Tommy Tuberville

Mr. TUBERVILLE

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President, you know, it is no secret that I oppose President Biden's tax proposal. I think it is bad policy that would undercut growth and derail American prosperity. But one of the worst parts of the President's plan is the provision requiring financial institutions to report their customer's transactions of $600 or greater to the IRS. That means anytime an American pays a bill, makes a deposit, transfers funds, or makes a purchase of $600 or more, their bank, credit union, or financial institution would be forced to report that data to the IRS. Opposition to this proposal is deep and bipartisan. I don't care if you are a Republican, Democrat, or Independent. No one wants the IRS looking over their shoulder every time they make a financial transaction. The IRS doesn't efficiently use the data it collects now. Why in the world would we give them more information? If the IRS has reason to believe you are not paying all that you owe in taxes, they have the ability to audit you. They don't need any more private financial data on any of us. The bulk of the data collection they are proposing will do nothing to close the so-called tax gap. All it does is violate the liberty of every freedom-loving American who values their financial property. The proposal would dramatically increase IRS audits of working Americans. The overwhelming majority of people the IRS would look into as a result of this policy would not have done a single thing wrong, but when the IRS starts snooping, it will cost you big money. That means hiring a high-priced attorney/accountant who will bleed you dry. President Biden claims his proposal would only impact the rich, but middle-class families are the ones who will ultimately pay the price. Additionally, the IRS has a history of data security failures. Just earlier this year, the confidential tax information of over a dozen well-known Americans leaked from the Agency and was published in the press. That was unacceptable and unlawful, but nothing was done to hold the IRS accountable. But this is, unfortunately, nothing new. Under President Biden's watch, when he was Vice President, conservative groups and individuals were targeted for aggressive audits. And as recently as this year, a Texas-based charity was denied tax-exempt status because the IRS considered the charity too close to Republicans and too close to Christianity. Folks, that is pitiful. Providing the IRS with massive amounts of financial-transaction data will only make it easier for them to target groups or individuals they disagree with. If anything, we need to be reining in the IRS and holding officials accountable who go after taxpayers for political reasons. The outcry from voters has been strong and swift. Some of my Democrat colleagues are feeling the heat from their constituents and are starting to walk back the President's proposal. The American people have them on the run. Democrats in Congress are talking about only requiring transactions of only $10,000 or more to be reported to the IRS. While fewer Americans would be directly impacted by this threshold, we would still feel the broader, negative effects. That being said, on Tuesday of this week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the President's top economic adviser, defended the Biden plan and doubled down on the $600 IRS proposal. Regardless of whether Democrats settle on $600 or $10,000 threshold, every American would suffer. That is because our community banks and credit unions will be overwhelmed--I mean overwhelmed--with a tidal wave of compliance data. Small banks and credit unions won't be able to afford to hire the staff that they are going to need, forcing them to close their doors in a lot of rural and minority areas. And for Americans, including many minorities, living in rural communities across the country, these small banks and credit unions are a focal point for the community. They provide the money folks need to buy their first home or car; they fuel the economic development, provide good-paying jobs, and pump resources back into these rural communities. If these community banks and credit unions close, it would cut off access to capital for millions of Americans in communities. They would suffer. Livelihoods would be destroyed. That is why I, along with my colleague from Florida, Senator Rick Scott, have introduced a bill prohibiting the IRS from creating, implementing, or administering a financial reporting regime that would require financial institutions or individuals to report data or financial transactions or account balances to the IRS. To be clear, my legislation does not touch the Bank Secrecy Act or any of the regulations either implemented or issued under that act. My bill has been endorsed by the American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America, the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions, the Credit Union National Association, the Heritage Action for America, the League of Southeastern Credit Unions, and the Alabama Bankers Association. These organizations and their members know that if President Biden's proposal goes through, banking, as we know it, will end. At this time, I would like to yield the floor to my distinguished colleague from Florida, Mr. Scott.

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President.

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President.

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President, this is a simple two-page bill that will protect every American from an invasion of privacy by Big Brother Government IRS. I am sorry to see that my Democratic colleagues oppose protecting the financial privacy of American taxpayers. That is a real shame. I think you would be hard-pressed to find a Member of the U.S. Senate who can honestly say that a majority of their constituents support President Biden's proposal for the IRS to monitor a $600 or more transaction. I don't think you could find one. We ought to be able to stand up together, in a bipartisan fashion, to reject this radical proposal. I am confident that the American people will continue to put pressure on their elected representatives to reject this plan. I will work with my colleagues to address legitimate concerns, though I suspect there are none, and any position is going to be purely political. Americans across the country can count on Senator Scott and myself to keep up the fight of this important issue. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. TUBERVILLE

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

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, in the winter of 2010, American intelligence picked up the chatter of Afghan fighters in Pakistan. ``Why are you back?'' asked the Taliban leaders. ``You are supposed to be fighting the Americans.'' ``Yes,'' one of the fighters said, ``but the Americans run toward the bullets.'' That story captures the American fighting spirit. If you ever find yourself questioning the greatness of this country, I encourage you to go talk to one of our young servicemembers. I am not talking about our older generals or warhorses you often see on TV or around here on Capitol Hill. They won't renew your faith in America. They may even worry you. I am talking about the young people. It is the door kickers, the tank drivers, the trigger pullers. Some of them are still just kids. I am talking about the ones fresh out of college; ones hoping to pay for college by signing up for our great military. These young people are America's future. They are the Americans who fought so hard for us in Afghanistan over the last 20 years, and they are the ones so disappointed today of how we abandoned our mission in Afghanistan. Many of them did not remember the bright blue morning on September 11, 2001, when evil itself boarded four planes here on the east coast and took the lives of 2,977 of our fellow Americans in just a matter of hours. They were just infants when President Bush demanded the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden and shut down the terrorist training camps that littered Afghanistan. And when the Taliban refused, the United States and our most loyal ally, Great Britain, invaded Afghanistan. We were soon joined by 46 other nations. It was the first time Article 5 of NATO had been invoked, which states: An attack on one is an attack on all. America, in her righteous might, launched Operation Enduring Freedom and rained hell on the Taliban on October 7, 2001. We lost 12 brave American soldiers that year, but by December 17, we controlled a country few Americans could have found on the map months before. To call Afghanistan in 2001 ``stone age'' would be an insult to the rocks on the ground. We saw diseases only found in textbooks. Eighty- five percent of the population was illiterate. No girls were allowed to attend school. Cell phones and computers were nonexistent. We were not there to conquer. We didn't want to nation build. Our presence was needed because we wanted to keep Afghanistan from yet again becoming a training sanctuary for every would-be terrorist on Earth. After all, the United States and our politicians of the 1990s looked the other way and failed to recognize Afghanistan as a threat. Thirty years ago, Afghanistan was a training ground for some 10 to 20,000 terrorists. From Afghanistan, al-Qaida attacked the World Trade Center in 1993; two of our Embassies in Africa; and bombed the USS Cole, a ship that was docked. The Clinton administration thought it could handle al-Qaida and their terrorist threat with over-the-horizon capabilities. September 11 showed us that strategy doesn't work. But, unfortunately, the Biden administration has forgotten those lessons of our past. During World War II, my father landed at Normandy and fought the Nazis in Europe. Hitler and Germany had the will to win, but, thank God, America and our allies had more will. From the time my dad landed at Normandy to when he reached Berlin, he earned five Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart. He was lucky. More than 400,000 other Americans would never return home. Their blood, sweat, and tears saved Europe and the free world. Yet the work of the Greatest Generation didn't end on May 8, 1945. Americans stayed in Germany. We stayed to prosecute Nazi leadership. We stayed to build and rebuild their businesses and banks. If you drive a BMW today, it is because America worked to change the behavior of millions of Nazis who were still living in Germany after the war. And we are, today, still in Germany. It is the same success story in Japan and in South Korea. America's commitment to freedom and democracy didn't end when the shooting stopped. Today, Germany, Japan, and South Korea are some of our most vibrant economies and democracies across the world. Those nations are also among our closest allies. That, ladies and gentlemen, was our hope for Afghanistan. Every American wants to see war come to an end. War is ugly. War is brutal. War robs lives and destroys property. But freedom is certainly worth fighting for. Like World War II, our war in Afghanistan was completely justified. We took the end fight to the enemy who started it: the Taliban and al- Qaida. Our war in Afghanistan ended in 2014. Operation Enduring Freedom transitioned to a supporting role called Operation Resolute Support. That support trained the Afghan Army, intelligence, and police forces to fend for themselves. It allowed for greater educational opportunities for young boys and girls all throughout Afghanistan. And as the Afghan security forces became increasingly capable, America withdrew her forces. By January 2021, we had reduced our presence to just 2,500 from a high of 98,000 in 2011. President Trump also wanted to go to zero, but his military advisers said it would be unwise. So President Trump listened and maintained troop levels at 2,500. President Biden claims he doesn't remember his generals telling him to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. Yet the President's principal military adviser, General Mark Milley, says he wanted to see 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. The top commander for the Middle East, General Frank McKenzie, said he wanted to see 2,500 troops remain in Afghanistan. The top, longest-serving, and most decorated commander in Afghanistan, General Scott Miller, wanted to see 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. They clearly told President Biden that, to remain stable and protect the U.S. and our allies, Afghanistan needed a small American presence of 2,500 troops. So when the President says he doesn't recall or he doesn't remember, is he telling the truth? Well, I don't know. But what I do know is that President Biden didn't listen to his military advisers. He didn't listen to troops on the ground. He ignored military advice and, instead, made a political decision. You can't run a war from Washington with an 8,000-mile-long screwdriver. If you do, you will screw it up--85 billion in equipment captured by the Taliban; valuable air bases abandoned in the middle of the night; American citizens still left behind enemy lines to this day; journalists and aid workers abandoned; innocent Afghan partners and allies left to the will of our enemy; chaos and disorder at Kabul airport; desperate Afghans falling from our aircraft, as people across our Nation and the world watched in horror; 13 American soldiers dead. None of this should have ever happened. But now we must reckon with the worst foreign policy decision ever made. Our credibility has been eroded and respect from our allies has been destroyed. America must return to the peace-through-strength leadership that has guided us throughout history. It has made our enemies fear us, our allies value us and what it means to have us as a partner on the world stage. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. TUBERVILLE

Mr. TUBERVILLE. I yield the floor.

