals who testified that some of them had recommended staying in Afghanistan. Now, I have tremendous respect for our generals. I think they get it right more than they get it wrong. They provide very able advice to the Commander in Chief. But for 20 years, in Afghanistan, our generals recommended staying, in the face of mounting evidence, year after year, that it was going to be impossible to be able to stand up an Afghan military that could protect the country and an Afghan Government that could govern the country. Our generals recommended staying--year after year after year, month after month after month--despite the fact that many analysts told us that as soon as we left and the Taliban took over, the Afghan Government and the military would fall. Now, they did it because our military is bred to believe that anything is possible. It speaks, in some part, to the best of American military ethos, the idea that there is no obstacle that cannot be surmounted, that cannot be climbed by U.S. forces. But the task they were given by President after President was one that could not be carried out. And to simply believe that because the general said ``stay another year'' or ``stay another 5 years,'' this Commander in Chief should have listened, despite the fact that it had been proven that the mission that we were given in that country was impossible, is to compound a mistake--an unnecessary mistake--that the United States engaged in for far, far too long. And so my hope is that moving forward, this Congress and this Senate are going to engage in real oversight. There is no doubt the evacuation could have been done better. There is no doubt that, in a mission this complicated, the Biden team would have done things differently. But the real question is, Why did we stay in Afghanistan for 10 years too long? Why did we keep believing that we could train-up a military that would be capable of defending the country? It is time that we have a deep inquiry in this Senate about the limits of American military power overseas and how badly misresourced we are when we spend 10 to 20 times as much money on military power as we do on other means of projecting American power. It is also important for us to understand the cost of getting bogged down in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. It is not a coincidence that shortly after withdrawing from Afghanistan, we were able to announce this new partnership with Australia and Britain to better protect our mutual interests in the Pacific theater. It is because, when the entirety of the U.S. defense and foreign policy infrastructure is so trained on unwinnable contests in far off places like Afghanistan, it doesn't allow us the capacity and the creativity to be able to design new systems and new structures with which to protect the country. China celebrated every single year that we remain bogged down in Afghanistan. Russia celebrated every single year that we doubled down on that mistake. Now we have the ability to turn our attention to fights that truly matter. We learned some things in the Armed Services Committee today. I think what we learned confirms that the decision that President Biden made to pull our troops out was the right one. It is a decision supported by the American people because it allows this country, finally, to focus on fights that are winnable in reality, not just on paper. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I have a request for 7 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 Armed Services The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 28, 2021, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing. 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 Tuesday, September 28, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Energy and Natural Resources The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 28, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Foreign Relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 28, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations. Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 28, 2021, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing. Select Committee on Intelligence The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 28, 2021, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a closed briefing. Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management The Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 28, 2021, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a closed briefing.

Mr. MURPHY

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

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, notwithstanding rule XXII, that upon the use or yielding back of time on the Donfried nomination, the Senate vote on the motions to invoke cloture on the Medina, Phee, Robinson, and Lewis nominations; that if closure is invoked on any of the nominations listed, all postcloture time be considered expired and the vote on confirmation of those nominations occur at a time and in an order to be determined by the majority leader, following consultation with the Republican leader, with 1 hour for debate equally divided prior to each vote, and the Republican debate be controlled by Senator Cruz.