John Thune

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today we are wrapping up consideration of the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act. Next week the majority leader has indicated the Senate will take up the Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act of 2021. These are both bipartisan pieces of legislation. The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act was an initially partisan bill that has now been improved by input from Republicans and I expect will receive strong bipartisan support on final passage. The Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act has been 100 percent bipartisan from the very beginning. Senators Duckworth and Capito developed this legislation, along with Democratic Senators Carper and Cardin and Republican Senators Lummis and Cramer. The legislation went through regular committee consideration and was reported out of the Environment and Public Works Committee to the full Senate with a unanimous vote. It is a model of how we should work here in the Senate. Mr. President, after a very partisan start to this Congress, with Democrats and the President steamrolling through a massive, partisan COVID bill packed with non-COVID-related priorities, it is encouraging to see the Senate working the way it should: Senators from both parties talking, negotiating, coming together to work out legislation that both parties can support. It is particularly encouraging to see the Drinking Water and Wastewater bill--a bipartisan effort from start to finish and a too- rare example of legislation that went through the committee process, which should be our goal for most bills in the Senate. I hope this trend will continue. Democrats want the Senate to take up infrastructure legislation in the near future--a goal that Republicans support. What we don't support is Democrats' threat to shove through another massive, partisan bill-- this time on infrastructure--using reconciliation rules to ensure Republicans don't have a voice in the legislation. The Senate was designed to promote moderation and consensus. It was intended to be a check on the more partisan--or as the Founders would put it, factious--House of Representatives. The Senate fulfills its constitutional role best when it engages in serious, bipartisan consideration and negotiation and ensures that Members of both parties are heard. This is the framework we should adopt for infrastructure. I am encouraged by President Biden's decision to meet with Republicans to discuss infrastructure legislation. Republicans have now met with the President at least twice, and more meetings are expected. I anticipate meeting with the President and other Senators soon to discuss broadband infrastructure priorities. I hope we can reach bipartisan agreement on priorities in this area, including closing the digital divide by increasing broadband access in rural America and removing obstacles to digital infrastructure deployment. I know it can be done. When I served as chairman of the Commerce Committee, for example, we passed bipartisan legislation that reduced the redtape associated with building broadband networks. I introduced bipartisan legislation to accelerate 5G infrastructure deployment. There was a lot of bipartisan agreement to be found on infrastructure in general. Congress has a history of bipartisan collaboration on infrastructure legislation. Our last major infrastructure bill, the FAST Act, went through regular order and several committees, including the one I led at the time, and was supported by both Democrats and Republicans, and it was a remarkably successful bill. Not long thereafter, our committee spearheaded enactment of the largest reauthorization of the FAA since the early 1980s, including critical programs to improve airport infrastructure. Last Congress, the Environment and Public Works Committee here in the Senate developed bipartisan infrastructure legislation. There is no reason that we shouldn't reach bipartisan agreement on another substantial piece of infrastructure legislation. Senator Capito and other Republicans will be releasing a Republican proposal today that will reflect a lot of the bipartisan infrastructure priorities. I hope that after she releases this proposal, Democrats and Republicans will be able to sit down and engage in serious negotiation on our two plans. Our Founders established a democratic republic instead of a pure democracy because they wanted to balance majority rule with protection for minority rights. They knew that majorities could be tyrants, so they wove protection for minority rights into our system of government. The Senate was one of those protections. That is why we should be preserving rules like the filibuster, which ensures that the minority party and the many Americans it represents have a voice in legislation. It is always important that the minority party's voice be heard and the Senate engage in bipartisan negotiation and discussion, but it should be especially obvious that in a 50-50 Senate, any major legislation should be bipartisan. If one thing is for sure, it is that a 50-50 Senate is not a mandate for one side to force through its agenda unchecked. It is absurd for Senate Democrats or House Democrats to pretend they have a mandate for a partisan revolution. Yet much of the legislation that they have been pushing since taking office appears to have been drafted by Members of the extreme left wing of their party. In his inauguration address, President Biden appeared to recognize the bipartisan character of his mandate and his obligation to work with Members of both parties and promote unity in the country. Unfortunately, to date, his administration has not delivered on that promise of bipartisan leadership. As I said, I am encouraged that it appears he may be changing that when it comes to infrastructure. I hope the Senate and House Democrats will follow his lead. The ball is in Democrats' court. We can pass a substantial, bipartisan infrastructure bill, or Democrats can continue down the extremely partisan path that they have been pursuing. For the sake of our country, Mr. President, I hope they will choose bipartisanship. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee).

