Chuck Schumer

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Now, Madam President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 368.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, before I get into the procedural stuff, I just want to say what a great judge Myrna Perez will be, so I am so glad that she passed tonight. She is an amazing person, an amazing history: one of the leading voting rights lawyers in America and will be the second Latina on the Second Circuit, the first being Sonia Sotomayor. So it is a very good, good vote.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, now, in addition to Myrna Perez's nomination, I have also filed cloture on five additional judicial nominations, which we will begin working on tomorrow. It is my hope that we can work to process these nominees through the Chamber quickly. They are all outstanding individuals with proven records of fidelity to the rule of law. As we keep making progress on many pressing issues to help the American people, Senate Democrats will also continue working swiftly to fill judicial vacancies with qualified, mainstream jurists who, again, add to the bench's diversity, both demographic and occupational. All year long, that is precisely what we have done. This year, the Senate has already confirmed the first Native American and Muslim Americans to the Federal bench, as well as multiple civil rights attorneys, public defenders, voting rights experts, and more. This is how we work to strengthen not only diversity in our judiciary but the public's trust that it truly represents all Americans.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Now on Build Back Better, we had a productive weekend as we continue to close in on a final agreement for President Biden's Build Back Better plan. Yesterday morning, I traveled to Delaware to meet with the President and Senator Manchin about our agenda. It was a very good meeting. I thank the President for his leadership, and I also thank my colleagues in both Chambers for their shared commitment to getting this consequential and desperately needed legislation across the finish line. No one ever said passing transformational legislation like this would be easy, but we are on track to get this done because it is so important and it is what the American people need and what they want. The progress of last week illustrated that if we stick together and work toward finding that legislative sweet spot, then we can get big things done for the American people. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, the Senate begins this week with votes to confirm two more highly qualified Biden nominees--one to serve in his administration and another to serve on the Federal bench. First, we will vote to confirm Mr. Douglas Parker to serve as an Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA. A veteran of the Labor Department from the Obama administration, Mr. Parker will be the first Senate-confirmed OSHA head since the Obama Presidency. He has a proven track record of protecting everyday Americans in the workplace--more important now than ever before--and I look forward to his confirmation later today. The fact that the previous administration left OSHA empty for 4 years shows how little they cared about worker safety and protecting our workers, as many of them often do difficult jobs. Second, the Senate will also proceed to the confirmation of a truly outstanding judicial nominee, Myrna Perez, to serve as circuit judge for the Second Circuit, which includes my home State of New York. It is a good day for the Second Circuit and for the entire Federal judiciary. If confirmed, Myrna Perez would be a remarkable, remarkable addition to the bench. She would be the only Hispanic jurist to sit on the Second Circuit and the first since Justice Sonia Sotomayor. And just as I was proud to support Justice Sotomayor's nomination--I even suggested her name for the Supreme Court to President Obama, a fact I am proud of--I am also, today, proud to champion Myrna's elevation to the bench. Myrna's life was the embodiment of the American dream. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, she grew up in San Antonio, TX, where her father was an Army veteran who worked as a consultant with Bexar County, while her mother worked in the post office. As Myrna herself will tell you, growing up in a family of immigrants often meant breaking through linguistic, cultural, and racial barriers. And of all places, perhaps nowhere else did these barriers leave an important imprint on Myrna than when her aunt took her to the polls on election day. It was there where Myrna realized how an election system built from Byzantine rules shut out countless citizens from the political process. This experience instilled in Myrna a thirst for making our democracy work for all, and that has become her life's work. After graduating from Yale, Harvard, and Columbia, Myrna eventually joined the Brennan Center for Justice, becoming the director of its Voting Rights and Elections Program. Over the course of her career, Myrna has become one of the Nation's top voting rights and elections lawyers, playing a key role in making sure Americans could vote safely in the 2020 election. She also has fought unlawful purges of voting rolls, spoken out against long wait times at polling locations in diverse neighborhoods, and has played major roles preparing six amicus briefs before the Supreme Court, including one for the Shelby case in 2013. But Myrna's qualifications are not limited to her experience as a voting rights litigator. She is also a brilliant attorney with experience in fair housing law, disability rights, and employment discrimination. In the words of one former colleague, her skills as a lawyer are simply ``off the charts.'' The cupboards of the Federal judiciary have long been filled with attorneys who have taken the traditional route on their way to the bench--a big law firm, corporate experience, prosecutorial experience. Many of those jurists have done commendably on the bench, and I have been proud to support many of them over the years. But Myrna Perez represents something different, something wonderfully different: a sorely needed boost in both the personal and professional diversity of the Federal bench. Especially now, we need more election lawyers in black robes. We need more Federal defenders in black robes. We need more immigrants and civil rights lawyers and diverse candidates assuming positions on the bench. We need, in other words, for our courts to reflect the rich mosaic that is the American people. With Myrna Perez's nomination, I am glad we are taking a step closer to that goal, and I hope she is confirmed later today.