Mr. TUBERVILLE

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President, you know, these days, information is only a few clicks away on your computer, and there is more information to be consumed than there are hours in the day. It is information overload, and it is overwhelming to sift through all the noise. But no matter the narrative being pushed, one thing remains: the facts. The facts don't lie. It is information overload. The facts tell the story better than anyone. Facts take many forms and play out in many ways. They are the impacts of decisions made and actions taken, whether we like it or not. But it doesn't take long for anyone to see this fact: The decisions coming out of the White House have followed one overall thought, one guiding ideology. It is not a unifying ideology that protects the freedoms and liberties we hold dear as Americans. It doesn't safeguard the values of our country or promote a vision for a brighter tomorrow and a more prosperous nation for future generations. It is a Big Government, socialist ideology. It is a vision of transformation. It is a strategy of undoing everything done by the previous administration even if those policies were successful. Since President Biden's inauguration, every executive order, every regulatory rollback, and every message of so-called unity we were once promised has been in the spirit of doing the opposite of the previous administration, with an emphasis on the ``woke'' transformation of America's founding principles. ``But not Trump'' is not a strategy. It is not a policy stance. It is a reactionary and misguided posture that has plunged our Nation into domestic and international disarray. It is a backward approach to implementing an agenda to transform the culture and the values of America, and we are seeing the on-the-ground effects of this approach in our communities, at our borders, and abroad. When the singular driving force of your Presidency is simply being the opposite of your predecessor, our country faces the consequences of that decision. We are facing crises that were preventable, crises that are a direct result of policy decisions. This is an uncomfortable and inconvenient fact for President Biden, and Democrats don't seem too interested in the facts about the consequences of this administration's decision, either. So let me lay them out. Here are some facts. The Biden administration inherited a conditions-based withdrawal strategy on Afghanistan. The idea was that we will have a withdrawal of forces that kept some boots on the ground to maintain stability and limit chaos and, importantly, preserve the progress our troops had made. Instead of continuing this conditions-based approach that would protect our servicemembers, allies, and innocent civilians, President Biden came up with a new plan, one he thought would make for better headlines, rather than listening to our commanders on the ground. President Trump's plan was to roll people out strategically and maintain our assets to prevent attacks on the United States in the future. The plan certainly did not involve leaving American citizens behind. Instead, President Biden's decision left chaos in its wake. His decision left our troops vulnerable and resulted in the death of 13-- 13--U.S. servicemembers. The average age of these servicemembers was 22 years old. His decision has disrespected the sacrifices of more than 800,000 U.S. veterans who bravely served during the War on Terror. His decision gave the Taliban their greatest victory to date and made them one of the top 10 most well-equipped militaries in the world, funded by the hard-working taxpayers of this country. His decision abandoned innocent Americans in a country governed by radical terrorists, and it is clear that he ignored the best military advice given to him by his top commanders and ordered our troops to put down their weapons and retreat. President Biden's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan this way gave the Taliban everything they wanted: control of the region, our own weapons, and, ultimately, a breeding ground for terrorism. The fact of the matter is, our country will be facing the consequences of President Biden's decision for decades--for decades to come. Our country was safer for the past 20 years thanks to the bravest fighting forces in the world, our men and women in uniform. Counterterrorism is still necessary, but we just made it harder on ourselves by not having ground forces and by closing Bagram Airfield. The myth from the White House is that our country had no choice but that we were beholden to a deal made before January 20. But the policy decisions made by President Biden emboldened the Taliban, endangered Americans, and encouraged our adversaries. Tomorrow, the Senate Armed Services Committee will hold the first open hearing--hopefully, one of many--to review President Biden's decision and what caused our time in Afghanistan to conclude the way it did. The American people deserve facts, and I and the rest of our delegation will not rest until we have answers from the people involved. From abroad to right here at our own southwest border, we are witnessing the disastrous effects of the Biden Presidency play out in epic proportions. The numbers do not lie. Fact: In July and August, apprehensions at the southern border surpassed 200,000 each month. That is quadruple the amount from this time last year. Fact: We have seen recordbreaking numbers of illegal immigrants at our southwest border from the day President Biden was inaugurated. Over 1.3 million people have been apprehended trying to illegally cross our southwest border, and that is only the ones we know of. There are hundreds of thousands more getting into our country. And fact: All of this is a direct result of President Biden's open border policies, a reversal from those of the previous administration. This is a prime example of the Biden administration putting politics over policy. On January 20, his first day in office, President Biden announced a suspension of the border wall construction. Now billions of taxpayer dollars are being spent to cover the cost of canceling the contracts the Federal Government entered into to build the wall. On the same day, he terminated the Migrant Protection Protocols policy. In February, President Biden terminated the asylum cooperative agreements with the Northern Triangle countries established under President Trump. Doing away with these agreements has allowed caravans to travel thousands of miles through multiple countries to our southwest border, without any capacity support from our regional partners. These decisions have directly contributed to the unprecedented numbers of illegal immigrant encounters we have seen, because with these decisions, President Biden signaled to the world that anyone wanting to leave their country for ours would be admitted to the United States of America. After months of avoiding the word ``crisis'' to describe the border, President Biden recently said: ``We will get the border under control.'' To even say he will ``get the border under control'' means he acknowledges that it is not under control. Well, I guess that is one fact that we can all come to agreement on. The facts that Democrats seem to want to ignore most are those that deal with our economy. The separation from fact to fiction for our friends across the aisle could not be starker than when it comes to the American economy. It is a fact that inflation is sky high--as high as it has been since 2010. Despite rising inflation and increasing prices, the President is still marching forward with his vision of Big Government--a big government welfare State, enacted through the Democrats' reckless tax- and-spend spree. He wants to create a massive welfare State paid for by staggering--and I mean staggering--tax hikes that would destroy economic growth. And the Democrats are his captive audience. President Biden's America is one where our businesses and job creators pay for all. That is not ``pay your fair share.'' That is wealth distribution. He is not interested in boosting the economy and helping Americans. He is interested in remaking the system with subsidies and entitlements--a welfare state to keep everyone beholden to the government--no work requirements, just complete government dependency. Our country was founded on freedom. It was founded on opportunity-- the opportunity to work hard and to achieve the American dream. That is what this country owes you, not a handout but a hand up. The programs laid out in the Democrats' reckless tax-and-spend spree are a transparent effort to a woke transformation of the values and culture upon which our country was built. If that wasn't bad enough, they are going to raise taxes to pay for them, picking from a menu of more than 30 new taxes. Our businesses, small and large, create jobs and grow the economy. Increasing their taxes means they can't spend and invest in their own businesses. If they can't expand, they can't create more jobs. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Businesses will squeeze inward, cutting workers and wages. A higher corporate tax rate isn't ``paying their fair share.'' It is destroying the blue-collar jobs that have fueled the middle class. Why would we ever take pride in the fact that our corporate tax rate is higher than China's? When did that become a worthy goal? I have an answer for you: It is not. But the terrible proposals to offset the cost of this bill just keep on coming. The Biden administration wants to require financial institutions to report account balances and transactions greater than $600 made by Americans to the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service. Any transaction you make over $600 will be reported to the IRS. That is every taxpayer in this country. Today, only transactions over $10,000, which is a lot of money, are reported. Yes, that is the same Agency with a long history of data security failures. Earlier this year, the confidential tax information of a number of prominent Americans leaked--surprisingly, leaked--from the IRS and was published in the press. The Agency also has a history of singling out certain taxpayers for political purposes. You have a rent payment over $600, planning to buy airplane tickets over $600--how about a new hunting rifle? a wedding dress for your daughter? All of this--any transaction over $600--would be sent to the IRS under President Biden's plan. This is Big Brother Government at its worst. We are talking about routine financial transactions that Americans make every day. The IRS has no business monitoring these--none. The IRS is intrusive enough as it is. This is something Americans of all political stripes should agree on. Not only would the IRS be looking over Americans' shoulders, but this would place a heavy burden on community banks and credit unions that play a key role in providing financial services to rural and minority communities. These financial institutions cannot afford to monitor and report all this data to the IRS. They can't afford it. It will put many of these folks out of business, destroying mainstream American communities that rely on all of them in the process. But don't just take my word for it. The Independent Community Bankers of America's Minority Bank Advisory Council wrote: Our primary concern is that the proposal would undermine the critical relationship of trust we foster within the communities we serve--communities prone to distrust of institutions and government agencies. We fear that invasive and indiscriminate account reporting would undermine the policy priority of bringing more people into the banking system and may drive many of those in the system to leave. I couldn't have said it better. This is one of the most outrageous proposals coming from this administration--and there have been a lot of them over the last 9 months. This is like a shakedown squad coming around to try to get every single cent from you that they can. So, today, I introduced a bill called the Protecting Financial Privacy Act that would proactively prohibit this. My bill prohibits any Federal Agency from creating, implementing, or administering a financial account information reporting regime that would require financial institutions or individuals to report data on financial transactions or account balances to the IRS in excess of what is already required by the Bank Secrecy Act. The last thing Americans want or need is Big Brother looking over their shoulders. The President wants to run from the facts. He would rather hide behind them and point fingers. The facts, for him, don't fit. But it is time for the President to wake up. It is time to stop blaming President Trump for disasters that are clearly his own making. It is time to stop an entitlement state of our country that Americans don't want. It is time for the President to face the facts and listen to the American people. He cannot be allowed to deflect responsibility and attempt to distract the American people from crises that were predictable and preventable, especially when the facts couldn't be clearer.

