Rob Portman

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Renee Sheehy, a Postal IG detailee from my staff, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I rise today with Senator Jeanne Shaheen to request that the Ukraine resolution introduced by us, along with Senators Risch, Menendez, Cornyn, and Durbin be passed by unanimous consent. This is a dangerous time in the world, especially for our ally, Ukraine. There are over 150,000 Russian troops poised on their border, an overwhelming force that could invade at a moment's notice. This resolution is very simple and straightforward; it makes it clear that for 30 years Ukraine has been an independent and sovereign country. It commends the bravery of the Ukrainian people and their desire to integrate with the West, to align themselves with democratic values and freedom and continue to move away from the autocratic rule of Russia. It also acknowledges the over 14,000 Ukrainians who have been killed since 2014 in fighting against Russian backed separatists. It details the ongoing illegal Russian aggression against Ukraine. Most importantly, this resolution reaffirms our unwavering support to Ukraine and the importance of our NATO alliance and our transatlantic partnerships. This is simply a strong, bipartisan show of support to our ally Ukraine as they face a threat and danger not of their making. I now yield the floor to my friend, Senator Shaheen from New Hampshire.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. We have seen here on the floor of the Senate lots of back-and-forth and partisanship. I made the assertion earlier that I see colleagues on both sides of the aisle being unified on this. I certainly feel that way with my Republican colleagues. Can the Senator speak to it as to her Democratic colleagues?

Mr. PORTMAN. Absolutely.

Mr. PORTMAN. That is correct. And if there is an invasion, it would be the first time since 1945 that we have seen this kind of malign behavior--not just an invasion but even the proof we have seen of the so-called hybrid attacks, the cyber attacks, the disinformation attacks, which is why so many in Europe are alarmed, particularly in the Baltics and Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland, Romania. Countries that are right on the border, they realize that this is not going to end in Ukraine if this is what happens. It will send a message that we no longer have this post-World War II security system in place in Europe that has kept the peace. So my hope is that we will continue to see not just unity here on the floor of the Senate and in the House and in the White House to stand up for Ukraine but among our allies because all of us are engaged in this. And I must say I think what Russia and Vladimir Putin have done quite well in the last several weeks is unify the transatlantic alliance in ways I have rarely seen it. So NATO is stronger than ever because the Secretary General of NATO talked about this. He sounds exactly like we do, meaning that this shall not stand and cannot happen. So I think this is going to bring us together. But deterrence is what we are all about--a peaceful resolution, a backing off, and the ability to allow a free and independent people of Ukraine to have their sovereignty and territorial integrity respected. Now, may I ask my colleague from New Hampshire a question?

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I come to the floor tonight with my colleague from New Hampshire, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, to discuss the critical situation in Ukraine. Ukraine is an independent country. It is a democracy. It is an ally of ours. It is a country that is currently under siege. There is a threat of invasion by Russia that grows every single day. Right now, there are more than 130,000 Russian troops under the command of 100 tactical groups surrounding Ukraine. This Russian deployment includes nuclear-capable missiles, rockets, tanks, and artillery, and it is no longer just on the eastern border of Ukraine, where there has been activity before, as we will discuss, but now on the northern border, where Russian combat troops and heavy equipment have moved into the country of Belarus and also in Crimea. Additionally, Russia has now deployed amphibious assault ships and other ships into the Black Sea, to the south, and has positioned its S- 400 missile defense systems, which could stop flights into Ukraine. So from the east, from the north, and from the south, Ukraine is facing this threat. News accounts say additional equipment is actually being moved to the Ukrainian border, not being pulled away. While there are differing views on whether Russia has made the final decision as to whether to invade or not, there is no question that they have now amassed the capability needed to conduct a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Let's not forget that Russia has invaded Ukraine twice in the past 8 years, illegally annexing Crimea and inserting troops and offensive military equipment into the Donbas region in the east. They have also targeted cyber attacks against public and private entities in Ukraine and continue to use information to try to destabilize the democratically elected Government of Ukraine. By the way, Ukrainians have lost about 14,000 citizens in the last 5 years at the hands of the Russians--14,000--fathers, brothers. That would be, as a percentage of our population, like the United States losing about 115,000 people. That is more than we lost in Vietnam and Korea combined--actually, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined. Think how we would feel. And let's not forget that Russia continues, day by day, to conduct this low-grade but serious war against Ukraine. We all hope that instead of an invasion, Russia chooses a diplomatic end to this current crisis, but we had better treat this threat of an invasion as a very real and serious possibility. Doing anything else would be irresponsible, given the massive mobilization and the past malign behavior. And all freedom-loving countries have an interest here. Ukraine is where the cause of freedom is under siege today in our generation. Eight years ago, Ukrainians made a very deliberate choice. They stood up to a corrupt Russian-backed government, and they turned to the West, to the European Union, to America. They said that they wanted to be like us. I was in Ukraine in 2014 shortly after what is called the ``Euromaidan,'' the revolution of dignity. The barricades were still there in the center of town. The Maidan is a square that was still occupied by Ukrainian patriots. They sat there in makeshift tents in the cold because they believed that their hard-won freedom was worth defending. And they did defend it. In the protests against the Russian-backed government, they lost 100 Ukrainian citizens by the security forces of the Russian-backed government. These individuals were called the ``Heavenly Hundred,'' and they are still honored today by memorials at the Maidan. Their freedom came at a high price, and they were willing to defend it then, as they are today. I was there as an election observer with other American and European officials, mostly parliamentarians from Europe, and we witnessed a fair and robust Presidential election with a huge turnout. I saw their patriotism and national pride. The Ukrainian people are proud and consider themselves Ukrainian, not Russian. They have been a free and independent country for 30 years, and since the protests in 2014, they have been on a track toward a Western-focused democracy and a free-market economy. It is their choice to be free and independent, and no country--no country--has the right to take that away from them. I also want to highlight a change since 2014, and that is in the proficiency of the Ukrainian military and the great tragedy that would result from an illegal invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian military will stand up, and they are ready. The military of today is a professional force that has been fighting this low-grade war with Russia for the past 8 years. It is not the military they had in 2014. They are, instead, battle hardened today. And thanks to the United States and our allies, including many NATO allies, they are better trained and better equipped than ever before. I have been to the line of contact in the Donbas region--the line of contact, which is where the Russian troops are on one side and the Ukrainian troops are on the other, firing back and forth periodically. I have seen these troops from Ukraine. They are tough. They know how to fight, and they will fight to defend their country. And Ukraine is a big country. It is a nation of 418 million people. In the capital city of Kyiv, there are almost 3 million people. Think about the humanitarian disaster that will ensue if there is an invasion--millions of innocent civilians displaced from their homes in the dead of a Ukrainian winter, fleeing desperately for safety, while fighting rages around them. This is not a sight anybody wants to see. By the way, the blood of these innocents will be on the hands of the Russians. And there will be significant Russian casualties as well, and severe multilateral sanctions that will be devastating for the Russian economy and targeted sanctions that will ensure that the era of Russian oligarchs treating the West as their playground while pillaging their own country of resources and wealth will be no more. In 2014, the Ukrainian people rejected authoritarianism and chose instead democracy, freedom of speech, freedom to gather, respect for the rule of law, free markets, prosperity. They are not going back. Despite Russia's underlying efforts to destabilize Ukraine over the past 8 years, the people of Ukraine remain committed to this independent, sovereign, and democratic nation. They don't want State control, repression, and fear. They instead seek liberty and opportunity. Moscow would have the world believe that somehow this massive, unwarranted Russian buildup is about trying to shore up its border against threats from Ukraine and NATO. This is, of course, patently false and should be rejected out of hand by America and its many allies. Ukraine's military posture has always been defensive. They just want to be left alone. And unlike Russia, Ukraine has upheld its commitments under the Minsk agreements, which were designed to ensure a ceasefire in the Donbas region. NATO is defensive and is no threat to Russian territorial integrity. It is important to note that Ukraine is not asking for us to fight this war for them. They are asking us for increased lethal military assistance to help them defend themselves should Russia make a mistake and invade Ukraine again. And they are asking all of us to abide by commitments we have made. In 1994, after the Berlin Wall came down, Ukraine signed what is called the Budapest Memorandum. It was a treaty where Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom; that we would all respect the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine and refrain from the threat or the use of force against Ukraine. These are commitments that must be honored. I know there is a lot that our country and this Congress are divided over today, and we see it played out on the floor and in the media constantly. But I will tell you, Republicans and Democrats alike are united in backing Ukraine in this crisis. That is why it is so important that my colleague from New Hampshire is on the floor with me today. She has been a stalwart. We traveled to Ukraine 2 weeks ago and had the opportunity to meet with the leading officials there, including President Zelenskyy, but also talked to the Ukrainian people. And we let them know that on a bipartisan basis we support Ukraine. We have a bipartisan consensus on the broad structure of sanctions and an aid package for Ukraine. The sanctions, by the way, would cripple the Russian economy. We have some disagreement perhaps over preinvasion or postinvasion sanctions and how much on each, but we agree on sanctions. We also agree on assisting Ukraine with further and much needed support: defense against cyber attacks, as an example, that the Russians are already conducting--and we expect more to come--and disinformation attacks coming from Russia. We agree, Republicans and Democrats alike, not just on sanctions but providing more support to Ukraine for these critical areas. And of course we agreed on providing more military assistance to Ukraine so they can defend themselves. We have come to a consensus on these issues. What we now need is for all of us to work together, including the White House, to ensure that we can step forward and put legislation or a resolution on the floor to ensure that we are doing whatever we possibly can to make it clear what the consequences will be to act as a deterrent to Russia from making a terrible mistake. This is a critical time for us to act and to lead. It is time for us and the Congress and for this government to speak with one voice. Freedom in Eastern Europe depends on it but so does the cause of freedom all around the world. I now yield to my colleague from New Hampshire Senator Shaheen.

Mr. PORTMAN. I would like to commend my colleague from New Hampshire for her strong statement. There should be no mistake here. The United States of America is united, as this place is united, the Senate and the House, Republicans and Democrats alike, in standing with Ukraine. And if there were to be another invasion, the consequences would be devastating for Russia. It would also, by the way, be harmful to the stability of Europe and the cause of freedom all around the world because then you would have an authoritarian country coming into a democratically elected smaller country and invading it, as Russia has already done in Crimea and parts of Donbas. So this effort tonight on the floor is simply to make it very clear that regardless of what legislative vehicle we end up choosing or resolution or other, there is no question that we are united, both Republicans and Democrats, in doing what is nonpartisan, which is standing up for freedom, which is what America has traditionally done. I thank my colleague.

Mr. PORTMAN. Well said. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to come to the Senate floor today to speak in support of a bill sponsored by the entire Ohio delegation naming the post office in Avondale--of Cincinnati, OH--for two World War II aviators: John Leahr and Herbert Heilbrun. These two remarkable men--one Black and one White--grew up in Avondale, which is a neighborhood which is part of Cincinnati, OH. They dreamed of flying and signed up for the Army Air Corps after Pearl Harbor. John Leahr flew the P-51 Mustang with the Tuskegee Airmen, and Herb Heilbrun flew the B-17 bomber. The Tuskegee fighters were assigned to protect the bombers in the European theater. John and Herb worked together on some of the same missions, but as World War II airmen, they were segregated and did not interact. They didn't get to know each other until more than 50 years after the war ended. In 1997, Herb Heilbrun discovered that an event for the Tuskegee Airmen was going to be held in downtown Cincinnati. He decided to stop by and thank the fighter pilots who helped protect him and his bomber and his bomber squad in Europe. There, Herb met John Leahr, and the two men hit it off and discovered how much they had in common. They found out they had both grown up in Avondale and both spent time waiting for training working at the same engine plant: Wright Aeronautical in Lockland, OH. They realized they had been in the same third grade class at North Avondale Elementary School. Luckily, Herb had saved the class picture; and there, you can see them standing right next to each other, John and Herb. Their friendship was obviously meant to be. John Leahr had long wanted to make sure people knew about the Tuskegee Airmen and their contributions during the war. Together, John and Herb shared their story with schoolchildren and adults, talking about how things were different in the past and promoting racial understanding and the rejection of bigotry today. Here they are with a group of young people, Herb and John, with models of the airplanes that they flew. The Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations honored them for their work in 2003, and in 2007, there was a book--``Black and White Airmen: Their True History''--and it recounts their story. John died in 2015 at the age of 94. Herb died in 2020 at 100 years old. I believe naming this post office in their neighborhood for John Leahr and Herb Heilbrun is a fitting way to honor the memory of this team, who served our country with bravery and distinction in World War II but then continued an important part of their public service long after their military service ended. My hope is that this legislation will be passed by the Senate on a bipartisan basis and we can name this post office after these two remarkable men. (Ms. HASSAN assumed the Chair.)

