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LEGISLATIVE SESSION
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SERGEANT FIRST CLASS HEATH ROBINSON HONORING OUR PROMISE TO ADDRESS
COMPREHENSIVE TOXICS ACT OF 2022
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will resume consideration of the House message to accompany S. 3373, which the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
House message to accompany S. 3373, a bill to improve the Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grant and the Children of Fallen Heroes Grant.
Pending:
Schumer motion to concur in the House amendment to the bill.
Schumer motion to concur in the House amendment to the bill, with Schumer Amendment No. 5148 (to the House amendment to the Senate amendment), to add an effective date.
Schumer Amendment No. 5149 (to Schumer Amendment No. 5148), to modify the effective date.
Schumer motion to refer the bill to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, with instructions, Schumer Amendment No. 5150, to add an effective date.
Schumer Amendment No. 5151 (to the instructions (Schumer Amendment No. 5150) of the motion to refer), to modify the effective date.
Schumer Amendment No. 5152 (to Amendment No. 5151), to modify the effective date.
Recognition of the Majority Leader
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader is recognized.
CHIPS Act of 2022
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, this morning--this morning--the Senate will draw a clear line in the sand that America's chip crisis and America's dwindling commitment to science and innovation will not continue under our watch. Within the next hour, the Senate will vote, finally--finally--to move toward final passage of our CHIPS and Science bill. That is what we are calling it, the CHIPS and Science bill. That will put us in a position to finish the work on this bill before the end of the week. It is a major step for our economic security, our national security, our supply chains, and, in fact, for America's future--for America's future.
I want to be clear. The proposal we are passing this week contains the majority of key science and innovation measures that the Senate passed last summer. It will make historic investments to scientific research. It will take direct aim at our Nation's chip crisis. Alongside the infrastructure law and our recent gun safety bill, among others, it is one of the most consequential bipartisan achievements of this Congress. I thank all of my Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle who are helping to make this happen.
I am confident that future generations will look back on the passage of this CHIPS and Science bill as a turning point for American leadership in the 21st century, but it didn't come together overnight. The legislation has been several years in the making.
In 2019, I approached my Republican colleague Todd Young with a proposal to work together on legislation to revive America's commitment to science and innovation. Together, we drafted the first iteration of many policies we are passing this week, the Endless Frontier Act.
A year later, I joined with my colleagues Senators Cornyn and Warner to push for the authorization of new Federal chips initiatives as part of the NDAA to address our Nation's growing chip shortage.
We all knew that America faced a choice: We could keep underfunding science and innovation and continue to let America fall behind our global competitors, or we could wake up to the challenges of this century and empower the American people to unleash the next wave of discovery and scientific achievement. We knew that if we didn't get there first, our rivals--chief among them the Chinese Communist Party--
would likely beat us to the punch and reshape the world in their authoritarian image.
In February of 2021, less than a month after I became majority leader, I directed the chairs and members of our relevant committees to start drafting a legislative package to outcompete China and create new American jobs, with the Endless Frontier Act serving as the core of this effort. I also instructed them to draft legislation to rebuild the capacity of the U.S. semiconductor industry. The pandemic made clear with unforgiving clarity how America's chip shortage was creating a crisis in our economy and national security.
So Members on both sides of the aisle--this has been a bipartisan effort from the get-go--got to work. We made a commitment last February that if both sides worked together, we would bring a bill to the floor for a vote in the spring. And that is what we did, and we passed the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act with overwhelming bipartisan support in June of 2021.
A year later, the legislation we are passing this week has many of the same important measures contained in the bill we worked on last summer. For example, last year's bill secured historic investments for science and innovation. This bill does too.
Last year's bill offered tens of billions to encourage American chip manufacturing and R&D. This bill does that too and even more with the investment tax credit provisions.
Last year's bill provided funding to help build a wireless communications supply chain to counter Huawei. This bill does too.