Mr. TUBERVILLE

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, our country is facing several crises as we speak. We are facing a border crisis with recordbreaking numbers of illegal immigrants pouring into our country daily, weekly, and monthly. We are facing a political and humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan resulting from a fatally flawed political decision. And we are still facing a public health crisis with the resurgence of COVID putting a strain on our healthcare system and our entire economy. And despite the finger-pointing that President Biden has tried to do, we are seeing the real impact of his failed policies. Every one of these crises, from the border to Afghanistan, to COVID, require our attention immediately. But you haven't heard much more than a peep from our colleagues on the left. Instead, they are focused on jamming through a $3.5 trillion spending bill. You know, even if you spent $5 million per day, every single day of the year, it would still take almost 2,000 years to spend $3.5 trillion. Think about that. Five million a day, 365 days a year, would take 2,000 years to spend $3.5 trillion. So they are either completely tone deaf on the left or they are playing a game of hide the ball in an attempt to divert attention from these very real problems that are facing our country today. You might find yourself asking, rightfully so: How will this package help the crisis our Nation is facing now, today? Will it help secure the border? Will it bring home Americans who were abandoned in Afghanistan? Will it encourage folks to talk to their doctor about getting the vaccine? The answer across the board is a definite no. This reckless tax-and- spending spree will not do any of the above things. What it will do is add to inflation, which is already at the highest point dating back to at least 2010. With recordbreaking inflation and American families feeling the squeeze, it is long past time for Congress to pass some fiscal restraint. American families across this country have to. They have to have restraint, so why wouldn't we have to have it? But the real kicker, as if spending $3.5 trillion is not enough, is what they want to spend it on. If you think the pricetag is shocking, wait until you hear what programs are going to be funded with your taxpayer dollars. Tucked into this legislation is a laundry list of progressive initiatives to expand Medicare, fund climate programs, and provide universal preschool and free college, all while inflation is going sky high. With this bill, Democrats are painting a vision--their vision for what they think America should be, not what it is, and that is a socialist, welfare state with handout programs from cradle to grave, with not one work incentive included. And remember, this bill only needs 50 votes, and because of that, they are trying to tack on everything that they know can't pass at a 60-vote threshold. That includes the illegal immigrants, which we have talked about. They were actually considering this in the middle of a border crisis, which is as illogical as it is radical. It shows you just how radical this thing is--so radical that they tried to stick a policy provision into a budget bill, which, thank goodness, got struck down this weekend. The Democrats are also adding in parts of this disastrous PRO Act, including a provision to overturn 85 years of precedent enabling lawsuits from civil penalties. This would allow unions to bleed businesses dry. It would cause many companies to close up shop and move operations overseas. It is truly the kitchen-sink approach to try to bypass any Republican weigh-in on these important issues on behalf of the America that we all represent. And if you think these policies are bad, the taxes are worse. Democrats are looking at a litany of taxes to throw at Americans to cover some of the costs of the far-left agenda. Top on the list is an increase in the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 26.5 percent. That is higher than communist China's corporate tax--higher than China's. President Trump's signature Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered this rate. As a result, we saw a surge of corporations returning to American shores, and over $1 trillion flowed back into the country after lowering this rate. A reversal of President Trump's pro-business tax policy will directly hit American businesses-- the heart of this country. That is simply something we can't afford. Family farms--they are going to come under assault like everybody else with the increase of the capital gains tax and death tax. To make matters worse for farmers, our Democratic colleagues want to increase taxes on family farms at the time of inheritance by doing away with the longstanding step-up in basis rule. For every family across Alabama, this tax bill would mean an average tax increase of over $500. More taxes mean paychecks don't go as far. More taxes mean small businesses will struggle to afford to keep employees on the payroll. And more taxes mean less economic freedom. Finally, the Democrats want to increase the power of the IRS--we are all fired up about that--by requiring financial institutions to report any and all financial transactions of $600 or more made by their customers. Presently, it is $10,000. They want to drop it down to $600. They want the IRS to be able to keep tabs on how you are spending the money that you earn--not somebody else, the money that you earn. This means that every check you write, every bill you pay, every Venmo you send, and every stock purchase you make over $600 will be reported to the IRS. Why do they need this information? They don't even effectively use the data they collect now. It is going to put businesses, banks in a huge bind. Turning this information over to the IRS will only give the government more ability to go after taxpayers whose politics they don't like. Remember Lois Lerner--Lois Lerner from the Obama administration. The IRS has a long history of unequal enforcement. Earlier this summer, for example, they denied tax-exempt status to a Texas charity because, according to the IRS, the organization's commitment to the Christian faith tied it too closely to the Republican Party. That is disgraceful. Requiring financial institutions to report this data to the IRS would put a huge burden on the community banks and credit unions. Some of the smallest institutions will be forced to close their doors because the cost to comply will be too high. We can't allow that to happen. These businesses are the backbone of Main Street America and play a key role in getting capital into the hands of middle-class Americans. This policy would also disproportionately hurt minority communities and folks living in rural areas, many of whom are already distrustful of Big Government and would be pushed out of the banking system. Democrats say they want to help these folks get financial services, but this policy would do exactly the opposite. Our colleagues on the left want to spend to no end, and the American people are sounding the alarm. In a recent poll, 80 percent of Americans directly point to the economic policies of this administration for their financial hardships and the rising prices of everyday goods and services. When asked about the concerns of rising prices at the grocery store as a result of this administration's poor economic policies, an administration official said: If you take out beef, pork, and poultry, the rising prices are normal. Well, proteins like beef and poultry make up 63 percent of grocery items purchased--63 percent. So when prices rise as they are now, it directly impacts American families. There is nothing normal about that. It is unacceptable. But it is not only the price of groceries that are rapidly rising. According to the National Retail Federation, back-to-school spending is expected to increase more than $3 billion from 2020, just in 1 year, with the average household spending upward of $800 on school supplies. Rapidly rising prices translate to a tax on the American consumer. There is no other way to put it. Inflation is a tax, one that is already weighing heavily on the shoulders of all American families. Don't just take my word for how bad this bill is. Even some of their own party have come out against it, asking Congress to take a strategic pause on spending billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars. We are not even through the year yet, but this out-of-control spending will amount to at least $6.5 trillion before the year is over. You heard me right--$6.5 trillion. To put it another way, that equates to more than $50,000 for every household across the country, costing more than ObamaCare and World War II combined. Considering that there is not an initiative in this bill that would address any of the crises facing our Nation today, it begs the question: Why are the Democrats in such a hurry to spend so much? You know, the Federal Government cannot keep writing blank checks and expect future generations to pay the bill. It can't happen. This is real money we are talking about. This is not Monopoly money. The Federal Government cannot keep turning a blind eye to legitimate crises facing our country in order to hastily enact a partisan agenda. It was then-Vice President Joe Biden who said: ``Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.'' I would encourage the President to heed his own remarks, because this reckless tax-and-spend policy is exactly the opposite of what Americans want, need, and value.

Mr. TUBERVILLE

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President, sometimes we don't all agree on things here in this Chamber, but I think we can all agree that a quality education has the power to uplift and transform someone's life. It is the key to freedom and the key to opportunity. I know this because I have seen it firsthand. I have coached and mentored hundreds of student athletes over my 40-year career. I witnessed the difference an education can make in the outcome of someone's life, how it truly creates a pathway to success. In fact, that is one of the reasons I was inspired to be an advocate for better educational opportunities for all Americans--because investing in our children's education is investing in our country. It is like putting a downpayment on our country's future success by creating opportunity. I have recruited hundreds and hundreds of students from across our country. I have been in their homes. I have seen how they live, and I have seen how they have grown up. Unfortunately, for many children from difficult backgrounds, a large percent coming from one- or no-parent homes, real opportunities can be hard to come by--very hard. Regardless of what town that they lived in or what their family was like, I wanted my athletes to know that education can open many, many doors. Most of them understood and appreciated. As I have said many times before, the only thing that this country owes you as a citizen is an opportunity, and I still believe that is true. There is a lot that goes into making the decision to go to college. Students often think first about the cost, or they could be the first in their families to attend college. My parents didn't attend college. One worked in manufacturing. The other worked on a line. They were very supportive of my decision, but I still had to figure out a lot on my own, and it is a huge decision. But there is always the question: Is this the right place for me? Will this school provide me with a path forward for success and a productive future? Many students across the country have turned to historically Black colleges and universities, better known as HBCUs, to answer these questions because of the pathway HBCUs provide. While they are respected for their strong traditions, HBCUs are the ultimate opportunity creators for students all across this country. Serving nearly 300,000 students annually in 21 States and territories, HBCUs have made tuition costs more affordable, costing 30 percent less, on average, than other higher education institutions. And because of that, 60 percent of the HBCU attendees are low-income, first-generation college students. HBCUs not only knock down barriers, but they build upon the inherent potential of their attendees. I am proud that the great State of Alabama is home to 13 HBCUs, the most of any State in the Nation. These colleges are major contributors to communities across our State, producing more than 15,000 jobs annually for our local economies. And they also prepare students for the 21st-century job market. Let me tell you a bit about some of the great things that HBCUs in my State have accomplished. Among their many contributions, Alabama HBCUs have helped to fill the continuing need for more African Americans in STEM--or science, technology, engineering, and math--professions. For companies desperate to recruit top talent for entry-level STEM roles, HBCUs offer thousands of highly qualified candidates. As part of this effort, Alabama State University offers the Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program. This program focuses on giving undergrad STEM students a chance at hands-on research and professional development opportunities. In fact, Alabama State University just announced a new partnership with Apple where it will become a center for coding and creativity. In Montgomery, Trenholm State offers free STEM courses for dual enrollment students to allow high school students to get a jump start on their college careers. But it is also important to recognize that HBCUs support low-income, first-generation college students in meeting and exceeding their postsecondary educational goals. Alabama A&M University recently announced its new master's apprenticeship program for social work--the first of its kind by any HBCU in the country. This investment in our students and communities will help to ensure that we will have more social workers to meet the needs of the underserved that are in our population. Tuskegee University, home of the renowned scientist George Washington Carver and the Tuskegee Airmen, leads the country in African-American aerospace science engineer graduates--leads the country. Oakwood University in Huntsville is one of the top universities sending minority undergraduate students to medical schools. And, just this year, the achievements of two Stillman College students and two Talladega College students were recognized by the White House as part of the prestigious HBCU Scholars Program. Traditional 4-year degrees aren't suited for everyone. I noticed that in my years of coaching. Everybody does not need to go to a 4-year university. And Alabama HBCUs have a strong tradition of empowering students through the vocational and technical programs that they offer. In as little as 6 months, a student at Lawson State Community College in Birmingham can launch a career--just in 6 months. Their vocational programming provides low-cost and fast-tracked avenues for students to gain subject-matter expertise in industries like HVAC work and building construction. Meanwhile, Gadsden State Community College is working to make a new Advanced Manufacturing Center part of its future to help prepare students for the roles that the manufacturing industry will be filling in the coming years. Finally, we have repeatedly seen that when Alabama HBCUs collaborate with local businesses and government agencies, communities thrive, innovation occurs, and progress is made. Shelton State's Fire College is responsible for training paid and volunteer firefighters and EMTs. Bishop State Community College just partnered with Alabama Power to offer a 9-week electric line worker training program--only 9 weeks. The graduates of this new program will be the power restoration experts that people rely on in times of need, such as a hurricane, which we have just gone through several in the last few months in the South. Drake State created a satellite tracking station in partnership with NASA and an amateur radio station that serves as FEMA's relay station during local weather watch activities. And throughout its history, Miles College has had a strong relationship with the surrounding community, promoting racial equality for African Americans. During the civil rights era, President Lucius Pitts helped to negotiate race relations and supported his students' desires to participate in nonviolent protests. Overcoming decades of adversity and opposition, HBCUs continue to be competitive educational institutions with programs for students who want higher education, career-tech training, or to position themselves for better employment opportunities. We need to honor accomplishments by the HBCUs and celebrate their significant contributions to our society. Over the last decade, my colleague Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina has been focused on doing just that. I am thankful to have joined him the last month to introduce a resolution to formally designate the week of September 6 as National HBCU Week. Because of their work and the work of their leaders, these institutions are deserving of national recognition. Last week, during National HBCU Week, there were many tributes about the work of these great colleges and universities, about the impact they have made in the lives of so many people across this country and the impact they have made on many, many lives. While this week was a chance to recognize the many ways HBCUs contribute to our society, our recognition shouldn't stop at one week. We should honor their work by continuing the conversation for how we can support these institutions for years and years to come. HBCUs have given a gift--a gift of education and an opportunity--to so many in Alabama and across our Nation. I hope my colleagues join me and Senator Scott in recognizing their tremendous, tremendous impact on a lot of young lives of people all across our country. I yield the floor.