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, finally, I want to acknowledge someone who is in the Chamber tonight. I want to acknowledge her dedicated service. This is one of my senior staff members, who is moving to Richmond, VA, to join the new Virginia Governor's administration. Angie Youngen is an Ohio native and an Ashland University graduate-- who is very proud of that--and who was the scheduler for my predecessor, Senator George Voinovich. I have had the good fortune of having her on my team. Her loyalty, hard work, and judgment over the past 8 years is deeply appreciated. So, Angie Youngen, we will miss you here on Capitol Hill, but best of luck in your new adventure. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I come to the floor this evening to urge that Congress speak with one voice, at a critical time, on an urgent matter. The fight for freedom is being waged in Ukraine right now, and the outcome is going to have profound effects not just in Eastern Europe but around the globe. Russia has invaded Ukraine twice in the last 8 years, illegally annexing Crimea, inserting troops and offensive military equipment into the Donbas region in the east. They have initiated cyber attacks against public and private entities in Ukraine, and they continue to use disinformation to try to destabilize the democratically elected government in Kyiv. Now, the Russians have gone further by amassing more than 100,000 troops under the command of 100 tactical groups on Russia's Ukrainian border. This Russian deployment includes rockets, tanks, and artillery, and it is no longer just on the eastern border of Ukraine but now on the northern border, where Russian combat troops and heavy equipment have moved into Belarus and in Crimea in the Black Sea area. Let me give a little history as to how we got here. Eight years ago, Ukraine made a choice. The people of Ukraine stood up to a corrupt Russian-backed government in 2014 and made a conscious decision to turn to the West--to the European Union, to the United States. I was in Ukraine in 2014 shortly after what is called the Euromaidan or the Revolution of Dignity. When I was there in 2014, the Revolution of Dignity barricades were still up, and in the center of town, the Maidan was still occupied by Ukrainian patriots who were determined that their country not go backwards. The Ukrainian people at that time rejected authoritarianism. They said instead they were choosing democracy, freedom of speech, and freedom to gather, respect for the rule of law and free markets-- turning to us. Despite Russia's unrelenting efforts at destabilization over the past 8 years, the Ukrainian people are more committed than ever to an independent, sovereign, and democratic nation. And Ukrainians today are increasingly patriotic and opposed to the Russian efforts to destabilize their country. They don't want state control, repression, and fear; they choose liberty and prosperity. Moscow would have the world believe that somehow this massive, unwarranted Russian buildup is about trying to shore up its border against threats from Ukraine and NATO. This is, of course, patently false. Ukraine's military posture has always been purely defensive, and, unlike Russia, Ukraine has up held its commitments under the Minsk agreements, which were designed to ensure a ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine in the Donbas region. NATO, of course, is a defensive alliance and is no threat to Russian territorial integrity. NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently told reporters that the ``significant movement'' of Russian troops into Ukraine's neighbor, Belarus, is the ``biggest Russian deployment there since the Cold War.'' And Russian troop numbers in Belarus are likely to climb to 30,000, with the backing of special forces, advanced fighter jets, short-range ballistic missiles, and S- 400 ground-to-air missile defense systems. This is new. By the way, Ukraine is not asking for us to fight these wars for them. They have been in a war with Russia over the past 8 years. They have lost over 14,000 Ukrainians to this battle, including at the line of contact, where there has been a hot conflict. I have been to the line of contact. I have seen it. I have seen where the Russian snipers have killed Ukrainian soldiers. I have talked to the soldiers from Ukraine, who are determined, committed, and patriotic. Fourteen thousand people--if you compare the population of Ukraine to our population here in the United States of America, that would be the equivalent of us losing about 120,000 Americans over the past 8 years to an enemy. That is more people than we lost in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined. Think how we would feel. This is how the Ukrainians feel. Ukraine is not asking, again, for us to fight their war for them, but they are asking for increased lethal military assistance to help defend themselves should Russia make a big mistake and decide to invade further into Ukraine. When it comes to our allies, I have been pleased that most have really stepped up to help Ukraine during this crisis. The British have provided anti-tank missiles. When I was in Ukraine recently with the congressional delegation, as we left the airport--this was about 3 weeks ago--a cargo plane arrived--an American-made cargo plane--with weapons from the U.K. The United Kingdom was providing anti-tank weapons to Ukraine. I saw them being unloaded, and I saw the smiles on the faces of the Ukrainians knowing that this will give them a better chance to defend themselves. We appreciate the Brits. The Canadians have helped, specifically recently providing important training on some of the new equipment they are getting. The Danes have helped with additional funding, and the Baltics have transferred weapons as well. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have all been strongly supportive. Poland has been so supportive--and so many others. We need all of our allies to step up like that--certainly all of our NATO allies but, really, all freedom-loving countries around the world. This is where the cause of freedom is being fought right now. My hope is that Congress can come together and speak with one voice-- Republicans and Democrats alike--pass bipartisan sanctions legislation and an aid package that sends a strong message of support to the Ukrainian people, a message that we stand with them in their fight for freedom but also sends a strong message to Russia that, if they choose to invade further, the armed conflict will carry a heavy cost, the sanctions will be devastating--and, finally, legislation that sends a strong message to the world that the United States stands with its allies in Eastern Europe and throughout freedom-loving countries across the world. The time to speak is now, with one voice. The world is listening and watching.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. I ask unanimous consent that Senators Blunt, Blackburn, and I be permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes each prior to the scheduled vote.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I am here today to discuss the crisis at the border. Unfortunately, it is not getting any better. In fact, it is getting worse by any measurement. The flow of illegal drugs and illegal migration continues to surge. As the lead Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I recently traveled to the U.S.-Mexican border in Nogales, AZ, just south of Tucson, to learn firsthand from Border Patrol and Customs officials and Border Patrol agents who are on duty 24-7 trying to protect our Nation from illicit narcotics, unlawful immigration, and terrorism. It was my third trip to the border in the last year, and, like other trips, what I saw was alarming. Officials at the port of entry told me about the increasing and more sophisticated efforts to smuggle illegal and deadly drugs into the United States. They showed me some of the x rays that have been taken of some of the vehicles where the smugglers are cleverly hiding these illicit narcotics into compartments. By the way, this is deadly stuff. This is mostly now the illicit drug called fentanyl, which is a synthetic form of opioid that, according to the Centers for Disease Control, is probably killing two-thirds of the people who are dying from overdoses. The number of overdose deaths in this country is at record levels. During the year of 2021, we believe it is going to exceed 100,000 individuals--record levels. So why aren't we scanning more of these vehicles for drugs and other contraband? The best numbers we have are that, currently, less than 2 percent of the passenger vehicles and less than 20 percent of the commercial vehicles coming into the United States are scanned for illegal drugs like this deadly fentanyl we talk about. That is just unacceptable. A smuggler with multiple pounds of fentanyl concealed in hidden compartments needs to know that there is no chance of getting across our border without some kind of search. It is not just a gap in our security; it is a gaping hole in our security, and it is resulting in lives being lost in my home State of Ohio, where we have a big issue with opioids, and also all across America. In a sense, every State is a border State now. Last year, Customs and Border Protection seized nearly 10,000 pounds of deadly fentanyl. That is a 40-percent increase from 2020. But, as officers on the line told me when I was down there recently, most of it is getting through. A year ago, Congress mandated that the Department of Homeland Security give us a plan and a strategy to scan all vehicles at the ports of entry for deadly narcotics such as fentanyl. Unfortunately, even with this crisis that demands these new approaches, the Biden administration has failed to deliver this report, which was due more than 6 months ago. Let's get that report done. Whether it is crystal meth or cocaine or whether it is fentanyl--sometimes pressed into pills to make it look like something else--it is flowing across the southern border. Let's have a plan to stop this. We also face challenges between the ports of entry. In Nogales, the Border Patrol agent in charge rode with me to look at the border. What he described was an overwhelming, recordbreaking number of unlawful migrants and a recordbreaking number of drugs like fentanyl and these other drugs coming into the United States. He talked about the urgent need for more Border Patrol agents to be able to cover the border; new vehicles--vehicle maintenance is a huge issue for Border Patrol right now; and technology, particularly cameras and sensors. There is a lot of discussion here always about the wall, but what is really important about a fence or a wall is the technology that goes along with it. When the Biden administration came in and they stopped construction of the wall, what they really did was they stopped the technology. In the El Paso Sector where I have been, as an example, only about 10 percent of the technology had been completed for the fence that was being erected there. So they stopped building the fence--and you can see all the metal on the ground, which is very demoralizing for the Border Patrol because they have to fill the gaps 24-7 or figure out other ways to stop people--but most importantly, only 10 percent of the technology had been done, and they cut off all of that. We have already paid for it, by the way. Taxpayers have paid for all of that. My thinking is, Democrats and Republicans alike talk about the need for technology--this is, again, monitors of some kind; there are various kinds out there that are very effective--cameras, and the ability to respond quickly. I toured the border area that had huge gaps in the fencing, too, which I don't get. Why would you want to spend all this money to build the border barriers and then leave the gaps in the middle? I saw broken areas of fencing that need repairs. I saw the need for new fencing in some areas. I walked up to one large gap only several miles from the city of Nogales. There is 15- to 20-foot fencing on either side of this gap, and then there is about 40 feet with just a four-strand barbed wire fence to keep cattle from coming into the United States and vice versa. So that is where human smugglers go. They know about these gaps. I saw lots of evidence of foot traffic, lots of plastic bottles and plastic bags discarded in the area from migrants who crossed right there. Leaving these gaps is one of the reasons we face a crisis. We just learned in December that the Border Patrol apprehended more than 170,000 unlawful migrants in December. That is the highest number ever in December. And the Biden people say: Well, this is seasonal so it will stop in December and January because it is colder and people aren't going to go or when it is really hot in July and August. That has not happened. For the first time ever, we see a continual flow of people. It is not slowing down at all. These dramatic increases in unlawful entries and illegal drugs in the last year are clearly due to the policy changes, again, that were put in place on day 1 of the Biden administration--not just fewer deportations and a more lax approach to immigration generally but a specific issue of stopping the installation of this technology and fencing. Also, they made a major change immediately with regard to asylum policy. So now people know if they claim asylum, they will be released in the United States pending a court date, which, on average, is going to be 5 or 6 years away. They say the backlog is at least 1.3 million people now--the backlog. Now, is there any wonder that when people come to my home State of Ohio or go to my colleague's State in Missouri or go to Nevada, with 5 or 6 years ahead of them, that it is sometimes not possible to find them when the court date comes up, and that is happening, obviously, increasingly. So we need a policy that just makes sense, that doesn't tell the smugglers, hey, if you get somebody in the United States, you can tell them that they can get in; they can work; they can get their kids in school. And that is what the smugglers do to people all over the world. It is not just Central America. In fact, there are more people coming from Ecuador now than there are from Honduras. I am told in the last week there were five Syrians who were apprehended coming across the border. It is a lot of people from around the world who are being told by these smugglers who are exploiting them and their families, hey, just come on with me, and we can get you in. Pay me 10,000 bucks or whatever it is. That is one reason we have right now this pull factor because of a policy issue we have got to address. The administration also chose to end the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy, which says to people, hey, you can come and apply for asylum, but you have got to wait over in Mexico until we adjudicate this. That discouraged a lot of people. A lot of folks went home because they were trying, obviously, to come to the United States, but that policy was ended. But, generally speaking, the right policy is adjudicate these cases immediately. Let people know, we don't want to have a 1.3 million backlog of people in the United States, 5 or 6 years waiting for a court case. It just doesn't make sense. Anyway, with these policy changes since the President's inauguration, the southern border has faced the worst unlawful migration crisis in decades and the worst drug crisis ever. To help the Border Patrol do their job, we are working on bipartisan legislation to increase the number of agents, address retention challenges of the existing workforce, and respond faster to these humanitarian crises that come up by doing things like having a Border Patrol reserve that can respond to surges. I am always impressed with the men and women of Customs and Border Protection and the Border Patrol that I meet on my trips. They have tough jobs right now--really tough jobs. A lot of them are overworked. A lot of them are being pressed into doing processing and other things that they weren't hired to do or trained to do. It is tough. And we are making it even tougher with policies that we are putting out here in Washington. The ongoing crisis is clear and persistent, no longer seasonal. I urge the Biden administration to change course, stop the policies that send the green light to these human smugglers to be able to exploit migrants and families from all over this hemisphere and elsewhere now and stop giving a green light to the drug traffickers. Instead, provide Congress with a plan to deter illegal immigration, to detect and deny deadly drugs from crossing our border. America's national security depends on it. American lives depend on it. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

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

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am here today to talk about the escalating aggression by Russia against Ukraine, an ally and a sovereign country whose territorial integrity is once again under attack. In our generation, this is where the fight for freedom is being held; this is where it is being waged. It is going to affect not just Ukraine and Eastern Europe but countries all over the world, depending on the outcome. Today, I am going to address what I think the appropriate role is for us as Americans, what more we can do to help avoid what could become an international disaster and a humanitarian crisis. Russia is the aggressor here, having invaded Ukraine twice in the past 8 years, illegally annexing Crimea, inserting troops and offensive military weaponry into the Donbas region of Ukraine, initiating cyber attacks against public and private entities in Ukraine, and using disinformation to try to destabilize the democratically elected Government of Ukraine. Now they have gone further by amassing more than 100,000 troops under the command of 100 tactical groups on Russia's Ukrainian border. This Russian deployment includes rockets and tanks and artillery and is no longer just on the eastern border of Ukraine, but it is now across the borders, including the northern border, where Russian combat troops and heavy equipment have gone into Belarus. And on the Belarus-Ukrainian border, a Russian presence is being felt. It is also in Crimea and in the Black Sea area, where Russia is taking advantage of their illegal annexation to move troops in those areas close to Ukraine. I will give you a little history about how we got here. Eight years ago, the people of Ukraine made a clear choice. They stood up to a Russian-backed, corrupt government in 2014 and made a conscious decision to turn to the West, to the European Union, to us, the United States of America. I was in Ukraine in 2014, shortly after what is called the Euromaidan, also the Revolution of Dignity. The barricades were still there. And in the center of town, the Maidan, in Kyiv, was occupied still by Ukrainian patriots, insisting that Ukraine chart its own course. The Ukrainian people had rejected authoritarianism and, instead, embraced freedom, embraced democracy, freedom of speech, freedom to gather, freedom for the respect of law, respect for the judicial institutions in the country, and free markets. Now, have they stumbled along the way sometimes with regard to reforms, including of the judicial system? Yes, of course. Most fledgling democracies do; all of them do. But they have made tremendous progress, and they are on their way toward becoming what they wanted to become at the time 8 years ago--again, this Revolution of Dignity that is called the Euromaidan--more like a Western European or Eastern European country that is part of the EU. Despite Russia's unrelenting efforts to destabilize Ukraine over the past 8 years, the people of Ukraine have remained committed to this independent, sovereign, and democratic principle, that vision. And Ukrainians today are actually increasingly patriotic and opposed to the Russian efforts to destabilize their country. According to polling data, this sentiment is especially true among young people, which makes sense because they have tasted the fruits of freedom--free enterprise, the ability to express themselves, the ability to connect with the rest of the free world. They don't want state control. They don't want repression. They don't want fear. Instead, they want liberty and prosperity. Moscow and Russia would have the world believe that somehow this massive, unwarranted Russian buildup is about trying to shore up its border against threats from Ukraine and from NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. This is patently false. Ukraine's military posture has always been defensive. Unlike Russia, Ukraine has upheld its commitments under the Minsk agreements, which were designed to ensure a cease-fire in the Donbas region, the eastern part of Ukraine. NATO, of course, is defensive. It is not an offensive group and is no threat to Russian territorial integrity. My hope is that Congress can come together this week--Republicans, Democrats, Senate, and House--and issue a strong message to the people of Ukraine that we stand with them in their fight for freedom; to Russia that if they choose to invade, the armed conflict will carry a heavy cost, and the sanctions that would result from that would be devastating; and then to the world that the United States stands with its allies, not just in Eastern Europe but throughout the freedom- loving countries of the world. I am hoping Congress will pass an extensive sanctions package, including increased security funding for Ukraine, more resources for cyber security, and funding for the Global Engagement Center at the U.S. State Department to help push back on Russian disinformation. I want to say a word about our allies. In many respects, I believe that what Vladimir Putin has done by these aggressive actions we talked about is to strengthen the transatlantic alliance, including those countries that are part of NATO, and go beyond that, countries in other parts of the world that understand that this is about the cause of freedom. So many have stepped up. Denmark is providing F-16 jets to nearby Lithuania. Spain is sending ships to join a NATO fleet. France is getting ready to send troops to Romania, they say. The United Kingdom has sent anti-tank weapons directly to Kyiv and supported Ukraine in so many ways. When I was in Ukraine recently, I was there to see a cargo plane unload anti-tank weapons from the UK to Ukraine. And recently, the United States has not just increased our military assistance to Ukraine to help it defend itself, but also we have placed 8,500 of our troops on heightened alert to go to be with our NATO allies in the region in Eastern Europe. They, of course, welcome