Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I am here on the floor today to talk about climate chaos. It is a monumental crisis that requires immediate and bold action. The reason I am speaking about climate chaos at this moment is because several things are happening today that create this connection. The one is that the IPCC, the International Panel on Climate Change, has released its 2021 climate report, and the second is, we are in the middle of talking about infrastructure for our Nation, and the investments in climate infrastructure are going to be critical to take on the crisis that we are facing. We are in pretty big trouble. This report that came out today--``5 Big Findings from the IPCC's 2021 Climate Report''--it lays out how dramatically things have shifted in just a few years. It notes that the concentration of carbon dioxide is now higher than it has been for 2 million years, and we have made that happen over just the last 100 or so years but particularly the last 30; that the glacial retreat is unmatched for the last 2,000 years; that the last decade was warmer than any period for 125,000 years; that the summer Arctic ice coverage is smaller than at any time in the last 1,000 years; that the ocean is warming faster than at any time since the last ice age; and that ocean acidification is at the highest level in the last 26,000 years. These things would not have been true a few years ago, and it is because of the massive buildup in carbon dioxide from our burning of fossil fuels to power our energy economy, and it is from the massive release of methane gas because of our use of natural gas, which is a very nice name for what is mostly methane gas. We collect methane gas, and we have accelerated that through fracking. A tremendous amount leaks out through that drilling and fracking system. A tremendous amount more leaks out through the millions of miles of pipes that carry it to its destinations, and then when we burn it, it creates carbon dioxide, also a global warming gas. So we don't need to really get this report to know we are in trouble because we just have to look at the facts on the ground from our home States right now. I mean, Oregon is aflame. We have so many fires burning simultaneously, and the largest fire is over 400,000 acres-- 400,000 acres. Think how long it would take, if you were on a hike, to pass through 400,000 acres. You know, a few years ago, we had a group of homes that were burned out in John Day, OR, some 24 or so homes, and we thought that was a big deal. Then last summer, we had six towns burn to the ground, completely incinerated. Now we have these massive, massive fires, as do Idaho and Montana and Washington State and California State and Colorado and Utah and New Mexico, Arizona. The West is aflame because the temperatures are so much higher. What else is happening in Oregon? Well, our snowpack is disappearing; average snowpack is decreasing. It is affecting the amount of irrigation water we have. It is affecting the fact that our streams are now smaller and warmer than they were before, affecting our trout and our salmon, and the ocean is acidifying. Now we have some 30 percent more acid in the ocean. It affected first the reproduction of our oysters, so now we artificially buffer the water for our oyster scene to survive, baby oysters to survive. Now it is starting to affect the Dungeness crab, one of the most significant financial enterprises in terms of sea life production in a commercial sense off the coast of Oregon. So we are seeing impacts in every possible way. I know that as I travel rural Oregon, people emphasize that this is a huge impact on rural Oregon and rural America because it is affecting our farming. It is affecting our fishing, and it is affecting our forests. So we are engaged here in a two-part plan. The first plan is an infrastructure bill that address water, transportation, and broadband. Well, all well and good, but if part one sails away from the dock and leaves part two stranded, what is left behind? Housing, massive investment; education, a massive investment in 2 years of preschool and 2 years of community college. Foundations for thriving families are left behind, the support for daycare for working families; and the child tax credit, which is lifting half of the children in poverty out of poverty in America--the most massive tax cut ever envisioned for middle-class America. What other thing is left on the dock? The investment in climate; the transition from burning fossil fuel, the fossil fuel economy, to the renewable energy economy. We cannot let part one sail away of the infrastructure bill without doing part two, and the report from the IPCC today emphasizes how absolutely important it is that we act and we act boldly. That report said it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, the ocean, and the land. The report, crafted by 200 global scientists, concludes, as one of the report's coauthors summarizes: There is no uncertainty language in this sentence because there is no uncertainty that global warming is caused by human activity and the burning of fossil fuels. The report goes on to say that we are now on an irreversible course towards a hotter planet; that if we do the severest cuts in carbon emissions right now, the severest cuts, we are still going to see temperatures rise 1\1/2\ degrees Celsius or about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. That was the goal of the Paris Agreement. We would have to massively cut our carbon emissions and our methane emissions right now to meet the Paris target. The report goes on to say that extreme weather events, which were rare or completely unprecedented, will now be common and more common as we approach the new normal or it becomes a new normal because of climate change. I think the U.N. Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, summed it up when he said this report is ``a code red for humanity''--``a code red for humanity.'' So that is why all 100 of us here in the Senate should be on the floor discussing how to respond to a code red for humanity. Wow, we have a lot of work to do, but that first part of the package has nothing in it or almost nothing in it--a little bit of money for charging stations, a little bit of money for electric buses, a little bit of money for improving the electric grid, but nothing like the massive investment that is required to respond to a code red, a code red for the planet. Now, clearly, as the planet gets hotter and it is affecting our forests and our farming and our fishing--forest fires that are destroying towns, more powerful hurricanes affecting the seashore, more intrusion of saltwater into freshwater supplies--cities are having to basically start to build dikes around themselves in order to keep the seawater out. I heard one Member of the Senate say: You know, here is the thing. We shouldn't do anything about this because the investments required to take on climate change will be disruptive. Well, I will tell you what is disruptive. Forest fires are disruptive. The loss of the snowpack for our winter sports and our irrigation water and our healthy streams, that is disruptive. Sea life being damaged by ocean acidification, that is disruptive to our economy. Forests with pine beetles thriving and trees dying, that is disruptive to our forestry. Lack of rain, such that the groundwater is not recharged, is disruptive to our irrigation for our ranchers and our farmers. What is disruptive is doing nothing, and the damage will far exceed the cost of taking an honest effort to transition quickly to renewable energy. Failing to act means failing our future generations. We cannot allow that to happen. So that is why I am so pleased that on the same day that the IPCC released their report, we also saw the budget resolution released. Now, the budget resolution is the second half of the package, the part that addresses families, that addresses forests, that addresses housing, that addresses children, and, yes, addresses climate. So there is hope. And what does it do? Well, it funds the Civilian Conservation Corps to put Americans to work in good-paying jobs to help conserve our Nation's public lands and waters and bolster community resilience and to advance environmental justice. It establishes the Energy Efficiency and Clean Electricity Standard that my colleague from Minnesota, who is presiding over the Senate right now, has been so instrumental in laying out for the Senate to act on. That clean electricity standard will have an enormous impact because to escape the fossil fuel energy economy, we have to electrify everything on the production end. We take the power off the grid, but we have to put renewable energy onto the grid. So it is the key. It is the centerpiece--the centerpiece--of how we act. And there are a lot of subsidies, yes, for things like electric buses and also for electric vehicles. And I think it is so exciting that we now are going to have an F-150 electric. And the F-150 electric goes from zero to 60 miles per hour in 4.4 seconds. Try that with your fossil fuel car, my friend, because you will fail. But you get the new Ford F-150, and it will press you back in the seat like you have never experienced as you take off, and you can still do your industrial work with your pickup. And there is a Ford Mustang coming on, electric, and that is going to be a hot item, an exciting item as well. And so it is kind of neat that what is good for the environment is also going to be good for all of us to have a good time driving. So all of these pieces that are in the second half--the second half of the infrastructure package--that has to get done, and it should be absolutely bipartisan because these investments in families are desired by Democratic families and Republican families and Independent families. These investments in housing--affordable housing in our country--are needed by Republican and Democratic and Independent families. And you know what? It is going to be completely paid for--completely paid for by having the megarich pay their fair share. And as you all know from all the reports, they have been jumping and diving and ducking their taxes, many of them paying zero. Billionaires who are putting themselves into space on a joy ride pay zero in taxes. Billionaires are using tons of the products of what we paid for of our road infrastructure and our water infrastructure and our education infrastructure. They are employing all kinds of folks who are funded by Pell grants to get through college, paying zero--zero--in taxes. Why are the billionaires paying less than you and me? Why are they paying less than the clerk at the grocery store or the person bagging your groceries? Why are they paying less than the secretaries? Why are they paying less in taxes, the billionaires? Good question. It shouldn't be the case. So the responsible thing is to pay for the package with tax fairness for all Americans, everyone doing their fair share, including our companies, some of which have posted tremendous, astronomical profits while paying absolutely zero in taxes. If we turn the clock back to Henry David Thoreau, who said many interesting things in his book, ``On Walden Pond,'' and one of the things he said is, ``What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?'' Well, his question was kind of looking toward the future that we are now in, where the ravages of a heated planet are destroying our forests, our fishing, and our farming, undermining the foundations of our rural economy, creating storms that assault our shores, creating fires that burn down houses and towns as well as trees. It is time for us to act, and to act boldly, because we are under a red alert for the planet and we need to act.