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, it is another day and another manufactured crisis. Yesterday, I came down to the floor to talk about the supposed crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court that requires us to immediately add four additional Democrat-chosen Justices. Today, I want to talk about another manufactured crisis, and that is the supposed election crisis that requires us to pass H.R. 1, a Democrat piece of legislation designed to increase Democrats' chances of maintaining their current tenuous hold on power. H.R. 1 is not new legislation. Democrats introduced a nearly identical version of this bill in the last Congress as well. Back then, we were told that we needed this bill to address profound electoral problems in our democracy--in other words, Democrats didn't like the results of the 2016 elections. Then, of course, last year, we had an election with record voter turnout--the highest voter turnout since 1900--an election that gave Democrats the Presidency and paper-thin majorities in Congress, and the story changed. Now we are told that we need to pass H.R. 1 and federalize elections because legislatures around the country are passing ``voter suppression'' laws. The State of Georgia recently passed an election reform measure--a law that keeps Georgia squarely in the mainstream when it comes to State election laws. The Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives noted yesterday in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that while Georgia has made its no-excuse absentee voting more secure with this law, States like Delaware and New York--among many others--don't even allow no-excuse voting. Delaware, of course, is the home State of the President of the United States. New York is the home State of the Democratic leader. I haven't noticed the President or the Democratic leader criticizing their home States for voter suppression. Nevertheless, Democrats decided that the Georgia measure would serve as a useful rallying cry for H.R. 1, so they spread a web of misinformation and outright lies, attempting to get people worked up by portraying Georgia's fairly ordinary election reform laws as a radical attempt to suppress voters and to suppress votes. President Biden irresponsibly described the law as ``Jim Crow on steroids,'' as if the Georgia Legislature had decided to reinstate the evil of segregation. The President has been repeatedly rebuked by none other than the Washington Post for repeating a completely false claim about the Georgia law. In fact, the Washington Post gave the President four Pinocchios--a rating that the Post reserves for ``whoppers''--for his false claim that the law is designed to keep working Americans from voting. In fact, as the Post's Fact Checker piece makes clear, there is reason to think the law might actually--wait for it, Mr. President-- expand access to early voting. A fair-minded piece in the New York Times, hardly a newspaper that carries water for Republicans, concluded that the voting provisions of the Georgia law are ``unlikely to significantly affect turnout or Democratic chances.'' But that hasn't stopped Democrats from using Georgia's law as the poster child for supposed voter suppression and the pressing reason to pass H.R. 1. Let's talk about the substance of H.R. 1. To start with, this legislation would transfer control over elections from States to the Federal Government despite the fact that the Constitution gives primary control over elections to the States. Under this law, States' ability to develop election systems that address the needs and challenges facing their States would be substantially limited. Of course, Democrats would like us to believe that this Federal power grab is urgently needed since, they argue, States are contemplating voter suppression laws, but as I pointed out, the last election, with its record turnout--the largest turnout since 1900--did not exactly suggest that States are incapable of setting their own election rules. Ironically, H.R. 1, which purports to be an election integrity bill, would actually undermine election integrity. The bill takes aim at State voter ID laws--a longtime obsession, I might add, of the Democrats. I have always been at a loss to understand Democrats' passionate opposition to requiring people to provide identification before voting. Democrats, of course, present voter ID laws as an attempt to suppress votes by forcing people to go through a challenging process of obtaining a government ID. I have to ask if Democrats also think laws requiring ID to drive are somehow discriminatory. We constantly require photo identification in our society to drive, to board planes, to enter many government buildings, to pick up tickets to Major League baseball games. These requirements are pretty universally accepted. It is difficult to understand how requiring identification to vote is so outrageous. The American people don't seem to think so. Polls show that a majority of Americans support voter ID laws. In addition to effectively eliminating State voter ID requirements, H.R. 1 also requires that States allow ballot harvesting, the controversial practice of allowing political operatives to collect and submit ballots. Needless to say, ballot harvesting opens up a lot of questions about voter fraud and election integrity, but the Democrats' bill would require it. As I mentioned, Democrats introduced an almost identical version of H.R. 1 in the last Congress, and--get this--the ACLU opposed it. The ACLU opposed it. That is right. The American Civil Liberties Union opposed it. Why? Because the bill would ``unconstitutionally burden speech and associational rights.'' Unconstitutionally burden speech and associational rights. H.R. 1 would impose a vast new array of restrictions on political speech and issue advocacy, and it would impose disclosure requirements for organizations that would open up donors to retaliation and intimidation. I could fill up several speeches with a discussion of all the bad provisions in this bill. H.R. 1 would turn the FEC, the Federal Election Commission, into a partisan body. It would require taxpayer funding of political campaigns. Taxpayer dollars would go to fund bumper stickers and political ads. It would allow the IRS to deny tax- exempt status to organizations whose positions it doesn't like and on and on. Then there is the fact that on a purely practical level, this bill would be a disaster. A recent Daily Beast article highlighted