Mr. TUBERVILLE

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, 20 years ago, September 11, 2001, Americans watched in horror as two planes struck the World Trade Center in New York City. We watched as another plane slammed into the Pentagon, and yet another bound for this very city crashed in Pennsylvania. That day was the worst attack on American soil in our history. America's death toll surpassed Pearl Harbor in December 1941. That day, children came home from school without their parents; calls from family members went unreturned; lives were changed forever. Yet instead of tearing us apart, instead of frightening Americans off the world stage, the cowardly attacks on September 11 brought our Nation together. But just remember, we were at war with al-Qaida prior to 9/11/2001. In the 1990s, between 10,000 and 20,000 people went to Afghanistan to train to be terrorists. Insurgencies sprang to life in Algeria, Indonesia, Philippines, Somalia, and Yemen. The World Trade Center was bombed the first time in 1993 by Ramzi Yousef, who spent time in a terrorist camp in Afghanistan. In 1998, al- Qaida bombed two U.S. Embassies in Africa. In 2000, al-Qaida bombed a U.S. warship, the U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 Americans. The 9/11 Commission would later write: ``The 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise.'' That came from the Commission. But they were a surprise to most Americans because our leaders simply ignored the threat, issued a weak diplomatic scold, and promised ``over the horizon'' missiles and surveillance could solve the problem. What solved the problem was American resolve and American might. That fighting spirit began on the bright blue morning of September 11, when a 32-year-old software salesman named Todd Beamer boarded United Airlines Flight 93. Todd knew his plane was likely bound for another mishap or catastrophe after hearing it on the telephone just after takeoff. He knew that this plane was either headed for the Capitol or the White House. He knew what happened to the other flights because of conversations. But instead of being fearful, Todd Beamer rallied his other passengers. The former college athlete stayed calm and prayed the Lord's Prayer. Then he and his fellow passengers unleashed hell on the hijackers of their plane. The moment Todd Beamer said ``Let's roll'' is the moment America began to fight back against radical Islamic terrorism. That is when the war started. The whole country took up Todd's battle cry of ``Let's roll.'' Over the next 20 years, 800,000 Americans rolled into Afghanistan--800,000. Of them, 2,461 were killed in action, including the 13 brave men and women we just lost a few weeks ago; 20,961 soldiers were wounded. Their sacrifices were great, but so were their accomplishments. With 48 partnered nations, America smashed the Taliban and sent al-Qaida running for their caves in Pakistan. We killed Osama bin Laden and crushed terrorism networks around the world. Over the past 20 years, the death toll from terrorists inside the United States was 107 because of our brave military that took the fight to the enemy overseas. One hundred and seven souls are still far too many in this country. But the Nation has been spared another catastrophic attack, while our All-Volunteer Force stood the watch in Afghanistan. But here on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, what should be a resounding victory and success of American values and resolve is, instead, a defeat. And it is an especially bitter defeat to Americans all across this country. It is bitter because Americans surrendered 20 years of blood, sweat, and tears to the enemy. The Taliban now controls more of Afghanistan than they did in 2001, and they are better armed with American guns, vehicles, and aircraft. It is bitter because it was entirely preventable. It is bitter because those who work in national security know in their hearts that the President is wrong when he says the ``war is over.'' Mr. President, the war is not over. The war is over when your enemy accepts defeat. Our enemy, the Taliban, are not defeated; they are emboldened. President Biden has handed them the greatest victory of their pitiful, pitiful history, a victory greater than they could have ever dreamed. Using this victory as propaganda against the United States will be recruiting gold for the Taliban. Make no mistake, now that they have sent America running for the exits in Afghanistan, they intend to bring the terror we saw at Kabul's airport home to us right here in the United States of America. We cannot allow that to happen because now, after our Commander in Chief decided to leave behind--let me repeat that--leave behind American taxpayer-funded equipment, the Taliban is one of the top 10 best equipped militaries in the world. Over 44,000 military vehicles were left behind, nearly a half a million guns left behind, 33 Black Hawk helicopters left behind. All are now in the hands of our enemy. And we are fooling ourselves if we think they are not going to use this equipment against us. Early last week, 10 of my colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee joined me in calling for hearings on the Biden administration's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. As members of the committee that overseas our Nation's Armed Forces, we bear a particular responsibility to seek--I mean seek--true and correct answers. We asked to hear from the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley; the commander of U.S. Central Command, General McKenzie; and the last commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, General Miller. These are our top military leaders who need to be asked the hard questions, and that is what I and my colleagues intend to do, starting with why did we give up the most strategic air base in the middle of Asia, Bagram Airfield? Why did we do that? It makes no sense. We owe it to our Nation, those who served, their families, and our allies to preserve the records of how our time in Afghanistan ended. For every people we and members of the Armed Services Committee represent here in Congress, this is the biggest issue facing our military since Vietnam. Those who have given so much to this cause are demoralized and disheartened. I have talked to hundreds of them in the last couple of weeks. Al-Qaida didn't defeat our military. The Taliban didn't defeat our military. The complexities of rebuilding a country did not beat our military. This administration in Washington, DC, defeated our troops. Never in American history have we seen a Commander in Chief leave Americans behind enemy lines. It is unheard of, unheard of in the history of this country. I cannot think of a single fighting man or woman who would leave an American behind. It does not make sense. That is why they fight. That is why our military fight. We do not leave people behind. But they were ordered to leave by our Commander in Chief. To those soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, guardsmen who served in Afghanistan, I promise you this: We will get answers from this administration. If you are a member of the military or you have served our Nation and you have questions, I hope you will reach out to my office. I am ready to be your voice. I am ready to fight with you for your answers and accountability. I want to thank Chairman Reed and Ranking Member Inhofe for scheduling hearings so that we can do just that in the next few weeks. On September 11, America said: ``Never forget.'' Thousands upon thousands of Americans have taken that rally cry to the enemy. To them I say: America has not forgotten. We will never forget. We will answer the fight, and we will fight for these answers. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. TUBERVILLE

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

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, believe it or not, people back home actually listen sometimes to what we say here. To some local leaders across the country, the far-left rally cry of ``defund the police'' is not just DC rhetoric; they are actually acting on it. More than 80 percent of law enforcement in America is conducted by State and local police departments--80 percent. These men and women are community heroes. We should invest in all of them. But local leaders across the country have decided the ``woke'' thing to do is cancel their city's police force. My amendment is pretty simple. If your city council wants to defund their police, don't expect the Federal Government to make up the difference. The American taxpayers in Alabama shouldn't have to pick up the tab for local leaders in Oregon and Minnesota who value the ``woke'' ``defund the police'' movement over their own community's safety. I call on my colleagues to support our law enforcement by voting yes for this amendment. Opposing my amendment is a vote in support of defunding the police and against the men and women in blue.

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, I call up my amendment, No. 3113, and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. TUBERVILLE