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. MERKLEY

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

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I come to the floor today to bring attention to the wildfires raging in our Western States, devastating community after community. I am also here to call on my colleagues to use the ongoing infrastructure discussions to take the swift, bold action necessary not just to confront the current crisis but to address the root cause and help save others from having to endure similar fires and tragedies in the future. For nearly a month now, the Bootleg Fire, pictured here, has been the biggest of 91 fires burning across 12 States. It has been raging in Southern Oregon. It has burned about 415,000 acres. Translate that into square miles. That is 646 square miles. Translate that. That is an area about 20 miles wide and 30 miles long, half the size of the State of Rhode Island reduced to ash and smoke. It is ranching country. There are not a lot of developed communities, but you still have a lot of homes getting burned, at least 161 homes; double that or roughly double that in outbuildings. Hundreds of vehicles have been destroyed. Thousands of families have been forced to evacuate. This fire grew so large, it started generating its own weather system. Think about that. Usually, we watch the weather to see how the weather is going to influence the fire. Will rain and storms slow them down? Will humidity slow them down a little? Will dry, hot conditions help them grow or, worst of all, hot and dry with wind? Well, that is not the case with the Bootleg Fire, which created these massive clouds rising more than 30,000 feet into the air, and as the air surges up, then below it, it pulls in air from all around, which feeds oxygen to the inferno. Then, when that air cools and drops down, it pushes the bottom air out, spreading sparks like some living monster sucking in fire, intensifying oxygen, and then spewing out fire-spreading embers as the air cools and descends. It even generates its own lightning storms and spawns fire tornadoes, swirling vortexes of heat and flame. Fires are an annual occurrence in Oregon, but decade after decade, they are getting a lot worse. There are two major reasons for this. Climate chaos is one, and poor forest management is the other. The forests, due to climate chaos, are drier and more prone to fire. Why are they drier? Because, well, carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and methane gas leaking out of our natural gas systems are heating the planet. So we have to pivot quickly and transition to renewable energy to stop it from getting worse. But that is a discussion really for another day. Let's focus today on the second part of the challenge, which is forest management. When fires erupt, we put them out as fast as we can, trying to prevent devastating fires like the Bootleg Fire. But the result of putting fires out fast over decade after decade after decade is that a lot of fuels build up on the floor of the forest. In addition, we have a lot of forests that are second-growth forests, with trees planted very close together, and they all grow up at about the same height and their canopies are touching each other, which makes it very easy for the fire to spread from tree to tree to tree. So you throw in the combination of longer, hotter, dryer summers and second-growth forests, and you have the perfect recipe for infernos like the big fires we have been seeing out West. To reduce the risk of these devastating fires in the short-run, we have two basic tools. One is, we reduce the grass and undergrowth that fuels the fire--we sometimes call that mowing--and then we do prescribed burns, and the second is, we thin the forest. Now, thinning the forest works better in some forests than in others. For ponderosa pine, it works really well. You spread out those pine trees. They would never have grown so close together. In the old days, when fires regularly swept through, they would kill the younger trees. The older trees would survive, widely spaced trees. They would burn up the fuel on the floor of the forest, and it worked well. Other forests--wetter forests, Douglas fir forests, other types of forests-- we are still trying to figure out exactly the best way to do forest management to reduce fire risk. The Bootleg Fire did show the effect of these types of efforts. Over the last decades, ecologists have been working in the Sycan Marsh Preserve. They have been thinning out the forest, and they have been using prescribed fires. So they have been reducing the number of ponderosa pines to make it a less fire-prone forest. As the Bootleg Fire came into the preserve, firefighters on the ground report the flames didn't jump as easily or readily from treetop to treetop; they went back to the ground. Going back to the ground, where there had been prescribed fire, they didn't burn as quickly. The fire moved a lot more slowly, and, in addition, it is easier for firefighters to get into the front of the fire. So the thinning and burning of the Sycan Marsh Preserve are strong proof of why we need to use these tools, with science-informed adjustments resulting in the most effective strategies for different kinds of forests. But, again, those strategies may not work as well in other types of forests, and we need the best science. I have asked the head of the Forest Service to get us the best science so we can apply the best strategies to make different types of forests more fire- resilient. But we need to be able to fund such efforts on a much more massive scale. Out in Oregon, we have 2.3 million acres that have been approved environmentally to be treated that aren't treated because we haven't had the funds. So this infrastructure bill is an opportunity to address so much of the work that needs to be done to make the forest more fire- resilient. Well, I am pleased to say that the bill is going to have quite a bit in it, and I really am pleased with this. I have been pushing for this for years, that we need to spend not millions but billions of dollars in forest management. So $8 billion of wildfire-related funding is included, and that will go out through the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior; $2.4 billion for hazardous fuels reduction efforts; $2.1 billion for efforts to restore ecosystems on a broader scale in a fashion that will help reduce the vulnerability of the forests and other ecosystems to fire; $1 billion to help fund wildfire mitigation activities for at-risk communities; $650 million for rehabilitating areas burned by fires; and $600 million to give firefighters the pay raises they deserve and to increase the year-round workforce. For years, I have been saying that one of the problems we have is a big attrition rate for firefighters. They go out for a season, and then the job is over, and they have to find other jobs. When they find those other jobs, well, they are not there to fight the fire the next season. Crew bosses are essential. You don't want to lose these experienced crew bosses. So what is the answer? Well, part of the answer is, let's create year-round jobs with decent pay so that when you are not doing firefighting directly, you are doing fire prevention by working on forest management projects, and I think that idea is starting to gain some traction. We also have funding in here to increase the collaborative forest landscape restoration projects, CFLR projects. A CFLR collaborative brings together the stakeholders from every perspective--from the environmental side, from the timber side, from all sides in between-- and they work out what they refer to as a prescription for a specific forest. They go out, and in the beginning, when they don't really have a great trust relationship, they go out together, and they will go through the acreage and mark the trees. Then later on, as the trust grows, they write the prescription, and they know it will get implemented as they desire, and they can get a lot more work done. Do you know what? It means this thinning operation, this forest treatment operation, stays out of the courts. That is very important because if we are just treating forests through timber sales that are always hung up in disputes in the courts, we are not getting the job done. This effort to increase the role of these collaboratives puts people in the room who have been traditional opponents. They are talking to each other, and they are working out plans together. They find out they actually sometimes like each other. So we need a lot more of these collaboratives. We have in Oregon close to two dozen collaboratives. Only four are federally funded. So by increasing the funding, we enable more collaboratives to do a lot more work, and that would be a very good thing. I spoke to the billions of dollars, but you know what--these couple billion dollars is not enough. I will be introducing legislation modeled on the Great American Outdoors Act to fund $30 billion in hazardous fuel treatments across our public lands over the next 5 years. That is closer to the scale we need to undertake to manage these forests. It used to be you thought about, well, when do I want to go out and hike on the Pacific Crest Trail? Well, August has the least chance of rain. Now it is like whatever you do, think twice about going out in August because you will be dodging forest fires. It has happened to my wife Mary and me a number of times now. We planned to hike in the southern part of the Pacific Crest Trail, and twice