the onerous and impossible-to-meet requirements the bill imposes on conducting elections. To quote the Daily Beast, another media outlet not exactly known for its favoritism toward conservative Republicans, the bill ``was written with apparently no consultation with election administrators, and it shows . . . it comes packed with deadlines and requirements election administrators cannot possibly meet without throwing their systems into chaos.'' The article goes on to say: The sections of the bill relating to voting systems . . . show remarkably little understanding of the problems the authors apply alarmingly prescriptive solutions to. Many of the changes the bill demands of election administrators are literally impossible to implement. That, again, is from the Daily Beast. Like the Democrats' Supreme Court power grab, H.R. 1 is a solution in search of a problem. Protecting the right to vote and preserving the integrity of our election systems are essential. While we are fortunate that our electoral system by and large seems to be operating well, there are certainly measures that we can take up to further enhance election integrity. H.R. 1 is not one of those measures. This legislation is an unacceptable Federal takeover of elections that would undermine election integrity and substantially curtail First Amendment rights. Every single Member of Congress should be opposing it. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be able to complete my remarks before the vote.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, last fall, there was a concern among many around the country, many Republican voters, that if elected--Democrats in the House, the Senate, and the White House--if they had the whole of government, they would try to implement massive change, transformative change, as it was described. There was a consistent view articulated by Democrats in other places around the country that it would never happen because Joe Biden, after all, is a moderate. These ideas are crazy ideas. Nobody would ever do some of the things that are being talked about. Well, I have to say that pretty much everything that was predicted is now coming true, at least as it pertains to legislation that is being advanced by Democrats here in the Congress and by the White House, starting, of course, with the massive amount of spending, the massive expansion of the government. We saw that with the coronavirus relief bill, which ended up being about $2 trillion. That was on top of the $4 trillion that Congress, in a bipartisan way last year, had put toward coronavirus relief. Much of that $2 trillion--in fact, most of it, about 90 percent of it--didn't have anything to do with coronavirus. Only about 10 percent of all that spending of nearly $2 trillion was actually related to the coronavirus. Most of it was other things that Democrats had wanted to fund, that had been on their wish list, if you will, for some time, and expansion of government. Well, if that weren't enough, there is now talk of an ``infrastructure'' bill that would spend on the order of another $2.5 to $3 trillion--again, much of which is unrelated to infrastructure. If you define ``infrastructure'' simply as roads and bridges, things that most people think of as infrastructure, the number that has been used is 6 percent of that entire bill is about infrastructure. If you add in broadband and a few other things, it gets slightly higher than that. The point is that most of the spending in this bill is unrelated to infrastructure. It is another $2.5 to $3 trillion expansion of government, new spending financed--some with tax increases but a lot of it just adding to the debt, just putting it on the credit card and handing the bill to our children and grandchildren, something that has been routinely done around here for a long time. Mr. President, what I think people should find concerning is that the worst fears predicted about what the left might do if in charge of this country are, in fact, coming true. Much of this new spending--by the way, the infrastructure bill is a first installment. There is another bill to follow, we are told, that would include more trillions in spending, dealing with other issues, including healthcare. You have this massive expansion of government, massive amount of new spending, unprecedented, truly unprecedented in history, coupled with massive tax hikes, also unprecedented. What is being talked about just in the first infrastructure bill is over $1 trillion in new taxes. The taxing, spending, borrowing patterns that we predicted would happen are, in fact, coming true. Add to that other things that were suggested and proposed throughout the fall and the course of the campaigns. Subsequent to that included adding DC as a State. So adding DC as a State is going to pass the House of Representatives. I am not sure if they are voting on it today, but it has either been voted on or will be voted on. It will pass the House of Representatives. That is a very, very serious, serious proposal which dramatically changes the U.S. Senate and, I believe, what the Founders intended with respect to the District of Columbia. Then you add to it legislation that has already passed the House and is being contemplated being passed here in the Senate that would federalize elections in this country, that would codify ballot harvesting, and that would ban voter ID, photo ID, which is something that, I think, most Americans think is a very wise thing to do when it comes to election integrity, to make sure that the people who are voting actually are who they say they are. Voter ID is a pretty important part of that. It would have the taxpayers finance--publicly fund--campaigns in this country. I can't imagine the American taxpayers, among all of the other things that they have to finance in the government, also want to finance the campaigns that they have to sit through. It would politicize the Federal Election Commission, which, in the past, has been a balanced--three Republican, three Democrat--bipartisan committee that has overseen and regulated elections in this country. So it would politicize it and give the Democrats an advantage, a partisan advantage, on the Federal Election Commission. All of those things are in this elections bill, which would transform--I mean, I am talking literally transform--the way we do elections in this country, which historically and by way of the Constitution and the law have been handled and administered at the State