Pat Toomey

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I appreciate the indulgence of my colleagues allowing me to speak twice today. But my understanding is that later this evening, objectors will object to the certification of Pennsylvania's electoral votes because they disapprove of the process that my State used in the last election. So in light of my expectation of this objection, I rise to defend the right of my citizens, my constituents, to vote in the Presidential election. Let's be clear. That is exactly what this objection is about. It is what it would do. It would overturn the results of the Presidential election in Pennsylvania, and it would thereby deny Pennsylvania's voters the opportunity to even participate in the Presidential election. Even if Congress did have the constitutional responsibility to judge the worthiness of a State's election process, which it does not, rejecting Pennsylvania's electoral votes would still be wildly out of proportion to the purported offenses and very damaging to our Republic. Let me go through a few facts about Pennsylvania. First, some of the objectors and, in fact, even the President of the United States this morning have observed that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court disregarded existing law when it ruled that mail-in ballots could be counted even if they arrived up to 3 days after election day. Now, the objectors are right about that. In my view, the Supreme Court of the United States should overturn that illegal decision. But only 10,097 ballots arrived in Pennsylvania during the 3 days after the election, and those 10,097 ballots have been excluded from the vote count that resulted in President-Elect Biden winning Pennsylvania by about 80,000 votes. What greater remedy could the objectors possibly want than the complete exclusion of the late-arriving ballots? How could we possibly invalidate the entire Pennsylvania election over 10,000 votes that were not even included in the vote count? A second charge we heard--and the Senator from Missouri alluded to it this evening--is that a 2019 Pennsylvania law that allows mail-in ballots for any reason--that that might violate the Pennsylvania Constitution. First of all, as Senator Casey observed, this was a bipartisan law passed with nearly unanimous Republican support. Clearly, the State legislators and the Governor believe it is consistent with the Pennsylvania Constitution. Secondly, this law was not challenged when it was passed. It wasn't challenged when it was applied during the June primary election. It was challenged only after President Trump lost the general election. But 2.6 million Pennsylvanians voted by mail-in ballot in the general election. Over 37 percent of Pennsylvania voters, in good faith, relied on a law to cast their votes, as they had done previously. Now, I understand you can make a theoretical argument about whether this is consistent with Pennsylvania's Constitution, and that needs to be resolved for future elections. But because of this constitutional question that some people have, the objectors want to prevent Pennsylvania voters from participating in the Presidential election entirely. That would be an outrageous remedy to this purported offense. A third charge we have heard is that Pennsylvania officials did not properly implement Pennsylvania election law in a variety of other ways. But the Trump campaign has shown that many of these issues have-- well, first of all, none of these issues would have changed the election outcome, but more importantly, the campaign had many opportunities, of which it availed itself, to litigate these issues. They did time and again, and they lost repeatedly, often in unanimous, bipartisan decisions. Some of the objectors also cite Congress's own failure to investigate allegations of election irregularities, and that is their justification for refusing to certify the election results. But the allegations of election irregularities and fraud have been investigated. They have been adjudicated. They were adjudicated in the States in which they were alleged to have occurred. In Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign took their case of election irregularities into the courtroom of Judge Matthew Brann of the Federal district court. Judge Brann is a conservative Republican Federalist Society member. Here is what he said about the Trump campaign case: This court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations . . . unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all [the] voters of the sixth most populated state. So the campaign then appealed Judge Brann's decision to the Third Circuit, and they drew a three-judge panel, all Republican-appointed judges, one appointed by President Trump. The panel concurred with Judge Brann. Certainly there were irregularities in this election--there always are--but there is no evidence of significant fraud, conspiracies, or even significant anomalies that cast any serious doubt on who actually won the election. You know, one of the ways you can tell is to look at the big picture in Pennsylvania. Look at what happened. In 2016, President Trump won Pennsylvania by eight-tenths of 1 percent. In 2020, he lost Pennsylvania by a little over 1 percent. Is there anything at all that is implausible or surprising about a 2-percent change in the election outcome? Relative to 2016, in Pennsylvania the President lost a little ground in most of the rural counties he had carried. He lost a lot of ground in the big suburban counties, and he slightly narrowed his large loss in Philadelphia. There are no surprises here. This reflects a pattern that occurred all across the country. My colleagues, as I have said, it is not our responsibility to sit in judgment of State election procedures in the first place, but if it were, there would not be nearly sufficient reason to deny my constituents their right to participate in this Presidential election. Joe Biden won the election. That is not what I had hoped for, but that is what happened. It was an honest victory with the usual minor irregularities that occur in most elections. We witnessed today the damage that can result when men in power and responsibility refuse to acknowledge the truth. We saw bloodshed because the demagogue chose to spread falsehoods and sow distrust of his own fellow Americans. Let's not abet such deception. Let's reject this motion

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, let me start by pointing out that we are not in the same place that we were back in March. Our economy is in nothing like the situation we faced during a moment in March when this body came together and voted unanimously, I believe, for the most extraordinary aid package-- financial stimulus bill, however you care to characterize it--in the history of the world by far. Remember where we were. We had closed down the economy. To a very large degree, the American economy had stopped functioning because State governments around the country decided they had to close it down. We can discuss and we can argue about whether that was a good decision or not, but given the limited knowledge we had about the nature of the COVID-19 threat, it was deemed to be the right thing to do. So we were on the verge of having no economy. That has never happened before in our history. So what did we do? We decided this calls for extraordinary measures, and we would try to use Federal dollars as a substitute for the economy--just replace lost income on a massive, unprecedented scale-- and we did. We approved almost $3 trillion in that legislation. At the time, we included $1,200 per person. You could make an argument that that was an extremely inefficient use of that $1,200 per person, but at the time, given the circumstances, I understood why we didn't have many good options, and that was something we decided to do. So where are we now? We are in a very different place. Our economy is not in a free fall. Our economy is in a recovery mode. We are not back to where we want to end up. We are not back to where we were before March, but we have taken big steps in that direction. The economy grew at 33 percent last quarter--33 percent. That is a tremendous recovery that is underway. More than half of all the people who lost their jobs earlier this year have regained their jobs. So we are not finished yet, but that is a huge step along the way. And now we are being told, after passing another extraordinary bill-- this one almost $1 trillion and including $600 per person--that that is not enough; we need to do $2,000 per person, despite the fact that we know for sure, we know for a fact, that the large majority of those checks are going to go to people who had no lost income. How does that make any sense at all? We know for sure that the majority of these people had no lost income. They didn't lose their jobs, and yet we are going to send them not $600, not the $1,200, but $2,000. So think about this. A married couple, who both are working and have 2 kids, maybe they work for the Federal Government, like 2 million-odd people do. Maybe they work for a large company, the vast majority of which did not have large numbers of layoffs. So this two-child, two- income couple that makes six figures had no interruption, no diminishment of their income whatsoever. They are going to get $8,000 of money we don't have that is going to be either borrowed or printed. That is what it is all going to come down to. There are people who are still suffering from the economic fallout of this terrible COVID crisis. There is no question about it. We know there are people who are concentrated in a handful of industries, for the most part--not exclusively--but people who have worked in the restaurant industry, people who work for hotels, travel, entertainment. So many of those people are still out of work and their prospects of getting their old jobs back are not good in the short run. I sure hope they will be good in the medium-term run, if not sooner. And our bill addressed that. It addressed that problem. How did we do that? With a new round of PPP loans, which are really grants to small businesses, if they will keep their workforce intact; expansion of unemployment insurance benefits, so that people who have historically been ineligible remain eligible so they can continue to collect unemployment benefits; an increase in the amount of unemployment benefits, a $300-a-week overlay of Federal money on top of whatever their State program is; $600 per person, regardless of whether they lost income. All of that was passed just a few days ago, and now we are told we need to come back immediately, right now, and make sure that we are sending $2,000 checks to people who had no lost income. So for that reason, I object.