that. Ukraine, by the way, has never asked for U.S. troops or NATO troops to defend Ukraine. They have asked for help to be able to defend themselves. And that is an important distinction. On the Russian pipeline to Europe called Nord Stream--I think it was a bad idea before all this started and I think it is even a worse idea now--Russia provides Germany with roughly one-third of their natural gas supply already, a dependency that will increase substantially with the activation of the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline. Let's not forget, this multimillion-dollar pipeline is one that this body, the U.S. Senate, chose not to impose sanctions on just a few weeks ago after we had already done so once before on a bipartisan basis. I will say the vote last week was not 60 votes, but it was a majority of this body voting to impose sanctions because, again, the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline is a bad idea in terms of the dependency of Europe on Russia. Once the pipeline is complete, it will supply a lot of Russian gas to Germany, the rest of Europe, and Russia will use it as a political weapon. We have seen this. This is no surprise that they would do it. They did in it in Moldova, and of course they have done it in Ukraine. Even today, German prices are being affected by what Russia decides is appropriate. Germany has told us privately that they are willing to shut down the pipeline if Russia invades Ukraine, but they should say so publicly and clearly. I am also concerned about Germany's resistance to approving arms sales to Ukraine. Again, Ukraine just wants the help to be able to defend itself. A great example of this is some artillery pieces that were made in East Germany decades ago. Those artillery pieces, those howitzers, are now in the hands of the Estonians. The Estonians want to provide these weapons to the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians want them. Even though they are older howitzers, they need them. They need the artillery. And yet, because they were made in Germany--in East Germany--decades ago, under the licensing agreement, Germany has to approve Estonia sending Ukraine these weapons they so desperately need. That approval has not been forthcoming. To me, this is outrageous that Ukraine is not receiving the weapons it needs because another country that is part of the NATO alliance is saying that they are not going to approve the transfer. I hope that will change. I hope very soon we will see that transfer approved. Germany, by the way, might say--as I have heard from some, and I have had conversations about this with them--that they don't like to send weapons into hot spots. Well, they are certainly happy to send weapons into the Middle East. In fact, last year, as I understand it, it was their largest year ever of exports of military weapons made in Germany to other countries, including to countries like Egypt, as an example. So we need to be sure that we are doing all we can to avoid Russia making this terrible mistake. And a big part of this should be all the countries in the region, certainly our NATO allies, standing up and providing military assistance to Ukraine and making clear that if something happens, that the consequences will be devastating because of sanctions. The cost of freedom in Eastern Europe is at stake here, but so is, really, the stability of all of Europe. The Ukrainian officials themselves have talked about this. The Foreign Minister, Foreign Minister Kuleba, whom I met with recently in Ukraine, stated that Germany is taking a stance that ``does not correspond with the level of our relations and the current security situation.'' I agree. People listening may be wondering: Why should the United States get engaged here? Why is this Senator from Ohio passionate about this? Well, first, in Ohio, we have a lot of Ukrainians I have gotten to know over the years, and it is not just about the Ukrainian Americans in Ohio; it is about people from all over that part of the world-- Central Europe, Eastern Europe, certainly the Baltics, Lithuania, Latvia. The people whom I talk to tell me that this is, again, a seminal moment, not just in the history of Ukraine, but in the history of our world because, again, it is the fight for freedom being played out right before our eyes. These nationality groups, including, of course, the Ukrainian Americans, are deeply concerned that this continued aggression unchecked will lead to other countries, including the Baltics, including Poland and others, being subject to the same kind of pressure from Russia. But it is also because I believe what happens in Ukraine does affect the cause of freedom more broadly. Countries all over the world are watching. Authoritarian countries are watching. Democratically elected countries are watching. And they are wondering, in the 21st century, are we going to allow something like this to occur, when one country looks to another and says that I want that country so I am going to invade and take that land? Again, until we had the invasion of Crimea only 8 years ago, this hadn't happened in almost 80 years since World War II on the continent of Europe. This is something that countries are watching to get a message to see whether the United States is going to continue to be the country that joins with others, including our NATO alliance but a much broader group of freedom-loving countries to stand up for the cause of freedom and to stand up for the right of a sovereign country to be able to protect its own borders. I recently joined a bipartisan delegation led by me and my good friend Senator Jeanne Shaheen. Senator Murphy, who is on the floor tonight, was also with us. We personally met with President Zelensky. We also met with four or five other Cabinet officials, including the Secretary of Defense. We talked about the U.S. commitment to provide military assistance to ensure Ukraine can defend itself and deter the threat. If you talk to these individuals and you talk to the military officials we talked to and the commanders--and I have also been to the line of contact, where this hot water is going on with Russia even today in the Donbas region. I have been there. I have talked to the troops. You will see that there is a commitment, a strong commitment by the Ukrainians to defend themselves. They get that this is a critical time in their history. We tried to send a clear message on a bipartisan basis. I believe we did. I believe that this time--this time--unlike 2014, when, frankly, Ukraine and the world wasn't ready, that the situation is very different. The military is prepared. The people of Ukraine have a strong sense of nationalism and a deep patriotism and they will fight and this will be a bloody conflict that we all want to avoid. The other thing I will say about Ukraine is they are our friends. They are our allies. They share our values. When the United States was looking for help in Iraq and Afghanistan, some NATO partners came through, but so did Ukraine. Ukrainian troops were shoulder to shoulder with American troops during some very tough situations in those countries. These are our friends. This is a country that has allied with us because they believe that that is the best future for the Ukrainian people. It is time for us to stand with them in response to this unwarranted and unprovoked Russian aggression. My hope is that Congress will act on a bipartisan and bicameral basis--the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats--and send a strong message to Russia that would avoid a bloody conflict, deter them from taking the actions that they are contemplating and making a terrible mistake, but also that we would send a strong message to the people of Ukraine to give them strength during this time, and, finally, a message to the global community that the lamp of freedom will not be extinguished. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I was asked recently what I think is the No. 1 issue facing America. It is a tough question, and I have had a lot of issues race through my mind: inflation, the debt, workforce issues, the crisis at our southern border, the explosion of COVID cases, the deadly opioid epidemic, a warming planet, Russia and China flexing their muscles and creating more volatility around the world. We have got plenty of challenges, don't we? But do you know what I landed on, what I think is our biggest problem? It is the increasing division--even polarization--of our politics and our country. It is what makes it so hard to address all of those other issues that I named that are so important to the families whom we represent. Last week, on the Senate floor, my Democratic colleague from Arizona, Senator Sinema, called it a disease of division. Well put. When we are together, this country can achieve great things and has over the years. It can provide a beacon of hope to a troubled world, but as Lincoln warned, ``a house divided against itself cannot stand.'' In this body, we should be figuring out how to come together to help America stand-- and stand strong--to address our many challenges. That is why I am so discouraged about what I see playing out on the U.S. Senate floor again this week. I have seen an attempt by Democratic leadership to fan the flames of distrust. I see an attempt to further divide an already splintered country, both by exaggerated arguments being made to advance controversial legislation opposed by every single Republican regarding the tough issue of voting and then to try to achieve this purely partisan objective by changing a foundation of the Senate to dismantle the one Senate rule--the legislative filibuster-- that works to bring us together rather than pull us apart. Equally troubling to me is that this seems to be a purely political exercise now in that the conclusion seems predetermined. Apparently, the Senate is being dragged through this divisive and ugly partisan debate, knowing that it will not achieve a legislative result but only a deepening and hardening of the political lines in each camp. Here in the Senate, most Republicans and most Democrats say they want to bring the country together. I think they are sincere about that. This message was an explicit part of President Biden's campaign for President. Yet there is nothing about the harsh, partisan rhetoric from the President's speech on this topic in Atlanta last week or from much of the floor debate this week and last week that does anything but push our country further apart. First is the substance of the legislative fight. Democrats have been highly critical of those Republicans who refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election, pointing out accurately that dozens of lawsuits failed to show adequate fraud to change the result. They have attacked some Republicans because they have said that the election was rigged and for questioning the State-by-State certification process that has led to deeper rifts in our Nation and a significant number of Republican voters questioning the legitimacy of the election. I get that. So why now are Democratic leaders and President Biden using the exact same language, literally saying the elections are rigged--literally saying that? Why are they perpetrating their own election narrative that does not fit the facts but serves to push both sides deeper into their own camps and, in particular, now leads Democrats to think that elections are illegitimate? Majority Leader Schumer claims ``Republicans are pushing voter suppression and election nullification laws.'' President Biden has compared State efforts to tighten up election administration to Jim Crow laws. He has compared Republicans to notorious racists in our history. These attacks are overwrought, exaggerated, and deeply divisive. Here is what the nonpartisan and respected group called No Labels has said about the Democratic attacks: If you dig into these [state legislative] proposals you find most entail tightening up procedures pertaining to registration, mail-in absentee voting and Voter ID [laws] that were loosened in 2020 in the name of making it safer for people to vote amid the COVID pandemic. Many leading Democrats and liberal commentators have taken to describing these measures as Jim Crow 2.0, which is to say they are somehow worse than the original Jim Crow era, which entailed poll taxes and literacy tests, violent intimidation of Black voters by the KKK, and even outright prohibition on Black voters participating in party primaries in southern States. To suggest that any voting measures being debated today in America are somehow worse than this is simply irresponsible demagoguery. That comes from No Labels, which is a nonpartisan group, Democrats and Republicans, trying to find that middle ground. Now, to be fair, this group has been critical of Republican claims of widespread election fraud that cannot be backed up. So what are the actual facts? First, the Constitution guarantees all citizens 18 years of age or older the right to vote in elections regardless of race or gender--period. The Federal Voting Rights Act reaffirms that right and makes it enforceable in Federal court. In 2006, Congress voted in a bipartisan way to reauthorize this important law for 25 years, through 2031. I voted for and strongly support the Voting Rights Act and have long supported other commonsense efforts to increase voter confidence in our elections. In fact, there is a bipartisan effort underway right now to deal with a real problem: to ensure that after the fact, certified elections are respected. This will require making overdue reforms to the Electoral Count Act and some other reasonable updates to Federal election procedures. I am happy to be working with a small group of Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans on those efforts. That is how the system should work. We are not going to agree on everything, but we can sit down and talk and find common ground to address problems. What Republicans and most Americans don't support is an unprecedented Federal takeover of our election system, which is what the overly broad party-line bills proposed this week by the Democrats will do. Let me be clear. Despite what Democratic leaders are saying to jam these bills through Congress, our democracy is not, as they say, in crisis because it is too hard to vote. We just had a national election in 2020 with the highest voter turnout in 120 years. Ninety-four percent of voters said it was easy for them to vote. This is according to the Pew Research Center--94 percent. That is good. Some have said drastic changes are needed at the Federal level because the States are now enacting voter restrictions. Some point to the liberal Brennan Center, which reports that 19 States have enacted laws which it characterizes as restricting the right to vote. As noted above--again, by the nonpartisan No Labels group--when you really look at these laws, the truth is that they largely make modest changes in election law administration, such as the date that voters may apply for mail-in ballots or ensuring voters are who they say they are through voter ID and other signature requirements--something, by the way, the vast majority of Americans support. Some of the laws return to State practices closer to the status quo before the pandemic. As an example, some laws reduced the number of ballot drop boxes in cases where there were no ballot drop boxes before COVID. And many of the States the Democrats criticize for improving their elections process are enacting laws similar to those that have long been in place in States represented by Democrats, so-called blue States. For example, under its new law, Georgia has a limit of 17 days of in- person early voting, 17 days. New Jersey and New York have 9 days of in-person voting. Connecticut doesn't have any early voting. Georgia has also added one extra Saturday of early voting. Georgia's new requirement that voters provide their driver's license or State ID numbers when applying for mail-in ballots, which Democrats have criticized, is the same as laws in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Rhode Island enacted a voter ID law a decade ago. And with regard to President Biden's home State, The Atlantic has noted that ``few states have more limited voting options than Delaware.'' I, frankly, have not heard Democratic leadership calling out any of these Democrat-majority States for pushing what they deem to be voter suppression. I don't know anyone who doesn't believe it should be easy to vote and hard to cheat. Every State has to find that balance, but they have to find it while not violating the Voting Rights Act. I don't agree with every policy every State has in place. I find some too restrictive. As an example, I support no-fault absentee voting, as we do in Ohio. It works well. You don't have to have a reason; you can vote absentee. I would like to see every mailbox, in a sense, be a ballot box, in essence. I find that some of the laws in some of the States lack adequate security, on the other hand. For example, I think some form of ID is smart, as do the vast majority of Americans. But in our Federal system, within the guardrails of the Voting Rights Act and consistent with the Constitution, that decision is left up to State legislators, closer to the people and accountable to the voters. That is just a fundamental philosophical difference we have here on the Senate floor. We see it play out on lots of issues and now on this one. I am very proud of the job that my State of Ohio and our bipartisan election officials in every county do in our elections. In the last election, we had a record 5.97 million Ohioans cast a vote--more voters than ever. It represented 74 percent of eligible voters in our State, the second highest percentage in the history of Ohio. Despite the challenges of running the highest turnout election in our State's history, during an unprecedented pandemic, it was widely regarded as the most secure and most successful Ohio election ever. Now is not the time to take the responsibility away from Ohio State and local officials. Article I, section 4 of the Constitution clearly assigns that authority over elections to the States. Alexander Hamilton acknowledged in Federalist 59 that only in extraordinary circumstances should the Federal Government become involved in election law, explaining that allowing the Federal Government to run elections would have been a ``premeditated engine for the destruction of State governments.'' We are not in extraordinary circumstances right now. In general, it has become easier and easier to vote in America, and that is a good thing. And it has become easier to vote in America than many other democracies around the world, and that is good too--easy to vote, hard to cheat. Despite all the fiery speeches on the floor stating the contrary over the past week, according to a recent survey from Morning Consult, only 33 percent of American adults think it is too hard for eligible voters to vote. A larger share--44 percent--actually think current rules aren't strict enough. Having heard the debate, this is what voters think. Not only are Democrats attempting a Federal takeover of our election system, but because they have chosen to change the constitutionally based election system in a purely partisan way, they don't have the 60 votes necessary to get something passed here in the U.S. Senate. That is why instead of reaching out to find a bipartisan way forward, they are also proposing to fundamentally change the longstanding rules of the Senate. Specifically, they are proposing to do away with what is called the legislative filibuster in order to advance their Federal election takeover bills by a simple majority instead of the normal 60 votes. This 60-vote margin, the legislative filibuster, is the one tool left to encourage bipartisanship not just here in the Senate but in our system, in the House and at the White House. Yes, it provides important minority rights in the Senate that protect the country from legislation that is too far out of the mainstream, and it helps pass good legislation, like Medicare or Social Security with big votes, big margins, that mean those programs can be sustained, and they can be relied upon. That is good for our country. Most importantly to me, the legislative filibuster is the one thing that encourages us to work in a bipartisan way. The successful passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law last year is a good example. I was in the middle of those negotiations. We knew we had to achieve 60 votes in a 50-50 Senate. What did that mean? That meant that we had to find common ground. We had to make concessions on both sides in order to get to 60 votes. As a result, we got well over 60--into the seventies--and a good piece of legislation was able to pass the House and be signed into law and is now in place, again, as sustainable, reliable legislation. Did I agree with everything in it? No, nor did anybody else. But to get to those 60 votes, we all had to make certain concessions. Although it is a Senate rule, the legislative filibuster also requires Members of the House of Representatives to come up with more bipartisan solutions because they know their legislation has to pass the Senate if they want it to become law. Just as I have been a committed, bipartisan legislator here in the Senate for the past 11 years, the same was true in the House for 12 years, where I regularly used the fact that we needed 60 votes in the Senate to force colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come together and find a way to pass legislation in a bipartisan manner. When I was in the executive branch in two Cabinet-level jobs in the Bush 43 administration and as Director of the Office of Legislative Affairs for Bush 41, that 60-vote necessity in the Senate calmed the passions within the administration and forced us to find common ground to work in a more bipartisan manner, resulting in more effective results that last the test of time. I know the benefits to our country of requiring more than a bare Senate majority that shifts back and forth because I have lived it in the House, in the Senate, and in the White House. And it is not just me or other Republicans now saying that the legislative filibuster is good for our Federal system. Less than 5 years ago, 32 Senate Democrats, including then-Senator and now-Vice President Kamala Harris, joined with me and other Republicans in signing an open letter insisting the legislative filibuster should not change. This was at a time when there was a Democrat in the White House, but Republicans controlled the Senate. It appears that those 32 Democrats were happy to defend the filibuster as good for the country when they were in the minority but not now when the country is even further divided, and they have a majority. All but a couple of those Members have shifted their views. I would encourage my Democratic colleagues to reread their own letter, which makes such a compelling case that this is about the country, not about one political party or another. Back in 2005, Senator Schumer called abolishing the filibuster ``a temper tantrum by those on the hard, hard right'' who ``want . . . their way every single time.'' That was in 2005. Now he is majority leader, and he has changed his tune. This seems shortsighted to me, since the history of the Senate is to change the majority regularly. We don't know who is going to be in the majority in the next Senate. Could the Senate rules be improved to allow more debate and more progress on legislation? Absolutely. There is bipartisan interest in this, and we should turn it to something constructive. After this political exercise we are going through right now, we should turn to the issue of reforming the rules around here. Let's have each leader choose a few interested Members. Let's hammer out a bipartisan proposal that allows more amendments and makes it easier to get legislation passed. It is not that hard. But eliminating the one tool that forces us to come together makes it harder to address those many challenges we face. It makes it harder to pass legislation, broadly supported and sustainable, to actually help the people we represent. That is what we were elected to do. That is our job--not inflame the passions of our most committed and hard-line supporters but achieve results. And as I said at the outset, between inflation, and COVID, our southern border, and more, we have got plenty to do. I urge my Democratic colleagues to step back from the brink, to think twice before trying to destroy what has made the U.S. Senate such a unique and valuable part of the world's longest lasting and most successful democracy. And I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support sensible rules changes and recommit to use the 60-vote margin responsibly to generate consensus and find that elusive common ground that will best serve those we represent and that will keep our great Republic the envy of the world. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor an exceptional American and an exceptional member of the U.S. Capitol Police Force, Officer Roderick Jennings. Officer Jennings is retiring from the U.S. Capitol Police on December 28, 2021, after 31 years of service, and today, I wanted to take a moment to honor his years of service to the U.S. Capitol Police and to our country. While he has served in many roles during his tenure, Officer Jennings most recently has been assigned to the U.S. Capitol Police Senate Division. I would often see him stationed in the basement of the Russell Senate Office Building, as well as other locations throughout the Senate complex. Whenever I saw Officer Jennings, he was always friendly and consistently maintained a sense of utmost professionalism. I always enjoyed seeing him throughout my day, and I know other members and staff feel the same. The Senate community will miss Officer Jennings. We must do everything we can to support and honor our law enforcement officers for what they do for us each and every day. The Capitol Police make tremendous sacrifices and put their lives on the line for us, and for that, we owe them a debt of gratitude. Officer Jennings showed an unwavering commitment to keeping others safe, and these halls undoubtedly remained safer because of his service and the entire Capitol Police force. Officer Jennings represents everything that is great about our country, and we are all better off for his selfless sense of duty and his tireless commitment to our safety. I thank Officer Jennings for his years of service, and I wish him all the best in his retirement.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, first of all, it is great to be on the floor with my friend Jeanne Shaheen and talk about something positive, something that we have been able to accomplish over the years--as she said, we have been at this over a decade--which is to encourage more energy efficiency. This is the ability for us to save energy by not using it. It is, therefore, sort of energy found. It is also an ability to improve the economy because it creates more jobs and makes us more competitive globally by having lower energy costs. Think about the businesses in your State. The competitive nature of business today is that you are really competing with the Europeans and the Japanese and the Chinese and so on, and if you have higher energy costs and you are not energy efficient, you are not going to be competitive. But if you are competitive, it adds jobs and makes the economy stronger. So the way I look at it, if you are interested in lower emissions and a better environment and, at the same time, you are interested in a better economy and creating jobs, then energy efficiency is the low-hanging fruit. That is the thing we can all agree with. I applaud Senator Shaheen because she has been patient. We have both been patient, as our staffs have been, over the years, in getting pieces of our legislation in various bills that have passed this U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives and been signed into law by President Obama, President Trump, and now President Biden. The most recent one was the infrastructure bill, and it is exciting what we were able to get in there in terms of encouraging a better, more sustainable use of our energy resources in both the public sector and in the private sector. Importantly, energy efficiency is also a part of a more reliable and resilient grid, which was part of our legislation: improving the electrical grid. We have had some pretty severe weather events over the last year, as you know. I was just in Kentucky over the weekend, my neighboring State, helping out on the cleanup there. And, boy, electricity was out everywhere. By improving energy efficiency, we can reduce demand, taking pressure off our power grids, and help create more stability. These are some of the reasons why, since 2011, we have worked together to promote this energy efficiency bill called the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act. Senator Shaheen called it Portman-Shaheen. I call it Shaheen-Portman because she is in charge now. The Senate is in the Democrats' majority, not ours. But we have worked together seamlessly. It has really been nonpartisan. And, again, our goal has been, really, three different areas. One is residential and commercial buildings, because that is where we use a lot of energy. About 40 percent of the energy used in this country is used there. Also, to ensure that the Federal Government does a better job. The Federal Government uses more energy than any other entity in the entire economy. By the way, it uses more energy than anybody in the world. And they don't do it very efficiently. In fact, there is a lot of energy inefficiency in our Federal Government. So practice what you preach, right? So you have the government telling everybody else they have got to be green, but the government itself is not green. So our legislation requires that the Federal Government take steps to make it more energy efficient as well. And then, finally, the manufacturing sector. Here is where there is a great opportunity, and manufacturers are really excited about it because we can provide some incentives, some best practices, and so on to make them more competitive globally by improving their energy efficiency. We have created a big tent through this process, joining forces with our colleagues over the years for the purpose of supporting these kind of commonsense energy efficiency measures. A number of Senators who have had important parts of our legislation include Senator Wicker, Senator Bennet, Senator Collins, Senator Manchin, Senator Hoeven, and others--Senator Murkowski. Our legislation has been voted on by this body before. In 2016, it passed the U.S. Senate. It also passed out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee five separate times with bipartisan support. By the way, in 2016, the vote was 85 to 12. Now, it was part of a larger energy package, but that was a pretty strong sign of bipartisan support for this. And it improved energy efficiency, in that case, in leased office space and improved energy savings from water heaters, as an example. However, we have long recognized we need to do more to be able to save energy and save money. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, residential and commercial buildings accounted for 40 percent of total energy consumption. In addition, reports from the U.S. Department of Energy have found that the Federal Government, again, is the single largest energy consumer in the country. And those studies have shown that our legislation as a whole would save consumers $51 billion on energy bills, reduce carbon emissions by 1.3 billion tons-- not by hurting jobs--by creating more jobs because it would add more than 100,000 jobs to the economy. Over the years, our legislation has gained the support of industry, such as the National Association of Manufacturers, American Chemistry Council, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It has the support of commercial and real estate developers like BOMA and the Real Estate Roundtable, as well as from efficiency advocates and the environmental community like the Alliance to Save Energy, called ACEEE. There is not a lot in Washington these days that has such a broad group of stakeholders supporting it. But there is a reason this legislation has received such broad support. It reduces emissions by reducing energy consumption. It also creates new jobs and lowers energy bills for consumers. And it does all this without putting any new mandates on the private sector. Particularly now, at a time of record inflation and rising energy costs, investing and improving energy efficiency is a smart way to help support hard-working families in Ohio and around the country. The good news is that now, with the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law, we are much closer to seeing the benefits for the American people become a reality. The infrastructure bill, which we coauthored along with a bunch of our colleagues, included a total of $2.5 billion for various energy efficiency projects. Included in these critical investments are a number of our provisions from Shaheen- Portman. For example, we were able to include and fund programs to help incentivize contractors, homebuilders, and others to adapt and implement updated building codes. We were also able to fund programs that will help career skills development to help us train a workforce able to develop and install important new energy efficiency technologies. That has been one of our challenges. For example, we include funding to enhance the Industrial Assessment Centers Program at the Department of Energy. This program allows students from around the country to conduct energy assessments and small- and medium-sized manufacturers to improve their competitiveness, reduce waste, save energy, while at the same time training students in the field. By the way, it is these kinds of small changes and upgrades that can result in big emissions and cost savings for businesses all around the country. So I am truly proud of what we have accomplished, including the infrastructure bill most recently. Again, I want to thank my colleague Senator Shaheen for her tireless work to get this legislation across the finish line--again, energy efficiency, the low-hanging fruit. I look forward to continuing our partnership on these important issues.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, first, I want to offer my congratulations to Bryn Stewart. That was a beautiful speech about the public service that he has contributed to Wyoming and to the U.S. Senate. I thank my colleague from Wyoming for that. Kentucky Mr. President, I also want to say that over the weekend, I had the opportunity to travel to Kentucky. I live in Ohio so Kentucky is our neighboring State. I went down to help some of our neighbors get back on their feet after these devastating tornadoes. It was very emotional, partly, obviously, seeing people's lives just be devastated--houses ruined and family heirlooms lost and, unfortunately, some loss of life--as the tornado hit some of the residential areas in Western Kentucky, but also another emotion, which is gratitude for the people who came forward as volunteers to help, neighbor helping neighbor. As always happens when you have one of these natural disasters, the only silver lining is that people do come together in providing water and food and help getting people out of their homes through urban search and rescue teams, like Ohio Task Force One, that went down to Kentucky chain-sawing trees down so that people can get their cars out and try to repair some of the damage, get their lives back together. It was a terrible thing to see the devastation but also a wonderful thing to see people coming together to help one another to get through a tough time. Inflation Mr. President, I am on the floor today primarily to talk about the legislation that has been proposed by the Biden administration and by the Democratic leadership. This is the 11th consecutive week that I have come to the floor to talk about this because, every week since it was introduced 11 weeks ago, I have wanted to talk about what is actually in this legislation, how it would impact our communities, how it would impact our economy. So, today, I am here to talk a little about some of the new numbers we have in terms of inflation and how this would impact inflation and some of the new numbers that just came out since last week from the Congressional Budget Office, which is the nonpartisan group up here that analyzes these legislative efforts, and what they are saying about what the cost of this bill will be. So I think it is worth having this conversation before Congress--the Senate and the House--votes on this massive tax bill, a massive spending bill that could fundamentally change the way our economy works and, I think, put us in a very difficult position as it relates to inflation and the economy and our debt and our deficit. Democrats want to push this through under what is called reconciliation, which is a special procedure here in the Senate where, instead of getting the normal supermajority of 60 votes, they could do it with only 50 votes and then have a tie-breaker be the Vice President in her role as President of the Senate. So I have concerns about the substance of the legislation but also in terms of the process. Wouldn't it be great if this could actually go through committees and the committees could vet some of these proposals? Last week, I talked about some of the tax proposals, for instance, which I think have inadvertent impacts on pensions--defined benefit plans, in particular-- inadvertent effects on businesses that aren't going to be able to write off expansions and plant equipment, which we want them to do. Maybe some of these things are inadvertent, but it also has a change in the tax policy where it says that the State and local tax deduction would no longer be capped at $10,000. This is a Federal deduction people are able to take on their State and local taxes, but they would raise that to $80,000, that cap. The impact of that and a couple other things in the legislation means that 70 percent of millionaires--people who make over $1 million in income a year--would get a significant tax cut under this legislation; whereas, if you only make 30,000 bucks a year, only 30 percent of those people get a tax cut. And that is in the first year. In the second year, it goes down to about half that. And in the third year, it goes down to 10 percent and below. So it really is skewed toward providing tax relief for the wealthy at a time when, obviously, we are concerned about those people. Given the economic uncertainty, given the COVID issues, given the natural disasters, given the other issues that we face, you would want to help those who need the help the most. That is not what this legislation does. Again, if it had gone through the process of the committees of jurisdiction--in this case, the Finance Committee, the Ways and Means Committee--I don't think we would be seeing this. All these issues are ones that could have been ironed out had it not been jammed through on this reconciliation process without any committee consideration. So I am upset that Congress is being thwarted from doing its work, and I think, if we had, it would be a very different piece of legislation. This plan is also going to hurt, in my view, with regard to inflation. We are looking at the highest inflation we have had in decades. I think everybody knows that now, not because they are looking at the numbers, which I will talk about in a second, but because when they go to the grocery store, they are paying a lot more for a hamburger or for milk or for bread; or when they go to fill up their car with gas, they are seeing the prices at the pump. I filled up my pickup truck--I took it to Kentucky on the trip I just talked about--and it was almost a hundred bucks to fill it up. That is a lot for people who are on a fixed income or young people or someone who has to commute to work. That really takes a bite out of your budget. But that inflation is across our economy right now, and it is tough on people. The work shortages that we see, the workforce shortages, the supply chain delays, the inflation--all of these things are problems in our economy right now. All of them get worse, in my view, if we do it the way the Democrats propose because, by adding more fuel to the fire, more stimulus spending--in this case, trillions of dollars--you are going to stimulate more demand in the economy. And inflation happens when demand outstrips supply. So you have a lot of demand for something, but you don't have the supply for it, and it raises inflation. And that is exactly what many of us predicted would have happened back in March of this year when Congress did the same thing--$1.9 trillion. A lot of it was stimulus spending. And people said, ``This is going to cause inflation,'' and, sure enough, it did. It wasn't just me and other Republicans. It was some Democrats as well. So that trend of rising inflation, which has made things so costly and expensive for so many people in my home State of Ohio, shows no sign of slowing down. Late last week, the Labor Department reported that the Consumer Price Index, or the CPI, rose by 6.8 percent over the last 12 months. That is the biggest year-to-year inflationary increase in 39 years--39 years. And last month, the number for inflation--1 month alone--was 0.8 percent. So get on your calculator and do the math: 0.8 percent in 1 month. Do that times 12 months, and you end up with inflation of 10 percent on an annualized basis. That is just from last month, if we just extrapolate that out over the year. Ten percent inflation? For those who lived through inflation in the late 1970s, early 1980s, you know what that does to your economy. So the notion that the Biden administration has that this is going to be temporary or transitory, that is just not true. And, by the way, the Federal Reserve has now said that is not true. It is going to be here for a while. Although we are hearing a lot of stories these days about businesses paying higher wages to attract workers, average wages went up by 4.3 percent last year. So with all of the labor shortages and the increase in wages, wages went up 4.3 percent. Again, inflation went up 6.8 percent in the same 12-month period. So this is why, if you are getting a raise at work and you feel pretty good about it--getting the raise--but then you go to the grocery store or go to the gas pump or buy some clothes and you don't feel so good about it, it is because your inflation is higher than your wage gain. So unless your wage gain is over 6.8 percent over the last year, on average, you are losing out. And that is a real problem. By the way, in 2020, as we got into the COVID-19 crisis, we had a very different economy. In February of 2020, we had the 19th straight month of wage gains of 3 percent or more, and inflation was 1, 1.5 percent. So people were feeling: Hey, I am making more money, and it is not being eaten up by inflation. That is not the case now, unfortunately. Wages are not keeping pace with these higher prices, and people are finding that their paychecks just don't go as far as they used to. We can see by some data that just came out from a survey of consumer expectations from the New York Fed that an increasing number of people are reporting that they are struggling more financially than they did a year ago. That is from the Fed, the New York Fed. And fewer are expecting their financial situation to improve by this time next year. That is not a great feeling as we approach the holiday season. That is a real concern. The other report we have had since I was on the floor last week is with regard to the Producer Price Index. We have talked about the Consumer Price Index. The Producer Price Index is about businesses: What are businesses seeing in terms of inflation on business-to- business purchases, for instance? The new number out this week on that is the largest increase year over year since we started keeping track of this number, which was about 11 years ago, 12 years ago. So the Producer Price Index is also going up, and the Consumer Price Index is already up. What this means is that that Producer Price Index number is eventually going to be reflected in higher consumer costs--right?