level. States have been very involved. What this would do is consolidate more power in Washington, DC, and pull the regulation of elections up to the Federal Government, coupled with all of the changes that I just mentioned. There is no way-- absolutely no way--that even if passed they could be done, could be implemented, for the upcoming 2022 election, which secretaries of state from across the country, including Democratic secretaries of state, have indicated. So that is another thing that is on the liberal wish list that I mentioned: the federalizing of our elections--taking them away from the States where, historically, elections have been handled and administered--and bringing them here, essentially nationalizing our elections. Then there is the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal is, I believe, being introduced again today by a number of Democratic Senators and House Members--something, again, that would completely change the way we fuel our country in ways that would drive up dramatically the costs that an average consumer in this country and an average family would have to pay for energy. It would be done through mandates, regulations, and heavy-handed government requirements as opposed to incentivizing some of these things that, I think, we all agree we should be doing when it comes to cleaning up our environment. The Green New Deal is the opposite of that. The Green New Deal is a government, Washington, DC, mandate, requirement, heavy-handed regulatory approach to that issue and something that has struck fear in the hearts of literally tens of millions of Americans since it began being talked about only a few years ago. Those are just a handful on the list of what I would call horribles for which the left has been advocating for some time in this country. All of these things could be accomplished if the Democrats are able to follow through with another thing that they said they would never do and are now talking about and if they have the votes would do, and that is to do away with the legislative filibuster, which is a feature of our democracy that goes back literally 200 years to our Nation's founding and has ensured through those years that the minority has a voice in our policymaking process; that there is an opportunity for both sides to collaborate, compromise, and to ensure that there isn't majoritarian rule. The Founders were very firm about that idea. They thought there needed to be checks and balances against that, and the legislative filibuster has provided that for 200 years. It is something that we refused to do--even though the Republicans were asked repeatedly during the last 4 years of the Trump Presidency, by the President himself, to get rid of the legislative filibuster-- because we believe it is essential as a feature of our democracy and something that protects the minority in this country, the minority rights, the voice of the minority, in our policymaking process. It ensures that we get solutions that, ultimately, are durable over time because they have been negotiated in a way that requires the input from both sides of the political equation. That is something that has been sacred, so sacred, even despite the fact that President Trump, on 34 different occasions, asked the Republicans--or probably more; I would say ``ask'' would be a gentle word--and essentially said that the Republicans in the Senate needed to get rid of the legislative filibuster. He either did that by tweet or by public statement. It was clearly something that he believed was a priority in order to implement his agenda. We resisted that. We resisted that even though we would have benefited from it on numerous occasions when it came to moving legislation through the Senate. For the past 6 years, we had the majority, and for the past 4 years, we had the Presidency up until January of this year, and notwithstanding the constant barrage of suggestions--again, putting it mildly--to get rid of the legislative filibuster by a President from our own party, we resisted that simply because we believed the legislative filibuster is such an essential and critical part of our democracy. So here we go. The Democrats get elected. They have, on countless occasions, told me privately--individual Senators on their side of the aisle--that there is no way. We would never do that. We will never get rid of the legislative filibuster. It is too important. We are not going to do that. In fact, 33 Democrats signed a letter as recently as 3 years ago, basically, essentially ratifying their support for the legislative filibuster and, as to the suggestion that it could possibly be done away with, suggesting that it would be a terrible, wrong thing to do for this country--essentially coming out strongly, strongly supporting the legislative filibuster. These are 33 Democratic Senators here in the U.S. Senate coming out in support of the legislative filibuster. Now, the shoe is on the other foot. They are in the majority. They have been in the majority for about 2 months, and they are already talking about it openly, and many have come out and endorsed the idea. Frankly, to be honest with you, I think it would have been done already had it not been for a couple of Democrats who, I think, are thoughtful enough, contemplative enough, and revering enough of our institutions in this country not to be run over by the majority on their side and do away with something that is just so critical and so important to our Nation's not only heritage and history but to our future. If it were not for that, I think it would have been done already. I think the Senator from New York, the Democratic leader, in a New York minute would get rid of the legislative filibuster if he had the votes to do it, partly out of fear that he would be savaged by his ``woke'' left if he wouldn't do it. Obviously, the President, President Biden, whom, as I mentioned earlier, man people thought would govern as a moderate and a unifier and as someone who fiercely defended the legislative filibuster as a U.S. Senator and made speeches on this very floor in defending fiercely the legislative filibuster, is now also talking about getting rid of it in order to implement massive tax hikes, massive spending increases, and a massive growth in government--an expansion of government unlike anything we have seen in history, including the 1930s, the New Deal. This would dwarf that by comparison. DC statehood, federalizing our elections, and passing the Green New Deal, all of