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I wish to enter remarks regarding the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, which I will refer to as the 2021 Approps Act. Specifically, my remarks are about sections 1001 through 1005 of the 2021 Approps Act. I was the sponsor and principal drafter of these sections. I also negotiated the final legislative text of these sections with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and my Democratic colleagues in the Senate, including Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. These sections relate to the Federal Reserve's temporary emergency lending facilities under section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act that are creatures of the CARES Act P.L. 116-136. These facilities were established in response to the extreme turmoil in the credit markets caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. They were made possible by $500 billion in funding and authority provided by the CARES Act. As a result, these facilities are often referred to as the CARES Act facilities, which is how I will refer to them. The CARES Act facilities are the Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility, the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility, the Municipal Liquidity Facility, the Main Street Lending Program, and the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF). The CARES Act required and Congress intended the CARES Act facilities to cease operations by December 31, 2020. I was one of the two Republican Senators involved in drafting the CARES ACT provisions that provided the funding and authority for the CAREES Act facilities. During the last 2 days--December 19, 2020 and December 20, 2020--I have spoken at length on the Senate floor about the creation, intended purpose, and success of these facilities, as well as the impact of sections 1001 through 1005 of the 2021 Approps Act on these facilities and the reasons for enacting these sections. As a result, I will not repeat those remarks now. Today, I would like to focus on the impact of one particular section of the 2021 Approps Act: section 1005. But let me first remind my colleagues of what sections 1001 through 1005 of the 2021 Approps Act do. Collectively, these sections rescind more than $429 billion of unused money out of the CARES Act facilities and use that money for other important purposes; definitively end the CARES Act facilities by December 31, 2020, as Congress intended and the CARES Act requires; forbid the CARES Act facilities from being restarted; and prevent the CARES Act facilities from being replicated without congressional approval. Specifically, section 1005 of the 2021 Approps Act prevents the creation of any Federal Reserve emergency lending facility established under section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act that is ``the same as'' any CARES Act facility. Because an earlier version of TALF was established in 2008 prior to the CARES Act, section 1005 of the 2021 Approps Act specifically allows TALF--but only TALF--to be replicated in the future without congressional approval. Under section 1005 of the 2021 Approps Act, all of the other CARES Act facilities--the Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility, the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility, the Municipal Liquidity Facility, and the Main Street Lending Program--cannot be replicated in the future without congressional approval. So what does it mean for a new facility to be ``the same as'' a CARES Act facility? That question can easily be answered by looking at the purpose of the CARES Act facilities. The purpose of each CARES Act facility is identified in its term sheet. Let's walk through them. The purpose of the Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility was to lend directly to corporations by purchasing bonds or syndicated loans from them at issuance. The purpose of the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility was to purchase corporate bonds and corporate bond Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) in the secondary market. The purpose of the Municipal Liquidity Facility was to lend directly to states and municipalities by purchasing their municipal bonds from them at issuance. The purpose of the Main Street Lending Program was to extend credit directly to small or medium sized businesses, including nonprofit organizations. These purposes are clear and are what define each of the CARES Act facilities. A future lending facility that had the same purpose as a CARES Act facility would be the ``same as'' as CARES Act facility and therefore could not be created without congressional approval. The Treasury and the Federal Reserve would need to come to Congress for approval, just as they did at the time of the creation of the CARES Act facilities. Unfortunately, I have seen some uninformed reporters and outside commentators incorrectly assert that section 1005 of the 2021 Approps Act only prevents the creation of new lending facilities if the facilities are ``identical to'' or ``exactly the same as'' the CARES Act facilities. That is manifestly not true. Section 1005 of the 2021 Approps Act does not say that, nor was that the intent of Congress. I should know because unlike these reporters and commentators I drafted and negotiated the final text of section 1005 of the 2021 Approps Act with my Democratic colleagues, including Minority Leader Schumer. During the course of our negotiations, Democrats actually proposed that we use the phrase ``identical to'' in section 1005 of the 2021 Approps Act. I specifically rejected this proposal because ``identical to'' is far too limited in scope. If section 1005 of the 2021 Approps Act had used the word ``identical to'' than that would mean only a new facility that is identical to a CARES Act facility in every way would be prohibited. That would defeat the entire purpose of section 1005. It would have allowed the Treasury and the Federal Reserve to essentially restart the CARES Act facilities, which section 1005 of the 2021 Approps Act separately prohibits them from restarting, by simply tinkering with their terms and launching them under a new name. For example, the terms of the Municipal Liquidity Facility only allow it to purchase bonds directly from and state and municipal issuers that have a maturity of up to 3 years. If a new facility was the same in every way as the Municipal Liquidity Facility with the exception that it could purchase bonds with maturities up to 10 years, rather than up to 3 years, than it would not be ``identical to'' the Municipal Liquidity Facility and therefore could be created. However, such a facility would be the same as the current Municipal Liquidity Facility because it is lending directly to States and municipalities. My Republican colleagues and I did not want to permit for such a loophole in the law. That is why I specifically rejected my Democratic colleagues' proposal that we use the phrase ``identical to'' any CARES Act facility. In our negotiations, I told him that we did not want the Treasury and Federal Reserve to replicate the CARES Act facilities by tinkering with their terms and then launching them under different names. Ultimately, my Democratic colleagues conceded on this point and agreed to compromise by using the broader phrase ``the same as'' instead. So where does that leave us? Section 1005 of the 2021 Approps Act prevents a new Federal Reserve emergency lending facility from being established under section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act without congressional approval, if the facility has the same purpose as a CARES Act facility. The CARES Act facilities were unprecedented facilities that the Treasury, with the support of the Federal Reserve, requested that Congress make possible. Congress did so through the CARES Act. These facilities required legislation in March 2020 and the same types of facilities would require legislation in the future if the Treasury and the Federal Reserve believed they needed to engage in such bond purchasing and direct lending again.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, earlier today, the minority leader came down to the Senate floor and unfortunately once again mischaracterized both the objectives and motives of Senate Republicans in the pursuit of the changes we wanted to make with respect to the CARES Act emergency lending program, and I want to address that. But let me just say candidly that I understand his frustration. Republicans together set out four goals for the country with respect to these programs, and we achieved all four goals. I guess that is a little bit frustrating. Let me go through just a little bit of recent history on this. Let's remember that this debate has been going on for several months. The Democrats' original position was to keep these programs in place. In fact, many of them wanted to expand them. They certainly wanted to extend them well past the end of the year. How do we know that? Well, among other ways, Senator Schumer himself sent a letter to Secretary Mnuchin and Chairman Powell asking exactly that--that they extend these programs. You might wonder, why would they want to extend an emergency lending facility when we are clearly not in an emergency in terms of the financial markets? The reason is that a lot of Democrats had other purposes in mind for these programs, and in my view, those other purposes would have constituted a terrible misuse of those programs. One of the goals clearly was to kind of morph the Fed's Municipal Liquidity Facility into a bailout fund for States and municipalities. How do we know that? Well, because the Democrat- controlled House passed a bill that would require that. There is no mystery here. They passed a bill that specifically would require the Fed to use the Municipal Liquidity Facility to bail out States and municipalities under outrageous terms: ultra-low interest rates, ultra- long-term loans, 25 basis point interest rate, 10 years. States wouldn't even need to attest, as they do under current law, that they were unable to secure credit elsewhere. Basically, they wanted to turn the Fed from the lender of last resort to the lender of first resort. So they were clear about that. There are many Democratic activists and folks here who are sympathetic with them who have other purposes as well, such as using the Corporate Credit Facility as a way to coerce the behavior they want from corporations. It wasn't about extending credit to companies that need credit; it is about achieving a social or cultural or political objective by attaching terms to the loans that would result from that. Those are the kinds of uses that many on their side had. How do we know that? Well, among other things, they beat us up almost every day for not voting on the Heroes Act. I think they intended to vote for it, so they would have been voting for this very misuse. So our goal was simple. Our goal as a conference or the consensus of Republican Senators was