we had to move to the northern part. We hiked in the northern part twice and had to dodge forest fires. One time, it was the fire that erupted and put the whole Columbia Gorge on fire. They had fireworks on the Fourth of July. Just last year, we were hiking starting on the Warm Springs Reservation, and other hikers said: Hey, did you know that there is already a fire on the Warm Springs Reservation--right where we were. Well, the wind was blowing the other way. We hadn't smelled the smoke. You are out of cell phone range. You are up in the mountains. We hadn't heard that. But it reflects the fact that you have to worry now when hiking because the forest is so vulnerable. It is so dry. It so easily turns into a fire that can move very quickly, especially if there is a wind. I have worked to get funding for the National Guard to be able to help fight fires over the last 4 years, including 1,500 members of the Oregon National Guard who have been trained. They have been out helping on this Bootleg Fire, so that is great. We have been working to enable FEMA to deliver disaster assistance more quickly to the communities impacted by catastrophic fires. And we have sat to recognize that we need to tackle the issue of smoke. We didn't used to talk about smoke in Oregon, but it was smoke from burning our grass seed fields, because the way to get grass seed very pure was to burn fields every year. So we had this haze throughout the summer. Well, it was very unhelpful to people's health to be breathing that smoke. So eventually we said: No, no, no, we are not going to burn the fields in that fashion. But now we have the smoke from the forest fires, and--wouldn't you know it--when I was home last weekend, I expected to see a lot of smoke. There was a previous moment where I drove 600 miles during the Labor Day fires last year, and I never got out of the smoke for 600 miles. This time, I was in blue skies. And then I looked and saw that the weather patterns were driving the smoke from our fires into Montana, and it was going up in the jet stream. It was swirling around. There was a lot of smoke here in DC from the fires out West. Well, so it is a national issue. In fact, I guess the index for air quality in New York City surged to 157, and anything above 100 is pretty dangerous. But that just shows the level of challenge that we are addressing. So we need to tackle the smoke, and that is why I am introducing the Smoke-Ready Communities Act and the Wildfire Smoke Emergency Declaration Act. We need to recognize the threat not just from the fires but also the impact of the smoke on communities. So we need to have a way to respond and create a national emergency related to it. We need to prepare our communities to be ready for the smoke, to have some kind of air-filtered locations where people with asthma and other healthcare conditions can escape and get to clean air when the air quality drops so dramatically. And we need to protect our farm workers. So I will be introducing the Farmworker Smoke and Heat Protection Act. We lost one of our farm workers due to heat when this heat dome struck Oregon a couple of weeks ago. There in Portland, where my house is, it was 116 degrees, plus a wind that was blowing that turned it into a hairdryer. You stepped outside, and you were just watching the plants just shrivel up. And we were fortunate. We converted our gas furnace to a heat pump so that we could heat our house with renewable electricity rather than fossil fuels. The side benefit is we got air-conditioning. So we had air-conditioning for the first time. But so many houses in Oregon don't have it. Think about the impact of 116-degree heat in a place where it is rare to have a single day ever break 100 degrees during the summer. So we need Federal standards related to smoke. We need to work with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration to ensure that farm workers get the assistance they need to be able to work safely. I can't underscore enough the importance of us coming together as a nation to tackle these western fires. At this moment, the fire season is just beginning in Oregon. It feels like we have been in it forever. It is just July. We have August, September, October. Well, we just turned the calendar onto August--August, September, October. We had fires starting early in the year, as early as March, burning late in the year. In California, it is a year-round proposition already, and Oregon isn't far behind. My fervent hope is that with fires engulfing Oregon and California and Idaho Montana and others, it will be a wake-up call that we need in this Chamber to realize that we have a responsibility to act and to act quickly. We have an opportunity to make an impact, but we have to have the policy knowledge and the political determination to take that quick action

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I rise today to add my voice to my colleagues in remembering and paying our respects to our dear friend and former colleague Senator Carl Levin, whom we sadly lost last night. My colleagues have been sharing their stories and their experiences of this incredible human being, this amazing Senator, and I want to share one of my own, a story of how he made an impact on my life and my approach to being a Senator. It was back in 2009, when we had an enormous collapse of our economic system. I came here as a freshman Senator, and we were working to say what happened and how can we prevent this from happening again. A lot of what happened was enormously leveraged bets made in the Wall Street casino. A staff member of mine kept saying, you have got to read this essay by Chairman Volcker about how we take and shut down this Wall Street casino and how it puts our entire economy at risk and will do so again in the future again if we don't act After two or three times that my team member had approached me on this, I put out an email to all of the Senators and said: Here is the challenge that is presented, and here is what we need to do to protect the future economy. Would anyone join me in undertaking to establish this Volcker rule to shut down the Wall Street casino? The next day, I came to the floor of the Senate, and Carl Levin comes up to me. And he says: About your email from yesterday, about your email, I want to join you in that project. He knew a lot about this issue, and he had staff members who knew a lot about this issue. Then he went on to say: And you may think because you are new and I have been here for a while that I am going to sweep in and take this over. He said: But I want to tell you, I am not going to do that. I don't want to do that. I want to work in full partnership with you, together. And that is what it became, this full partnership: our team members working closely together, Carl and I working closely together, no one leading, if you will, or, to put it differently, leading together. And it had many, many chapters in this effort. It was not an easy path to say the big banks needed to change how they operate. But what struck me in how he conducted himself was he expressed not egoism but altruism. He didn't focus on what he should do to advance himself politically; he wanted to know what we can do to serve the best interests of this Nation, not grandstanding but problem- solving to make the United States of America work better for everyone. And so we proceeded. During the debate on Dodd-Frank, we had an opportunity to put forward an amendment to establish the Volcker rule. Colleagues across the aisle were none too happy about that, and it shut down the Senate for a full day. So Carl and I kept working during that day to say: No, this should be debated. This should be voted on. But eventually, our second-degree amendment died when the first-degree amendment was taken down. But our team members had worked through the night to make it a germane amendment so it would have survived had that not taken place. So then we went, in partnership, over to speak with Mr. Frank, Congressman Frank on the House side. And Congressman Frank joined in the battle. And we kept pushing, and eventually, in conference, the Volcker rule was brought to life. And then we started partnering and trying to prevent the rulemaking from tearing it down. And Carl would call me up and say: Here is what is happening. What are we going to do? And we would write a letter and we would call the regulators and we would rally our fellow Senators. He just kept at it. Like a dog with a bone, he was not going to let go. He was tenacious, saying: This matters. Every piece of it matters. We are going to get this done. So when we think about the fact that that Wall Street casino no longer threatens the American economy because it no longer operates as it did, well, we have Senator Carl Levin to thank for that. There is so much more he did here. Colleagues have been speaking to other chapters of his work, but this was the chapter I was involved in. I think it said so much about who he was. His policy expertise, his humble approach to the fight, his willingness to take on powerful actors, that is truly what it is to be a public servant. I wish Carl were here so we could have him hear these stories from us directly. I am thinking now about his colleagues representing Michigan who have followed in his footsteps. They are here: Debbie Stabenow, Gary Peters. I know they are inspired by the example he set. A couple of years ago, I had a chance to debate in Michigan and called up Carl so we could get together for dinner, together with his wife Barbara. And, boy, he was just interested in every aspect of what we were doing here and how we were, hopefully, making the Senate work better. And just not so long ago, he wrote an op-ed about how to make the Senate work better by enabling the minority to slow things down, to have leverage but keep this body from being paralyzed. So he continued to think and to engage right up to his final days. So, Barbara, we are thinking about you. We are holding you and your family in the light, and we are doing so with such appreciation of the life and work of Carl Levin. Thank you.