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, when I go back to my hometown of Alabama, I usually ask the people: What is the most important to you? Every day, what is the most important to you? And, usually, there is a consensus of three things: a good job, schools for their kids, and safe neighborhoods for their families. That is always what they talk about. You know, the fulfillment of these basic aspirations is a foundation of a quality of life, the foundation of the American dream. In my relatively short time up here, I have noticed people in this building often lose sight of those three basic items. We waste time bickering over things that, at the end of the day, don't much matter in the grand scheme of things. We engage in bitter partisan commentary, all in the hopes of scoring political points. Folks back home can't relate to this because they don't have the luxury to waste time on cheap talk. We are witnessing a nationwide surge in crime as we speak. In the last year, homicides have risen upwards of 30 percent--this is unprecedented--and doubled the largest previous increase of 13 percent since 1968. There is always more than one factor to consider when analyzing crime trends, but the effect of some Democrats' anti-police rhetoric has been perfectly clear. Just take a look at what is happening across our country as we speak. For the last year, we have heard some Democrats at every level talk about wanting to defund the police, take money away from them; we have too many of them. In many cities they control, Democrats succeeded in reducing policy budgets. They have been very successful. They have told police to stop doing their jobs, to stop enforcing certain laws. I have heard Democrats say that they want to replace cops with social workers. You know, while I understand the well-intentioned desire to address the root cause of crime, instead of just focusing on the fallout, leaving our police underfunded and ill-equipped is not the solution. If someone is attempting to break into my house, I am not calling a social worker to come perform an evaluation and to develop a treatment for the assailant. I am not doing that. Too often, we have seen elected officials take the side of radicals burning property, looting small businesses, over the men and women who wear the badge and have sworn to serve and protect our communities. And now we are seeing the consequences all across the country. As one report notes, in New York City, murders have increased 47 percent since 2020. Tickets and routine arrests dropped by 90 percent, but requests for police intervention went up by 50 percent. But the police won't go. They are not wanted. Murders in Los Angeles this year are up 22 percent, and shootings are up 59 percent. But arrests in Los Angeles have dropped 37 percent since 2020, and are down even more this year. In Chicago, murders were up 33 percent this year. Last weekend alone, 12 people were killed and 63 more were shot--the latest in a string of deadly weekends this summer. And carjackings in this city have tripled in the last year. Why would you buy a car in Chicago? It is going to get stolen. It makes no sense. In Minneapolis, where cries to defund the police are loudest, murders are up 69 percent. It turns out that when protesters, activists, mainstream media, and elected officials told cops they are not wanted, it is not just the officers who heard them; criminals also were listening. And the American people are paying the price. Also, the defund rhetoric from the left is having a severely negative effect on police morale--an ``all-time low,'' some officers say. According to an NBC survey of 200 police departments, officer retirements are up 45 percent and resignations are up 18 percent this year. Why would anybody get up and put a uniform on in the morning with a badge on their chest and a gun on their side and go to work in this climate of crime? We have to take our hat off to the men and women who are actually doing this and doing the best job they can. Some police chiefs have had enough. The Chicago police superintendent said their court system continued to release the violent criminals in their jails, ``making us all less safe.'' The District of Columbia Police, right here in our hometown, said: ``[We cannot continue to] coddle violent criminals.'' Amen. But the ugly truth is there is a deliberate attempt to coddle these violent criminals, and it is bankrolled by the most radical fringe in the Democratic Party. District attorneys are the local public officials who determine whether and how the government will prosecute criminals, from petty theft to violent crime--district attorneys. There has been a big movement to elect ultra-radical liberal district attorneys in big cities across the country. They have succeeded in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, and just right across the river in Fairfax County, VA. These rogue prosecutors--and they are rogue--are refusing to prosecute all sorts of crimes, like theft, disorderly conduct, and trespassing. Well, what is their job? It is to prosecute. But not these prosecutors. This isn't just opposing the men and women who wear the badge. These radical leftists are opposing the very idea of enforcing the law. The prosecutor's job is to enforce the laws that are written, not rewrite the laws on the books. But these DAs are choosing to follow the law as they see fit. They know better than anybody else, ignoring what the people's representatives have passed. In San Francisco, District Attorney Chesa Boudin said his office wouldn't prosecute theft under $950. The result has been people robbing stores in broad daylight. We have all seen it on TV, going in the store, just grabbing all you can get and not running out the door, but walking out the door. If the cops are called, they don't show up. They know they are not going to do anything about these. But probably the worst of all is in Boston. Rachael Rollins, elected DA in Boston in 2018, released a list of crimes that her office would, by default, move to dismiss when they came to court; we are not going to prosecute these: trespassing; shoplifting; theft under $250; disorderly conduct; drug possession with intent to distribute; malicious destruction of property; breaking and entering, so long as the defender was trying to sleep or escape the cold; resisting arrest. And that is not even the entire list. What do they need a DA for? So if a violent felon could steal $200 worth of goods, have large amounts of drugs, break into someone's home, resist arrest--and the DA's office would not even bother to prosecute these crimes. Makes a lot of sense to me. If all of that sounds crazy to you, you are right. But these are the actual policies and the real-world effects. And now Rollins, this same district attorney in Boston, who decided she is just going to take a vacation than being a district attorney and not try to convict anybody, this Ms. Rollins has been appointed by President Biden to be the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts. He is giving the person who decriminalized resisting arrest and all these other laws a promotion. That is from our President. I wonder what Federal crimes she will decide aren't worth processing. There is surely somebody in Boston who can do the job. Yet President Biden is the only one saying Republicans are lying. He said that just a couple of weeks ago about Democrats wanting to defund the police. He said it is Republicans. I will tell you what is also not helping to make our neighborhoods safer: the growing crisis at our southern border--absolute shame. And the Biden administration completely, completely lacks the urgency to fix it, and it is getting worse every day. I guess nobody cares. We have already surpassed 1 million illegal immigrants since President Biden was inaugurated. And remember, this data is looking at the illegal immigrants and the drugs that Customs and Border Protection catches. We don't know how many have slipped by or how many pounds of dope have slipped by. We just know the ones that we have caught. President Biden is only making matters worse, folks. As our colleagues on the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee found, the Biden administration is spending $2 billion to not build a wall. We are paying $2 billion. Taxpayers in this country are paying $2 billion to not build a wall. That is right. That is $3 million, every day, of your taxpayer money wasted just to not build something that would help fix this crisis. The bare minimum we should expect to happen at the border would be to make sure illegal immigrants we do apprehend have a court date so a judge can review their asylum claim. I mean, that is common sense. But, according to a recent report, 50,000 illegal immigrants have been released into the United States in the last few months without a court date. Yet only 13 percent of those have bothered to show back up--13 percent. We are going to trust them to come over here and just do it on their own. That is not going to happen. At best, this hurts those who come into this country actually looking to plead their asylum case. Congress needs to pass my bill, S. 1007, that would require the DHS to provide a notice to appear before releasing the illegal immigrants into our country. It just makes common sense. But, as we have seen, too many folks in charge don't have any common sense when it comes to enforcing the law. Everybody can see violent crime rising in big cities. They can see the Biden administration turning a blind eye to a continually growing catastrophe on the southern border. The American people are right to question President Biden and the Democrats' commitment to the rule of law, to question their commitment to keeping our citizens and neighborhoods safe. I am painting a pretty bleak picture here, but my job is to call it like I see it. But there are things we in the Senate can do to make the situation better. We can do things here, right in this room right here, to make things better. It starts with everybody fully supporting our law enforcement because, if we don't, one day we are going to regret it. We need to improve morale and recruit the best and brightest in our police forces to keep our communities safe. We should also empower all law enforcement to address the negative effect at our border. This is the local and State police. The Empowering Law Enforcement Act that I introduced would give them the power to take over for ICE. My bill would grant this and give them the authority to investigate and identify an illegal immigrant who has entered the U.S., which we at this moment don't have. If the Biden administration won't enforce the law, let's give local and State law enforcement the opportunity to do it. Folks, wanting safe communities is something every American wants and deserves. We elect public officials. We pay taxes and trust our governments to ensure safety for the greatest number of people possible. It is pretty much impossible to have good jobs and good schools if you don't have safe neighborhoods, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that. If the people don't feel safe, their government and we as government officials have failed to perform its most basic function. Failure of this is not an option. So to reverse this rise in crime, let's support the very people who have put their lives on the line every day. I certainly do, and I encourage the President and Members of this body to support every member of our law enforcement. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. TUBERVILLE

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

Mr. TUBERVILLE

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, you know, there is an old saying that I have used quite often, but it bears repeating: Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. It is a simple yet insightful concept. Human beings often like things to be easy. It is just in our nature. But the reward for easy is very short-lived. Sometimes, if you don't earn it, you don't understand it. If we work hard and challenge ourselves to improve, we reap the benefits for much longer. That is the American way. I would tell this to my players over the years that I coached. You know, lessons learned that are applied to the football field also apply in life. You know, this country owes you one thing: an opportunity. Sometimes people just need to be shown where that opportunity is at and encouraged to take it, and that is what everyone in this body should be focused on doing: opening doors for opportunity for the people of this country. President Biden seems determined to close those doors of opportunity by creating, it looks like, a future massive entitlement state. My Republican colleagues and I have talked a lot about the reckless tax-and-spend plan and the cost of that plan on American families. We are seeing rising inflation, which means dollars from your paycheck are not going as far. We are seeing costs rise on everyday goods that families need: food, gas, diapers--you name it; it is going up. This is a direct result of untargeted spending this year as we are trying to recover from a pandemic, which is the worst time in the world to be throwing government money at a pandemic. And, now, our Democratic colleagues, it looks like, want to spend $3.5 trillion more, after spending $1.9 trillion back in February. And what gets talked about less than the cost of this spending is the social and societal cost of all of these new and expanded programs. While it may not be easy to see or measure, it is no less important, and that is what I want to talk about today. Let's remember how this started and how we got here. It started with President Biden's announcing two plans--great names. First was the American Families Plan, and then there was the American Jobs Plan. Despite their confusing and similar names, on the face they don't sound that bad. I am for American families, and I am for American jobs. These plans are not about American families or American jobs. They are full of progressive items that can only pass the Senate through a reconciliation process. There won't be any--there won't be any-- Republicans that will vote for this, and Democrats know this. So, now, here we are with our colleagues stuffing the worst parts of President Biden's agenda--I am talking about the most progressive items that only appease the far left of their base--into their latest package. And all of President Biden's progressive programs cost money, lots and lots of money. And they are going to pay for them with your taxpayer dollars, not the government dollars--taxpayer dollars. A lot of my colleagues have expressed concern with the Democrats' tax-and-spend spree, but they aren't the only ones sounding the alarm. Folks back home have started to take notice, and there is a lot more collective wisdom among the folks back home than there has been here lately in Washington, DC. So I brought a couple of letters with me today. These are folks from Alabama who wrote to me about their concerns with President Biden's massive spending plan. Here is what James Merrill from Huntsville, AL, wrote to me: I have been studying this atrocious ``Biden American Families Plan'' and it is clear that not only is the cost staggering, the implications of all the rules that will go with it will terribly impact all family life and our freedoms to manage our lives. It blatantly makes the middle-class dependent on the government--cradle to grave. A clear path to socialism.'' James, you are exactly right. And Rosa Hill in Birmingham, AL, had this to say: I have just listened to President Biden . . . and the ideas are ridiculous. [We] should be helping each other, [not] the government . . . [getting] involved. Ms. Hill makes an important point. Much of this work can and should be done by our neighbors, churches, and people in the communities. The problem is, we have been conditioned to wait for the government to do the hard work of helping the less fortunate for us rather than doing it ourselves. Half a century ago, President Lyndon Johnson launched the ``War on Poverty.'' He and leading liberals at the time thought the answer to poverty was to dramatically increase the benefits the Federal Government would give out to the poor. Well, the War on Poverty didn't work like its backers thought it would. The following decade was filled with economic stagnation, high inflation, gas lines, spikes in drug addiction, and a horrifying rise in crimes across our country. Sounds familiar--doesn't it?--just like what is happening today. Folks, the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. We have already tried this. President Biden is determined to try the same worn out policies today: throwing trillions and trillions of taxpayer money at the problem and hoping the problem goes away. It has been and still is the wrong solution. President Biden's reckless spending spree won't help struggling American families. It will trap them in the endless cycle of dependence on Big Government and taxpayer money. Just take a look at what President Biden has proposed in his American Families Plan: government-subsidized childcare, free preschool, free community college. Free, free, free; that seems to be the slogan of this administration. Of course, we all know that there is no such thing as free in this country. I have talked before about the fact that President Biden has proposed 30--you heard me right, 30--new taxes that the Democrats can choose from to pay for these free programs in their next spending package--30 new taxes during a pandemic. According to one analysis by the Hoover Institution, President Biden's American Families Plan would add 21 million Americans to the Federal Government's list of beneficiaries--21--21 million more people living off the government. Now, there are certainly people out there who need help. We all know that. But this plan opens the floodgates to taxpayer-funded benefits instead of concentrating on those who mostly need it. Under President Biden's plan, your family could make up to $200,000 and still qualify for Federal healthcare--$200,000. We don't have to comb through the history books for examples on how these progressive policies fail. We don't have to look far. Just look at what we have done here recently and the insistence on keeping unemployment benefits historically high. My Republican colleagues and I have spoken about how these misguided benefits essentially paid people not to work, destroying small businesses all over the country, and our economy's progress has gone down as we try to recover from this pandemic. Republican Governors across the country recognized the problem and decided to cut out the overly generous benefits months ago. Folks who needed help would get it, but they wouldn't be paid to sit at home, and then they wouldn't be sitting home when they could have been working at jobs that would help their family. Just about every Democratic Governor has insisted on keeping these benefits. Now, what does that tell you, insisting on keeping the benefits and not keeping the benefits? We have made some terrible decisions just in a short period of time. Well, we can already see the results of what is happening with these benefits. According to the monthly data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, States that cut the Federal expanded benefit are closer to returning to prepandemic employment levels than the States that kept them. Thirteen of the top 15 States with the best unemployment numbers have all ended their Federal expanded unemployment insurance. Why don't we learn from this misguided policy and not repeat it by spending money on bad outcomes? We seem to continue to do that every time we turn around. The reckless tax-and-spend spree to advance President Biden's progressive agenda isn't just unaffordable; it is un-American. The United States was founded on the ideas of personal liberty and self- reliance. It makes you feel good about yourself earning your own way, not government handouts best known as socialism. Since our founding, people have flocked to the United States because of the opportunity it gives citizens to succeed, not because of cushy government handouts. Our society valued and values hard work, grit, and determination more than the countries most of these folks have left behind. Again, this country owes you one thing and that is an opportunity to succeed through education and hard work. Democrats want you to believe that you can only succeed with the government's help. Republicans believe in self-reliance and that you have within you God-given skills and potential to work hard and succeed. You have that. That is what this country gives you, which is why President Biden's reckless spending spree and expansion of government programs is so, so disappointing. The President and Democrats think success is measured by how much taxpayer money the government can spend, but real success is measured by how many people no longer need the help in the first place. Our efforts need to empower people to be free to live and work to build a better life for themselves and their families. The most successful anti-poverty program should eventually put itself out of business. So I say, enough. Enough of continuously growing the Federal Government. Enough of the reckless taxpayer-funded spending sprees. Enough of trapping people in a cycle of dependence, because a culture of dependency is a culture in decline. I say we work together to encourage people to seize the many opportunities in our country, not have them wait around hoping the government will fix every problem life throws their way. We can't do that. It is long past time we get back to teaching folks to fish, to learn to fish themselves, to be self-reliant. That is a culture of hard work and resilience. That is a culture of the United States of America, the best country on the face of the Earth. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. TUBERVILLE