Last year's bill created the National Science Foundation tech directorate and provided funding to the Department of Energy National Labs to help compete with foreign rivals in key technologies like AI and quantum computing. This bill does too.
Last year's bill made major new investments in Manufacturing USA and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership to strengthen domestic supply chains. This bill does too.
Last year's bill created the first-ever program to cultivate the tech hubs of tomorrow in regions around the United States that have enormous potential but have largely been overlooked--not the big megalopolises which have a lot of tech in them, like New York City and San Francisco, but smaller regions that have great talent but have been overlooked. They might be in Upstate New York. They might be in Indiana and many other parts of the country. This bill is making sure that happens.
Now, let me be clear. While this bill contains the two major components of the Science and CHIPS bill, there are other major proposals from both sides that are still being worked on in the conference committee. Make no mistake that there are many Democrats and Republicans who have provisions that will be contained in the conference report under Chair Cantwell's leadership, and it is my intention to put the conference committee bill on the floor of the Senate.
As I said a moment ago, I firmly believe that passing this bill will be a turning point for American leadership in this century. The benefits of this legislation will reverberate across the country for years and decades to come.
For much of the 20th century, America was without peer in our commitment to scientific research, to innovation, and to new, cutting-
edge manufacturing, and it led to tens of millions of good-paying jobs and made the United States the unquestioned economic leader of the world.
Today, the story is different. Nations around the world are spending tens of billions of dollars to secure this century, much like America secured the last one. Sadly, the Federal Government's commitment to science has waned in recent decades. In fact, as a percentage of GDP, we spend less than half as much as the Chinese Communist Party on basic research--less than half--which is even more devastating given China has spent decades stealing America's intellectual property.
With this bill, that is finally going to change. We will not only create the good-paying jobs of tomorrow; we will not only fix our supply chains and bring costs down for American families with this bill; with this bill, we will reawaken the spirit of discovery, innovation, invention, and optimism that made America the envy of the world.
We don't mean to let the days of American leadership end on our watch. We don't mean to see America become a middling nation in this century. We mean for America to lead this century. For that reason, I urge my colleagues to give a resounding vote ``yes'' on cloture at 11 a.m. today.
PACT Act
Mr. President, now on the PACT Act, last night, I filed cloture to prepare the Senate to once again pass the PACT Act, the largest and most important expansion of veteran healthcare benefits in decades and a bipartisan issue to the core--another bipartisan issue.
As my colleagues already know, because of a technical error, the House of Representatives was unable to take up our version of the bill that we passed in the spring. The House has now fixed their error and returned the PACT Act back to the Senate. We want to finish our work on the PACT Act before the end of the week.
Our Nation's veterans have waited long enough to get the benefits they need to treat complications from toxic exposure in the line of duty. So we have every reason in the world to get this bill done quickly, with the same bipartisan support as the first time around.
The need for the PACT Act is beyond question. Burn pits have affected up to 3\1/2\ million veterans since 9/11. Yet the VA has rejected nearly 80 percent of all disability claims connected to burn pits. That is unacceptable and must change.
I hope Members work together to fast-track this bill as soon as possible because there is no reason to delay a measure that the vast majority of Senators from both parties agree is necessary. Our veterans, their families, and our veterans service organizations have been urging us to finish work on this bill. Let's keep our promise to those valiant servicemembers and send the PACT Act quickly to the President's desk.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Order of Business
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 11 a.m. the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to concur with respect to H.R. 4346, the CHIPS and Science legislation.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SCHUMER. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Recognition of the Minority Leader
The Republican leader is recognized.
Inflation
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, 93 percent of the American people are concerned about inflation; 42 percent say they are struggling just to stand still financially; 63 percent say that gas prices, inflation, bills, or the economy are their biggest concerns. That is because 100 percent of the American people live in a country experiencing the worst inflation in more than 40 years, and 100 percent of the American people live in a country where things did not have to be this bad but for Democrats' deliberate policy choices.