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 87, S. 65.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I know of no further debate on the bill, as amended.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to and that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, this is a critical time for America. It is a moment in which the actions we take or don't take will affect the very design of our government for generations to come. Our Founders had a vision that we all are created equal. In our initial Constitution, it wasn't fully manifested, but we have worked through several hundred years to come to that point that we recognize that every American should be able to participate in the direction of their country. We had some key moments in that national debate. I was always fascinated that when my father was born in 1919, women couldn't vote in America. We had all kinds of other barriers for communities of color--for Black Americans, for Native Americans--and those barriers we struck down time after time after time. Then we came to 1965, and we said there are still so many ways that communities are trying to keep every citizen from participating in voting, and we are going to make sure that ends from this point forward. President Johnson said that the power of the vote is the most significant tool ever developed to strike down injustice. It is a powerful tool. It is really the beating heart of our Republic, that ballot box, the ability to say: This is what I like, and this is what I don't like. This is who I like, and this is who I don't think will carry the policies I believe in. At its heart, this is a vision of power flowing up from the people, not down from the powerful, but here is the problem: The powerful don't like that vision of America, so they have many, many strategies designed to try to override that founding vision of participation. They have legions of lawyers, and they have legions of lobbyists. There are three drug lobbyists for every single Member of Congress. They have the ability to fund mass media campaigns to try to change the way that issues are framed. They have the ability to participate with dark money in elections that manifests itself in those endless attack ads you see on social media and on television. They have all of these abilities, but the thing they really fear is the ballot box, and right now in America, they are going after the ballot box. We have to decide if we are going to defend it or not. That is the challenge that faces us, and it is a challenge that shouldn't be that difficult because every single one of us in this Chamber took an oath to the Constitution. The Constitution lays out the power, the vision of government of, by, and for the people. It starts off in the Constitution ``we the people,'' not ``we the powerful''--``we the people.'' This assault has now spread to 18 States and 35 new, restrictive voting laws. These laws attack the ability to vote, and they are targeting Black Americans, communities of color, poor Americans, and college students. They make it harder to register. They make it easier to purge voters off the voting rolls. You can't vote if you are not on a voting roll. They attack early voting. They attack vote by mail. They attack curbside voting. They make it hard to drop off your ballot. They make it hard for people with disabilities to fill out their ballots. In some cases, they are creating a strategy of voter intimidation by allowing poll watchers to essentially hover over you as you vote and challenge your legitimacy to vote. They have even decided, in some cases, to make it so that, if you are in line to vote and it is a hot day, nobody can give you a drink of water. All of these strategies are about biasing America in its process so the powerful will run this place rather than the people. I would love to hear a Senator come to this floor and defend these attacks on the right to vote because, if you are not defending the right to vote, you are not defending the Constitution, and every one of us took an oath to that Constitution. We also have a challenge with the courts. It is the Supreme Court that said that it is OK to have hundreds of millions of dollars of dark money--and nobody knows where it came from--in our elections. Now, if you or I donate $100 to someone, it has to be disclosed. Everyone knows I made that donation. Yet if a powerful corporation or a billionaire puts $1 million or $100 million into an election, he can do it and remain in complete secrecy. That is why it is called dark money, and that is what the Court unleashed with its Citizens United decision. Then the Court said: That is not enough. We are going to go after voting rights by undermining the 1965 Voting Rights Act, even though this Chamber has reauthorized that act on a bipartisan basis time after time after time. First, the Court said in Shelby County v. Holder that preclearance no longer applies. So a State that had been routinely attempting to block citizens from voting no longer had to have new changes in its voting laws precleared to make sure it did not have a prejudicial effect against a targeted group of voters. Within days, chambers in this country were plotting about how to stop people from voting. The Supreme Court was maybe just so idealistic that they said nobody would ever do this again in America and that no chamber would ever do this in America. If that were right, if that were their thought, they were wrong because, within days, those plots unfolded. Then we have the most recent Supreme Court decision of Brnovich v. DNC, and Alito says that making voting inconvenient doesn't make access unequal. Well, let's just explain to this Justice, who apparently knows nothing about how voting really works, that when you make it inconvenient for a targeted group, you make access unequal. It is exactly the intent of these laws to make access unequal. Elena Kagan, in her dissent, said of the equal chance to participate in our democracy--referring to the 1965 Voting Rights Act--that this law, of all laws, should never be diminished by this Court. Section 2 is the most recent section attacked by the Supreme Court, and it bars procedures that result in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of one's race or color. Well, one of the issues was from Arizona. It was a situation wherein you had no easy places to drop off your ballot in large Native American reservations. So by banning the ability of people to collect ballots and drop them off, you essentially make it extraordinarily difficult for this targeted community to vote, and that was the intent. That was the intent. Now, this law, section 2, didn't say anything about intent. It said the result. It didn't say it had to be a denial. It said an abridgement--in other words, an infringement--on the ability to cast a ballot, but Alito doesn't care. The majority on the Supreme Court doesn't care about defending the right to vote, the pulsating heart of our Republic. So where does that leave us? It leaves us as the critical factor to defend the Constitution. The Supreme Court won't do it. The States are undermining it. It is our responsibility--our responsibility--to set out those basic standards that defend the ability of every American to vote. That is why I am here on the floor tonight, talking about the For the People Act. It is called S. 1. Why? Because defending the right to vote is our No. 1 responsibility. That is the challenge we face, and if we fail in this challenge, then across this country, in State after State after State, communities are being targeted to make it hard for them to vote, and it will be harder for them to vote. It will change the outcome, and it will destroy the idea of equal representation. We cannot let that happen. Today, I met with members of the Texas Legislature. They have come here in order to stop the Texas House of Representatives from passing these types of laws that are targeted at stopping specific groups from voting. What are the types of laws that are being considered by the Texas Legislature right now? One is they don't like the idea of Christian communities voting on Sundays and getting in buses to go to the polls together. They call it Souls to the Polls. So they said: Do you know what? It will be against the law for more than three of you to get in a car and drive together to the polls. Are you kidding me? Has anybody heard of the right of association? Are any Senators here caring about defending the right of association in our Constitution? Can you imagine something so diabolical as to say: ``All three of you can get in a car but not four,'' and ``Do you know why? Because we want to stop you from using vans or buses to go vote''? That is crazy. It is as crazy as the Georgia effort to stop people from passing out water in long voter lines. What else is the Texas Legislature trying to do? It is infringing on overnight voting, voting for people who have long hours, who are working during the day. Overnight voting