to end these programs consistent with the intent of the law and, in fact, I believe, the letter of the law, prevent the misuse, and make sure the Fed's legitimate functions are not impinged upon. How are we going to do this? We are going to do this with four specific steps, four specific goals that would allow us to achieve that outcome for the American people. No. 1, sweep the unused money out of those accounts and repurpose it; use it for other, better purposes. We have other needs. That is an important objective. It also makes sure that the money is not available for misuse, if we are shifting it out of these facilities and putting it to good use. Now, again, initially the Democratic position was in opposition to this, but to their credit, the bipartisan group of eight folks who got together and really were the catalyst for the bill that we are working on now--the Republicans persuaded the Democrats to accept this idea that the money should be swept out, and to the credit of the Democrats there, they agreed. So that became the basis or one of the bases of this piece of legislation that we have been working on, and it achieves Republicans' first goal. The second goal is to end the programs as the statute intended. As I say, I believe the statute achieves that, but there is a very aggressive interpretation to the contrary. We know that Senator Schumer wanted to extend these programs well beyond the end of the year. We know it from his letter that he wrote. But, to his credit, he ultimately relented, and Republicans achieved our second goal. The third goal that we had was to make sure that these programs aren't simply resuscitated next year. We all know there is going to be a new Secretary of the Treasury, and a joint decision by the Treasury Secretary and the Fed is what governs this program. Now, I don't think they would have the legal authority to resume this, but many of our Democratic colleagues openly advocated that despite the fact that Secretary Mnuchin and Powell had agreed not to extend these programs, that a new Treasury Secretary should, in fact, resume these programs, start them up again. We said no, and again, to the credit of our Democratic colleagues, they relented, and Republicans achieved our third goal. The fourth was simply to forbid the creation of a clone that would circumvent the third; right? If you had to end a particular lending facility, but you could just create an identical version of it or a nearly identical version of it and call it something else, why, that would defeat the purpose of ending the one you ended. So we needed, in statute, to make it clear that there would be a prohibition against the creation of a clone or a near clone. This one, Senator Schumer fought us hard on. I will say he fought us hard on this. In the course of exchanges, we kept getting documents that didn't have any reference to this at all, but in the end, he agreed that we would have this prohibition. We then went back and forth on the exact language, exactly what would constitute a clone, as I am using the term, and what wouldn't. We got to an agreement, and we achieved our fourth goal. I want to commend my Democratic colleagues for working with us to get here. It wasn't easy, and I know there is a lot in this that they don't love about this, but with respect to these really important goals for the American people, we are making progress. One of the other things that I just have to address because the leader brought this up in his comments earlier was a terrible misrepresentation of what our objective was or why did we think it was so important to end these programs in the first place. Our intent was not, as Senator Schumer implied on the floor today, to sabotage the incoming administration's ability to stabilize the economy. And that is a direct quote. That was not our intent. So what was our intent? Well, first, I mentioned earlier we think it is important that you follow the law, and we believe the law requires that these be shut down. We understand there was going to be an aggressive attempt to circumvent that by interpreting the law differently, so we felt, clarify the statute, make it unambiguous, and we would achieve that. The second thing is, of course, it is completely consistent with congressional intent. Let me say that I was one of the two Republican Senators in the room when we were negotiating this part of the CARES Act with our Democratic counterparts, Secretary Mnuchin, our respective staffs, and attorneys. There was nobody in the room who thought for a minute that these were meant to be indefinite programs. Remember where we were. We were absolutely convinced--and I think rightly--that we were on the verge of a full-blown financial crisis, a meltdown in the financial markets. If that had happened, it is very likely we would have had a full-blown depression that could have lasted a very, very long time. Credit markets were freezing. Companies couldn't borrow. Do you know what that means when that happens to a business? They can't make payroll. If they can't access credit, if they can't borrow, draw down on a bank facility or issue their commercial paper or issue their corporate bond, if they can't raise the credit they need, they can't pay their bills. When the credit markets freeze up and businesses can't pay their bills, including payroll, you have a full-blown, unmitigated disaster. That is what we wanted to prevent. The purpose of these facilities was narrow. It was to restore the normal functioning of the private lending and capital markets of America. The purpose was never to replace those markets. The purpose was never to pick winners and losers and decide which companies and industries should get favorable terms and which should not. It was none of those things. And it was very much not intended to be some kind of all-purpose cure-all for whatever economic ills there are. None of that. The purpose was always to ensure that creditworthy borrowers could access credit through normal channels. Well, guess what. It worked. It worked better than we could have imagined, better than I was even hoping, because within days--within days--credit markets were flowing again because lenders had the confidence that, through these facilities, the markets would not collapse, there would not be a freezing up, they would be able to function, and therefore they had the confidence to make that loan to that company that needed to make its payroll and all the other innumerable transactions that have to take place. In fact, it worked so well that as of now, I think, total credit has flown at an alltime record pace in the United States of America. Corporate bond issuance is off the charts. High credit, lower credit, debt and equity--the capital markets have been flowing. Credit lines from banks have been flowing. The programs achieved their limited purpose extremely well. Now, look, are there other economic needs in America? Absolutely. I mean, there are industries that have been devastated--the restaurant industry, hotels, transportation. We know that, and we have legislation that is attempting to address many of those issues with forgivable loans and an increase in unemployment benefits and other provisions. It is here on the Senate floor, through legislation like that, that we should decide how, whether, and to what extent we are going to address those problems. That is our job--to do it through an appropriation process here in the Senate. That is not the job of the Fed. That brings me to another really important reason why we didn't want these programs to continue indefinitely, and that is to protect the Fed from being politicized, to preserve the independence of the Fed, which is very, very important. If the Fed ever became simply an extension of one of the political parties, we would be in a very, very bad place. But think about it. If these programs were going to continue indefinitely and our Democratic colleagues got their wish that is represented in the Heroes Act--to have massive subsidies for municipalities--think about the amount of political pressure on the Fed to bail out whoever is the preferred constituent of the day: private or public, municipal or business. Just think about how it would be used, and think about the strings that they would--they have advocated this. Many of our Democratic colleagues have said: This could be a way to encourage unionization or encourage the composition of the Board to look like we would like it to look. It is an endless list, and it is all wildly inappropriate for the central bank of America to be engaged in this kind of thing. You should never put the Fed in the position of the incredible political pressure that they would have been under. So with this bill--and I hope we are able to vote on this, if not today then tomorrow. There are some things in this bill--unrelated things--that I like. I do think we need another round of PPP loans. I do think we need the expanded eligibility for unemployment benefits, for instance. Here are things I don't like. I think direct payments to people who have not suffered a loss of income makes no sense whatsoever. But this topic I have been discussing--the end of these 13(3) lending facilities is a very important part of the bill that I like very much. There are four important objectives we set out, and we achieved them: sweeping the money out; shutting down existing facilities, the four existing CARES-funded facilities; forbidding their reopening without the consent of Congress; and forbidding clones from being an end-run around that--all without impinging on the Fed's ability to intervene in the markets in emergency circumstances. Those were our objectives. In this legislation, we achieve all four of those objectives. I would say that is a good day's work. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I want to address the ongoing debate over the content of a relief bill that I think we have made a lot of progress on and I am hopeful that we can get finished. Many of our colleagues have been down here and have reminded all of us, quite rightly, of the terrible difficulties that many Americans are facing. We are not in a full-blown financial crisis anymore, but we are experiencing a lot of economic hardship that tends to be concentrated in certain sectors and industries, and we have a full-blown healthcare crisis. So it is a very, very serious moment, and it demands a response. I am hoping we can get that done as soon as possible, and I want to discuss one of the terms that I have advocated for in this legislation. The terms I have advocated for have been mischaracterized, including by the Senate minority leader and others, and so I want to set the record straight on what this is all about and why I think this is so important. And to that, I think it is worth remembering what brought us to this point. Back in March, when the coronavirus was first ripping across America and wreaking so much havoc, the response, in many, many places, was a complete economic shutdown--a complete prohibition against doing business, against going to work, against earning a livelihood. And I understand why that was done--that we were in a healthcare crisis, and that was the response that was believed to be most likely to prevent an overwhelming of our healthcare capabilities. That would have been absolutely horrific, and so we had this economic disaster. And what we discovered in March was this shutdown brought us to the brink of a financial crisis as well. If you think about the financial markets where people are providing capital to businesses and municipalities and individuals, they only do that if there is some confidence that they know, at least generally speaking, what the future looks like. We had never seen anything like the government shutting down our economy before. And so not really shockingly, the financial markets were on the verge of completely freezing up, shutting down, and preventing even the most basic functioning of our economy. I mean, we might well have gotten to the point where a business couldn't go to its bank and borrow the money it needs to make payroll on Friday or they couldn't issue the bond that they need to do to pay off another bond that is coming due, and so that would put them in default and force them into bankruptcy and require them to lay everyone off. I mean, the knock-on effects would have been devastating had our financial system completely frozen up, and it was on the verge, some would say it was actually in the process, of freezing up. And so that is why the Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve Board Governor came to Congress and said: Look, we need some extraordinary, unprecedented new facilities that we can stand up very, very quickly, and we can use them to be a backstop, to restore confidence, and to enable private credit to start flowing again so that this economic recession that we are certainly going to go through--back in March it was clear that was going to happen, but it was not clear that we had to suffer through a financial crisis that would create a depression. That was something we thought maybe we can avoid. So these facilities were set up, as I say, to restore the normal functioning of private lending and private capital markets--not to replace those markets, not to pick winners and losers and decide, well, who gets credit and who doesn't depending on whether we like their business, not to subsidize, not to say: Well, look, you know, let's just give cut-rate loans to the people we like to give them to. None of that was the intention. None of that was the purpose. The purpose was to ensure that creditworthy borrowers could access credit through the normal channels. That was it. That was the purpose of what has been widely described as the 13(3) lending facilities. There were several of these facilities. That was the intention for these facilities. And guess what. They worked. They worked amazingly well, remarkably well. Within days, certainly weeks, markets were again functioning, credit was flowing, and as a matter of fact, within a matter of months, credit was flowing at an alltime record pace; corporate bond issuance hit an alltime record high. Across the credit quality spectrum, municipal bond issues were at an alltime record high. Borrowers, businesses that wanted to keep their workers and continue to survive until we got past this COVID crisis--they were able to draw down lines of credit from their banks. It worked. The creation of these facilities gave the confidence to our financial markets that restored the normal functioning of those markets. It was really quite extraordinary. Now, that doesn't mean that the economy got perfect after that. Certainly not. The economy is not perfect today. But it meant that a recovery would be possible. We would be able to function. We would be able to begin to pick up the pieces of a closed economy and, sure enough, we have made tremendous progress. More than half of all the people who lost their jobs are back at work. So that is not anywhere near where we need to end up, but we are on the right track, in part, because these facilities did exactly what they were designed to do. Now, what does my language in this bill do? What my language does is it puts an end to these three programs that did their job--they functioned; they restored the private credit markets; and so they don't need to continue. What are these three programs? There is a corporate bond credit facility, there is a Main Street Lending Program, and there is a municipal lending program. Actually, they were hardly used at all. So quickly did the normal private credit markets resume their normal functioning that very few borrowers took advantage. In fact, I am pretty sure in the corporate credit facility that was set up under these 13(3) facilities, I don't think anything was done at all. In the Main Street lending, there was very little. In the municipal lending, there were two borrowers. That is it. These are the programs that were funded by the CARES Act, were set up at the time of the CARES Act for this narrow, specific purpose, and now they have achieved their purpose. By the way, there are lots of other programs that have been set up over time--some were set up recently--that my legislation doesn't touch in any way, shape, form, or fashion. The Commercial Paper Funding Facility--unaffected. The money market fund liquidity provision-- unaffected. The Paycheck Protection Program, primary dealer liquidity facility--untouched. All of them untouched, and, quite contrary to what some have suggested, this is no big rewrite of the Fed's 13(3) lending facilities. It couldn't be further from that. What it is is an acknowledgment that the three programs we created in March--and which, by the way, we put an expiration on them in March. We said they end on December 31. But now we have folks on the other side of the aisle who have a novel interpretation of the statute, saying: Well, they don't really have to end or, if they do end, we could bring them back to life. We shouldn't even be having this conversation, but we are because we have got this interpretation that we have to deal with. What my language simply does is it follows the statute and calls for the end of this. How do we do this? There are three steps. One is we rescind the money that never got used because, as I said, the markets responded so quickly we never ever needed to use this money. And I think our Democratic colleagues agree on this provision. The language that I am trying to get in this package reiterates that these CARES facilities end on December 31, as Congress intended. You know, I was in the room when we were writing this bill, and nobody thought that any of these programs were going to last beyond the end of the year. But, as I say, because of this novel legal interpretation, we need to reiterate, in an unambiguous way, that they end on December 31, as Congress intended. And, finally, we ensure that they can't simply be restarted next year or sometime thereafter or duplicated without congressional consent. Now, we have folks on the other side of the aisle who are raising all kinds of objections. They are very upset about this. And it is fair to ask: Why? Why would that be? Well, it certainly isn't because the credit markets are back in turmoil, and they think we need to restore the flow of private credit. That would be ridiculous. The credit markets are functioning as well or better than they ever have. It is not even a close call. So it is not that. No, what it is is something very different, and that is the problem that some of my colleagues want to morph these facilities into a use that was never intended for them. They want to convert them away from these temporary emergency liquidity facilities designed to stabilize markets and restore the flow of credit--to convert it away from that-- and instead to use them to implement fiscal policy and maybe social policy and certainly to allocate credit based on their political preferences. What is one of the ways that our Democratic colleagues would like to do that? No. 1, they want to bail out irresponsible States. Now look, I get that there are some States across the Union that have suffered financially because of COVID. There are other States that haven't been harmed at all; in fact, they have more revenue coming in this year than they had last year. It varies, and there is definitely a category of States and municipalities that have suffered a loss of revenue. We can and should have an ongoing debate in this body about what to do about that, if anything, but that is our responsibility. If we are going to send money to States and municipalities, we should have a bill, appropriate the funds, and have a vote in Congress so that the American people can hold us accountable. That is what happens. We get held accountable. When an action like that is done through legislation, it is out in the open. It is transparent. It happens in the light of day, and the American people know who to hold accountable. That is not what our Democratic colleagues want to do. They want to force the Fed to do this for them. How do we know that? Because they passed a bill called the Heroes Act, H.R. 6800, that instructs the Federal Reserve to use the municipal facility for exactly this purpose--superlong-term, ultralow-cost loans to municipalities, up to 10 years, at one-quarter of 1 percent interest rates. States wouldn't even have to attest that they couldn't secure ordinary credit; they could just show up and get it. So the Fed wouldn't be playing its traditional role as the lender of last resort in a national crisis; it would be the lender of first resort to their preferred constituency. There is the Main Street lending facility. If they can replicate that, who knows what kinds of conditions they would impose on low- interest loans there, whether it is climate or other policies that ought to be debated on this floor and ought to be determined through an accountable process. So, as I say, none of this is speculative. Our Democratic colleagues have talked about this. They passed a bill that actually does this. It is ironic that when we were developing the response to the crisis of March, earlier this year, some of our colleagues described this $500 billion fund that was intended to capitalize these vehicles that would lend and restore liquidity. They called it a ``slush fund.'' In one of many examples, Senator Warren, on March 30, 2020, said the CARES Act created ``a half trillion dollar slush fund that the Trump administration could use to help its political friends and punish its political enemies, and I think that's a bad thing.'' Well, now there is a new administration, and now they want to keep the slush fund. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to complete my remarks before the vote.