Don't take it from me. Listen to Larry Summers, Treasury Secretary to President Clinton and NEC Director to President Obama. Here is what Larry Summers had to say:
There wouldn't have been nearly the same kinds of supply chain problems . . . if we weren't giving people who were laid off unemployment insurance that was far more than the salaries they had been earning . . . if we weren't mailing checks willy-nilly . . . there would have been less spending, that would have meant less bottlenecks.
He continued:
Printing money and distributing it well ahead of the supply of goods is a prescription for inflation--and that's what we did. We injected enough money into the economy to make total spending grow at an 11.6 percent rate last year. When you have 11.6 percent growth rate in spending, then on any reasonable theory of how much capacity there is, you're going to have a lot of inflation. And that's what we did.
That is a top Democrat talking, but he is intellectually honest. He tried to advise Washington Democrats not to dump nearly $2 trillion onto the economy, but, of course, they didn't listen. And now working families are stuck with skyrocketing costs and bills as a consequence.
You would think the worst inflation in 40 years would be enough to convince Democrats to stop running these painful experiments on American families. But, if you can believe it, almost every House and Senate Democrat would like to follow up this historic inflation with massive new tax hikes. The same people who spent us into inflation want to tax us all the way into recession.
So let's hope this small handful of Democrats who see the insanity of this approach continue to stand strong for our country.
Ukraine
Mr. President, on an entirely different matter, this past Saturday brought yet another escalation in Russia's brutal war in Ukraine. The ink had barely dried on a deal securing safe passage for Ukrainian grain exports when Russian missiles hit the port city of Odesa.
Ukraine produces one-fifth of the world's high-grade wheat. Russia's Black Sea blockade and the destruction of Ukraine's crops have left vulnerable regions of the world literally on the verge of crisis. But Vladimir Putin only managed to resist the urge to commit senseless violence for about 24 hours.
Now, the fact that Putin was even compelled to negotiate was thanks to the introduction of HIMARS long-range rockets and Harpoon anti-ship missiles into Ukraine's arsenal. If Ukraine had had weapons like these earlier, the blockade of Odesa could have been prevented in the first place.
The Biden administration says its decision making throughout the process has been deliberate and nuanced. History will likely judge otherwise. The months before Putin's escalation clearly called for boldness and resolve, to say nothing of the months since. But, too often, the administration's first instincts have been to plot along slowly and vacillate.
The Ukrainians have fought bravely to stop Russia's advance despite being undermanned and outgunned. Just think what they could have accomplished if the West had acted boldly to support Ukraine as storm clouds were first gathering, or right away when the storm broke.
But, now, no one should need a reminder of the far-reaching impacts of the war in Ukraine. Our eastern flank allies certainly don't. They have been preparing to defend themselves literally for generations, and from the beginning of Russia's latest offensive, they have reached deep into their own inventories to help equip Ukraine.
Elsewhere in Europe, treaty allies have finally taken an important lesson about investing in deterrence and self-defense to heart. Countries like Germany have made historic commitments to increase military spending. The Germans, Swedes, and others have also broken historic precedent to share their stockpiles with Ukraine.
And, of course, Russia's war has led other major European states to announce their intention to join the ranks of the strongest alliance in world history. Last week, our colleagues on the Foreign Relations Committee advanced the necessary protocols to ratify Sweden and Finland's accession to NATO. There is now nothing preventing the Democratic leader from calling these measures up for immediate consideration and passage by the full Senate. The legislatures of other NATO allies like Canada, Norway, Poland, and Germany have already ratified them.
The United States would be fortunate to have two new treaty allies as impressive and capable as Finland and Sweden. Both countries' high-tech economies and extensive American-made systems will improve the alliance's interoperability and instantly improve the state of burden-
sharing the day they come in.
American leadership in the world has made possible the peace and security our country enjoys today. That leadership is helping encourage our allies to make sufficient investments in their own capabilities to face down the shared threats, but American leadership is only as strong as our willingness to make robust investments in our own capabilities.