really made the ballot accessible. They are attacking drive-through voting. They are attacking online registration. They are attacking assistance to disabled Americans. They are making it easier to purge voters off the lists of voters, the registration lists. They even have in that bill stopping election workers from sending out absentee ballot applications. Is it a crime to be able to help your fellow citizen apply for a ballot? Yes, if Texas passes that law. They are also engaged in a process of voter intimidation by allowing partisan poll watchers to freely intimidate voters. That is wrong on so many levels. Intimidation is something that has a long history in our country. It is a very racist history. I remember one of the stories after the Civil War. You had a situation wherein you formed a group of horses surrounding a ballot poll place to prevent Black Americans from being able to get to the polls to vote. There are all kinds of other voter intimidation strategies. They were racist strategies. These efforts to stop Black Americans from voting are racist strategies. It is simply, simply wrong, and we have the responsibility to end these practices. The effort to silence the voices of the American people, to stop them from having a say through their votes, is just fundamental to the vision of a government of, by, and for the people. Citizens wonder why it is they are hearing that billionaires don't pay any taxes and that some of the most profitable corporations in America don't pay any taxes. Well, it goes back to the many advantages the wealthy have in influencing the outcomes. Those reams of liars, those platoons of lobbyists, those media campaigns, that dark money, and now the effort to block the ballot box, that is how afraid the powerful are that the voice of the people will say: Invest in American families rather than tax breaks for billionaires. Tackle healthcare and housing and education. Create living-wage jobs rather than new tax cuts for the already wealthy and influential. What we have is a battle between the powerful and privileged holding onto their lever of power, trembling at the idea that American voters can get to the polls and determine to block it. They are afraid that, if voters can get to the polls, they might elect people who are fighting for Main Street rather than Wall Street. They are afraid they might invest--those elected individuals--in quality, affordable healthcare--and healthcare should be a right, not a privilege--that we might invest in housing because there is a tremendous housing shortage across America and that we might invest in education because education is the path to success in our complex society. So how do we address this? We pass S. 1, the For the People Act. We do it by following the example of men and women who sat in this Chamber half a century ago and used their power to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act to give every American a full opportunity to vote. Once again, this more than half a century later, we are called upon to fight to defend our Constitution, to defend the ``we the people'' vision and ensure that every American can freely and fairly cast a ballot. This bill sets out basic national standards for how elections are conducted in accordance with the constitutional power specifically stated for Congress to be able to so set such standards to ensure that every American has equal freedom to vote, equal opportunity regardless of who they are, the color of their skin, or where they live. It ensures this access by protecting vote-by-mail, early voting, and fairness on ballot drop boxes. Why are early voting and vote-by-mail so scary to the powerful? Here is why. On election day, there are so many ways to stop people from voting. First of all, you reduce the number of precincts in the communities you don't want to vote, so there are fewer places to vote. Then you put them in places where there is no parking. That makes it harder. Then you reduce the number of precinct workers in those locations, so there are really long lines. You have heard about those lines--3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours, 6 hours, 7 hours. Then you tell people you can't even give people a glass of water to those who are waiting in those lines. Then you intimidate people by allowing partisan poll watchers to hover over people while they vote or one single person to challenge the legitimacy of the right to vote of every single person who walks in that door, because that is another one of the bills that is being passed in State after State. Election day can be easily manipulated, and there are even more ways to do it. One is--and this happens--you send out false information about what day is election day. You send out texts that say: So sorry you missed the election last Tuesday. Hope you make it to the polls next time. So people think they missed the vote. They are, like, well, I thought it was next Tuesday, but I got this text, so it was last Tuesday. You put out false information about where the voting location is. You proceed to make sure you change the location from the previous time so people get confused about where to go and vote in the wrong precinct, and then you make it illegal for their vote to be counted if they voted in the wrong precinct. Election day is easy to manipulate. The antidote is early voting and vote-by-mail, and that is why the powerful are attacking early voting and vote-by-mail. Now, my State, Oregon, was the first State to adopt vote-by-mail. It did so when we had a Republican house and a Republican senate in my State. Utah was a major early State to do vote-by-mail. It is considered a red State, a Republican State. This isn't blue or red. This is American. This is our Constitution. A second thing that the For the People Act does is stop billionaires from buying elections with dark money. You know, no matter if you poll Republicans, Independents, or Democrats, they all believe billionaires shouldn't be able to buy elections with dark money. They know that if a billionaire can create the equivalent of a stadium sound system that drowns out the voice of the people, that that is just wrong. Think about how Americans thought of those early debates in the town square. Everyone got their chance to stand up and have their say. You didn't allow someone to erect a big sound system to drown out the people you didn't want to speak. No. Give everyone--that is kind of the heart, isn't it, of our First Amendment? Free speech. Everyone should be able to have their voice heard and not be drowned out by advertisements by anonymous billionaires buying elections. The third thing this act does is it ends partisan gerrymandering. It creates independent Commissions--equal numbers of Republicans, Democrats, Independents--and therefore fights for the vision of equal representation. Now, I have heard some folks salivating over increased gerrymandering, hoping to influence that other institution down the hall, saying: Hey, we have an extra 15 votes we shouldn't have right now. Let's get 25 with increased gerrymandering. Well, it is just wrong to attack the principle of equal representation. You don't have equal representation if the system is rigged so that politicians choose their voters rather than voters choosing their politicians. The fourth thing the For the People Act does, it takes on ethics reforms and targets corruption. Again, whether you ask Democrats, Republicans, or Independents, they want the corruption out of our system. They want to ensure that public officials serve the public, not some private cause or serve themselves; that we are going to do the people's business, not the business of some outside billionaire or some outside corporation. These principles are widely supported across the country. The people sometimes say: Why don't you have any Republican sponsors on this bill? Why don't Republicans support this bill? Across this Nation, Republicans overwhelmingly support these four principles in this bill. It is incredibly bipartisan. But not here in this Chamber because here is where the powerful speak, and the minority leader has said: I am going to lock down my Senators from supporting these efforts to defend our Constitution. I would be embarrassed--I would be embarrassed if a leader of a caucus said it is going to lock me down to prevent me from defending the Constitution. I would be more than embarrassed; I would be alarmed. I would be outraged, as should every Member of this body across the aisle--should be outraged that they are being told they are locked down from defending the Constitution. Next month, America will celebrate the 56th anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the most powerful, significant advancement this Nation has ever made to realize that ``we the people'' vision of America. Lyndon Johnson called August 6, 1965--the day he signed that law--``a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield.'' He said: ``The heart of the act is plain. Wherever, by clear and objective standards, States and counties use regulations, or laws, or tests to deny the right to vote, then they will be struck down.'' Well, that is our job, to do what President Johnson thought was accomplished when he signed the Voting Rights Act--to strike down regulations, laws, or tests designed to deny the right to vote to targeted groups of Americans across this country. So let's do our job. Put this bill on the floor, and get it passed. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Would my colleague yield for a question?