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

Mr. TUBERVILLE

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, I am starting to feel a little bit like a broken record. I am here on the floor again to echo the concerns of my constituents and so many folks across our great country. People across the country are cautiously checking their bank accounts, and they are looking at the price of milk, bread, and things that they have to buy every day. They are driving out of their way to see which gas stations even have gas, and when they do find that, they are looking for the lowest price. Just as we are starting to come out of the pandemic, prices are starting to rise, and our dollar isn't going as far. Why? Because the Democrats want to spend their way out of a pandemic, and it really makes no sense. They are throwing trillions around like it is Monopoly money. It is not targeted to those who need it the most. It is on policy items that only appease their base--the far left--not even a majority of their party. They are flooding the zone with borrowed money like a credit card with no limit. They did it with their stimulus package earlier in the year, and it was disguised as a COVID relief package. Now they are getting ready to try the same thing again. Last week, Leader Schumer announced that the Democrats had reached an agreement on a budget reconciliation resolution, which is like the pregame warm-up to the next reconciliation package. The pricetag for that agreement has been set at $3.5 trillion. Let me take a minute to highlight what I think is wrong with the bill. First of all, I am not sure how anyone can call this an agreement. One Democratic Senator, who doesn't appear to have been consulted on the so-called agreement in the first place, said the package needs to be fully paid for. Let me translate that to you. That means we need tax increases. Last week, we talked about the 30 new tax increases that will probably be in this bill. On the other hand, we have Democratic Senators saying it is OK if this package adds to the deficit--$3.5 trillion added to the $30 trillion that we are already in debt. We already know at least one Senator wants the top-line number to be as much as $6 trillion while others are calling for $2 to $3 trillion, which, by the way, is still too much spending. It doesn't seem like everyone has fully committed to this so-called agreement. It appears the Democrats are in disarray when it comes to agreeing to this. Announcing there is an agreement when they still have Members of their own party arguing over the final top-line number and how it will be paid for is a pretty interesting strategy. The only thing I can guess is that the strategy is really to pull the wool over all of our eyes. Trying to sell the agreement of a top-line number as a win is like saying that you have won the game after the first snap. Folks, you have to play the game. You can't go by the first quarter's results. You have to play the entire game. Second, I can't understand why some of my colleagues across the aisle are still trying to sell this tax and spending bill as human and soft infrastructure. Most people have never heard of that. I haven't been up here long, but I know enough to know there is really no such thing as human and soft infrastructure. For some reason, we keep adding definitions to Webster's Dictionary. It appears that our Democratic colleagues have, once again, duped a few members of the media, as they can't stop parroting this ``human infrastructure'' phrase. Let's just call the package what it is: a spending plan on progressive social justice policies that will be paid for by the American taxpayers by 30 tax increases. It has nothing to do with infrastructure, even if they could define what infrastructure of the human and soft variety is. I know reckless tax and spending spree is not as catchy as soft infrastructure, but at least it is accurate. Lastly--and this is the most important part--there are costs associated with the level of spending that the Democrats are laying out, real costs that hurt American families. Whether it is fully paid for by tax increases or whether it adds to the deficit, it all boils down to the same thing: the cost to American families across our country, the small business owner, the operator, the manufacturing worker, the farmer, the moms and dads. Hard-working Americans across the country will be impacted at the absolute worst time, when they are trying to recover from a pandemic. Take the cost of tax increases on small businesses, for example. According to the Job Creators Network, 1 million--that is 1 million-- small businesses will feel the financial strain of tax increases through this bill--1 million. Many of these small businesses are still struggling after having been shuttered in place for a year and having battled against government-induced workforce shortages. With only 8 percent of small businesses on a solid economic footing after this past year--only 8 percent of our small businesses are really, actually, getting back on their feet--we should be working to help every small business see the light at the end of the tunnel, not increasing the heavy hand of government and keeping them in the dark. It makes no sense. Then there is the ``let's just keep spending and add to the deficit approach.'' The cost of spending so much and adding to the deficit means more inflation. More inflation means your dollar doesn't go near as far as it has in the past. In the June jobs report, we saw inflation up 4.5 percent, and the consumer price index increased by 5.4 percent, the biggest monthly jump in over a decade. The rising cost of inflation means that Americans are making tough choices on what is most important to them, like filling up your car with gas or buying food for your family. There is no reason why we should have to be making these choices. In a nation as great as ours, hard-working Americans shouldn't have to choose. American families are caught in the middle of rising prices and the Democrats' never-ending need to appease the far left. And then there is the Democrats' view of America, one where Big Government reigns supreme. Well, let me tell you, the Big Government approach does not work, and it never has. Alabamians want Big Government to get out of the way because they know that Big Government programs only tie their hands and stifle innovation and growth. We need to give folks an opportunity, not a handout, and right now, Democrats are on the wrong track with that. A government-subsidized economic recovery is not an economic recovery. It is an entitlement state. We need to get back to work. Prosperity is not purchased through the expansion of Big Government. How many times have we heard that? The expansion of Big Government safety net programs does not make people prosperous. Prosperity is found within the ideas of the American people. It always has been, and it always will. Democrats are signaling that they are OK with the cost of American families if it means that they can pay for a whole grab bag of far-left policies, like the expansion of Medicare, free college, and amnesty for illegal immigrants. If all this wasn't bad enough, here is the worst of it: Our Democratic colleagues have taken their priorities that are too radical to pass the Senate and creating an if-then scenario with true infrastructure negotiations. Forced by far-left voices in their party, Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi have decided a massive spending bill that has nothing to do with the pandemic or infrastructure should hold actual infrastructure legislation hostage. In their world, if we pass a partisan spending bill, then we can pass infrastructure. Well, that doesn't sit right with a lot of folks. By linking a bipartisan proposal to a partisan reconciliation package, our Democrat colleagues are showing their cards. The cards show that they really want this reckless tax-and-spend spree to pass, and they are fundamentally unserious about a true infrastructure package that would make needed improvements to roads, bridges, and broadband possible, and that is a shame. By tying budget reconciliation to infrastructure, the American people are the ones who will be left out to dry. I have always said that I would be in favor of infrastructure. We all would be--a great infrastructure deal, where every penny of every dollar goes toward roads, bridges, broadband, and waterways. But the American taxpayers know they have to pay for it. They know eventually they will have to pay for it, but they need something that they are putting their money into that they can get something back. But we cannot let a partisan tax-and-spend spree bog us down and hold back the American taxpayers. This summer, so many Americans are traveling across the country. This includes most of us who travel across our States, me across Alabama. As I have been on the road, I am reminded once again that we need improvements to our infrastructure. It is more than just fixing potholes on a city street. We rely on infrastructure every day, during our drive to work, trucks moving our goods up and down the highways, when a ship leaves a port with cargo, or when we just get on the internet. All those are infrastructure. Good infrastructure allows people to move freely, keeps our products flowing, and maintains America's competitiveness in the global economy. In Alabama, we have got 100,000 miles of public roads, and we need them to be in good shape. Driving on poor roads costs Alabama drivers a total of $4.2 billion every year. Because of things like vehicle operating costs, traffic congestion, and car crashes, we can tell our roads need work. We have got 1,000 condemned bridges--1,000--just in the State of Alabama. Out of 16,000 bridges, we have 1,000 that have been condemned that need to be repaired in the worst way. In an increasingly online world, getting our rural areas access to reliable internet is more important than ever. Whether it is for work, healthcare, or going to school, we need broadband across our entire State. Investing in our infrastructure is investing in our future success. It is way past time to step up and act on this. The American people need help with infrastructure, and that is what we should be concentrating on. But despite that, our colleagues on the left still can't resist playing politics here. Before the actual bill text of the bipartisan infrastructure framework could be written and before the pay-fors were negotiated, Leader Schumer has called a vote on the framework. Now, I know it is pretty hard to get a majority of skeptical Senators to vote on anything, much less something that has not even been written yet. We don't even have the bill written, but we are going to vote on it. But these are serious times that call for serious actions. So we should be very careful considering this framework, not rushing toward arbitrary deadlines. As our country's economy is trying to recover from the pandemic, anything and everything we do has to be thoughtfully considered, especially when it comes to passing legislation that costs money in the long run. And this is going to cost a lot of money. Because this is the taxpayers' money, after all--your money--we owe it to the taxpayers to spend their money in the most efficient and effective way possible. Personally, I don't think it is ever a good time to raise taxes, but I can tell you the absolute worst time is when we are still coming out of an absolute global pandemic. There are commonsense ways to pay for some of this new infrastructure spending. Chief among them is redirecting all that unused COVID money that the Democrats insisted on spending earlier this year, and there is a lot of it left. Let me be clear. Raising taxes on the American people should be a nonstarter for any potential bill. It certainly is for a lot of people. Folks, simply put, a dollar spent on traditional infrastructure is a dollar well spent. But it has got to be done in a smart and targeted way, and we can't allow Democrats to hurt Americans by creating an if- then scenario. Let's spend some time on the infrastructure bill and do it the right way. Then we can turn to debating all the spending that our colleagues on the left have their sights set on. But we have to do the infrastructure bill first. Hopefully, Congress can deliver the targeted results our country deserves, results that don't increase the tax burden on the American people. Throughout this debate, you can count on a lot of us to be a strong voice for making infrastructure work for three or four things: Alabama, our neighbors, our country's rural areas, and the American taxpayer. We can get this done. Let's just do it the right way. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. TUBERVILLE