that could be done with 51 votes if they could blow up and get rid of the legislative filibuster, and all of those are very real, not hypotheticals--real. These are things that have already passed or are going to pass the House of Representatives and are being considered here on the floor of the U.S. Senate, including today when, I think, the Green New Deal is being reintroduced. These are legislative proposals that are so far out of the political mainstream in the things that they are contemplating that it is hard to believe. Just as an example of the impact that these tax increases could have, look at what the tax cuts that were passed--the reform act that was passed in 2017--were doing in terms of the economy and the benefits that they were having across all demographic sectors in this country. Up until the pandemic, we had the best economy probably in 50 years. We had the lowest unemployment rate, for sure. We had the biggest gain in income wage levels among particularly minority groups. In fact, this is census data from 2019 that shows that the real median household income hit its highest level ever for African- American, Hispanic, and Asian-American workers and retirees. The 2019 poverty rate was the lowest in more than 50 years for children at 14.4 percent, the lowest ever for individuals at 10.5 percent, for families at 8.5 percent, and for households headed by unmarried women at 22.2 percent. More impressive is that, even after 10 years of economic expansion, the 2019 gains shattered all records as real household income leapt by $4,379 in 2019 alone, 13 times the average annual gain since data were first collected. So the tax policies we had in place were working, and there have been record income gains, especially among lower income Americans. The poverty rate, as I mentioned, plummeted 11 percent in 2019, the most in 53 years. Things were moving in the right direction. So the question is, If it isn't broke, why fix it? Why would we go and increase taxes in a massive way at a time when the economy is growing and expanding and creating better paying jobs? What I would argue for those in any income group and across any ethnic group is that the best solution for improving their standard of living and their quality of life is to have a growing, expanding economy that is throwing off better paying jobs and higher wages. That is what raises the income level. That is what lifts the boat for every American, and that is what we ought to be looking for, not how much government can we pull back to Washington, DC, and how much government can do for you but how we can put the right policies in place that put the conditions in place for economic growth that will stimulate the kind of investment that will create those good-paying jobs and start lifting wages across this country. It is about growth in our economy, I would argue. It is about good- paying jobs. It is about higher wages. That is what our arguments here ought to be about. Instead, right now, we are talking about growing government and increasing taxes and reversing what, I would argue, is a lot of progress that I just mentioned, that being from the 2019 U.S. Census Bureau's data. Why would we go back on the great progress that has been made? Why would we start to contemplate some of these suggestions that I mentioned, from the tax hikes, the spending increases, the federalizing of our elections, the Green New Deal, and repealing the filibuster which, again, would consolidate more control, more power, in the hands of a few people here rather than keeping it distributed? It would consolidate more and more power in Washington, DC. That kind of brings me to the topic for today that is on that list of horribles and things that would undermine the integrity of our political institutions in a way that these other things would as well but, I would say, on a much, much higher, much expanded level, and that is packing the Supreme Court which, again, people thought was a hypothetical. That was one of those things to which people said: Now, those guys down there, those Democrats, are not that crazy. There are some moderate Democrats out there. There are some people who would stand up in the way of that and keep something that crazy from happening. Well, it didn't take very long. It only took a week--just 1 week after President Biden established his Commission to study Court packing, which is another ostensible Supreme Court reform, for the Democratic Members of Congress in both Houses to introduce legislation that would actually pack the Court. This is no longer a hypothetical. This is colleagues on this side of the aisle and the Democrats in the House of Representatives who are openly advocating for packing the Supreme Court in the form of legislation and not just adding a couple of members but adding enough members to give them a majority, to give them a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, many people are probably wondering what the crisis was that precipitated this legislation, a crisis so grave that these Democrats couldn't even wait for the results of the President's stacked Commission. President Biden's Commission, which is stacked with Democrats to give them the result that they want, is supposed to report back in the timeframe of, I believe, about 6 months. They couldn't even wait for that. They had to introduce a bill that would pack the Court. So why did they have to do that? Well, I will tell you. The crisis that requires us to immediately add four additional Justices to the Supreme Court after 150 years of having the Court at its current size is that a duly elected Republican President was able to get three Supreme Court nominees approved. Apparently, by confirming a duly elected President's Supreme Court nominees, the Republicans stole the Court's majority which, I guess, apparently, rightfully, belongs to the Democrats, and in doing so, it ``politicized the Supreme Court'' and ``threatened the rights of millions of Americans.'' This legislation, the bill's Senate sponsor says, will ``restore the Court's balance and public standing'' and ``begin to repair the damage done to our judiciary and democracy.'' That is from the Democrat sponsor's statements with respect to this legislation--necessary to ``restore the Court's balance and public standing'' and ``repair the damage done to our judiciary and democracy.'' Well, there is only one problem, of course, and that is that this supposed crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court