President Biden has submitted a defense budget request that fails to keep pace with growing threats and fails to keep pace with Democrats' own inflation, and Senate Democrats are giving short shrift to the need for a strong, bipartisan Defense authorization bill.
Russian aggression isn't the only threat to American interests today. Rogue states like Iran and North Korea continue to march toward devastating weapons. China's provocative behavior in the Indo-Pacific continues to raise the stakes for long-term competition.
So there is no time--no time--to waste on either of these measures--
neither the Sweden and Finland protocols nor a strong, bipartisan NDAA. We need to do all three as soon as possible.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Nevada.
Unanimous Consent Agreement--H.R. 1892
Ms. ROSEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that if the Senate receives a message from the House that it has passed H.R. 1842, and if the text of that bill is identical to S. 697, that the bill be considered read three times and the Senate vote on passage of the bill without intervening action or debate, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
CHIPS Act of 2022
Ms. ROSEN. Mr. President, for months, our country has experienced a severe computer chip shortage, one that has impacted nearly every American industry and increased costs for nearly every American. From cell phones to cars to televisions, even our refrigerators and washing machines--products we use every day--well, they need computer chips to function.
They are also used in critically important technology like the medical equipment at our hospitals and the technology used by our military. This is why the computer chip shortage we are facing is a critical economic and national security issue. It has caused prices to rise, contributed to supply chain issues, and limited the availability of many products, something that anyone who has tried to buy or rent a car over the past couple of years knows all too well.
This shortage was directly impacting hard-working families and the businesses that support jobs across our Nation.
It has hurt companies that employ people in my State of Nevada, like Varian Medical Systems, which uses computer chips to manufacture cancer-fighting and other critical medical technologies. This shortage is impacting lives and likelihoods.
For decades, America was a global leader in manufacturing and innovation; but over the years, we outsourced the production of computer chips to countries like China, costing us millions of potential American jobs and increasing our reliance on foreign nations for technology that is critical--critical for our national security and for our safety. All of this has been exacerbated by a global pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
We can't afford to wait any longer to bring manufacturing of computer chips back to the United States. The Senate will be voting on bipartisan legislation to bring computer chip manufacturing back to the U.S. and help existing manufacturers compete, creating thousands of new American jobs and enhancing both our economic and our national security.
We will also improve our supply chain, which will help businesses like Varian Medical Systems, and it will minimize the supply chain disruptions which will ultimately help lower prices for consumers. This bill will do so much more to spur innovation and invest in our American economy.
As the first and only former computer programmer to serve in the U.S. Senate, I am so excited about what this legislation will do for the future of American technology and innovation. It will establish a first-of-its-kind effort to accelerate our development of critical technologies, like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and advanced manufacturing. We will invest heavily in STEM education and in our cybersecurity workforce. And it will help build regional technology hubs all across this country to spark innovation.
I am also so proud that this bill includes bipartisan provisions that I worked on in the committee that wrote the bulk of the legislation, which includes these: my bipartisan Rural STEM Education Act with Senator Wicker to increase access to quality STEM education for rural schools so it is accessible to all of our students no matter where they live. It also includes provisions I worked on with Senator Blackburn to support advanced manufacturing workforce development and a bipartisan amendment I introduced with Senator Lummis to develop a secure and reliable critical mineral supply chain.
This historic bipartisan legislation is just common sense. So let's build up our communities; let's strengthen America's competitiveness; let's invest in American innovation; let's lower prices for hard-
working families; and let's bolster our domestic supply chain. Let's pass this critical piece of legislation now.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican whip.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be able to speak for up to 15 minutes prior to the scheduled rollcall vote.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Inflation
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, ``our experts believe and the data shows that most of the price increases we've seen . . . [are] expected to be temporary''--that is what President Biden said 1 year ago this month, something his administration has repeatedly echoed.