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order, following the remarks of Senator Blackburn.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, that the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 289.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m., Thursday, July 15; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; further, that upon the conclusion of morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the Liang nomination; further, that at 11 a.m., all postcloture time on the Liang and Remy nominations expire in the order in which cloture was invoked; that the cloture vote on the Cunningham nomination occur at 1:45 p.m.; finally, that if any nominations are confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 92, S. Res. 107.

Mr. MERKLEY. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, that the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session for a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, every day that I have the honor of coming to work in the hallowed halls of this building--a symbol to the country and to the world of America's commitment to liberty and to justice, freedom, and democracy--I am humbled. I am humbled by the faith and responsibility that the people of Oregon have placed in me to advocate on their behalf. I am humbled by the responsibility of exercising the power of this office to use the opportunity to lift up all Americans, to create a foundation for families to thrive, to tackle significant challenges like human rights and global warming. But among all these responsibilities one is the highest, which is to defend our constitutional Republic, and in that Constitution, the single most important power given to every American is the right to a voice and a vote, a voice and a vote in the decisions of this government and the direction of our Nation. As we saw all too clearly on January 6, when this very building was attacked by a mob intent on burning the ballots of millions of Americans, democracy based on free and fair elections is far from guaranteed. Each generation, each new set of Senators and House Members has the responsibility to defend it anew. The sad truth, however, is that a violent mob storming the Capitol isn't the only way to attack our democracy. It can also be attacked by the quiet plotting of powerful and privileged individuals who hate the concept of government of, by, and for the people, and they work to undermine and corrupt the workings of our Republic to produce, instead, government by and for the powerful. In his inaugural address, our second President, John Adams, remarked that, ``we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.'' Well, my friends, our democracy--our elections are being infected. Our elections are under siege from gerrymandering, which destroys the principle of equal representation. Our system is under siege from dark money, enabling billionaires and powerful corporations to buy our elections. It is under siege by State laws being passed week to week right now that target specific communities to prevent them from voting, thereby manipulating the outcome of elections. Indeed, at least 22 laws have been enacted in 14 States since January to infect our free and fair elections to deliberately erect barriers meant to make it harder for targeted groups of Americans to vote, to silence the voices of students and low-income Americans, of Native Americans and seniors, of Black and Brown Americans who have fought too long and too hard to have their voice and their vote stolen from them, ripped from them now. We have a responsibility as United States Senators to ensure every American's freedom to vote, just as this institution sought to do more than half a century ago, when in this Chamber we passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. We have a responsibility to ensure that every American's voice is heard and that our elections reflect the will of the people. We can fulfill that responsibility by enacting national standards for voting to ensure that every American can have a say in the key decisions impacting their daily lives, a ``say'' expressed through the ballot box. That ballot box is the beating heart of our Republic, and those who seek to erect barriers to citizens having access to it are committing a crime against our democracy. We have to stop that criminal action against the rights of Americans. We must create those national standards by taking up this bill, the For the People bill, debating it, and ultimately passing it, to defend our Constitution. The For the People Act is comprehensive. It does popular, commonsense things to put the American people back in charge of their government and their country. It sets national standards so every American has equal freedom to vote, no matter where they live. In this country, if you are an American, you have the right to vote, plain and simple, full stop. It doesn't matter what your ZIP code is or your income or the color of your skin or your religious beliefs. You have the right to vote. Many of the State laws restricting voting are designed to eliminate early voting--in person or by mail--and we know exactly why. It is because the leaders in these States know how easy it is to manipulate the vote on election day. In these targeted communities, the States' leaders wants to be able to decrease the number of polling places, reduce the hours, change the locations, put polling places in locations with limited parking, put out false information about the date of the election, and purge targeted voters from the roll of registered voters, knowing that when they show up on election day, it is too late to correct the error and be able to exercise their right to vote. The antidote to these horrendous, racist attacks on the freedom and right of every American to vote is early voting in person and by mail, and this act guarantees 15 days of early voting. It sets forth the opportunity to acquire an absentee ballot, to return the ballot by mail or through dedicated dropboxes. The second big goal in national standards set forth in the For the People Act is to stop billionaires from buying elections. Elections in America are intended to reflect the will of the people, not the will of the powerful and privileged. Thomas Jefferson once described this as the ``mother principle,'' saying that ``governments are republican only in proportion to how they embody the will of the people.'' If the megawealthy can flood our campaigns with billions of dollars sent through shell companies, untraceable money, and manipulate the outcome of the elections, then Jefferson's mother principle is murdered because the outcome serves the powerful, not the people. The For the People Act says the people should have an equal chance of being heard and that the people listening ought to know who is actually behind those voices and those messages. It does that by creating an ``honest ads'' policy so political ads people see online have to disclose who is paying for them, and it does that by requiring the disclosure of megadonors contributing to political campaigns. Now, if you or I give a modest donation to a campaign, that campaign has to disclose who we are. Shouldn't the same thing that is true for an average American be true for the megadonors? This standard sets that equal standard. Third, the national standards set forth in this bill restore equal representation by ending gerrymandering, the process by which we draw congressional districts to favor one party over another and, by doing so, attack the sacred principle of equal representation. This creates a lot of bias in the House of Representatives down the hall. Take Michigan. In 2012, 2014, and 2016, the majority of the Michiganders voted for one party at every level of government, but because of gerrymandering, the other party held a decisive advantage in the statehouse, in the State senate, and in the congressional House delegation. The For the People Act defends, restores the principle of equal representation. It does it by creating independent redistricting commissions, made up equally of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. That means candidates running for office actually have to use the power of their ideas, the persuasion of their personality, not a rigged system to hold power. Finally, the standards in this bill target corruption by addressing and eliminating conflicts of interest. Public servants should serve the public, not themselves. That includes Members of Congress, the administration, and for the first time ever, the Supreme Court. This bill does that by striking down outrageous and corrupt conflicts of interest, strengthening divestment requirements, saying that the President and Vice President have to use a blind trust or limit their personal holdings to assets that don't pose a potential conflict of interest. It slows the revolving door between public service and K Street. It requires Cabinet Secretaries to recuse themselves from any issues in which a previous employer or client has a financial interest. The bill requires candidates for Vice President or President to disclose their tax returns to prevent hidden conflicts of interest. It creates a code of ethics for the Supreme Court, something all other Federal judges already have. None of these four principles is about helping one political party over the other. In fact, the provisions I have just laid out are wildly popular among the American people. An overwhelming supermajority of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents support these four principles. It is as bipartisan as you can get. Even when it is broke into specific provisions, three out of four Americans--Democrats, Republicans, Independents--say they support these reforms because they believe in the vision of government of, by, and for the people. It is in our DNA. Americans believe that dark money should not be able to flood our elections. They believe billionaires and corporations should not be able to buy