doesn't actually exist. A majority of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing. The Supreme Court's approval rating actually increased-- increased--over the course of the Trump administration. If the junior Senator from Massachusetts, who is one of the sponsors of this legislation, is looking to address a crisis of confidence, perhaps he should take a look at Congress, whose approval rating is consistently far lower than that of the Supreme Court. The real crisis--the real crisis we are facing--is not a crisis of confidence in the Court. It is that Democrats are apparently willing to do long-term damage to our democracy for partisan gain. Yes, Democrats are being hypocritical, and, yes, their Court-packing proposal is outrageously and transparently partisan. But, more than that, it is dangerous because Democrats' Court packing would eliminate public confidence in the nonpartisan character of the Court. Right now, the Supreme Court is generally seen as being at least somewhat above the partisan fray, as the Founders intended--a fact that I think is reflected in the Court's positive approval rating. And while some Justices are regarded as more conservative and some as more liberal, Americans don't see Justices as partisan in the way that we see politicians as partisan, and rightly so. I can think of more than one significant case where supposedly conservative Justices have sided with the Court's liberals, and there are plenty of cases where all of the Supreme Court's Justices have ruled unanimously. As Justice Breyer pointed out in his recent speech condemning Court packing, Supreme Court Justices do not fit neatly into conservative or liberal categories. But that perception of Supreme Court Justices as above partisanship would not last long if Democrats succeeded in packing the Court. Just think about it. We have had the same number of Supreme Court Justices, nine--nine Justices--for more than 150 years. One hundred and fifty years, and then Democrats sweep in, announce that the makeup of the Supreme Court isn't to their liking, and propose adding four Justices, all of them appointed in one fell swoop by a Democratic President. And that is in addition to any nominations the President might make in the ordinary course of things. Does any Democrat sincerely think that after that any Republican would regard the Supreme Court as nonpartisan? Or, for that matter, how many Democrats would regard the Supreme Court as nonpartisan? Just imagine if the roles were reversed. Imagine that Republicans were proposing to expand the Supreme Court and add four Republican- nominated Justices. Imagine the howls of outrage that would ensue, and rightly so. Democrats, the media, the far left--all would rightfully decry the politicization of the Supreme Court. Yet Democrats expect us to believe that if it is Democrats who do this, if it is Democrats who pack the Supreme Court, somehow this move is not a partisan and self-serving one? As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, ``If anything would make the court look partisan, it would be that--one side saying, `When we're in power, we're going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.''' That is from the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Or, in the words of Justice Breyer, ``I hope and expect that the court will retain its authority, an authority that . . . was hard won. But that authority, like the rule of law, depends on trust--a trust that the court is guided by legal principle, not politics.'' That is from Justice Breyer. And Justice Breyer noted: ``Structural alteration motivated by the perception of political influence can only feed that latter perception, further eroding that trust.'' As these two reliably liberal Justices make clear, Democrats' Court- packing plan would do the very thing Democrats claim to oppose, and that is to politicize the court. The Supreme Court would quickly lose its nonpartisan standing and quickly become a joke. Democrats cannot possibly think that Court packing would begin and end with their move under the Biden administration. I can guarantee-- guarantee--that the next time there is a Republican President and a Republican Congress, Republicans would be moving to ``balance'' the Democrats' power grab by adding a few seats of their own. Then the next Democrat administration would do the same thing. It wouldn't be long before the Supreme Court had expanded to ludicrous proportions. Twenty Justices? Thirty Justices? Maybe more? Instead of a respected and separate branch of government, the Supreme Court would be co-opted by the legislative and executive branches. The separation of powers, upon which our entire Federal Government is built, would be destroyed. The consequences of politicizing and trivializing the Court, as packing the Court would do, would be grave. If Americans don't respect the Court, they will have little reason to respect the Court's decisions or regard them as either definitive or binding. There has been a lot of concern, rightfully so, about the increasingly partisan and contentious nature of our politics. Politicizing the Court by packing the Court would further inflame partisan division and lead to increasingly bitter and dangerous friction in our society. It is deeply, deeply disappointing that Democrat leaders--and others in their caucus who wish to be seen as serious and responsible policymakers--haven't condemned this dangerous proposal to upend a bedrock institution of our democracy. I understand that it may be difficult for them to stand up to the unhinged and far-left fringes of their party, and it is possible that some of them are reluctant to condemn this proposal because of the partisan advantage it would provide. But anyone who cares about the health of our democracy and the stability of our country should be loudly and clearly opposing any discussion of Court packing. I hope that at least some of my Democrat colleagues will find the courage to speak up and consign the idea of Court packing to the ash heap of history, where it should have remained. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

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