-- because businesses are going to pass that along. So this is not a good week because we just got that data, and I was very sorry to see it because what you want to see is the Producer Price Index going down; meaning that, in the future, the consumer prices are going to go down too. Instead, we are seeing a situation where it is likely that prices are going to keep going up. Again, Republicans warned of this when the $1.9 trillion was spent, mostly to stimulate the economy, saying this is going to overheat the economy--more demand, less supply, partly because of COVID. In other words, COVID made it harder to get supply in. If demand goes up, you are going to have inflation. And sure enough, that is what happened. Larry Summers is the former Secretary of the Treasury under President Obama, former Chair of the national Council of Economic Advisers. Actually, he was Treasury Secretary for President Clinton and Chair of the National Economic Council for President Obama, a respected economist. He, too, warned of this. So it is not just a partisan issue, not Republicans and Democrats. It is the reality of what is happening when you increase demand much more than supply can handle. You get inflation. So it is not a surprise that it happened. Unfortunately, his prediction came true: overheated economy, demand outstripping supply. We found ourselves in this spiral of rising prices. That was 9 months ago. I think it is fair to say that the inflation that people said was transitory is going to stay here for a while. That is a real cause for concern. So why are we doing this? Why are we, again, spending trillions of dollars? And what is the cost? Something that happened since we talked last week is that the true cost of the Build Back Better plan is now being revealed by this group on the outside from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and by others, but now by the Congressional Budget Office itself. So the Congressional Budget Office is the nonpartisan group up here in Congress that tells us what the fiscal impact is, what the spending impact is, what the taxing impact is, what the economic impact is of legislation. And the number that has been cited for the cost of this Build Back Better legislation is $1.7 trillion over 10 years. That is a lot. That would make it the second most expensive bill ever passed by Congress, the first being the $1.9 trillion we talked about in March. But it is worse than that because it turns out that even those staggeringly high costs we just talked about--$1.7 trillion--miss the mark based on the analysis that just came out. Just as prices for everyday goods and services are going up, the estimates we are seeing for the true cost of Build Back Better are increasing with every analysis we see. These studies have shown us that because the legislation sunsets programs, if you actually assume those programs are not going to be stopped after--let's say with the child tax credit--1 year or 2 years or 3 years, but you continue it through the life of the legislation, it is going to be much more expensive. So people tell me: Well, Rob, that is fine, but the child tax credit, as an example, only costs $185 billion--only. And I say: Well, actually, if you take it out over time, that becomes trillions of dollars--like $1.6, $1.7 trillion. They say: Well, we are just going to do it for 1 year. Well, that is just not what happens here in Congress. The history of this is that once we put a program like that in place, it continues to live on year after year. Let me give you the best example of that. You have probably heard a lot of Democrats saying over the past few weeks: We have to pass this Build Back Better legislation by the end of this year. Why? Because the child tax credit--it is already in law based on the March legislation--is expiring. So there is a tremendous amount of pressure, right? They are saying you have to extend it. Well, that makes our case. So you have to extend it this year? That means, I assume, you have to extend it next year and the next year and the next year and the next year. And anybody who says that they don't want to extend it--on the other side of the aisle--I would like to hear from them because I don't think they are going to say that. And so, if you assume it is extended, then you have this huge cost. The spending is going to continue to increase, and the program is not going to sunset. The total cost of the bill goes from $1.7 trillion that we talked about to about $4.5 trillion based on the Penn Wharton study I talked about. Under the Congressional Budget Office analysis, it actually goes even higher--even higher--to $4.9 trillion. And when you add interest on the debt, it goes actually over $5 trillion. So it is difficult to understand these numbers we are talking about because they are so huge. You know, $4.5 trillion is $4,500 billion. We have never spent this kind of money before. I mean, if it is $5 trillion, that is the size of our budget, more or less--the whole budget for the entire country for a year, in one bill. Now, people say: Well, it is paid for. Well, the 1.7 part, you could argue, is paid for--although we can talk about that, too, because some of the things in the pay-fors are not sustainable in my view, including, again, the impact on pension funds or the impact on being able to write off investments or the impact of the SALT issue. So there are lots of things that need to be worked out on the spending side but also on the revenue side. So let's assume it is $1.7 trillion, but that is not going to cover it because you have these expenses--like the child tax credit--that will continue. So I am glad that my colleague Senator Lindsey Graham, who is the ranking member of the Budget Committee, a top Republican, and Senator John Cornyn, another colleague, asked the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to do their analysis, because they showed that, without the sunset, the 10-year cost of the child tax credit goes from $185 billion to $1.6 trillion. They also found that, in line with another study by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, the revenue lost would be $1.6 trillion, either taking us further into debt by $1.6 trillion or requiring new tax hikes. So that is just one part of the legislation. It would be the costliest expenditure by Congress in our history, but it is just one part of the legislation. The hundreds of billions in funding Democrats are proposing as an example for childcare under a new approach to childcare, which we can also talk about, the substance of that, but it is going to hurt a lot of our State the way they are doing it. But that will end up costing double the written amount over the next decade if they remain in place, for example. So all in all, the Congressional Budget Office looked at 18 supposedly sunset social spending programs and found that they will end up costing the taxpayers nearly $3.5 trillion over the next decade when they get extended, if they do. Again, the history around here is that they would. So, you know, the price tag goes up and up and up. When you add that spending to another program in Build Back Better, the CBO says the total spending in the legislation, again, goes to $4.9 trillion; $4.9 trillion is bigger than the economy of any country in the world, with the exception of the U.S., China, and Japan. Again, these numbers are just astronomical. But think about that. It is bigger than the entire economy, the entire GDP of any country in the world except for the three of us: the United States, China, and Japan. We are seeing record debts and record deficits right now, as you know. The Congressional Budget Office says that the American people can expect Build Back Better, if the sunsets don't hold, to add another $3 trillion to the Federal deficit. So if we continue to debate this in Congress, which way should we go, we just ought to know these numbers. We ought to analyze them. And again, if people on the other side of the aisle are going to say we don't want to have the child tax credit be extended, we need to know that. But my sense is, just as they want to extend it right now, they will want to extend it next year and the next year and the next year. So is this the right time to do that? Is this the right time to add that kind of stimulus to an economy that already is overstimulated, where you have more demand chasing not enough supply, do you want to add more to the demand side? That is what is going to happen if we pass this. I hope that we will not make that mistake, and I hope that we will slow down and look at these numbers and analyze where we are in terms of our spending. We just extended the debt limit. No Republican voted for it, but all the Democrats voted for it, and that is all they needed to be able to extend the debt limit because it was under a special 50-vote margin. That debt limit was just extended for basically 1 year. So after the elections next year, $2.5 trillion more debt. We had to make room for $2.5 trillion more debt, in 1 year. It is clear that a lot of Americans are nervous about that. When you look at the polling data, it says that. But just talking to people-- over the weekend, I was also in southeast Ohio, part of our State that is very rural, a lot of people are hurting in terms of the economy because they don't have access to broadband and so on. So we are talking about how they feel about the economy, and there is a lot of nervousness. They feel the surging inflation. They are paying more for everything. And, you know, common steps, people are saying, Let's just slow down and think about this. They may end up thinking at the end of the day they are for some of this, but they don't want to move forward precipitously and make a mistake and have this add more inflation and more problems for our debt and deficit for our kids and grandkids. They are saying, Let's do the right thing for the country and put the brakes on this. And if we do put the brakes on this unprecedented spending and taxing, it will help us to avoid some of these economic challenges that we otherwise are going to be facing. If we go ahead with it, it is going to make the economic challenges like inflation even worse. My hope is that we will put the brakes on, and these economic challenges will not worsen, and instead, we can get the country back on the right track. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I appreciate the comments of my colleague from Indiana. What he didn't have under that Christmas tree or in the stocking was a lump of coal because I guess a lump of coal is not something we would find in Build Back Better. Even though there is a lot of stuff in there that is really bad for our economy right now, bad for our families, bad for our workers. And when you think about it, right now, we are in a time of high inflation, supply chain difficulties, record levels of debt and deficit, and an uncertain economy due largely to the uncertainty regarding COVID and particularly this variant, the Omicron. So this is not a time for us to be putting forward a massive new spending bill and a massive new tax increase on the American economy. In fact, it is the time for us to retrench a little bit and try to help to get back to where we were before COVID-19. Remember, that was the time when after the 2017 tax reforms, we had a great economy, by any measure. And it was an opportunity time. It was the lowest poverty rate in the history of our country since we started keeping track in the 1950s. As of February, just before going into the COVID-19 period, February 2020, we had 19 straight months of wage gain of over 3 percent. By the way, that was over inflation because inflation was so low. So people were feeling it. They were actually getting a wage increase. In my State of Ohio, that was the first time in probably a decade and a half. Now, it is just the opposite. Wages are actually down when you take inflation into account. And inflation is high, as everyone feared because we have dumped so much on the demand side of the economy, and the supply side is restricted, in part, because of what has happened with COVID, and it creates this inflation. This was warned by not just Republicans like myself, but back in March, when President Biden and the Democrats put $1.9 trillion into this economy--the most ever, the biggest bill ever--it was Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton, and NEC, National Economic Council, Chair under President Obama, who said: You know, this is going to stoke inflation. It is going to overheat the economy. And that is exactly what it did. So we have this high inflation. We have these record levels of debt and deficit. We are talking about extending the debt limit right now, and people think the number is going to be--just to extend it for about a year--over $2 trillion; meaning that we are spending so much more than we are taking in. And yet there is this discussion that somehow before Christmas we are going to put forward this Build Back Better legislation that we just talked about. It is not building back America better. Unfortunately, it is building us worse off than we were and adding to inflation, adding to the supply chain difficulties, adding to the debt and deficits at record levels, and certainly doing nothing with regard to COVID-19. So why would we do this? And certainly why would we do this now? It makes no sense. Well, because I guess there was a promise made that we are going to have this massive new spending and these massive new tax increases. What is in there? Well, on the spending side, when you look at it, it is the largest spending bill ever put forward by the U.S. Congress, unless you believe that it is really only $1.7 trillion instead of two or three times that. In that case, it is the second biggest ever. But the analyses I have seen from the Penn Wharton study, from the Committee for a Responsible Budget, and from others said: You know, there are a lot of sunsets in there. As an example, the child tax credit lasts for 1 year. Does anybody believe it only lasts for 1 year? That wouldn't be the history of this place. So it will continue. So these sunsets are not going to be effective so the spending will continue to increase. The tax increases don't cover them so there will be a big gap accrued to the deficit, and the projections are it is more like $4\1/2\ trillion in spending. So it is the largest increase in the history of our country by far. We are talking about doing this, again, at a time when already we have record levels of debt and deficit and high inflation and driven by COVID, a lot of uncertainty in our economy. On the tax side, I could argue it is even worse because the tax increases are going to be hard on workers because they are taxes on businesses. What the Joint Committee on Taxation says--which is the nonpartisan group here in Congress that advises us--what CBO says, the Congressional Budget Office says, what other outside groups say is the same thing, which is when you tax these businesses, who gets taxed? Well, it is workers--lower wages, lower benefits. Seventy percent of the benefit of our tax cuts in 2017 went to workers, and 70 percent of this increase in taxes will be coming out of workers' pockets. So it is a bad idea. But let's look a little deeper at what these taxes actually are. There is a 15-percent minimum tax--a new alternative minimum tax, which is always complicated for everybody to figure out what that is. But in this case, it is called the book tax. Now, I don't know if this was on purpose or not. I assume it wasn't. But the book tax, as you apply it to our economy, will result in real damage to things that most people think are important like defined benefit plans, pension plans. Democrats and Republicans alike have supported defined benefit plans. I support them. Unfortunately, there aren't as many as there used to be. But there will be even fewer if this passes. Why? Because when you calculate your taxes under the book tax, you now have to take into account whatever your asset increase is in your pension. And if you are one of these companies caught up in this, you could well find yourself in a situation where, for the first time ever, you get no deduction for your contribution to your pension. Why would we do that? And then you are taxed on the asset increase, which may be caused by higher interest rates, may be caused by the market going up, but you get no benefit in your company, and your profits in your company may not be enough to pay those taxes. Here is an example of this. There are some companies that have figured out this problem. By the way, there are some unions figuring it out, too, because a lot of union workers are caught up in this as well because they have defined benefit plans, typically. The company is saying: OK. If I make $100 million in profit and if I have a $2 billion or $1 billion increase in my pension assets and you apply a 15-percent tax to that, I am not going to have enough money to pay my taxes. So what are they going to do? Well, they could declare bankruptcy. They could get a loan, which again hurts workers. So that, I hope, is an inadvertent part of this, but that is in this legislation. Why do we want to hurt defined benefit plans? I think it was an effort to say: OK. We are going to raise taxes, but we are going to do it in a sort of convoluted way so that it doesn't look like we are really raising taxes. But it is real taxes, and it is going to hurt, again, workers in America. Another thing it would disqualify companies from doing is taking what is called bonus depreciation. All of us, I thought, were kind of supportive of that. In 2017, that tax bill, this put in place where you can immediately write off expansion of plant equipment. Retailers love it, restaurants love it, and so do manufacturers. And they use it a lot. And those manufacturers are telling me: OK. Now, under the book tax, you have to go back to the regular depreciation so you are not writing things off that first year as you can now under bonus depreciation. Why would you want to do that right now, again, with all the economic uncertainty out there, with COVID, with inflation fears? We want to encourage people to expand plant equipment, and there are a lot of people hesitating. That is in this legislation. Now let's talk quickly about the SALT provisions. We already know what that is because it has gotten a lot of play. But the State and local tax deduction means that in States like mine, Ohio, we are subsidizing high-tax States. So if you are from Missouri--Senator Blunt is here on the floor--or if you are from Ohio, by having a deduction for your State and local taxes at the Federal level, you are not only encouraging those States to continue to have high taxes and even have further taxes if you are being subsidized by Federal taxpayers, but it is unfair to those States that have done the responsible thing to try to keep taxes under control. But in this legislation, Democrats say: No, we are going to increase this cap from 10,000 to 80,000 bucks a year; in other words, provide more help to the SALT beneficiaries. Guess what. There is an analysis out this week that says almost none of that benefit goes to Americans who are not in the top 10 percent of wage earners. Almost none of that benefit that is in this bill goes to people not in the top 10 percent. There is $285 billion devoted to this--$100 billion more than is devoted to the cornerstone social safety net program, the childcare credit in this bill. Over $100 billion more for this. So how does this all shake out in terms of whom it is helping and whom it is hurting? Well, here are what the numbers are. This is, again, the Joint Tax Committee, folks who are nonpartisan, looking at this. Almost 70 percent--almost 70 percent--of people who make $1 million or more a year are going to get a significant tax cut because of this legislation. Think about that. It is about 68 percent-plus are going to get a significant tax cut if you make a million bucks a year. If you are a millionaire, you are going to do very well. If you make between $500,000 and a million bucks a year, 90 percent will get a tax cut under this legislation. But if you make $30,000 a year--only 30,000--only 30 percent of people who make $30,000 a year are going to get tax relief under this legislation, and that is just in the first year. In the second year, it goes down below 30 percent to 12 percent; in the third year, 10 percent; and then it goes down to single digits. So the benefit is heavily skewed toward higher income Americans. Why would we do that? It just makes no sense. Are we worried about millionaires? But that is in this legislation. So, again, I would say, Build Back Better? I don't think so. We were building pretty well when we had the lowest poverty rate in the history of our country, when we had the lowest unemployment rate ever for Blacks, Hispanics, the disabled, when we had 50-year lows in unemployment overall in our economy, when we had a situation where wages were going up--again, 19 straight months of 3 percent or more wage gains. It was real wage gains above inflation. Let's get back to that. That is how you grow the opportunity economy. That is how you give people a chance. That is how you help everybody. But let's not do this massive new spending bill that will cause more inflation, massive tax increases that are going to hurt the economy and hurt workers, especially coming into the holiday season. Let's instead do something that gives the American people the gifts they deserve. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I rise today to honor an exceptional member of the U.S. Air Force. I am proud to enter this tribute into the Record as I have had the pleasure of traveling with Chris to London and Ukraine and saw firsthand his professionalism, leadership, and dedication to duty. Lt. Col. Christopher ``Chris'' Ryan has distinguished himself through his professional character and dedication by serving this Nation in uniform. A leader and expert communicator, he has provided distinguished service to our country while assigned to the Air Force Senate Liaison Office. He is an outstanding leader and the perfect airman to represent the Air Force on Capitol Hill. Chris has served in the Air Force for over 20 years in both the enlisted and officer ranks. As an aircraft maintenance officer, Chris has led thousands of maintainers in support of the AC-130H, C-17A, KC-135R, and C-5M aircraft. Throughout his career, Chris has demonstrated his exceptional abilities; he was the 1997 Airman of the Year at Joint Base Andrews and recipient of the John Levitow Award in 2000. Chris was both distinguished graduate for the ROTC Detachment 330 at the University of Maryland-College Park and at the Advanced Maintenance and Munitions Operations School. Further, Chris was recognized as the 2019 Secretary of the Air Force, Legislative Liaison Reserve Officer of the Year. Prior to his current assignment, Chris had the privilege of being selected as an Air Force Legislative Fellow where he was detailed to the Congressional Research Service and then worked for my dear colleague, the senior Senator from Oklahoma and then-chairman of the Armed Services Committee in 2018. As a legislative liaison in the Air Force Senate Liaison Office from December 2018 to December 2021, Lieutenant Colonel Ryan performed his duties well and without reservation supporting the 115th, 116th, and 117th U.S. Congresses. His strategic thinking and foresight helped to strengthen and improve our national security. Chris accomplished this utilizing his in-depth Air Force knowledge with numerous engagements between Congress and the Department of the Air Force. Chris expertly conveyed Department of the Air Force positions on the Air Force Future Design that included the future bomber, tanker, and fighter force. Chris' direct support provided the U.S. Senate critical information necessary for three National Defense Authorization Acts. His efforts helped establish the U.S. Space Force, ensure the confirmation of the 25th and 26th Air Force Secretaries, the 22nd Air Force Chief of Staff, and ensured the Department of the Air Force support of the National Defense Strategy in our return to Great Power Competition. Lieutenant Colonel Ryan planned and led delegations for Members of Congress on visits all over the world to include the bicameral Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Reagan National Defense Forum. In fact, Chris escorted me to the United Kingdom and Ukraine in 2019. Chris' significant efforts led to successful engagements between this governing body and senior Department of Defense Officials, including the Secretary of the Air Force. All of these engagements helped U.S. Senators understand defense equities and their impact on national security. Due to his direct involvement and stewardship, Members of Congress were able to make informed decisions and ensure the Department of the Air Force was properly resourced and funded. After serving in this vital role for the past 3 years and becoming a fixture on Capitol Hill, Lieutenant Colonel Ryan will move to his next assignment, as deputy group commander, 514th Maintenance Group, located at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. Chris, his wife Rachel--the chief of staff for the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance at the Department of State--and their children Joshua, Kathrine, and Emma have sacrificed much as a family in service to our Nation. I am thankful for Chris' service and his work with my office and the Senate over the past 3 years on issues important to this great Nation. I salute this American patriot whose selfless service has kept our country safe and strong.