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President, Members of the Senate were all home last week for 2 weeks during their State work period. It was a good time to get back--to get back to reality, as I call it, because we all know here in Washington, people aren't always operating in reality. If we were, we wouldn't be seeing some of the policies that are coming out as we speak. These State work periods are a great time to hear directly from the people we represent, and that is who we work for--what they care about and how they are affected by what is happening here in our Nation's Capital. This is what folks back in Alabama were talking about. They were talking about small businesses that can't find people to work because the government is paying more in unemployment benefits than folks make on the job. And that is understandable. We have to understand that, and we have to understand the problem and how we rectify that problem. We need workers in the State of Alabama in the worst way, almost in every business and in manufacturing. They were talking about an economy that is hurting--really hurting-- for hard-working Americans. They were talking about the real costs of rising inflation--rising prices on goods and services that the average family possesses. While driving around, I fill my truck up with gas. The cost was double what I spent just a few months ago, and that affects every American in this country. By the way, in June, consumer prices increased 5.4 percent. I got an earful from people about bread, eggs, and milk, all across the State of Alabama. I am sure that the people of Alabama are not alone in their concerns. This didn't happen by accident. This is the direct result of us up here spending way too much money, flooding the country with money that is out--I call it invisible money--out there just going into people's pockets that either they are saving, putting in the stock market, or spending on goods. This makes the timing of the President's proposed tax increases even worse. Simply put, President Biden's proposal is launching an all-out assault on the working Americans in this country, people who work hard for the money they put in their pocket to pay for the things that their family needs. Altogether, President Biden has called for 30--let me repeat that--30 different tax increases on the American people that total over $3 trillion. This is the worst time--the worst time--that we could be pushing a new tax increase, especially during this pandemic, which we thought was coming to a close, but it looks like we are not even close to that. So this would be the worst time for us to be raising taxes. Businesses and families have worked very hard to make progress after a very, very tough year and a half, and it has been tough. Higher taxes would set most, if not all, back even further. The President's budget laid down a marker. It lays out straight the priorities of the administration. It spotlights areas where the American public can expect a political emphasis. Well, with his budget, President Biden has telegraphed the types of tax increases that Congress can deploy to pay for his progressive policies. We are sure to see a few of them in the new reconciliation package. I am not going to talk about all 30 proposals, but let's take a look at some of the big tax increases that President Biden is going to propose. President Biden wants to raise the corporate rate from 21 to 28 percent, which was lowered just a couple of years ago and put money in people's pockets all across the country. Now we are going to raise it from 21 to 28 percent on corporations. That is not a tax on corporations; that is a tax on the people who work across this country, especially for these corporations. If our Democratic colleagues get their way, Communist China will have a lower corporate tax rate than the United States. Let me repeat that. If our colleagues pass this tax, we will have a higher corporate tax rate than China. Take a moment to think about that. The Biden budget targets certain industries that our Democratic colleagues don't like, such as the oil and gas industry, which supports more than 10 million good-paying jobs in this country. It would face nearly $150 billion in industry-specific tax increases. That is in addition to the already massive corporate tax increase. Once again, the President is undoing the progress made over the last few years. The United States became fully--and I mean fully--energy independent for the first time in decades. As a net exporter, we exported oil and natural gas. What are we doing now? We are buying it. Since Biden has come into office, we have become increasingly dependent on Saudi Arabia, OPEC, and Russia for oil and gas. Colleagues on the left want the government to subsidize expensive and inefficient energy, like wind and solar, so we can put oil and gas out of business. We are all for natural energy, but you can't do it all at one time. You cannot do it all at one time. Just look at the people with the Keystone Pipeline who are out of work. They were told they would get shovel-ready jobs. I hear from them every day. There are no jobs out there for them like they had when they worked on the Keystone Pipeline. Many other preferred green energy sources require critical minerals that only China produces. In enforcing their Green New Deal policies on Americans, our Democratic colleagues are forcing us to be more dependent on China for key resources. I want to say one thing about what is going on in China. They are getting ready to use a molten salt reactor that we invented years and years ago that we decided not to use. Now, they are starting to build it, and we are helping them. We are helping China to become energy independent off of coal in the future because of these nuclear reactors. We invented it and shut it down, and now, we are going to help China with the progress of putting these in all over their country. All of this will effectively be a tax on regular working- and middle- class Americans since their energy bills will go sky high as a result of this all-out assault on our oil and gas. It makes no sense. Not content with raising taxes at home, our President wants to implement a 21-percent global minimum tax on income that U.S. businesses earn overseas. Now, they are going to pay taxes overseas already, and we are going to turn around and tax them 21 percent more. Again, this is basically a double tax on the companies with international operations. Since they already have to pay taxes overseas, too, this tax would destroy American competitiveness. It would incentivize U.S. firms to headquarters overseas and move production offshore. We have got to rethink that. We have got to rethink it. Again, we are working for the American people, not for us here. President Biden is also calling for a 15-percent global corporate minimum tax based on the misguided assumption that other world powers will play fair. Well, I can guarantee you one thing: Russia and China are not going to play fair. We cannot count on anybody other than our allies. Everybody else is on their own. Even for the countries that do play fair, this international rate is lower than the 28-percent rate that companies headquartered in the United States would have to pay. So what does that mean? It means inversions are going to spread like wildfire, and large business corporations are going to move their headquarters overseas. We cannot allow that to happen. We are going to lose jobs. What is more, the President's budget calls to increase the IRS's budget by $80 billion over the next decade and add thousands of new agents. The President wants even more tax collectors to knock on your door and shake you down for all you are worth. I don't know if you have ever been audited. I have been several times, and it ain't a lot of fun. So what we are going to do is add even more people. If you get a tax refund, you are going to be audited. If you get some kind of refund, they are coming. We are talking about the same Agency that aggressively targeted conservative groups and individuals during the Obama administration. Now that there is another Democrat in the White House, the IRS is up to its old tactics again. We cannot politicize the IRS again. In just the past few months, the IRS has leaked the tax returns of American taxpayers to other groups. Now, to me, that really needs to be investigated. It has all gone down in the wash. For some reason, nobody is looking at this. Even more outrageously, news recently broke that a Christian organization based in Texas was denied tax-exempt status by the IRS. They were denied. Why? Because the IRS, for some reason, thinks the Bible is too closely associated with the Republican Party. That is ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. It is sad commentary on where America is today. What is next? Is the IRS going to start pulling the tax-exempt status from churches? I hope not, but if we are adding all of these other agents, we are going to run into more and more problems. Before Congress even thinks about giving the IRS a dime more, the Agency must demonstrate that it treats all Americans--and I repeat, all Americans--equally and protects our personal tax information. Individuals responsible for the most recent leak must be prosecuted. We have to get control of the IRS. For some reason, they are out of control. Sadly, there is more. The President's administration also has its sights on small business owners--this is huge in my State and in a lot of other small States in this country, especially in farming communities--family farmers, middle-class Americans who would like to pass on to their children what they have worked so hard to build. By ending the longstanding step-up in basis rule, the President would force anyone who inherits something to pay capital gains tax on that asset at the time of inheritance. I want you to think about what that is going to do to millions of people, to millions of family members. This doesn't just apply to folks who inherit millions in wealth, and I know, as we all know, that is probably what this is aimed at; it would slam middle-class folks who inherit family farmland or a house or a small business. I am going to say this: After campaigning for 2 years and in going throughout my State of Alabama and talking to our farmers, if we lose our family farms in this country to big corporations, we are going to be in huge trouble. This is exactly what this is going to do. If we tax them at the time of inheritance, we are going to have huge problems. Many would have to sell their businesses just to pay the taxes, and it would destroy American jobs in the process. We need to give incentives to small businesses, farmers, and the like to make sure they understand and know that they can work hard and pass it down from generation to generation. Opposition to this particular tax increase is bipartisan. Congressman David Scott of Georgia, a Democrat and chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, wrote to President Biden: Step-up in basis is a critical tool enabling family farming operations to continue from generation to generation. The potential for capital gains to be imposed on heirs at death of the landowner would impose a significant financial burden on these operations. This is a terrible--I mean a terrible--tax on small business and the American people. I agree with the Congressman. The American dream is about working hard so that your kids can have a better life than you did. That is why my parents worked so hard to give me and my brother and sister a chance. My dad never made over $15,000 a year, and we thought we were rich. We were actually poor, but they never let on to that. They worked hard to give us the opportunity to go to school, to get an education, and to try to make something of ourselves. I know that millions of mothers and fathers across the country feel the same way. When you boil it down, the tax plan is really just a tax on the American dream. We cannot take away the American dream from the American people. That is what we have lived off of. That is what we believe in. So why do we need to raise taxes so badly? It is in order to, obviously, finance all of the money that, in the last year and a half or 2 years, we have pushed out onto the public and for what we are going to do in the future. We have to tax. I keep hearing people say: Well, we are not going to raise taxes. Let me tell you that money doesn't grow on trees, so we had better find some way to understand that in the very near future or we are going to lose the future of our kids in this country. We can't let any of these tax proposals creep into the legislation that we are seeing. We can't let them do that. We can't let our policies overtake the things that will overcome our kids' future--and not just that of our kids. I used to say our kids and grandkids. Heck, it is us too. We are getting to the point now of no return, but we are looking at a package here in the next few weeks that is going to be $3.5 trillion, possibly even more. That is unfathomable. It is hard to understand. We have got to get this country back going again after the pandemic. Let the American people do it. We don't need to do it in this building. That is not our obligation. Our obligation is to give the people of this country the opportunity to get a job because growth and prosperity are what have made this country great, and that is what we need to continue to do. The root of the problem, I believe, is that a lot of people think that they can spend the hard-working people's money better than they can. They say: Trust us because Big Government knows best. Folks, Big Government is going to put us under--6 feet under. Governments have been making that argument to people for centuries. I would say this: In our growing up, look at the things that we as the government have taken control of, and you name me one thing that has been prosperous. I have thought long and hard about that. We try to put people to work through the Federal Government, and it doesn't work. We have got to allow it to happen through small businesses and corporations. Kings and Queens would demand more money from the people, but the monarchy felt that they were entitled to it. That was normal throughout the world until the United States was formed. We formed this country because of Kings and Queens saying: We know how to spend your money. We know how to spend your money more than you do. So the Founders wanted a country that was of and by and for the people, and that is why the United States of America was formed-- because the people built this country, not government. Thankfully, they set up a system that allows us to voice our opposition to taxes through democratic means. When the government tries to raise taxes, the American people have the opportunity to let their voices be heard at the ballot box. Just remember that when you earn, grow, and work hard to preserve your money, it is your money, not the government's. Our President would do well to remember that he serves at the will of the American people and not the other way around.

Mr. TUBERVILLE

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

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, in that spirit, I want to call up my bipartisan Senate resolution honoring the ``greatest generation,'' S. Res. 238. As if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 238.

Mr. TUBERVILLE. I yield the floor.