Mr. TOOMEY. So this is a very bad idea for many reasons, not the least of which is to put the Fed in this position of being pressured to make these giveaway transactions based on political pressure that would completely politicize the Fed. It would be the end of independence of the Fed. That is why this has never been the role of our central bank, the Fed. We have never asked the Fed to engage in fiscal policy or promote social policy or to allocate credit based on political standing. That is guaranteed to politicize the Fed and undermine Fed independence. Fiscal and social policy is the rightful realm of the people who are accountable to the American people, and that is us; that is Congress. I want to address another accusation that is completely false and totally unjustified, and that is that somehow this is an effort to hamstring the Biden administration and prevent them from doing what they want to do. Let me assure the Presiding Officer and my colleagues, my efforts to ensure that this would be a temporary facility began when we began discussing the facility. It was in March that I was arguing--actually, I argued that we should have this end as soon as the financial markets had restored their normal functioning and no later than September 30. I didn't win the argument. We ended up settling on December 31. But that is when I started pushing to have a finite period of time and a short period of time. There was nobody in the room who thought that this was supposed to go on indefinitely. Once we started working on another COVID-related bill, starting in the summertime, and I became aware of this alternative interpretation of the language, we put it in our bill, and we voted on that in September. So this language or the substantively similar language has been public for many, many months now. I also want to stress that we are not making permanent changes to laws and Congress can always act again. The CARES Act already made these facilities temporary. They were supposed to end at the end of the year, and, of course, no change in law is ever permanent. Any future Congress can change it. Back in March, when this crisis hit, the Fed and Treasury knew that they needed to come to Congress for the tools to solve it. They came to Congress, and we turned around in an extraordinarily rapid fashion these massive new facilities that had never been imagined before. We responded quickly. And if there is some kind of future event that calls for a future set of facilities of this particular sort, they can come back to Congress. There are three facilities--three facilities that were launched in conjunction with the CARES Act, funded by the CARES Act, and I am saying that they have achieved their purpose. They should come to an end. They should not be restarted, and a replica should not be created. That is all. Some have suggested that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve has some opinion on this. I would challenge anyone to find a statement in the public record that he has made in criticism of this. He is very well aware of what is going on. The last point I want to make: Some on the other side have suggested that our language may be too broad, and maybe it captures potential facilities that shouldn't be captured. If that is the sincere concern of my colleagues on the other side, I urge them to give me a call. It is very easy to track me down. If you have an objection to the way we have worded this and you want language that is narrower, I am all ears. We can work this out. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

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

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the provisions of rule XXII, the postcloture time with respect to the Harwell nomination expire at 6 p.m. today and that the Senate vote on confirmation of the nomination; I further ask that the cloture motion with respect to the Noland nomination ripen at 1:30 p.m. tomorrow; finally, that if either nomination is confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. TOOMEY. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. TOOMEY

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

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Madam President, I rise this afternoon because while we were away for our Thanksgiving break, there were some very important developments on an important piece of legislation that we passed earlier this year, the CARES Act. Specifically, what I am referring to is the decision that was made by the Treasury Secretary, Secretary Mnuchin, to not extend the 13(3) lending facilities that we dramatically expanded in the CARES Act. By way of reminder, let me summarize these facilities. When the economy first began to close down back in March-April, one of the things that started to happen was a collapse of our credit markets. I will get into that in a little bit. In response to that, we in Congress passed the CARES Act, which, among other things, appropriated just under half a trillion dollars-- $500 billion--for the Treasury to use to capitalize special purpose vehicles, which would be set up as entities from which the Federal Reserve would lend money, buy securities, and provide liquidity to the marketplace. Those facilities were scheduled to end by the end of the year. In keeping with the written statute and certainly the intent of Congress, Secretary Mnuchin announced that these programs will, in fact, end as they are supposed to. I commend him for making the right decision, and I commend Chairman Powell for agreeing to a subsequent request from the Treasury Secretary to return the unused money. As it happened, the program, the concept, worked so well that the mere announcement and the mere creation of the capability on the part of the Fed to provide this liquidity was enough to restore functioning capital markets. It was an extraordinary amount of trust that we put in both Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and Chairman Powell, giving them extremely powerful, unprecedented emergency and temporary tools. I commend them both for working together with those tools, for achieving the intended purpose, and for putting them away once the purpose had been achieved. Some of our Democratic colleagues have been extremely critical of this decision on the part of Secretary Mnuchin not to extend these programs. I want to address some of the arguments and why Secretary Mnuchin, in fact, did exactly the right thing. Let's go back and take a hard look at what we were facing in March of 2020. Unprecedented turmoil in the credit markets were threatening the ability of virtually every business, State, and municipality in America to obtain credit--a real threat to the financial plumbing, so to speak, of our entire economy. Credit markets were on the verge of shutting down. There was a mass flight of investors out of any kind of financial instrument and into cash. People were trying to sell everything they had. Prices were dropping in a free fall. In many instances, there was no buyer; there was no price at which one could sell an investment Of course, that meant that a borrower couldn't sell a bond or couldn't issue a commercial paper. This was the freeze-up in our financial markets that we were right on the verge of, and we were very desperately afraid that, if this happened--if our financial markets came to a grinding halt and you could neither borrow nor lend either in the capital markets or in the private lending markets of banks--then that would almost assuredly accelerate the downward spiral of our economy and could even lead to a severe depression that could last, potentially, a very long time. You don't have to take my word for it. A very well-stated summary of what was happening comes from Kent Hiteshew, who was the Deputy Assistant Director for Financial Stability at the Federal Reserve. He was a senior executive at the Federal Reserve, who, in his testimony before the congressional oversight committee, had this to say: The conditions that prevailed during March were unprecedented--far worse than during the onset of the financial crisis in late 2008 or even in the days after 9/11, when the municipal market was briefly closed. Interest rates soared . . . mutual fund investors pulled over $41 billion of assets out of the market in less than three weeks, and market functioning deteriorated to the point that buyers and sellers had difficulty determining prices. Ultimately, this meant that state and local governments were effectively unable to borrow, with most new issues canceled for lack of investor demand. That was the problem that Congress was seeking to address--a complete freezing up of our capital markets, the inability to borrow or lend. That is the lifeblood of business, which is the source of employment in this country. If we had not done anything at that moment, who knows how many more millions of Americans would have lost their jobs or how many more millions of businesses would have gone under. The economic devastation would have been very, very hard to imagine had we