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I am feeling a sense of deja vu this morning. In March, Democrats used reconciliation to pass a massive, partisan bill that served as a cover for a collection of payoffs to Democratic interest groups in Democratic States. Now, just over a month later, we are facing the prospect of round 2. Democrats are once again looking at reconciliation to pass a massive, partisan piece of legislation that serves to cover a long wish list of liberal priorities. The subject this time, of course, is infrastructure--like COVID relief, a subject that Republicans are very ready to tackle, but, just like with their COVID bill, Democrats aren't showing a lot of interest in bipartisan cooperation. Once again, their message seems to be ``Go along with everything we want or be completely excluded from any part of this bill.'' As I said, Republicans would be happy to take up infrastructure legislation. Our Nation is overdue for additional infrastructure investment. But an infrastructure bill should be focused on actual infrastructure: roads, bridges, airports, waterways, and digital infrastructure like broadband. Democrats have some of that in their bill, but they also have been very busy expanding the definition of ``infrastructure'' to include a whole host of Democratic priorities. One Democratic Senator tweeted: Paid leave is infrastructure. Childcare is infrastructure. Caregiving is infrastructure. Well, actually, no, they are not. Neither is the Civilian Climate Corps or community colleges or support for Big Labor. None of those things are infrastructure. Now, it may be that some--and I say ``some''--of Democrats' noninfrastructure proposals are things that we should have a discussion about here in Congress, a bipartisan discussion, but they are not infrastructure, and they don't belong in an infrastructure bill. Democrats should stop rewriting the definition of ``infrastructure'' to suit their purposes. The word ``infrastructure'' is not, in fact, anything that Democrats say it is. ``Infrastructure'' has an actual meaning, and it is not childcare or assistance for unions. Even Democrats' actual infrastructure spending is frequently problematic. Democrats' infrastructure proposals would cost $2.2 trillion. Less than 6 percent of that--less than 6 percent--would be spent on roads and bridges. Under the Democrats' plan, spending on electric vehicle promotion would exceed investments in roads, bridges, ports, and waterways combined. That includes tax credits and rebates for electric vehicles, measures that will primarily benefit wealthier car buyers and leave rural States like South Dakota, where electric vehicles remain impractical, behind. The bill also includes a massive sum for transit and high-speed rail--substantially more than the bill spends on highways, roads, and bridges--despite Americans' limited interest in rail travel. On the tax front, Speaker Pelosi has expressed her interest in including a lifting of the current cap on State and local tax deductions. Now, this one is really interesting. It is a very interesting priority for Democrats, considering that repealing the SALT deduction would mostly benefit wealthy taxpayers, including that evil 1 percent whom Democrats are always talking about. But I guess sometimes principle has to take a back seat to keeping Democratic donors happy. While we are talking about taxes, let's talk about how Democrats plan to at least partially--and I say ``partially'' because a lot of this could go on to debt--pay for this bill. Democrats would like to partially pay for this legislation with the largest corporate tax increase in a generation. They would sharply increase the corporate tax rate, once again putting American companies at a disadvantage next to their foreign competitors and threatening American jobs and wages. It is pretty hard to think of any worse proposal right now, with our economy still trying to recover from the effects of the pandemic. What, in effect, you are doing when you are raising taxes dramatically--when I say ``raising taxes dramatically,'' I am talking the largest or highest tax rate in the developed world. We will be leading the OECD when it comes to taxation of businesses if the Democrats get their way and raise the tax rate on businesses from 21 percent to 28 percent. What you are doing when you do that is not punishing some corporation; it is punishing workers who work for those companies. This is about jobs. It is fundamentally about jobs. When you raise taxes on businesses, it hurts jobs. Now, there is a history of bipartisan collaboration on infrastructure legislation. Our last major transportation infrastructure bill, the FAST Act, was supported by both Democrats and Republicans, and it was a remarkably successful bill. Last Congress, the Environment and Public Works Committee here in the Senate developed bipartisan transportation infrastructure legislation. There is absolutely no reason--no reason-- why we couldn't replicate past bipartisan success in this Congress. The word is that next week the Democratic leader is going to bring up a bipartisan water infrastructure bill that recently passed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously. I hope he will. That should be a model for a larger infrastructure bill, not the partisan process that Democrats embraced with their COVID legislation and not the partisan, wasteful proposal full of noninfrastructure- related measures that Democrats have put forward. I saw an op-ed the other day that pointed out that ``President Biden promised to usher in a golden age of bipartisan cooperation, but instead he is showing a reverse Midas touch--taking issues that once united Republicans and Democrats and making them partisan and divisive.'' Sad but true. But the President has a chance to turn that around with infrastructure. It is not too late for Democrats and the President to sit down at the table with Republicans and develop a substantial, bipartisan proposal that would address our country's infrastructure needs without spending taxpayer dollars on wasteful or extraneous proposals. I am encouraged that President Biden is meeting with Republicans on infrastructure legislation, but I hope these meetings are not just for show. The President, as we all recall, met with Republicans on COVID legislation, too, before rejecting bipartisan cooperation. Let's hope he will choose a different path this time. It is not too late for the President to start fulfilling his inauguration promise of unity and bipartisanship. He should start with this infrastructure bill. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Portman), the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Rounds), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall) would have voted ``no.''