elections. They believe our Nation is ill-served by corrupt conflicts of interest. They believe in the vision and ideals of our ``we the people'' Republic, and this bill is meant to do just one thing: make real the promise of democracy for all Americans. But powerful special interests don't want that. It threatens their hold on power by ending the ways they have rigged the system, and so they are all about striking down this bill. Why is that? We hear how Republican leaders say that they like this rigged system. Apparently, they like dark money in campaigns helping to buy elections. Apparently, they like targeting groups of individuals to prevent them from voting, taking us back to the racist efforts that existed before the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Apparently, they like gerrymandering, thinking it is a sort of the political power down the hall, which political scientists says it is. But should it be principle or power that we fight for here? It should be the principle and the oath of office we took to uphold the Constitution. Standing before a crowd on a November afternoon to dedicate the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg, 4 months after that momentous battle, President Lincoln remarked that they were gathered together to not only dedicate it to the men who had fallen in battle, but to the ideal for which they gave their lives, ``That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.'' Today, it is our responsibility to carry that ideal forward and to ensure that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the United States of America. We in this Chamber must pass the For the People Act. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MERKLEY

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

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise to support amendment No. 2103, which addresses a very important issue in the world, which is the issue of governments that undertake to destroy populations, either in other countries or within their own country; that is, to commit genocide. Now, this topic comes up because China is committing genocide against its own Uighur population--a million Uighurs who are enslaved, who are trapped, who are assaulted in every possible way by the official authorities operating out of Beijing. The finding of genocide is one that the State Department takes very seriously. It involves long investigations, collection of evidence, analysis. It is not something to say lightly. But we now have two Secretaries of State who have led our State Department through this process and reached the same conclusion--Secretary Pompeo, under President Trump, and Secretary Blinken, under President Biden. And both find that this is, in fact, genocide. Now, at this very moment, athletes are preparing to compete in the Olympic Games in China, and I find it horrific that the prestige of the Games is going to be carried on for a country that is committing genocide. Now, we have a Commission that works on human rights issues, known as the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and it hauls a whole team of experts who work to analyze human rights issues. This commission, which is bipartisan and bicameral and includes executive branch appointees, when they are actually appointed, has held a hearing. At that hearing, various experts came and testified on what China is doing. It reinforced what the Secretary of State under our former President and the Secretary of State under our current President found: Genocide is being conducted by the government in China against the Uighur population And that is not all China is doing. There are other afflicted groups that it is assaulting. In addition, it has proceeded to start stripping the political rights of the people of Hong Kong. It is very much in the news. We have seen the citizens protesting in the streets, hundreds of thousands, saying: China, honor the commitment you made when Britain transferred Hong Kong back under a 50-year agreement to China. And China has not honored that agreement. Now, China, when it was awarded the Games back in 2015 to be held in 2022--7 years in advance--made human rights promises to the International Olympic Committee--promises that have not been upheld. In fact, during those years, China has become an even worse violator of human rights in Hong Kong, in Xinjiang, and in other ethnic areas, including Tibet. So we have echoes of 1936--the year the summer Olympics were held in Germany and Hitler was in charge. He used those Olympic Games to shine prestige on his country and to essentially help distract enormously from his already horrific actions against Jewish Germans and other groups within Germany. So how is it here, nearly a century later, that, again, the Olympics are going to be used to shine a little bit of light and a lot of prestige on a country engaged in genocide? I want to compliment my colleague Senator Romney of Utah. He has placed in the underlying bill, as it came out of the Foreign Relations Committee, a provision that says: When the Olympics are held, there should be a diplomatic boycott to protest and draw attention to this egregious situation. I hope, also, that the sponsors of those games will start to withdraw their sponsorships. Now, my friend and colleague Senator Romney is an expert on the Olympic Games because he organized the Olympic Games in Utah. Nobody in America probably knows more about what it takes to prepare for them. And it is not, at this moment, possible for the structure that has been established to host the athletes to be redone and to pivot for just next year, which I find unfortunate, but I understand the point. So let's do this together. Let's send a strong message to the Olympic Committee, the IOC, that never again should they allow a country to host the Olympic Games that is engaged in genocide. This should be a message that every American can say together--that never should a country be given the prestige of hosting the games when they are committing genocide. Never should a country be able to host the games when it is something like what China is doing to the Uighur population--enslaving them, stripping them of their dignity, their autonomy, their culture, controlling them in every way, enslaving them. Never again should the Games be able to be hosted by a country like China that is restricting the political rights of Hong Kong--what China is doing, stripping the freedom of speech, stripping the freedom of assembly, and breaking the deal that it signed when the deal was struck with Britain for the return of Hong Kong. So this amendment, cosponsored by Senator Rubio, who is the cochair in the Senate of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China; cosponsored by Senator Romney, who knows more about the Olympic Games than anybody else in this country; cosponsored by Senator Young, who has been a terrific champion against the abuse of citizens in Yemen and the abuse of citizens in Burma--let's adopt this amendment as part of this package while we are on the topic of China, while we are on the topic of trade. Let's not let this moment bypass us without saying with a unified voice that this is wrong, and that the Olympics, which were designed to lift up the human spirit, to celebrate the best of competition, to have kind of the thrills and the agonies of victory and defeat--that never should the Games, the focal point of world attention, be hosted by a country that is committing genocide. Thank you.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, last September, the Echo Mountain Complex Fire swept through Lincoln County in my home State of Oregon. Nearly 300 homes were destroyed. At least 50 other buildings and structures were burned as well. In just a few days, the lives that residents spent decades building literally went up in smoke. These devastated families began looking around for help--for safety and security; for support getting back on their feet and rebuilding their lives. And they quickly found that help coming from the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. Even as the fire raged and families raced out of its path, leaving their homes and belongings behind, the Siletz worked with the Red Cross to open the doors of the Chinook Winds Casino to provide shelter and safety for their displaced neighbors in need. Sadly that safety and security provided by the Siletz was short lived as the casino itself was forced to be evacuated as the fire made its way dangerously close. And with the loss of power and phones lines and people in their cars on the way to the casino while others were leaving, it was hard getting any clear information. How harrowing it must have been for all those who believed they had escaped the worst, only to be forced once more to run from the path of an oncoming inferno. But the Tribe used the casino's shuttles to bring evacuees to the Newport Red Cross site, while staff volunteered to help deliver meals to those in need. Fortunately, the casino was not damaged, and everyone who was there made it to safety. And after the fire subsided, leaving a path of destruction in its wake, the doors of Chinook Winds and its hotel were once again opened to those in need. Families and members of the community who could not be in their homes--whether because those homes were completed gone or damage to roofs and other parts made them unlivable--were able to stay for up to 3 months at no cost to themselves until they could return to their own houses or found a new permanent living situation. But all these months later, many Oregonians impacted by the Echo Mountain Complex Fire are still struggling to rebuild their lives. Many still don't have a place to call home. Fortunately, they once again have the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians looking out for and working with them, in partnership with FEMA, to get them back on their feet. Since March, the Tribe has been hosting FEMA provided trailers on their lands to house Oregonians impacted by