not done anything. Fortunately, we did do something. Congress decided that this problem could be fixed by providing enough liquidity until the crisis had passed. We would make sure that operations of this liquidity exercise would extend no later than through the end of 2020, and that is what we did in the CARES Act. Just last week, every Republican member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs sent a letter to Secretary Mnuchin and Secretary Powell that reaffirmed that this was Congress's intent--a short-term, temporary facility to restore functioning private markets. I am pleased to report that these emergency facilities absolutely achieved the intended purpose--again, the purpose to stabilize our credit markets, restore the normal flow of credit to borrowers, and allow private capital to continue to resume funding our economy. It worked even better than we had hoped. Markets didn't just improve, and we didn't just see liquidity return; we saw record volumes of new debt issuance, new investor interest, municipal bonds, investment grade corporate bonds, high-yield corporate bonds--volumes that were off the chart in response to these facilities. The credit spreads at which these instruments were issued were very tight, and interest rates were near a record low. On the banking side, regional banks reported that their commercial borrowers drew down lines of credit so that they had the cash they would need to get through a very difficult period. In fact, many of them have been able to start paying that cash back. According to various surveys of businesses across America, unmet demand for credit among creditworthy borrowers is almost nonexistent. In other words, as to the creditworthy corporate borrowers--businesses large and small in America--if their credit is strong, they are able to access the facilities they need, the credit they need. That is exactly what we had hoped would happen by virtue of setting up these facilities. Despite that, some have said that we can't end these facilities that are called the 13(3) facilities because that is a section of existing law under which the Fed is authorized to conduct these activities. People have suggested: Well, you can't end these because the markets depend on them for their normal, smooth functioning. The markets now depend on these facilities. That was what we were told as a reason the Treasury had to extend these, presumably indefinitely, but, in fact, what we saw proved that the naysayers were completely wrong. In fact, it was on November 19 that Treasury Secretary Mnuchin announced that he would not be extending these programs. How did these financial markets respond? With a yawn. There were no adverse developments whatsoever. They continued their smooth, liquid functioning because, by November 19--in fact, many months prior to November 19--the markets had recovered on their own. They were functioning on their own. They were no longer in need of this fallback facility that we had created. Yet we did need it back in March. Equity markets have hit all-time record highs. Municipal debt and corporate debt volume is very high, and yields are low. The market is functioning very, very smoothly. Clearly, those of us who were advocating for actually following the law and ending these programs were right in that the markets were not actually depending on them anymore. Other people have said: You shouldn't end the 13(3) facilities for other reasons, one of which was, Who knows what risks may be out there or what bad things might be on the horizon for our economy that would cause us to want to have these facilities? That is a very bad reason for giving indefinite lending authority to the Fed to make direct loans to businesses in America. First of all, there has never been a day in the history of the Republic that you couldn't imagine some bad thing that could possibly happen on the horizon. That is no reason to create a taxpayer-sponsored backstop for all financial activity--none whatsoever. Sure, a bad thing could happen. Nobody knows. If it does, there is an answer. If such a disaster were to occur in the future and our financial markets were in danger once again of freezing up, then the Fed and Treasury should come back to Congress and ask for whatever authority they think is appropriate for those circumstances. Based on what we did in March, Congress is quite likely to respond by granting the tools necessary to deal with whatever hypothetical crisis may emerge down the road. Others of our friends say: You can't get rid of these facilities, and you can't terminate these facilities because there are industries that are failing in America. Let me be clear. It is true that there are industries that are in a world of hurt. We know what they are. The travel industry--much of the tourism and hospitality, which is generally the hotels and restaurants--and a lot of the entertainment venues have been devastated like we have never seen them before. That is a true fact I think you can make a strong argument that Congress ought to do something to respond to the circumstances that these folks find themselves in through no fault of their own, but they are in the situation they are in because, in many cases, their Governors closed their States. In other cases, it is because people are just prudently concerned about being in a crowded setting. So there is a problem there--there is a challenge--and we may very well decide we want to address it. Yet having the Federal Reserve lending money to fundamentally insolvent companies is not the role of these facilities. It never was. It is not contemplated in the underlying 13(3) statute, and it is not in the CARES Act. That is not what this program, what these facilities were meant to address. Let's be clear about what the advocates for continuing these 13(3) facilities are really all about. What is going on here with regard to these programs--this massive, massive amount of money that is at the discretion of the Fed and the Treasury to lend--is they want to use political pressure on the Fed and the Treasury to lend these facilities to favored political constituencies at terms they find appealing or attractive depending on their circumstances. This is exactly the opposite of what a central bank should be doing--capitulating to political pressure to lend to preferred constituents at whatever terms the politics dictate. That could not be anything further from the role the central bank ought to be playing. To my colleagues who are advocating that we do exactly that with these 13(3) facilities, I couldn't disagree more. If we want to be in the business of picking industries or sectors and subsidizing them or giving them money or treating them in some unusual way, we can have that discussion, but that is fiscal policy. That is a decision that, ultimately, needs to be made by the politically accountable branches of government--the Congress and the President--not by the central bank, which is supposed to be independent and apolitical. The fact is that I think we deserve congratulations. Even more so, I think the Treasury Secretary and the Chairman of the Fed deserve congratulations for setting up the facilities that have made it possible for our economy to begin a record recovery from a very, very deep trough that we hit in the late spring of last year. We all know that we are not at the end goal in that we are not back to full employment yet. We have, as I said before, many companies that are in deep trouble and many that have gone out of business altogether. We have a lot of problems, and we need to deal with them, but we do know this recovery has been occurring at a faster pace than anyone projected. Most economists, including at the Fed, thought that we would be lucky if the unemployment rate dipped below 10 percent by the end of this year, but it was at 6.9 percent at the end of October. We have a long way to go before we get back to the barely above 3 percent unemployment rate that we were enjoying before this pandemic hit, and by all means, we need to stay at it until we get there, but we won't do that by turning the Fed into the allocator of credit based on political demands. That would be a very, very bad idea. It would lead to worse economic outcomes and all kinds of distortions, and it would erode the independence of the Fed. As I say, I congratulate and commend the Treasury Secretary for making the right decision and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve for returning the unspent money. These programs have been remarkably successful. They have served their purpose. Their purpose is now behind us, and we need to continue the policies that will allow us to have the economic recovery we need without these programs continuing. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Brett Doyle, a member of my staff and the Congressional Oversight Commission, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the Congress.

Mr. TOOMEY

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

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote begin now.