Mr. TUBERVILLE

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, last week, when we were all back home, we all got to celebrate the Fourth of July. Cooking out, spending time with our family and friends, watching fireworks is always special. Sitting there with my family, I thought about how blessed we are to live in the United States of America. We get to live in the most free and prosperous country in the history of the world. We owe that freedom and prosperity to the people who declared their independence on July 4, 245 years ago. They fought and won their freedom for an idea called America. That American idea lives on two-and-a-half centuries later, thanks to the generations of men and women who, like many before them, put on the uniform to defend this great country. Many gave their lives, the ultimate sacrifice, to defend the United States. But many more are still with us, and future generations will continue to volunteer to protect the freedoms and liberties this country affords us every day. Today we have got almost 20 million veterans in the United States, and 400,000 of them call Alabama home. I have had the honor and pleasure to meet many Alabama veterans the past few years. I am always heartened to talk with them about their service to our great country, but what I hear over and over again is that there is more we can do for all of our veterans: better access to care, better opportunities to reenter civilian life. Taking care of our veterans is personal for me. My dad served in World War II and died on Active Duty after the war. But he taught me so many valuable lessons, like work ethic, perseverance, and love of country. When I meet with veterans, I see the same patriotism my dad lived out every day of his life. You know, I never served myself. The Vietnam war was over before I got out of college, but many guys I knew from back home served in Vietnam. I saw how badly they were treated by the media, by Hollywood, and even by their fellow Americans. They were just trying to serve their country. They watched their friends die, and when they got home, they weren't treated very well. I thank God we treat our veterans today better than we did when I was growing up. And veterans from the Vietnam era are still the largest of the veteran group in this United States that we live in today. More than 100,000 Vietnam vets live in Alabama. But there is still more we can do to give them the care and resources that they need and deserve. I am honored to be a member of the Senate's Veterans' Affairs Committee, where we can hear about the problems facing our veterans firsthand and work together on commonsense solutions. The biggest challenge our veterans face is the access to quality care. We have all seen it in the news. We have heard about it firsthand. Far too often, veterans can't get the care they need in a timely manner. One veteran who doesn't have access to care is one too many. My main priority is to get veterans the care they need and they well deserve by whatever means at our disposal, period. A solution to help address that problem is the GHAPS Act, Guaranteeing Healthcare Access to Personnel Who Served, introduced by my friend and committee ranking member Senator Moran from Kansas. The GHAPS Act would identify persistent gaps that veterans face and would help craft innovative solutions to make certain all veterans receive quality and timely care, especially our veterans living in rural areas. The bill would also direct the VA to create a telehealth strategic plan so that we can use modern methods to improve access to care. I am proud to cosponsor that legislation and will be working with Ranking Member Moran to get this bill passed. We also need to do more to address the scourge of veteran suicide. It is absolutely tragic that more than 18 veterans take their own life every day. I have partnered with groups like America's Warrior Partnership, who are gathering data on veteran suicide across the country to determine how we can combat this terrible epidemic, leveraging both the VA and community resources. At the same time, we must do more to make additional treatments available to veterans who haven't had success treating their traumatic brain injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder. One step we can take is to pass my bill, the HBOT Access Act. HBOT stands for hyperbaric oxygen therapy. My bill would permit HBOT as a treatment option for those veterans who have tried other evidence-based treatment options for TBI or PTSD but have not seen substantial improvement. I have heard from veterans and veterans service organizations that point to HBOT as a treatment that has produced positive results for individuals suffering from severe head and brain injuries. Many former football players, including ones who played for me, found success with HBOT in treating their head injuries after suffering from concussions. HBOT is already approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a treatment option for more than a dozen different conditions, including severe burns, infections, and decompression sickness. But the FDA does not recognize HBOT as an approved treatment option for TBI or PTSD, meaning veterans can't receive this care at the VA facilities or elsewhere and must pay for it out of their own pocket if they do use it. My bill would change that. If veterans are saying they have improved after using HBOT and if veterans service organizations have seen similar success, I say we listen to them. We should not leave quality options on the table while the veteran suicide crisis worsens. I want to thank my colleagues Senators Hoeven and Cramer as well as the American Legion and the Patriot Angels for supporting this important legislation. I hope my fellow colleagues will join me in passing this commonsense bill. Finally, we need to improve resources for veterans to find jobs after their service in the military. Too many face unnecessary hurdles in rejoining civilian life. They have some of the best skills you can ask for. Yet sometimes our veterans, like so many others, can fall prey to addiction, homelessness, or just be flat out down on their luck. Thankfully, we have got quality organizations that are doing good work helping veterans in need. One of these organizations is Three Hots and a Cot, based in Clay, AL. Three Hots is a small nonprofit organization founded by veterans for veterans. They get funding mostly through donations but also through a Veterans Affairs supportive housing grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Three Hots offers temporary assisted housing to 18 veterans at a time. They will drive the veterans to healthcare appointments at the VA, to grocery stores, to job interviews, and to church until they can get back on their feet. And the job doesn't stop once the veterans are settled in an apartment on their own. Three Hots will help with the transition by doing tasks like stocking their pantry, getting them furniture, and checking on them regularly. In their 10 years of operation, Three Hots has helped more than 1,600 veterans and family members with an 83-percent success rate. This is the holistic type of approach to a tough issue that we need more of. They meet veterans where they are at in the community and help them find the resources available. There are more great organizations across the country offering to help veterans in need, but oftentimes our veterans don't know these resources are available. I will be working closely with my colleagues to better connect veterans with the resources that are out there so they can be equipped with the skills they need to succeed at home. Folks, simply, without the brave men and women who wear the uniform, we wouldn't have the freedoms we enjoy and sometimes take for granted every day. Our service men and women risked everything by joining the military. The least we can do is to repay their service and sacrifice by taking care of them when they return home to the country they gave so much to defend. That is what I will be doing on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee and throughout my time here in the Senate

Mr. TUBERVILLE

Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, before I begin, I want to first take a moment and remember those that lost their lives in a horrific car accident in Butler County, AL, this past weekend. Ten people lost their lives. Nine of those were between the ages 9 months and 17 years old. A majority of those killed were in a Tallapoosa County Girls Ranch bus. The girls ranch is an organization that I have been involved with for 20 years. It handles young kids who have been abused, young kids who have no parents. They start at this ranch at most any age, and everything is paid for all the way through graduation of college. These kids were on a field trip coming from Baldwin County, AL, this past weekend and were involved in this horrific crash. There are no words that can bring comfort to these families or these children, but my family and my staff and the people of Alabama are praying for peace for all those affected during this unimaginable time. For the People Act of 2021 Madam President, as I and others have noted, Democrats call their flagship voting bill For the People Act, but a better and more fitting title is the ``Nancy Pelosi Power Grab Act.'' My Republican colleagues have done a good job of highlighting the many flaws of this legislation in the last couple of weeks, including doing away with commonsense fraud protection like voter ID, forcing mandatory same-day registration on every State, allowing paid political operatives to harvest voter ballots, and directing taxpayer dollars to the campaigns of progressive politicians. Sadly, there is plenty more. But let me also note that this recent ``compromise'' is anything but. A compromise among Democrats should have been their starting offer to Republicans, not their final offer. The most recent versions still run afoul of the Constitution by trampling on First Amendment rights of free speech and taking away redistricting from the States. While ID is still required to vote, the bill expands what kind of ID meets that requirement, such as a utility bill. But the last time I looked, there was not a photo on our utility bill. The most secure form of identification is a government-issued photo ID. States shouldn't be forced to water that down. Americans want faith and trust in the integrity of their election process. This bill does not provide solutions to strengthen these processes, and once Americans learn what is in this bill, they will agree. The Pelosi power grab yanks power from the States. The Pelosi power grab lets politicians stuff their pockets with taxpayers' dollars. And guess what, folks. A slightly different version of a Federal takeover of elections is still a Federal takeover of elections. That is exactly what this new version of S. 1 is. It is hard to even call this version of S. 1 a compromise when the Democrats only compromise with Members of their own party. This was not a bipartisan negotiation to get an end product that both sides of the aisle could support. The last time I checked, we still have a 50-50 Senate. There has been no negotiation with our side. But regardless of its form, this bill does not solve the problems currently facing our election system; it makes the problems worse. You know, in sports, one team changing the rules by themselves is called cheating. It is seen for what it is--a power grab. It is stacking the rules to win the game instead of doing the hard work necessary to get the job done. Folks may be scratching their heads as to why one political party thinks they can completely change the rules of elections all by themselves, but if you have been paying attention to what the progressives have been up to recently, it won't come as a big surprise. Changing our country as we know it is the end game. That is why they want to pass this Pelosi power grab--so those who disagree with them have a harder time winning at the ballot box. But it is not just elections. Remember when they tried to hoodwink us with defund the police last year? Remember when they tried to walk that back? But they had made their position very clear. Now we are seeing the same thing with education, as critical race theory is pushed on school districts across the country. Simply put, critical race theory reinforces divisions on strict racial lines. It doesn't teach kids moral values, like treating everyone with respect regardless of race; it is just the opposite. Critical race theory teaches kids to hate one another. That is one thing schools should absolutely--absolutely--not be teaching. But, again, for Democrats, it is about changing the way we view our country. What we should be focusing on is actually improving education all over this country. The American people need to realize how far we have fallen behind. As columnist Mark Steyn wrote, ``Education is the biggest structural defect in our society. We have an almost entirely corrupt and abusive education establishment.'' Here is where that education establishment has gotten us: We are 37th in the world in math, 13th in reading, and 18th in science. In 2019, only 35 percent of our fourth graders were able to read at the fourth- grade reading level--35 percent. Embarrassing. That was lower than 2 years before, and it was before the teachers unions kept kids out of school all of this past year. You can imagine how it is today. It is unacceptable. It should be unacceptable to every Member of this body. We have got China outpacing us in every industry and at every level of our economy. But Democrats are too busy painting the United States as the world's villain. How can we expect our young people to defend the United States abroad if they don't learn about the things that make America the greatest country in the history of the world? We, as elected representatives of Americans across the country, should be doing everything--and I mean everything--we can to create opportunity and to protect the freedoms that make this country great. It seems like folks across the aisle aren't interested in that. They have a completely different vision of and for our country--one that most Americans don't agree with at all. I bet if you ask folks back home if they want a bigger government and less State and local power, they would say no way. I bet if you asked them if a Federal power grab sounds like a good idea, they would say no. I bet if you ask them if they want their kids to learn to be more divided by race, they would also say no. They would tell you they want their freedoms protected. They would tell you they want the Federal Government out of the way. They want an education for children that provides opportunity because education is the key to freedom and success. Education can unlock every student's God-given potential, but critical race theory swallows that key. The Pelosi power grab just fills the lock with cement. Ladies and gentlemen, this For the People Act is one party's attempt to rewrite the rules--rewrite the rules of the game in hope that they will get a permanent advantage, plain and simple. It is really a shame. We are spending so much time on bills that the American people don't want, bills that don't have bipartisan support. So I urge my colleagues to come together and find solutions that will unite us as Americans, not divide us further as a country. I suggest the absence of a quorum.