the fire until they can find permanent housing--something that could take anywhere from 18 to 24 months in this part of the State that continues to struggle with a shortage of affordable housing. This is the first time in Oregon's history and potentially in the history of the whole country that FEMA has partnered with the leadership of a Tribe to host housing units on Tribal lands. FEMA was originally working with Lincoln County and Lincoln City to put these homes on another site, but that effort was stalled when the Agency found several problems with the site. Hearing about the problems and recognizing the urgent need to get roofs over the heads of these families, the Siletz jumped at the chance to help out. Thanks to the partnership between the Tribe's leaders, FEMA, Lincoln City, which had to change a zoning law to help make it happen, and Siletz Tribal Business Corporation staff, this project was developed and completed in record time--a testament not only to the real need for this help but to everyone's commitment to making it happen. And today, all 25 trailers are fully occupied, and the people living there have developed their own little community to support one another. We all owe a debt of gratitude to the members of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians for not only opening their doors and helping those in need in the middle of two crises--the pandemic and the Echo Mountain Complex Fire--but for continuing to step up and help their neighbors in need all these months later. It really speaks to the spirit of the Tribe and to the entire Oregon community to see that, when times get tough and people are in need of help, they can count on others to be there for them.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, my colleagues have talked about free and fair elections, but I am quite concerned that this bill does quite the opposite. I am really quite stunned that one would think that a bill that dictates exactly how every State has to use an ID law affects the access to the ballot box for every single American, that it would be requested that it would be passed with no process, no possibility of a committee to examine the fact that every single American voter is impacted by this effort to erect a barricade between the voter and the ballot box. I was thinking about how, when we were here on January 6, the boxes that had the electoral college votes--gorgeous, ornate, old wooden boxes were here on the counter, and they are just a symbol of the pulsating heart of our Republic, the ability of every citizen to participate in the vision for their country, how their country will operate, how their children will have an opportunity to thrive--that ballot box. So here is a bill designed to make it harder to get your voice heard, harder to get your ballot counted, being asked to be considered by this Chamber with absolutely no process of committee deliberation. If we had such a process, it would be pointed out that currently millions of Americans don't have the IDs required in this measure. Well, that makes it a lot harder for millions of Americans to vote. It would also be pointed out in the committee process that of those who don't have those IDs, about three times as many Black Americans don't have those IDs as White Americans, even though Black Americans are a much smaller percentage of the American population, which means that this measure is hugely discriminatory against Black Americans. And it is just wrong to engage in that type of discrimination in an effort to manipulate the outcome of elections. Now, it would be quite a different conversation if we had evidence that there were an actual, real problem being addressed. But, fortunately, this has been studied time and time and time again. We had the Governor of Michigan testifying here on Capitol Hill just a few days ago, and we asked when they did the study--the investigation because of the lawsuits that were filed related to the last election-- how many people voted illegally in vote by mail. And that effort to find the evidence of fraud turned out, she said, zero. Zero. And I asked her a question because I was stunned that it was zero. Certainly one person who thought they were a citizen but wasn't a citizen and voted who was found? Zero. Zero. And there is study after study after study. So we understand what this is, and that is what would be explored in committee. It is an effort to make it harder for Americans to vote. It is not about security because there is not a security problem. It is about the fact that this disproportionately affects low-income Americans and Black Americans. So I stand here today considering whether to object because I believe in that vision of Americans having a full, free, fair chance to be involved in their elections, defending the ballot box for every single American, and this bill does the opposite. I object.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, today I am proud to join a number of my colleagues to highlight the importance of S. 1, the For the People Act. The ballot box is the pulsating heart of our government of, by, and for the people. President Lyndon B. Johnson said: The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice. Think about that--``the most powerful instrument ever devised for breaking down injustice.'' It is Robert Kennedy who observed that ``each citizen's right to vote is fundamental to all the other rights of citizenship.'' You know, the opportunity to cast a ballot is not just an opportunity. It is not simply a responsibility. But it is a right--the right--the right that embodies all it means to a republic in which the power flows from the people. Our Nation, however imperfect in the beginning, has worked toward this vision of citizens through the ballot box, driving the vision of our Nation, for over 200 years, overcoming barrier after barrier. We overcame some of the barriers of race with the 14th and 15th Amendments. We overcame the barriers of gender with the 19th Amendment. We overcame barriers that had denied Native Americans the right to vote with the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. We overcame the barriers of Jim Crow with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But now, as we stand in this Chamber, the central right of each citizen's opportunity to participate in the election through the ballot box is again under attack. Right now as we speak, there are 253 bills in 43 States assaulting the right to vote. These efforts are designed to make it harder for students to vote, for low-income Americans to vote, for Native Americans to vote, for seniors to vote, and most insidiously, for Black and Brown Americans to vote. And I say ``most insidiously'' because blocking access to the ballot has been a massive form of systemic racism throughout our history for Black Americans. But all of us in this Chamber have taken an oath to the Constitution. All of us have a responsibility to defend the ballot box. It is our responsibility to knock down the barriers that others would put up to prevent citizens from having the opportunity to participate in our elections. That is exactly what S. 1, For the People, does in the face of the greatest attack on voting rights in this Nation since Jim Crow. This legislation puts the power back where it belongs--in the hands of the people. This bill said that if you believe in the vision of our democratic Republic, then you believe in voter empowerment, not voter intimidation, not voter obstruction, not voter suppression. This bill says that the people should choose their politicians, not the other way around. Gerrymandering attacks the very notion of equal representation that is so important in the social contract of the citizens with their government. So this bill says we will have an independent commission in each State to draw the boundaries of the districts so that we put an end to partisan gerrymandering. This bill says that government of, by, and for the people means you can't have a stadium sound system turned up to full volume, drowning out the voice of the people. And what is that stadium sound system? It is the dark money, hundreds of millions of dollars of unidentified funds racing and coursing through our elections across this country, doing attack ads, with citizens having no idea where that funding is coming from. That is simply wrong. This bill says that public servants should work in the public interest, not to line their own pockets, not to serve simply the wealthy or the powerful or the privileged. These points are straightforward. We have been fighting to improve and guarantee the vision of government of, by, and for th people over our entire history. Now, to protect our system of voting, the foundation of our Republic, we have to get this bill over the finish line. We have an extraordinary team working to make that happen, Senators with sturdy, clear ideals and excellent ideas and grit and determination coming together to save our Republic: Senator Klobuchar, who will be speaking next--author of several of the key provisions of this bill, including bipartisan provisions--who tomorrow will be chairing the first-ever Senate hearing on this landmark legislation; Senator Padilla, who knows exactly what it is like to be a secretary of state and has been an amazing champion for voter empowerment in his home State; Senator Van Hollen, who led the EMPOWER Act and the Restoring Integrity to America's Elections Act; Senator Whitehouse, who authored the DISCLOSE Act portion of the bill and is a tremendous leader on campaign finance reform. Today, our Nation is at a crossroads. Are we going to be a nation for ``we the people,'' or are we going to be a nation for ``we the powerful''? We must pass the For the People Act to save our democracy. As our leader said last week, ``Failure is not an option.'' So let's get it done, and let's ensure, as Abraham Lincoln declared, that ``government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.'' I yield to Senator Klobuchar.