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

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I have to say this sounds a lot like yet another attempt to just change the subject and obfuscate. I was on this floor earlier this week. The Senator from Alaska has just spoken about his goal here. Both of us have slightly different approaches to try to achieve the same thing, which is to discourage these attacks on law enforcement officials. It seems like almost every day we read about some horrific attack on men and women across the country just because they are police. It is absolutely appalling, and we are trying to do everything we can to discourage that, to create disincentives, and to make sure that violent criminals know that they will pay a very steep price if they commit the appalling kinds of acts that we have seen. I commend the Senator from Alaska for an approach to this. Yet, again, our Democratic colleagues refuse to support this effort and instead say: Let's change the subject to VAWA. Well, let's talk a little bit about VAWA. Look, there is a very real problem with violence against women. I don't know anyone who would dispute that. And VAWA, the legislation, has a number of programs, some of which are very constructive. I voted in favor of the last reauthorization of VAWA because I do think it is that important, and I have led the effort in this body to ensure that crime victims--very much including women--get the resources they are supposed to get from the Crime Victims Fund, which they historically have not been. But the fact is, it is a big bill, it is a complicated bill, and there are multiple programs, and some of it is very controversial. So the way we have actually gotten an outcome and achieved something with VAWA is through a bipartisan process. That is what was done in the past, and that effort has been underway. Senator Ernst, working with Senator Feinstein, has tried to find common ground. I think they are not quite there yet. But this legislation is not that bill. It is not that effort. This is a bill that our Democratic colleagues have declared they know has no chance of actually passing. So rather than changing the subject and putting forward a bill that everybody knows can't pass, I wish our Democratic colleagues would join me and my colleague from Alaska in doing something we can do, something modest but constructive that would help to diminish the risks that our law enforcement folks take every single day. So, Mr. President, I object.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I have a unanimous consent request. ``We hope they die.'' ``We hope they die.'' ``We hope they die.'' These are the vile words that anti-police protesters yelled on Saturday night, outside St. Francis Medical Center, in Los Angeles County, CA. They were yelling that about two deputy sheriffs, who, at the time, were clinging to life inside the hospital. They were clinging to life, just barely, because, earlier that night, those two deputy sheriffs were brutally ambushed by a gunman, who shot them multiple times as they sat in their patrol car while they were simply doing their jobs of patrolling the local train station. One of the deputies is a 31-year-old mother of a 6-year-old boy. The other deputy is a 24-year-old man. Both joined the force about 14 months ago. The female deputy was shot through the jaw, but, heroically, she still managed to radio for help and apply a tourniquet to her partner's wounds. What happened to these deputies in Los Angeles was horrific and dangerous. It is a reminder that, every single day, law enforcement officers put on a badge and then risk their lives to protect all of us--and I mean every single day. Just this past Sunday, a police officer in Lancaster, PA, responded to a domestic violence call. It came from a home in the city. His body cam video captured what happened next. When the officer arrived, a full-grown man, wielding a huge carving knife and waving it over his head, came charging out of the house and charged straight at the officer. The man who did this, as it happens, is scheduled to go on trial in October on charges of stabbing four people last year. What happened to the deputies in Los Angeles is not only horrific but is part of a disturbing trend of violence against police. According to the FBI, 37 law enforcement officials have been intentionally killed in the line of duty so far this year. That is a 23-percent increase from the same period last year. Rioters have attacked law enforcement. We have seen them hurling bricks and rocks and other dangerous objects. We have seen them ram them with their vehicles and set police cars on fire. This violence against police is not happening in a vacuum. It is not. In recent months, the Nation has been engaged in an important, substantive debate about the relationship between law enforcement and the communities they serve and protect. I happen to think the debate is important. It is one of the reasons I supported Senator Tim Scott's bill--to provide more accountability and transparency with respect to law enforcement. Unfortunately, our Democratic colleagues blocked us from even being able to hold a debate on that bill. Senator Scott and the Republicans were willing to allow votes on any Democratic amendments. They could have changed the bill in any way they had seen fit if they could have made the case with their amendments, but they refused to even have a process--they refused to even allow anyone, including themselves, to offer amendments. They refused to let us even consider the bill. The police reform debate has exposed some radical voices. Unfortunately, that sometimes includes government officials who spew anti-police rhetoric. They call for defunding--sometimes even for abolishing--the police, and they want to bail out rioters in Minneapolis. For example, after the two Los Angeles deputy sheriffs were shot on Saturday, not only did anti-police protesters yell ``We hope they die'' and other vile things outside the hospital, but the city manager of Lynwood, CA--the very city where the deputies were clinging to their lives in the hospital--the city manager responded to the shooting by posting on social media a message saying ``Chickens come home to roost.'' Can you imagine? Well, protesters feed off the failure of elected officials to support and defend the police. In Lancaster, after that knife-wielding man was shot by an officer who was just protecting his own life, which was obviously under serious risk, protesters came out and started rioting-- throwing bricks, rocks, and bottles at police, smashing windows at a police station and a post office, setting a dumpster on fire--despite the fact that the video clearly shows that the officer was being attacked. He was simply defending his life. I have no idea why anyone would protest a police officer defending his own life. In my own State of Pennsylvania, a local Democratic elected official in Delaware County recently posted an image--unbelievable--on social media of two Black men holding guns to the head of a White police officer with a caption that said ``Does it have to come to this to make them stop murdering and terrorizing us?'' What kind of message is that? As the Los Angeles County sheriff noted on Saturday--after his officers were shot, he said: ``Words have consequences.'' They do. You know, instead of defunding the police, we should be defending the police--defending them against this kind of violence both in word and especially in deed. That is why I am here today, calling on the Senate to pass my Thin Blue Line Act today. My bill sends a very simple and clear message: Anyone who murders a law enforcement official should be prepared to pay the ultimate price. Under Federal law, killing a Federal law enforcement official is an aggravating factor for the Federal jury to weigh when considering whether to impose the death penalty on a cop killer, but that consideration does not apply when a State or local law enforcement officer is killed. So the Thin Blue Line Act provides that same level of justice to State and local law enforcement officers that we already apply to Federal law enforcement officers by also making the killing of a local law enforcement officer an aggravating factor in determining whether to impose the death penalty in a Federal case. In 2017, the House passed this bill with bipartisan support, including support of liberals like Adam Schiff and Beto O'Rourke. The bill has very broad support from law enforcement groups, as you might imagine, including from the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Sheriffs' Association, the National Association of Police Organizations, and others. The Thin Blue Line Act is commonsense, bipartisan legislation that the Senate should pass now. Our law enforcement officers put themselves in harm's way every day, and we are reminded of that every day. They are out there protecting us, and I am not sure that has ever been more dangerous for law enforcement than it is today. We need to do our part to support them, to send a message to them that we support them but to send a message to criminals and potential assassins that they will pay the ultimate price. In the tragic event that a police officer is killed in the line of duty, we owe that officer justice, and I am going to keep fighting for them to receive it. So, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 1508 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, first of all, let me just say that bringing up VAWA can't be anything other than an attempt to obfuscate from the case that is in front of us. I would be happy to talk about VAWA. I happen to agree that violence against women is a serious issue. It is a serious problem. All the programs in VAWA are still fully funded. They continue. I don't think anybody in this body or the other body has done as much as I have done to make sure that the resources in the Crime Victims Fund go to the victims of crime--very much including women who are victims of violent crime and children and the groups who serve those victims. As a matter of fact, I have supported previous versions of VAWA. There has been a bipartisan effort to get a new reauthorization of VAWA. Senator Ernst and Senator Feinstein have spent months developing that. But that is not the version that has been under consideration here. No, there is nothing incompatible about passing my legislation, the Thin Blue Line Act, standing up to protect local law enforcement, and having a separate consideration on VAWA. They are not mutually exclusive. They are not in any way related to each other. But, unfortunately, our Democratic colleagues are not willing to simply extend the same protection we extend to Federal law enforcement officials to the local law enforcement officials who are at risk every single day. I am very disappointed that my colleague from New Mexico would object to a very simple and sensible bill that has bipartisan support.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, for the reasons that I mentioned earlier in my comments, I object to this version of VAWA.