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am here on the Senate floor again this evening to talk about the so-called Build Back Better legislation. This is legislation that Democrats are trying to push through the process here on a purely partisan basis under what is called the reconciliation process. I believe this massive tax-and-spend bill is irresponsible at a time when we see an uncertain economy, thanks in large measure to all of the challenges we are now finding with regard to COVID, and Omicron in particular, at a time of really high inflation that is hurting my constituents and everybody's constituents in this Chamber, and at a time of record levels of debt. Certainly, this is not a time for us to put out another piece of legislation that spends dramatically more money and also has big tax increases on the economy. This is the 10th consecutive week while Congress has been in session that I have come to the floor to talk about reasons I believe this legislation is bad for America. As we have talked about before, this massive new spending bill represents the largest amount of spending of any legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress. This is a big deal. Now, some would say: Well, the official score is only $1.7 trillion so it is the second largest because the first largest would be the $1.9 trillion that was already spent earlier this year. That is fine. You can say that, but what sets this legislation apart, as a number of analysts have shown us, including the Penn Wharton study, is that a lot of the spending in this bill, the costs of the bill, have sunsets. So it camouflages the full cost of the bill. I will give you an example of one of the major spending priorities that is going to end up costing a lot more than estimates say. The enhanced child tax credit from the March spending bill is extended for 1 year in this legislation, which means that after next year, this new benefit people have come to expect would be cut off. Based on the history here in Congress, that is not how it operates. Benefits like this are not ended. So if it doesn't end, and these programs ended up not being sunset, Penn Wharton estimates that the total spending on this bill goes from around 1.75 trillion to about $4\1/2\ trillion. Wow. More than double the largest spending bill ever considered by the U.S. Congress. At a time of record debts and deficits, my hope would be that Democrats and the Biden administration have come up with a responsible way to pay for this multitrillion-dollar reconciliation package. Unfortunately, some of us have been arguing for months that this legislation is about as far as responsibly paid for as you can get. One of the primary sources of proposed revenue is a series of tax hikes that, despite what Democrats might say, hits the middle class, hits families in the middle class, hits small businesses the hardest. As an example, the proposed Medicare surcharge on active investment income is going to hit millions of small businesses that structured themselves as passthroughs with a new, across-the-board, 3.8-percent increase on all income. Proposed corporate tax increases will hit American workers based on the analysis of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation. They say that when you increase the taxes on businesses, the main impact is to increase taxes on workers. Why? Because wages and benefits are reduced because of it. Costs will be passed down to working families. This means higher prices for everything. What is even worse is that, while the worker making 20, 40, 60,000 bucks a year is getting hit hard having to pay more because of inflation for gas, groceries, and clothes, at the same time, wealthy Americans, under this legislation, would get a tax break worth hundreds of millions of dollars, thanks to the Democrats' insistence on raising the cap on what is called the SALT, the State and local tax, deduction. As part of the tax cuts back in 2017, we decided to limit the deduction you could take for State and local taxes to $10,000 per year. Why? Because it was very expensive to have that deduction out there because it is progressive, helps wealthier Americans much more because it is an effective policy that leads to an incentive where States are incentivized to raise their taxes because people get a corporate--a Federal tax deduction for it, and it is just not fair. My constituents in Ohio are subsidizing New York and California for their high taxes. That doesn't seem to make sense to people. However, under this Build Back Better bill that was passed by the House, they raised that cap from $10,000 up to $80,000. Over the next 5 years alone, that provision would cost $285 billion. The vast majority of that tax benefit would go to the wealthiest Americans, with one recent analysis from the Tax Policy Center finding that almost no benefit will go to Americans not in the top 10 percent of income earners. Conversely, child tax credit expansion, which Democrats argue was designed to help lower and middle-income Americans, costs $185 billion. So $285 billion for the SALT, which primarily goes to the wealthier individuals; 185 billion is put in place for what is viewed as the cornerstone safety and social net program in this whole bill. So there are $100 billion more in the regressive tax cut than there is in this cornerstone social safety net program. As Marc Goldwein, with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, put it: We're debating about whether to give lower- and middle- class families a thousand dollars more a year through the child tax credit, while giving upper-class families $10,000 or more through SALT. That is pretty accurate. Through lifting the SALT deduction and a number of other poorly planned tax overhauls under the so-called Build Back Better legislation, almost 70 percent of people making $1 million or more a year--almost 70 percent of them--that is over 68 percent will get a significant tax cut. So if you make over a million bucks a year, 70 percent are going to get over--are going to get a significant tax cut. Nearly 90 percent of taxpayers earning between $500,000 and a million dollars are going to get a significant tax cut. Contrast that to people who make 30,000 bucks a year, as an example. While 70 percent of those making $1 million or more are getting a tax cut, only 30 percent of those making 30,000 bucks a year or more are going to get a tax cut. And guess what. That is in the first year. In the second year, it goes down to 12 percent. In the third year, it goes down to 10 percent or less, and then it goes to single digits. So if you make 30,000 bucks a year or more, you got really no significant benefit here at all. But if you make a lot of money, you get a huge benefit. That doesn't make sense. For example, in California, where there are graduated income tax rates of over 10 percent--that is the State income tax rate--that would amount to a $47,000 deduction, on average, for somebody making 500,000 bucks a year--that is a lot--while the average taxpayer in California is only seeing a $20-per-year benefit. So, again, you are getting a deduction of about 47,000 bucks if you make over 500,000 bucks; whereas, the average taxpayer is only going to get about a $20-a-year benefit. This doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to Americans as they learn more about this. The people I represent in my home State of Ohio are very concerned right now about the economy, particularly about inflation. They are worried about rising prices for everything, from gas to groceries. And they are worried about the fact that their hard-earned paychecks aren't going as far as they did just a few months ago. Back in March, when the Democrats pushed through that $1.9 trillion spending package, many of us on this side of the aisle tried to warn them that this stimulus was not needed to get the economy moving. The economy was going ahead on its own at that time, and yet this stimulus was thrown into the economy, which we said would overheat the economy. And it wasn't just Republicans. Larry Summers, who served as the Treasury Secretary for President Clinton and Director of the National Economic Council under President Obama, warned that injecting so much money into the demand side of the economy would lead to inflation. He was right. Now those same lawmakers are gearing up to do it again. Not only does Build Back Better deal an unfair hand to the working families they claim to champion, giving a tax break to the wealthy and leaving other Americans struggling to get by, it will stoke more inflation by pumping more money into the demand side of the economy. That is not what we should be doing now. Ultimately, the American people are going to have to look at this reconciliation package--this bill called Build Back Better package-- with its job-killing tax hikes, tax breaks to the wealthy, and stimulus spending and judge whether this is the right thing for the economy right now as we grapple with high inflation and struggle to get out of this pandemic. It certainly is not the right thing. It is not in our national interest to be providing tax breaks to the wealthy and burdening our businesses and everyday taxpayers with higher taxes while stoking more inflation. We are dealing with a host of economic challenges right now, from inflation to supply chain delays, to Omicron, to workforce shortages. As we seek to overcome these challenges, let's not build back worse. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am here on the Senate floor today to talk, once again, about the so-called Build Back Better legislation that the Democrats are trying to force through this system on a purely partisan basis under what is called reconciliation. I strongly believe that this massive tax-and-spend bill is the wrong way to go. I think it is irresponsible, particularly at a time of high inflation, uncertain economic growth--driven a lot by the uncertainties around the new COVID concerns--and record levels of debt. This is the ninth consecutive week that the Senate has been in session that I have come to the Senate floor to talk about specific reasons I believe the Build Back Better legislation is a bad deal for America. As we have talked about before, this massive new spending bill represents the largest amount of spending of any legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress. Now, the official score is something like $1.7 trillion. You could argue that the one that passed in March, the $1.9 trillion, was the largest one, and that this is the second largest one. In fact, when you look at what is in it, a lot of the spending is, in effect, camouflaged, as has been said by the folks at Penn Wharton, who analyzed this. When you take into account the programs that are relatively popular and unlikely ever to be ended--like the child tax credit--or that are likely to continue, they are sunsetted in this legislation. If they weren't sunsetted, the cost of the bill would go from about $1.75 trillion to about $4.5 trillion. One analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has it a little higher than that, but let's say it is $4.5 trillion. That would be, by far, the largest piece of legislation that would have ever passed the U.S. Congress. Much of that spending is what is called stimulus spending--adding to the demand side of the economy, adding to inflation. Remember, inflation is demand chasing supply. If there is not enough supply and there is more demand, you have inflation. That is what many of us predicted would happen with the $1.9 trillion legislation. Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened. So, once again, at a time of devastating high inflation already, record debt, and so much uncertainty on COVID and the possible need for more Federal resources there with regard to COVID, massive new spending--it seems to me right now--is the wrong thing to do. On the revenue side, the massive tax increases are also irresponsible, in my view, and not well thought out. Today, I would like to focus on one new tax increase proposal in particular, and this is the Democrats' plan to propose a new 15-percent minimum tax on the domestic side. They call it the minimum book tax. It is not a tax on books; it is a tax on companies and on workers and on pensions, which we will talk about, based on the financial statement. It is not based on income as we traditionally think about it or as the Tax Code traditionally defines it, but it relies on so-called book value, and it has several negative consequences that I want to talk about today. The new book tax, if it were to be put into effect, would drive inflation even higher. It would discourage investment in key sectors of the economy, and it would jeopardize the state of businesses that provide pension funds for their employees. The book tax proposal is, essentially, a new corporate alternative tax. But, again, it taxes the adjusted financial statement income of a large corporation, not its IRS tax analysis; and that is the income that might be reported to, let's say, the SEC through a Form 10-K. This makes it very different than the existing corporate income tax, which is determined based on the income that these companies report to the IRS. Because these two taxes are calculated using very different base amounts, the 15-percent book tax can end up being a lot larger for companies than the 21-percent income tax. The line that you will likely hear from some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is that this tax is designed to make big companies pay their fair share of taxes because it only applies to companies with a 3-year average adjusted book income of more than $1 billion, but studies from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Tax Foundation, and more show that it is actually the workers who bear the brunt of these types of taxes in the form of lower wages, lower benefits, lost jobs, and higher prices. I am also hearing about a number of specific unintended, perhaps, consequences, and I am certain there will be others as well. Let's start with its effect on workers' retirements. Under this proposal, a qualifying company ends up paying a new tax on certain investment gains, potentially due to just a change in interest rates, in their employees' pension funds. So this is a new tax. Right now, if the pension fund has an income gain, that would not be taxed, but under this proposal, it would be--under the book tax proposal. So it is basically a tax on the pensions. First, these gains shouldn't result in a tax to the company at all. Companies do not have access to these pension investments. They sit in a segregated account. Companies can't touch them nor should they be able to touch them. Obviously, they make money for the retirement accounts of the employees. That is the whole idea. For good reason, pension funds should be invested, and they should grow over time because it benefits the workers to strengthen their retirement security. Second, companies could be forced to pay more in taxes on the pension gains than the company makes in actual profits. Let's take an established company, and I can tell you some of them have contacted us with specific examples of this, but they tend to be companies that are pretty well established because they have pretty big pension plans. If you have an established company with a large pension plan, let's say that company makes a profit of 100 million bucks in a year. They could see their long-running pension fund gain a lot more than that-- say, $2 billion--over that same period. So, under this tax plan, that company would have to pay a 15-percent tax on that $2 billion in pension income, or about $300 million on top of any normal income taxes. That business then has to make a tough choice because, remember, the business has only made $100 billion in profit, and you have a tax bill of $300 million because of your pension income. Are you going to go bankrupt? Are you going to take out loans to pay these taxes? This is money that would otherwise be invested in people, in plants, equipment, in our economy. Instead, it is going toward paying a potentially large tax that is entirely counterproductive. Third, of course, is that it discourages companies from investing in their workers' retirements. Having more invested in pension plans is good for workers. I think we should encourage employers to do the right thing, and that is to have a defined benefit plan. There are fewer of them these days. Of those that are left, we don't want to drive employers out of those, in my view. By the way, that is the view of almost all of my colleagues, I think, on the other side of the aisle and certainly a lot of union members who have these pensions. Let's not forget that this tax could threaten the retirement of tens of thousands of union and nonunion workers alike. But this tax proposal doesn't just jeopardize pensions; it could have a significant negative impact on how industries, particularly manufacturers, invest in growing their operations. According to data from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, the manufacturing sector leads all other sectors in the economy when it comes to the use of what is called bonus depreciation. That is where you get to have an immediate writeoff if you expand, again, plant or equipment. That is something that was part of the 2017 tax legislation. It has been very helpful to help grow the economy, very important to retailers, very important to hospitality, and very important, of course, to manufacturers, who lead the way in terms of taking this deduction. It allows them to quickly and affordably invest in equipment, in new machinery, leading to higher productivity, leading to more jobs--what economists think is the most important thing we can do right now in our economy, which is to grow the supply side of our economy. Under this new book tax the Democrats are proposing, that deduction would not be able to be paid, as it is now, immediately as bonus depreciation but, rather, it would have to be paid over a longer period of time, making these critical investments a lot less likely and leading to fewer new hires and lower productivity. By the way, less investment in capital assets, of course, puts more pressure on inflation because it increases on the demand side of the economy if you don't do it. If you do it, it would increase on the supply side. So you want to encourage investments in capital assets. That is good because it helps in terms of the supply side. So this bill has stimulus spending, as we talked about, on the spending side, and more demand and lower investment is exactly the opposite of what we ought to be doing in terms of countering inflation. Taking a broader view, both of these immediate negative impacts on the economy and workers--the taxes on pension funds and less financial incentive for investment--are going to lead to higher prices for consumers, which also increases inflation. It is even worse. From what I am hearing, some of the biggest sponsors of pension plans are logistics and delivery companies. I hope my colleagues are talking to these same companies that are reaching out to talk to us. To pay for these additional costs, particularly the pension costs, they have told us they are likely going to have to increase costs, reduce customer services, and suspend investment in new technology. These are logistics companies. At a time when many Americans are already experiencing inflation and supply chain bottlenecks, this is exactly the wrong prescription. The book tax proposal is just one of a lot of policies in this reconciliation bill that I think would be bad for the economy and bad for workers. Maybe these specific problems we talked about today were just overlooked in the rush to produce a bill without going through any of the normal committee processes, including the Finance Committee, which hasn't looked at this--those issues would have emerged, I am sure, had the Ways and Means Committee and the Finance Committee had the opportunity to review it and to analyze it--or maybe the plan is to just overwhelm the American people with so many dramatic changes to our Tax Code that they won't notice how irresponsible any single one might be. Whatever the case, it is clear that this book tax has not been properly vetted. It is time for Congress to slow down this process so that we can properly understand the consequences of these policies on the American people. These massive tax-and-spend proposals are bad for the economy, certainly bad for inflation, bad for business, and most importantly, bad for workers and their jobs. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Ohio, and I am on the floor today to talk about a major public health crisis facing our country, one that is resulting in thousands of people losing their lives, causing the death of over 100,000 Americans a year, and has negatively impacted so many millions more in my home State of Ohio and all around the country. And, no, I am not talking about COVID-19. I am talking about an epidemic within the pandemic. I am talking about the surging epidemic of drug use and addiction that has fueled a record number of overdose deaths and threatens to get even worse. In the past 19 months or so, our attention has, understandably, been directed toward the COVID-19 crisis. And, once again, we see with Omicron the possibility of another variant coming, and those public health challenges are real. But I have to tell you that it has led us to ignore another crisis. The Centers for Disease Control, the CDC, recently issued a report which was shocking and should serve as a wake-up call to all of us. It said that between April of 2020 and April of 2021, the most recent year for which we have data, we had over 100,000 individuals lose their lives to drug overdose deaths in this country. That is the highest ever. It is a record. By the way, 100,000 deaths per year is more than the deaths from gunshot wounds and the deaths from car accidents combined. It is truly the epidemic within the pandemic. Away from the headlines, we have this other tragic healthcare crisis that has left no part of the country unaffected. Forty-six States and the District of Columbia have seen their overdose rates go up in the last year, with a 26-percent increase in my home State of Ohio. In some States, there are now as many drug overdose deaths as there are COVID deaths. Like many of you, I have seen firsthand the damage drugs like crystal meth or cocaine or heroin or now the synthetic opioids are causing to the families we represent, to people who have gotten caught in that spiral of drug abuse and addiction. I have also seen the heroic efforts of first responders who have saved people's lives by administering naloxone, which some call Narcan, its brand name. It is a miracle drug that literally saves lives by being able to reverse the effects of an overdose. And I have ridden with law enforcement and treatment providers on rapid response teams in various places in Ohio that follow up with those who have overdosed. Literally, somebody overdoses, and then this rapid response team--usually made up of law enforcement but also treatment providers, social workers--goes to people's homes, and it is amazing what you will find out. I was, frankly, a little surprised during my first visit--then, I got more used to it--which is that people respond very favorably. Most people who are approached by these rapid response teams agree to get into treatment. And isn't that the key? Using Narcan again and again and again to save someone's life is not the answer. The answer is to get that person into treatment so that that person can get back to his or her family, his or her work, and to a normal life and to be more productive in life. I have also met with families and loved ones affected, hearing their stories about how losing a family member to addiction has had such a negative impact, often tearing those families apart. And, of course, I have talked to a lot of people in recovery who have told me about the grip of addiction on their lives and how they got help and what worked and what didn't work. Unfortunately, a lot of people get help, get into treatment, and it doesn't work for them. They have to do it again and again. But, ultimately, for those who can stay in recovery and are able to stay sober and clean, they have the most amazing stories. And so many of them are coming back and contributing in big ways to our communities-- many helping others. Their recovery, basically, is reaching out to others and helping them along the way. Some are called recovery coaches, which is a more formal title, but so many of them are, in effect, recovery coaches helping others who are struggling. There are so many lives that have been touched by this crisis-- 100,000-plus deaths, but so many others affected. And I have made it a goal of mine to make sure Congress is playing its role in addressing this effort that must be at the community level, at the State level, but also at the national level to respond to what is a true national crisis. What makes it especially heartbreaking to me is that, only a few years ago, we had finally begun to make progress on this. We were beginning to turn the corner. We were seeing lower addiction rates. We were seeing lower overdose deaths for the first time in decades. How did we do it? Well, we redoubled our efforts on prevention, on getting people into treatment, on getting people into longer term recovery, making more naloxone available. Thanks to the bipartisan leadership here in Congress, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA, which I coauthored with my colleague Sheldon Whitehouse, and the 21st Century CURES Act were both signed into law in 2016, helping to pave the way for several billion dollars in new Federal funding to strengthen State, local, and nonprofit efforts to combat addiction. Our CARA legislation and the follow-up CARA.2 legislation that we passed a few years ago took a comprehensive approach based on best practices. We actually had seminars here in Washington. We brought people from all over the country here. We had four different conferences where we got information as to what was working and not working in our communities, and things that were working we funded. We directed resources toward more treatment and recovery services for individuals and more focus on prevention. I can't overstate how critical these kinds of proven services are for people on the path to recovery. Congress had never, before this legislation, ever funded recovery services. I have visited a number of inpatient and outpatient centers for addiction in Ohio to talk with those working to overcome their addiction. They have told me time and again how these recovery services gave them the structure, the support, and, most importantly, the hope they needed to be able to overcome this disease. And we actually started to see that hope translate into real success on the ground, real numbers and real people's lives. In 2017, Ohio's overdose death rate had increased for 30-plus straight years, and Ohio's death per capita that year, 2017, was almost three times that of the national average. But that next year, in 2018, as these two signature laws, CARA and CURES, were fully implemented, Ohio began to turn the tide with a 22- percent reduction in overdose deaths in 1 year. Again, after more than 30 years of increases in overdose deaths every single year, a 22-percent decrease. Nationally, overdose deaths declined that year about 4 percent, again, after a year after year of increases. In 2019, we had a slight decrease also. These were promising developments. But since then, there has been a lethal convergence on both the supply side of this issue and the demand side of this issue. Sam Quinones, the author of ``Dreamland,'' which I think is the seminal book on the rise of opioids in this country, recently put it well. He said in an interview that before COVID hit, Mexican cartels had achieved their goal, finally, of covering our country with ``the most . . . mind-mangling drugs we've ever seen. . . . It just so happened that we went into isolation at the very moment when these drugs hit their apex.'' A terrible coincidence that as the supply increased because of the greed of traffickers, the demand increased because of COVID. These two things came together, and that has caused this huge increase in overdoses, addiction, and overdose deaths. Let's look at the supply side of this crisis first. The record number of deadly narcotics and other drugs that are taking the lives of moms, dads, children, and loved ones all across the country are coming into our country in record numbers. As many are aware, for much of the past few decades, the most common cause of overdose deaths were prescription opioids like OxyContin or Percocet. Often people who suffered a serious injury or accident needed pain relief, and often, unfortunately, doctors and dentists overprescribed opioids. People developed an addiction that led to accidental overdoses, often from cheaper and more available heroin when the prescription drugs ran out. Now we are dealing with a class of drugs that are tens if not hundreds of times deadlier than those prescription drugs, the so-called synthetic opioids. The most well known of these is fentanyl, which, as you can see by this chart of drug overdoses, has become the drug most responsible for overdose deaths. The red here is overdose deaths overall, and the blue is overdose deaths that are attributed to fentanyl. You can see what has happened. Fentanyl was about half of overdose deaths in 2018. Half of all overdose deaths was one drug, fentanyl. In 2019, it was more than half and, in 2020, way more than half of all the overdose deaths caused by one drug, a synthetic opioid called fentanyl. It is the deadliest one. Incredibly, 80 percent of drug overdoses in Ohio and overdose deaths in Ohio can now be attributed to this deadly substance, based on what the experts tell me--80 percent. It is not surprising that the amount of fentanyl seized on the streets of Ohio cities like Dayton, OH, recently has nearly doubled compared to last year. And it is not only the amount of fentanyl that is flooding our country. Evil traffickers have increasingly disguised it by mixing it with other drugs or pressing it into fake pills to look like common pharmaceuticals. This concerted effort to expand the reach of fentanyl addiction started before the pandemic, but it is only accelerating. It is a profitable business for drug dealers. Compared to heroin, fentanyl is less expensive to manufacture and, pound-for-pound, far more potent. A few flakes can kill you. Traffickers make a bigger profit, and people are trapped into addiction more easily. Traffickers increasingly lace fentanyl with other drugs--cocaine, crystal meth, heroin, and even marijuana in some cases. They do it as a way to boost its effects and cut down on its costs. In Mexico, they use cheap pill presses to mold fentanyl doses into the shape of prescription drugs--everyday pills that people take for a variety of reasons. What that means is that many of the individuals who now lose their lives to a fentanyl overdose don't even know they are taking fentanyl until it is too late. Recently, I participated in a roundtable discussion on the border crisis and how it has impacted the addiction crisis. We heard from an Ohio mother, Virginia Krieger, who lost her daughter Tiffany to an accidental fentanyl death. Virginia told us about how Tiffany had been unable to get the care she wanted from her physician. That led her to buying pills on the street--pills she was told were Percocet, and it looked like Percocet. That is what was stamped on it. But in reality, it was laced with lethal doses of heroin and fentanyl. When Tiffany took these pills for her pain, she was poisoned by the fentanyl, and the life of a young 26-year-old woman was snuffed out far too soon. We are hearing this across the State. Recently, in Cleveland, OH, Xanax pills, an antianxiety medication--fake pills pressed by Mexican traffickers contained fentanyl and caused overdoses and overdose deaths. My heart goes out to these families. My heart goes out to Virginia, who, by the way, has channeled her grief into something positive, and that is going to schools and explaining to young people how dangerous this is. Her view is that no one should ever take a pill unless they know it comes from a pharmacy. She is right. People across the country need to know that pills of all shapes and sizes can contain fentanyl even though they might say something else. No street drug is safe right now from the threat of fentanyl poisoning, and too many kids and adults who weren't addicted to opioids are unknowingly ingesting these substances and putting themselves at risk. We need to be on high alert. Parents and kids need to know that right now no drug you get on the street can be safe. Our communities are saturated with fentanyl and other synthetic opioids right now. Among other things, of course, this drives the price of the drugs down. So, yes, the most important thing is to reduce the demand for drugs, but with its overwhelming supply, the price of the drug goes down and there is higher use and higher demand. A conversation about how we can cut down on the supply side of course has to start with our strategy on our southern border. For years, fentanyl and other synthetic opioids were overwhelmingly illegally manufactured in China. As then-chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, I led a bipartisan investigation back in 2017 which showed that fentanyl was coming into our country from China primarily through our own lax Postal Service. Our own Postal Service was the conduit. That is why I worked in a bipartisan manner to write and pass what is called the STOP Act, which required the Postal Service, for the first time, to crack down on fentanyl through the mail. We required the Postal Service to get advanced tracking data on international shipments coming to the United States, showing the package's origin, contents, and destination. This allowed law enforcement to spot potentially dangerous packages ahead of time and make it much more difficult to move fentanyl into the United States in this manner. Other carriers were already doing it--FedEx, private carriers, DHL, but the post office was not. The good news is that the STOP Act has been effective, and also, after persistent engagement and pressure from the United States, China scheduled fentanyl, meaning made it illegal, and its analogues as a class of illegal drugs. We believe these changes have helped to dramatically reduce the flow of fentanyl directly from China into the United States. But, obviously, it hasn't solved the problem because Mexican transnational criminal organizations know a great business opportunity when they see one, and they moved in to take over the fentanyl market in the United States. Now Mexican transnational criminal organizations work with criminal gangs in China to import into Mexico the ingredients used to make fentanyl, where the final product is made in so-called superlabs. We have a record amount of the substance pouring in, both at our ports of entry and through other gaps in our southern border security by car, by truck, by courier. This is a problem that continues to get worse as this shocking chart shows us. Look at the dramatic increases in fentanyl that was seized along the U.S. border. This past fiscal year, Customs and Border Protection seized 11,201 pounds of fentanyl, enough to kill every man, woman, and child in America--more than double the amount from the previous year and four times the amount from fiscal year 2019. Just a few weeks ago in Southern California, border officials discovered 8\1/2\ tons of meth in a single truck along with 400 pounds of fentanyl. Remember, it only takes a few flakes of fentanyl to kill you. This 400 pounds could kill millions. Their smuggling operations are complex and sophisticated, and Customs and Border Protection have their hands full. According to the most recent statistics, last month, seizures of fentanyl increased 42 percent. That is 42 percent in 1 month. This is only how much we know was discovered, was apprehended. We don't know how much more made it over the border undetected. When I have asked Customs and Border Protection and DHS, our homeland security officials, in public hearings, as I did the week before last, they don't answer the question because they don't know. But in private conversations with Border Patrol agents, they tell me that they believe the vast majority of drugs are coming in undetected. So this is just the seizures, not the amount of drugs that are streaming across the border. I take no pleasure in saying this, but the failure of the Biden administration to control the southern border has resulted in record levels of deadly fentanyl coming in to our country and contributes to the growing strength of the Mexican transnational criminal organizations. Part of the problem is that the Biden administration's own policies have encouraged an unprecedented surge of unlawful migrants at the border, diverting our Customs and Border Protection officers and Border Patrol agents away from interdicting drugs. I have seen that on the southern border as has anyone else who has visited. These law enforcement officers who should be on the line stopping the criminals carrying drugs are instead processing a record number of migrants. This massive influx of unlawful migrants began when President Biden was inaugurated and made specific policy changes, and it has only continued to worsen ever since. We had all hoped that during the summer months, when normally unlawful migration slows down because of the heat, that we would have a lessening of this issue, but it didn't happen. In fact, last month was a record month for October for Border Patrol apprehensions. As the border crisis created by the Biden administration policy changes continues, the administration has failed to give Customs and Border Protection the resources they need: additional personnel, better technology, infrastructure, and more, to enable them to better protect our Nation along the nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico. On an average day in 2020, Customs and Border Protection processed 650,000- plus passengers and pedestrians, 187,000 incoming privately owned vehicles, and 77,900 truck, rail, and sea containers. The amount of traffic at the border is going up now that there is less concern about the pandemic. However, only 2 percent of those privately owned vehicles are physically searched at the border, and less than 20 percent of all those commercial vehicles are scanned for drugs before they cross into the United States. Let me repeat that: 2 percent. So if you are a smuggler driving a sedan with multiple pounds of fentanyl concealed in hidden compartments, right now you have a very good chance of getting across the border without a search. That is not a gap in our security, that is a gaping hole. We have known this is a problem. Congress, last January, almost a year ago, passed and President Trump signed into law a requirement that the Department of Homeland Security give Congress a plan and a strategy on using technology and making policy and resources changes to be able to scan all vehicles. Unfortunately, the Biden administration is late delivering this report. It was due over 4 months ago, and we still don't have it. In conversations with administration officials the week before last, I got assurances that it is coming soon. I hope so. We need it. It would be extremely helpful to have this information as we finalize the spending bills over the next month or so. I am proud that the recently enacted Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act invested billions of dollars in upgrading and modernizing our ports of entry, including ports of entry on the southern border. Our ports are aging, some of them badly. This funding would allow Customs and Border Protection officers to have adequate space to do more screening of vehicles. However, we cannot and should not build a brandnew port of entry and then just install the old legacy technology for scanning and detection of deadly narcotics. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to dramatically upgrade seaports of entry with modern, state-of-the-art detection technology that can help our officers catch more of these drugs before they enter our communities. In May, I introduced bipartisan legislation with Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona to establish a $1 billion irregular migration border response fund so that the Department of Homeland Security is not forced to transfer resources away from drug interdiction priorities to fund processing of individuals, food, clothing, blankets, and transportation when there is an influx of migrants, as has happened periodically. These contingency resources would be available immediately when there is a surge to quickly respond to increased migration at the border. Considering the crisis at our border and the record amounts of fentanyl coming in, it was not surprising to me in September when the Drug Enforcement Agency, DEA, issued its first public safety alert in more than 6 years after it seized more than 9.5 million fake pills this year, more than the last 2 years combined. As I said, we all need to be on high alert. We hear a lot these days about problems with the supply chain, with delayed shipments and cancelled orders. I will tell you the Mexican transnational criminal organizations don't have that problem. They are moving more fentanyl than ever into our communities, and once that fentanyl is here, what a waste. Sadly, more people are caught in the grip of addiction. This brings us to the demand side of the equation. Again, most important to me is reducing the demand for these drugs, but both the demand and the supply side are related. As we discussed, the supply of deadly fentanyl was already increasing when COVID-19 hit us almost 2 years ago. Clearly, this pandemic has led to more isolation, anxiety for some, depression for others. Millions of Americans lost their jobs through no fault of their own. Millions have lost loved ones to COVID-19. Some in recovery have not been able to be with their treatment providers or with their recovery coaches, as we talked about earlier. Millions have had their lives turned upside down, and some have turned to drugs as a coping mechanism. Others, who were on the path to recovery, have suffered setbacks--relapsing into drug use again. Last month, I visited with Erin Helms, who runs recovery homes for women in northeast Ohio that I have had the chance to visit. Erin told me about the challenges during COVID to connect people with treatment and recovery support services when they overdose or when they are being released out of the criminal justice system. When we were in the most restrictive time of the pandemic, those people fell through the cracks, and we are seeing the results of that today. These overdose deaths are happening away from the national headlines, but they are taking a toll all the same. As I said, this is truly a nationwide crisis. It will take all of us here in Congress coming together to work on a bipartisan basis to find solutions to turn the tide again, reduce overdose deaths, and put more affected individuals on the path to recovery. So what can we do here in Congress in moving forward? What are the answers? First, we have got to be able to address both the supply side and the demand side. This chart lays out some of the ways we can help with both, all of which I have talked about tonight. This means we need to complete the installation of enhanced border security technology, which has already been appropriated by Congress, so that the Border Patrol has the tools it needs to complete its national security mission--so enhanced border security. In March, I visited El Paso and saw fully funded construction materials laying on the ground, at the border, at the place where there was a gap in the wall. I heard directly from Border Patrol officers about the importance of enhancing border security to give them the opportunity to complete their national security mission and help them to stop the drugs. That is why, at his nomination hearing in October, I pressed Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus, the nominee to be Commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, on the need to install the enhanced border technology and complete the funded sections of the wall. Not only are there physical gaps in the wall right now that we have already paid for, but there is technology, which, to me, is the most important part of the wall. So you need the barrier, but, also, you need the technology to be able to monitor it, and it is only about 10 percent completed in that El Paso sector. That is outrageous. Everybody--Republicans and Democrats alike--likes to say they are for technology. We should complete the technology along the border and help the Border Patrol be able to do their important job, including keeping these deadly narcotics out of our communities. We also must pass the bipartisan Border Response Resilience Act, which I talked about, that I introduced with Senator Kelly. It would provide an additional billion dollars to the Border Patrol and U.S. Customs and Border Protection folks during a surge in unlawful migration, like the one we are in right now. Due to limited resources, Border Patrol agents are pulled off the border to care for migrants, and drug cartels are taking advantage of these open gaps in our Nation's security. Even some of the checkpoints had to be closed down when there was a recent surge on the border near Del Rio, TX. Drug interdiction checkpoints here in the United States are left unmanned so offices can process more migrant families. But the supply chain doesn't start and end on the U.S. border. Criminals understand the opportunities of the globalized world, and they pose a dynamic threat to the United States. They are smart and adaptable and can take advantage of the complexity and volume of international trade and travel patterns, and they do that. They also understand how to exploit openings in law enforcement and regulatory approaches. Many of the ingredients used to make fentanyl continue to come from China, and Chinese money laundering networks have emerged as key enablers in the business model of Mexican transnational criminal organizations. This must stop. While we have a complex and difficult agenda with China, this issue needs to remain at the top of our list. I urge the Biden administration to push the Chinese Government to be our partner in cracking down on these international crime rings rather than a tacit enabler. It is in both of our countries' interests. Likewise, the issue should be front and center in our relationship with Mexico. Both of our countries lose when the traffickers are successful. Our country is inundated with lethal substances, and the cartels gain money and sometimes American-made firearms that allow them to better wage war on the government in Mexico City. For both of our countries' sakes, we need to partner more effectively with Mexico-- international cooperation. We should also recognize that these adaptable drug traffickers will have other options as we go after this current supply chain. We saw this after the STOP Act started to be implemented and traffickers from China shifted to Mexico. There is a risk that it becomes a game of whack-a-mole--when you stop it in one place and it crops up somewhere else. As an example, as we work to stop the flow of fentanyl ingredients from China, other countries, like India, could prove to be good alternative sources. We need to be prepared to partner with India and other potential new sources in this lethal supply chain to ensure we continue to improve our security. We also need to continue to enforce the provisions in the STOP Act to ensure that our postal service does not, once again, become the viable option for traffickers moving fentanyl into the United States. After missing the initial October 2019 deadline for full implementation of the STOP Act regulations, in March, Customs and Border Patrol finally began demanding 100 percent of advanced tracking data on shipments entering the country. That is good. I am glad we got there. That means that, for every package coming into the United States that originates from a country like India or China, we have a sense of what the package contains, where it is from, and where it is going, or else it doesn't come in. However, a number of waivers remain in place for these regulations for low-risk, low-volume, and less-developed countries. These waivers allow some countries to continue to skirt these reporting requirements, including, if you can believe it, Russia. It should not be in that category. This means criminals in Russia can continue to send potentially illegal packages into the United States without our knowing in advance what they may contain, posing a significant security risk, and undercutting the goals of the STOP Act. Frankly, I think it is an unacceptable oversight in enforcement, and I believe there is bipartisan agreement that that is the case. That is why I am urging DHS Secretary Mayorkas and the Biden administration to narrow down the STOP Act waivers and ensure that high-risk countries, like Russia, have to comply with these critical advanced tracking data requirements. In addition to this added security at the border, closer cooperation with the international community, and better STOP Act enforcement, we need to take the unexpected but important step to make sure that these deadly synthetic opioids actually remain illegal so that our law enforcement can take the proper steps to crack down on them. In order to avoid prosecution, prior to 2018, evil scientists in China and drug traffickers started making slight modifications to fentanyl, sometimes adjusting a single molecule and creating what are essentially fentanyl copycats to get around the law. While these fentanyl-related substances have the same narcotic properties as fentanyl, their tiny variations allow them to evade prosecution. Oftentimes, actually, these simpler substances than fentanyl were even more deadly. Carfentanil is actually more deadly than fentanyl, and that was one of the substances that was being made. Just this past week, we have learned that a fentanyl-related substance called para-fluorofentanyl has been discovered laced into drugs in my home State of Ohio, as an example. To address all of this, the Drug Enforcement Administration, in 2018, used its authority to temporarily classify all fentanyl-related drugs as schedule I substances, which allows law enforcement to aggressively intercept and destroy them. Unfortunately, this designation was only temporary. We have successfully extended the designation a few times, but it will expire in about 2 months, at the end of January. Until we make these fentanyl-related drugs--these are fentanyl copycat drugs, some more dangerous than fentanyl--law enforcement will not have the certainty they need to go after criminals moving these deadly substances, and lives will be lost. Fortunately, we have legislation, already, to address this. Our bipartisan FIGHT Fentanyl Act, which I introduced with Senator Joe Manchin, would fix this problem by permanently classifying fentanyl- related drugs as schedule I. It is about time. That would give our law enforcement the certainty to go after synthetic opioids in all of its forms and show we are committed to addressing the threat posed by this dangerous class of drugs. The FIGHT Fentanyl Act would increase the costs of fentanyl on the street and would be an important step toward rededicating our efforts to stopping these drugs from stealing thousands of lives and causing so much pain. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come together and support this legislation to help us reduce the supply of dangerous synthetic opioids on our streets. So, again, on the supply side, let's pass legislation to be sure we are making fentanyl permanently illegal. Let's look at what we can do on the demand side to reduce this demand--insatiable sometimes in our country--for these illegal drugs: more effective prevention and education and ensuring individuals struggling with addiction get the support they need to overcome the disease and no longer feel the need to turn to these dangerous substances. That is all part of it. The first step, to me, is to continue to build on what we know has worked. Remember, back in 2018, we actually had the first year-over- year decrease in overdose deaths in the country in about three decades--a 22-percent decrease in my home State of Ohio in 1 year. Building on that success starts with building on our CARA legislation we talked about earlier. Before CARA, the Federal Government provided no funding of any kind for recovery support services, which are so essential to so many in overcoming their addictions. There was also no Federal funding for naloxone, also known as Narcan, which is so effective because it is a miracle drug that allows first responders to reverse the effects of an overdose and save lives and get people into treatment. CARA also lifted the cap on the number of patients a doctor could treat with a medication assisted treatment called Suboxone, while also allowing nurse practitioners and physician assistants to prescribe this medication. All of these provisions expanded access to treatment, and that was incredibly important. I remember a father who came to me from Ohio and talked about his daughter. His daughter had an accident, an injury. She took pain medication. She became addicted to opioids. She then shifted to heroin because it was more available and less expensive. She was in and out of treatment and never took it seriously. One day, she went to her father and said, ``I am ready. I am ready to go into treatment. I am ready to turn my life around.'' He was convinced it was true until he went out to find a treatment provider for her, and as continues to be the case in some communities--and at that time, before 2018, it was the case in many communities--there were no beds available. There was no treatment option. She had to go on a waiting list. While she was on the waiting list, she overdosed on heroin and died in her own bedroom, and her father found her there. So all of these provisions we put in place expanded access to treatment to be able to ensure that those stories are not repeated. In the 5 years since our CARA legislation has become law, I have visited with hundreds of recovering addicts at treatment centers; I have visited with experts on local addiction and mental health boards; and I have been to recovery homes and other nonprofits across Ohio. We have talked about what we can do now to build on the successes we were having back in the 2018-2019 period, as well as what we did with regard to CARA 2.0, which is the bill that passed in 2018. The result of those discussions is CARA 3.0--the third CARA legislation. I introduced that with Senator Whitehouse earlier this year, and it builds on the existing CARA framework and expands its scope to ensure all Americans who are fighting addiction have the chance to overcome this disease. It does so by addressing three important areas: one, research, education, prevention; two, treatment and recovery; and, three, criminal justice reform. CARA 3.0 will bolster our work to prevent drug abuse--before it even happens--through better research and better education and prevention. I believe effective prevention is done when it is at the community level, which is where it is most effective, and engages a wide variety of stakeholders--youth, parents, faith leaders, educators--all with a focus on showing the risks of drug abuse and addiction. There are now about 2,000 community coalitions around the country that do this, and God bless them for the work they do. They benefit from our legislation called the Drug-Free Communities Act, which is also something that is important with regard to CARA 3.0. Over 25 years ago, I found in my own community an antidrug coalition. It is now called PreventionFIRST! It is still in existence, doing a great job. In fact, I had a Zoom call with the leaders of PreventionFIRST! last week to learn about some of the new innovations they are coming up with to reach more people. They do a drug survey every 2 years--they are in the middle of fielding that right now--where they get the best information. It is almost like a census, not a survey, from high schoolers all over the greater Cincinnati area to find out what drugs are being used, what people's attitudes are about drugs. They take that and use that to try to promote the prevention message in a way that is effective. I appreciate what they do, again, and that is part of what we need to do in this new legislation, is to redouble our efforts on prevention, to keep people out of the funnel of addiction in the first place. It is obviously the most effective way to address this issue. In our legislation we call for a massive new national drug awareness campaign as part of this. I believe that ought to be done with help from the private sector, by the way. There are plenty of people in the private sector who have concerns about this issue and should. It affects their workforce. Certainly, with regard to companies that are in the pharmaceutical business, they should have a strong interest in this. We could leverage funding--taxpayer funding--in ways that could create, for the first time in a couple of decades, a very effective national media campaign to get the word out there. We know that a number of Federal Agencies have smaller efforts on this front, but we need more coordination and a united message coming from the Federal Government and from the private sector. Our bill also includes more for research and development of alternative pain treatment methods that don't lead to addiction. To me, it is unbelievable that we are still relying on these opioid pain medications that were developed a couple of decades ago. And although some have worked on this issue--and I appreciate those researchers--we need to put more money and focus on this to find ways to treat pain without the addictive properties of the opioids. And CARA 3.0 will also take the important step of addressing the disproportionate effect the addiction crisis has had on certain vulnerable communities. Second, our bill will build on what has worked with regard to treatment and recovery. So the first step is more research, education and prevention. The second one is with regard to treatment and recovery. It will double down on proven evidence-based addiction treatment methods while expanding treatment options for groups particularly vulnerable to addiction, including young people, new and expecting mothers, rural communities, and communities of color. Third, our bill will build on what works and how we treat addiction. It will double down on these treatment methods. It will, importantly, make permanent the current expanded telehealth options for addiction treatment that were temporarily created in response to the social distancing required by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is important. Telehealth was something that was a necessity during COVID. People couldn't come to the doctor for visits. They couldn't be at their treatment providers in person. And we wondered whether telehealth would be effective. I believe that for mental health treatment and for addiction services, behavioral health, that it has been incredibly important. And although addictions have gone up during this period, obviously, and the overdose rates are at record highs, my belief--and from talking to experts I have come to this belief--it would be even worse if we had not had the telehealth options. So in the dark cloud of the pandemic, the silver lining may be that we learned how to use telehealth better. And our legislation allows that to continue to be used with reimbursement; as an example, Medicaid reimbursement or Medicare reimbursement. CARA 3.0 will also bolster the recovery options for individuals working to put addiction behind them through funding to support the recovery support services and networks. It eliminates the waiver required of physicians who want to provide medication-assisted treatments to their patients and changes the law to allow those drugs to be prescribed via telehealth for greater ease of access. The bill will also help to destigmatize addiction recovery in the workplace by ensuring that one of these medications to treat addiction does not count as a drug-free workplace violation. Finally, CARA 3.0 reforms our criminal justice system to ensure that those struggling with addiction, including our veterans, are treated with fairness and common sense, putting them on a path to recovery rather than a downward spiral of abuse. Importantly, CARA 3.0 funds a Department of Justice grant program to help incarcerated individuals struggling with addiction to receive medication-assisted treatment while they are still in the criminal justice system. This means that when they are released, they have a much higher chance of success. If someone is addicted, and you don't treat it, and you let them out of the system, they are very likely to go back to a life of addiction. But if we allow medication-assisted treatment in the criminal justice system, we will reduce recidivism or repeated offenses. I think that makes sense for the person addicted, for the community, and certainly for the taxpayer. CARA and CARA 2.0 have given States and local communities new resources and authorities to make a real difference. CARA 3.0 renews and strengthens these programs. And given the recent spike in addiction, it provides a boost in funding as well. When added with the existing CARA programs that are authorized through 2023, we would be investing over $1 billion per year to address this longstanding epidemic, putting us on the path toward a brighter future free from addiction. The addiction epidemic has proven to be resilient. It is a disease that knows no ZIP Code, and one that is always ready to come roaring back should we not stay vigilant. Columnist Peggy Noonan was exactly right when she wrote a couple of weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal that: We have a deep and profound addiction crisis in our country and we've had it so long we forget to see it . . . and nobody's talking about it because nobody has a plan. She is exactly right. We need a plan right now to tackle this crisis that continues to devastate our country. I have laid out one tonight that can give us some understanding of the magnitude of the problem, the nature of the challenge, but also have the Federal Government take concrete steps to turn the tide once again. Again, we have done it before. Let's do it again. Washington can and should be a partner to the State and local groups on the ground every day working to combat this crisis. We should be a better partner. We have got to all work together to find constructive solutions to the addiction epidemic and ensure more Americans don't suffer in silence, that we don't lose more lives to these deadly drugs but instead ensure that more Americans can achieve their God-given potential in life. I yield back my time.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to Dr. Kristina M. Johnson and celebrate her investiture as the 16th president of the Ohio State University. Dr. Johnson brings more than 30 years of experience and leadership in the academic, business, and public policy sectors to Ohio State, along with some very ambitious goals she has for the university. Although the formal investiture was postponed until this Friday, November 19, due to COVID, Dr. Johnson actually assumed the presidency in August of last year, and her leadership has already helped the university community to come together during the past year of the pandemic. Ohio State is in full swing--classes, research, and other activities. They have a darn good football team under her leadership as well--currently No. 4 in the country and on its way up. Go, Bucks. The Ohio State University was founded in 1870 as a land grant university--the first of its kind in Ohio. Over the years, the university has grown into one of the largest and best respected institutions in the country. Dr. Johnson actually has close family ties to Ohio State. Family lore has it that Dr. Johnson's grandfather, who graduated from Ohio State in 1896, met Dr. Johnson's grandmother on the Columbus campus. We like to think those close ties to OSU and deep family roots in Ohio have made her a Buckeye in spirit all along. Dr. Johnson comes to the Ohio State University after a long career in academic and business leadership. She previously served as the chancellor of the State University of New York system and has founded and served as CEO of several successful science and technology companies, served as the Under Secretary of Energy at the Department of Energy, and held academic leadership positions in institutions such as Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her breadth of experience from academic leadership, business, and public policy gives her the important tools to successfully lead the Ohio State University. I have enjoyed getting to know Dr. Johnson over the past year and a half, and I have been impressed with how the students have embraced her. It is a great student body. I have seen that firsthand at Ohio State, having taught four courses at the Glenn School of Public Affairs--now the Glenn College of Public Affairs--before being elected to the U.S. Senate, and I am proud to have been a member of the advisory board of the exciting Glenn College for the past 12 years. I believe the students and the faculty and the alumni and the friends who make up the Ohio State University community are very fortunate to have Dr. Johnson at the helm during this time. I wish her the very best as she continues to guide Ohio State into the future while focusing on academic excellence and building a strong and passionate community of Buckeyes. I look forward to continuing to work with Dr. Johnson to ensure her success and the success of the great institution, the Ohio State University. I yield the floor.