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Rounds) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Rounds) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Rounds) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Rounds) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, shortly before Easter, I joined a number of my colleagues on a visit to the border to get a firsthand look at the crisis that we are facing. And make no mistake, this is a crisis. Customs and Border Protection apprehensions at our southern border last month were at their highest level in nearly 20 years--20 years. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported more than 172,000 encounters with individuals attempting to cross our southern border in March alone. And that is just the individuals they encountered. We don't know how many individuals came across without being identified and are currently residing illegally in our country. Nearly 19,000 unaccompanied children crossed our southern border in March alone, the largest number ever recorded in a single month. That is 19,000 children making an incredibly dangerous journey without their parents, at the mercy of smugglers, human traffickers, or any other dangerous individual that they might encounter. Needless to say, the surge at our border is having very serious effects. Border Patrol agents have been pulled off the border to deal with the influx of migrants and unaccompanied children, leaving the borders undermanned. And the government is straining to deal with processing the massive number of people who have come across the border. One facility that we visited was at 16 times its allotted capacity. The administration has had to deploy the Federal Emergency Management Agency--that is right, our government's disaster recovery Agency--to help deal with the influx of unaccompanied children. And the Department of Health and Human Services has been forced to open emergency shelters and ask the Department of Defense for temporary housing on bases. Despite the pandemic, adequate COVID safety measures have been unable to be maintained because the numbers needing to be housed have been so great. While the administration would like to attribute this crisis to the previous administration or anything but the current President's policies, the truth is, President Biden bears a lot of the responsibility for the situation. His Presidential campaign made it clear that border security was not going to be one of his priorities. And since taking office, what signals have he and his administration sent? On his very first day in office, President Biden rescinded the declaration of a national emergency at our southern border; he halted construction on the border wall; and he rescinded a Trump administration order that called for the government to faithfully execute our immigration laws, including removals for visa overstays and limiting funding to sanctuary cities--all on his first day. And that is not all. The President's Department of Homeland Security also issued guidelines that same day pausing deportations, except under certain conditions. The effect of President Biden's actions was to declare to the world that the U.S. borders are effectively open. That may or may not have been what President Biden and his administration intended, but it certainly has been the effect. The message received by prospective migrants has been, if you can make it to the U.S. border and claim asylum, whether legitimate or not, even if you illegally cross the border, you are in. Trump administration policies like ``Remain in Mexico'' and the third country asylum rule relieved pressure on our overburdened immigration casework and enforcement efforts at the southern border. They allowed for asylum claims to be vetted long before individuals reached the U.S. border, removing the need for people to uproot themselves and attempt a dangerous border crossing only to be sent back home again. But in his rush to distance himself from President Trump and appease the open borders wing of the Democratic Party, President Biden eliminated these policies, which has helped create the humanitarian crisis we are currently facing. Under the Biden administration, there is little deterrent or fear of punishment for those who seek to enter the country illegally, knowing that they can claim asylum and join the backlog of roughly 1.3 million cases while they wait in the United States. And the humanitarian crisis that we are seeing at the border is the result. President Biden and Democrats would like to present themselves as the compassionate alternative to the Trump administration, but there is nothing compassionate about policies that invite illegal immigration, that encourage people to attempt the dangerous border crossing, to run the risk of death or injury or exploitation or disease. Inviting the surge at the border also shows a significant lack of compassion or consideration for Americans, particularly those in border communities. While many of those trying to cross our borders illegally are simply looking for a better life, which is not an excuse for going outside our established legal pathways, there are also a lot of dangerous people-- dangerous people attempting illegal border crossings: drug traffickers, weapons traffickers, human traffickers, gang members. And when Border Patrol agents have been pulled off the border to help manage the immigration influx, it is not going to be too surprising if we discover that more of these dangerous individuals have made their way into our country. And that represents a real danger to Americans. Americans living in towns and cities along our southern border are at the greatest risk of having their communities disrupted by border- related criminal activity, but the effects of drug trafficking and other criminal activity across our southern border are felt throughout our entire country. President Biden helped cause this crisis. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. And he could start ending this crisis today by making it clear that his administration will enforce immigration laws and that the way to come to this country is to come legally. He could also help by recommitting our country to serious border security along our southern border, including construction, continued construction of the border wall. For the sake of the unaccompanied children and all those trying to cross our borders and for the sake of the Americans who have been endangered by his policies, I hope--I hope that President Biden will take action. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).