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize and honor the heroic acts of two Pennsylvania volunteer firefighters, Chief Howard M. Fausey, Sr., and Assistant Chief Ethan Goodbrod of Citizen's Hose Company, Station 45, in Jersey Shore, PA. On the evening of February 15, 2020, Chief Fausey and Assistant Chief Goodbrod responded to a multiple alarm fire reported at the Broadway Hotel and Restaurant in Jersey Shore, PA. The hotel is a historic building with multiple residential apartments in its upper levels. When Chief Fausey and Assistant Chief Goodbrod arrived on the scene, the building was already consumed in flames, and they soon learned that a man was trapped on the third floor. Without regard to their own personal safety, these volunteer firefighters climbed to the third floor on ladders, forced their way into the building by breaking a window and removing an air-conditioner, found the trapped man amidst heavy smoke, and safely removed him from the building. And they did not arrive a moment too soon. The man they rescued suffered severe burns and smoke inhalation while he was trapped inside. Thanks to Chief Fausey's and Assistant Chief Goodbrod's heroism, he lived to see another day and has recovered from his injuries. Chief Fausey's and Assistant Chief Goodbrod's courageous acts call attention to the heroic service that first responders provide for their communities every day, often on a volunteer basis. In fact, Citizens Hose Company, Station 45, is made up entirely of volunteers. These individuals, many of whom hail from generations of voluntary service, place themselves in harm's way to protect the rest of us. We should never take for granted the risks that first responders take to ensure that we are safe in our communities. I want to say to Chief Fausey, to Assistant Chief Goodbrod, and to all of Pennsylvania's first responders, that we are grateful for the service that you provide to the community and thankful for your sacrifices.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, again, let me stress how grateful I am for the passionate, persuasive, and very effective advocacy of Senator Van Hollen throughout this entire effort. I am very grateful to him, as I am to other colleagues who helped make this happen. As in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 7440, which was received from the House.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I am here on the Senate floor with my colleague from Maryland. I am here this morning, in part, to condemn the Chinese Communist Party's actions, their efforts to swallow Hong Kong into the mainland and silence the dissent of the people of Hong Kong, but I am also here to do something about that. For decades, Hong Kong has been one of the most successful, thriving societies on the planet. An indispensable part of their success has been their freedom. Hong Kong has enjoyed a vibrant free press, free speech, freedom to worship. They have had an independent judiciary and a partially democratic electoral representative system of government for a long time now. Hong Kong is one of the freest places in Asia and, because of these freedoms and the Hong Kong people's natural entrepreneurial spirit, Hong Kong is just one of the most successful and vibrant cities there has ever been. Yet for years--maybe because of this--the Chinese Communist Party has pursued a systematic campaign to snuff out these basic freedoms in Hong Kong and bring the Hongkongers who live there into line. The intensity of the Chinese Communist Party's aggression appears to be growing by the day. Their campaign shouldn't be very surprising. Just look at the recent actions: the genocidal action toward the Uighurs in Xinjiang or the aggressive action toward neighboring countries in the South China Sea-- or toward the entire world, since the COVID-19 virus was first detected in Wuhan and the Chinese Government lied to us about its nature. Fundamental principles, such as freedom and transparency, the just rule of law--these ideas are entirely antithetical to the core of the Chinese Communist Party's mission. I think that, several years from now, we are going to look back on July 1 of 2020 as a milestone in the Chinese Communist Party's aggression and hostility toward Hong Kong. Yesterday was the first day that the Chinese Communist Party's new so-called national security law went into effect. News reports described the law as ``tailor-made to bring Hong Kong's massive pro- democracy movement to heel.'' This picture was taken within the last 48 hours--thousands and thousands of people of Hong Kong taking to the streets to simply demand their freedoms--peacefully--to protest, to insist that they continue to have the freedoms that help make their society such a great society. Tragically, 300 of these people were arrested last night simply because they were protesting the Chinese Communist Party. Some of the arrests were made because Hongkongers possessed items that called for Hong Kong's independence. That is right--people arrested simply for holding a sign, arrested for holding a flag. Among them was a 15-year- old girl--a 15-year-old girl. Her crime: She held a flag that said ``Hong Kong independence.'' Another was a 19-year-old young man. His crime was that he had a pro-democracy sticker on his phone. Imagine-- imagine the nerve of wanting to have self-determination and expressing that with a sticker on your phone. So he was arrested. His parents attempted to visit their son in jail and bring him dinner, and the police refused their visit. It is not at all clear if this young man will be able to get out even on bail. So the Chinese Communist Party has very rapidly started enforcing this new law, and I think it is because they realize what is at stake. They know that the people of Hong Kong fervently believe in the importance of an open and free society. They believe in and they want the ability to practice liberal values, and they want a system of transparent, accountable government, one that is elected by and responsive to the people. See, the vision of the people of Hong Kong for their own city, for their society, is anathema to the Chinese Communist Party because the Chinese Communist Party's deepest fear is that mainland Chinese citizens will demand the freedoms that Hongkongers enjoy, and that quest for freedom on the mainland would pose an unacceptable risk to the authoritarian control of the Communist regime. So the Chinese Communist Party is cracking down. We have been witnessing it just in recent hours. This new so-called national security law was unilaterally imposed on the people of Hong Kong without any input from the people of Hong Kong, and that is in direct contravention to Chinese commitments to Hong Kong and the international community. The law was also purposefully written in a very vague and ambiguous manner, designed to essentially criminalize any behavior or speech on the part of a resident of Hong Kong that the Chinese Communist Party does not approve of. Now, the law may be ambiguous, but the message behind it is not. If a 19-year-old can now be imprisoned for having a sticker on his phone or a 15-year-old girl can be imprisoned for having a flag, then no one is safe, and that is the message that Beijing wants to send to the people of Hong Kong: We can arrest you. We can imprison you if you misbehave. So think twice about what you say, where you go, with whom you meet, what you read, what you write. Maybe even think twice about what you think. This law, sadly, looks like it means the end of Hong Kong's autonomy and the freedoms which underpin its social and economic vibrancy. And we are seeing the effects: As I said, hundreds of arrests that occurred just yesterday as tens of thousands of courageous Hongkongers--here we see some of them--poured into the streets to shout and chant and demonstrate peacefully, to tell the Chinese Communist Party that they are not going to back down. We have also seen Hongkongers who have been forced to scrub their social media history, booksellers who were intending to remove books from their shelves, Hong Kong pro-democracy political figures saying that they have to lessen their activism and rethink their strategy. How can you blame them? How can you blame them? They could face years in prison if the Hong Kong authorities, at the bidding of the people in Beijing, choose to target them. I think we can fully expect independent media voices in Hong Kong to be shuttered and Beijing's censorship and surveillance apparatus to flourish in the coming months and years. The fact is, Hong Kong's vibrancy is being throttled by the Chinese Communist Party. So I am on the Senate floor today to request passage of a piece of legislation that responds to this. I am pleased to report it has already received unanimous support from both Chambers of Congress. I introduced this legislation with my colleague Senator Van Hollen of Maryland to create real penalties on those responsible for this campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to end Hong Kong's free way of life. It is called the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, and the bill would impose mandatory sanctions on anyone involved in taking action to attack the basic freedoms that were promised to the people of Hong Kong. Critically, our legislation also takes another step. It penalizes banks that choose to finance the erosion of Hong Kong's autonomy, banks that would put marginal profits ahead of the basic human rights of the people of Hong Kong. I am really pleased that we are here this morning. I think we are on the verge of sending this legislation to the President's desk because America needs to take meaningful steps like this to push back on the Chinese Communist Party. We should remember that this aggression toward Hong Kong is not limited to Hong Kong. The Chinese Communist Party is intent to spread its influence and power worldwide, and in the process, it is meant to simultaneously undermine and challenge free and open societies. I should point out that the spread of the Chinese Communist Party influence around the world poses a very real threat to us, to Americans, to our national and economic interests. That is part of why the Hong Kong Autonomy Act is so important. It is not only an effort to shield freedom-loving Hongkongers from this continuing escalation of aggression by the Chinese Communists, but the bill is a larger signal to China. It is a message that the United States and the free world are no longer willing to look past some of the worst behavior that has been occurring. It is a message that our patience has run out. China is being warned to expect stiff resistance--stiff resistance to stealing American intellectual property, to committing genocide against religious minorities like the Uighurs, to militarizing artificial islands and infringing on other nations' sovereign waters, and trampling on the basic freedoms of the people of Hong Kong. I could go on, but suffice it to say that this is occurring in the context of a great battle--the great battle about what model the world is going to pursue. Will the citizens of the United States and other democratic nations around the world continue to foster the liberal democratic model that spread around the world after World War II, with open societies, the just rule of law, greater economic freedom underpinned by respect for private property, basic human rights like the freedom of speech and the freedom of a free press and the freedom to worship? All of the prosperity and the elevation of human dignity that comes from human freedom and democratic values from our model--that is the model that is up against the dark shadows of the authoritarian governments that are constantly pushing to systematically erode, corrode, and warp the values and freedoms that we cherish. Through this bill, the U.S. Senate makes clear which side we are on. At this point, I would like to yield to the Senator from Maryland.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. TOOMEY

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