Mr. SCHUMER

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

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 413.

Mr. SCHUMER

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

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum calls for the cloture motions filed today, October 25, be waived.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 471.

Mr. SCHUMER

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

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 339.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, on voting rights, yesterday, this Chamber had an opportunity to begin debate on protecting the voting rights of American citizens. That right, essential to any democracy, is under attack in ways we have not seen in generations. Despite the obvious danger, Senate Republicans crushed any opportunity this Chamber had to even begin a debate on the Freedom to Vote Act. We didn't ask Republicans to sign their names to any policy. We simply asked them to come to the table so the Senate can work as intended, and they refused. Let there be no mistake, Senate Republicans blocking debate yesterday was their implicit endorsement of the horrid new voter suppression and election subversion laws passed in conservative States across the country. When they wouldn't debate, they said these horrid new laws that suppress voters, that subvert our elections are OK. It is ludicrous--ludicrous--for Republicans to pretend that the Federal Government has no role to play in defense of our liberties. Of course, it does. They should read the Constitution. But despite Republican opposition, the fight to protect our democracy is far from over in the U.S. Senate. Voting rights are too precious, too fundamental to abandon because of obstruction from the minority. As soon as next week, I am prepared to bring another proposal to the floor, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The Voting Rights Act has historically been bipartisan, but following the gutting of the law by recent Supreme Court rulings, the Voting Rights Act needs to be restored, and the Senate ought to, at a minimum, be permitted to debate. The reflexive obstruction from Senate Republicans is not--is not--how the Senate is supposed to work. Not long ago, this Chamber operated differently, in a way more befitting the world's greatest deliberative body: debate, compromise, amend, and legislate--all with the purpose of helping the American people, even when people's views of how to do that differed. There was a debate and amendment. We need to restore that legacy. We need to work to restore the Senate as the world's greatest deliberative body so we can better serve the needs of our Nation. Republicans blocking one bill after another, even from consideration, is not that. The fight to protect our fundamental liberties is as old as the country itself, and we can take note from the lessons of history. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the majorities in Congress passed transformative measures, like the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution--and other civil rights bills--expanding liberty to tens of millions previously deprived of it. These are some of the crowning achievements of this body, but if you were in Congress back then, that is hardly how they were viewed by some at the time. Back then, the minority party refused to provide even a single vote to pass these laws--not even one. The minority condemned them as partisan tools of the angry, vengeful north; a power grab. The minority refused to come to the table, so the majority was willing to act alone--act alone--to pass civil rights legislation. It wasn't partisan; it was patriotic. Their actions made our democracy stronger, and they were willing to do what was necessary, including going it alone to defend our freedoms. Today, we feel the same way. The question now before the Senate is how we will find a path forward on protecting our freedoms in the 21st century. The Members of this Chamber can take inspiration from the great patriots of the past who put country over party, or they can cross their arms and watch as our 240-year-old experiment in democracy falls prey to the specters of authoritarian control.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. SCHUMER

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.