Unfortunately, it long ago became clear that was wishful thinking on the President's part. Far from being temporary, inflation has become a fact of life in the Biden economy.
Last month, inflation hit its highest level yet under President Biden, climbing to 9.1 percent, the worst inflation in more than 40 years. The impact of inflation is being felt in every corner of our economy. Businesses of every size are dealing with the effects of inflation. Small businesses, of course, are being hit particularly hard. And 75 percent of small business owners report inflation has had a negative effect on the financial health of their business over the past 6 months. And 75 percent report that inflation pressures are getting worse.
It is not surprising. Everything from inputs to transportation to electricity has become more expensive in the Biden economy, and that has a huge impact on businesses' ability to pay their expenses and run their operations.
As one South Dakota business owner who wrote to me noted:
It makes it hard for me to grow my USA-made business when I don't have the funds to pay my employees more, add more benefits, purchase more machinery, and buy more material in buck as inflation continues to rise.
Farmers and ranchers in my State are also struggling. As of March, the price of fertilizer had risen to an astounding 162 percent since January 2021. The prices of two common herbicides have risen more than 50 percent since last year. And the price of diesel, which powers a lot of farming and ranching equipment, has doubled since President Biden took office. Farming and ranching are tough jobs already, often with tight margins and a lot of weather-related risks. Inflation is making things exponentially hard.
The list of inflation's impacts goes on. For example, last week I talked about how inflation is affecting our military, which is able to do less with the funds appropriated for it, thanks to soaring prices across the economy. That, in turn, can affect troop readiness and the military's ability to keep up with needed programs and purchases from weapons to vehicles to aircraft, and ships.
Of course, I haven't even yet mentioned the most basic impact of inflation and that is the misery faced by hard-working Americans who confront sky-high prices at the grocery store and the gas pump and wonder how they are going to feed their family this month or whether they will be able to afford to get to work.
Bloomberg reported last week that nearly 6 in 10 American workers are concerned that their paychecks won't stretch far enough to support themselves and their families. Another recent poll reported that 70 percent of Americans have had to cut back on other spending to afford necessities.
Life in the Biden economy is grim. At this point, how we got here is well-established. One of the main reasons we are in the midst of this inflation crisis is Democrats' decision to pass a massive partisan $1.9 trillion spending bill last March under the guise of COVID relief, despite the fact that Congress had just passed a fifth bipartisan COVID bill that met essentially all current pressing COVID needs. Democrats were warned that their bill would cause inflation; and they proceeded anyway. The so-called American Rescue Plan flooded the economy with unnecessary government money, and the economy overheated as a result.
So here we are with Americans struggling under the weight of the worst inflation in 40 years, and Democrats want to double down on the spending strategy that helped get us into this mess in the first place. That is right. Despite the fact that even Democrat economists have stated that the American Rescue Plan helped create our current inflation crisis, Democrats want to pass another massive government spending bill filled with excessive spending and tax hikes--a trillion dollars in tax hikes in recent discussions.
Apparently, Democrats are not content with spending us into an inflation crisis, they would also like to tax us into a recession. There is already reason to worry about the negative economic impacts of new climate measures the President is contemplating imposing, but on top of that, Democrats want to spend even more government money and impose a trillion dollars in tax hikes, a substantial part of which would fall on small businesses.
At this rate, there is no telling when our inflation crisis will end. Democrats are so committed to big spending that even if their legislation fails this time around, they are already planning to run on their big spending agenda in November.
I am not sure I would want to try to convince voters to elect me by touting the same spending strategy that helped land our country in this inflation crisis in the first place. But Democrats' belief in big spending is so deeply ingrained that it apparently can't be swayed even when they see the negative consequences.
It is incomprehensible that Democrats are contemplating doubling down on the spending strategy that helped get us in this mess in the first place. The first spending spree has been a disaster for our country, and I can only imagine how much Americans would suffer from their next one.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican whip.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the scheduled 11 o'clock vote.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 168, No. 124
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