Transcripts For CSPAN2 U.S. Senate U.S. Senate 20210311

u.s. senate here on c-span2. the president pro tempore: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. eternal god, you have always been our helper. continue to teach our lawmakers to live for your glory. lead them along the paths that will keep our nation strong. give them confidence in your guidance and a passion for your truth. strengthen them so that they will be courageous in defense of righteousness. inspire them to wait patiently for the ultimate triumph of your prevailing providence. may they find spiritual nourishment simply by being kind. -- by being kind to each other. we pray in your merciful name. amen. the president pro tempore: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the president pro tempore: under the previous order, leadership time is reserved. ms. rosen: i ask for a quorum call. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: dz quorum call: mr. schumer: madam president. the presiding officer: the democratic leader. mr. schumer: are we in a quorum? the presiding officer: we are. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent the quorum be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: now, madam president, yesterday, the senate completed an extremely productive day by confirming three members, three members of president biden's cabinet. today we're going to keep up the pace by moving forward on two more of the president's nominees. first the senate will begin the process of bringing xavier becerra's nomination to serve as h.h.s. secretary to the floor. this is a critical position as we continue to battle the virus, and i'm perplexed that none of my republican colleagues would vote for him. he's a capable man. he's worked hard to make sure that people get health care, and some have said well, he's not a doctor. neither was the previous trump nominee for h.h.s. who happened to be a pharmaceutical company executive. what would americans prefer? second, the senate will move forward with another very historic nominee that makes us so proud. representative deb haaland of new mexico to serve as the next secretary of the interior. she will be confirmed on monday. representative haaland was elected to the congress in 2018. she was the first native american woman, along with representative charice davis from kansas, to ever, ever serve in the people's house. if confirmed, rep haaland would not only become the first native american to lead the department of interior, she would be the first native american to serve in any cabinet position in american history. we have had a vice president with native american roots, but never a cabinet official. given the long and troubled relationship between the federal government and tribal nations, the ascension of rep haaland to the top of the interior department is a profoundly important moment for america, as we advance on the long road, still not fully traveled at all, of equality, or towards equality. for too long, tribal nations have been denied a seat at the table where decisions were made that impacted their lives and their land. not only will secretary haaland ensure that they get a seat, she will bring her own lived experiences to the table alongside them. under president trump, the department of interior became one of the most scandal-riddled agencies in the history of the federal government. it gave oil and mining companies carte blanche to drill in wildlife preserves, rolled back environmental protections, and greatly undermined trust in the federal government in tribal lands. rep haaland will move the department in a dramatically different direction. one of her most important responsibilities will be to restore and uphold the federal government's obligation to sovereign tribal nations. i cannot think of a better candidate to take on this job than rep haaland, and i greatly look forward to confirming her. it will be historic. now, in general, madam president, the senate is making great progress in installing president biden's highly qualified nominees. so far, we've already confirmed 16 cabinet level appointments, we're set to increase that number to 18 after secretaries haaland and becerra are approved. every single one of the president's nominees has been confirmed with a bipartisan vote here on the senate floor. president biden deserves to have his team in place, and the senate is moving quickly to get the job done. now, on the american rescue plan, which finally cleared the hurdle in congress yesterday by passing the house. the plan is now only a signature away, a presidential signature from becoming law. soon, very soon, the most sweeping recovery effort in recent history will get under way. direct checks will be delivered to american families from coast to coast. roughly 85% of all households. the american people can expect those $1,400 checks for each person in the family to be delivered by the end of march. and we're making amazingly good progress on vaccines. vaccines will be available far more quickly to far more people. just this morning, the biden administration announced an expansion of the vaccine program , and i was able to announce that more than 100 community health centers in my home state of new york will be eligible to get their own dedicateed supply of vaccines. there is a brand-new vaccine supercharge for new york and for some of the rest of the nation as well. the crux, more vaccines and more sites to administer them. over 100 sites will be set up across new york state and administer a massive influx of new shot supplies. there is light at the end of this covid tunnel which has always been centered on access to a free vaccine for all new yorkers. more access and more shots means a quicker recovery, and that's what we want, and that is becoming available for my home state of new york and for the entire nation. the c.h.c. sites, community health center sites will be federally funded, organized by the department of health and human services, a huge expansion. we have all heard stories, numerous stories of people having to travel too far to get the vaccine. hampering our ability to recover and return to normal. with this announcement, more vaccines and more new york sites to administer them, new yorkers have something to celebrate, and i thank the president for working with us to make this effort real and to bring it to every state in the nation. now, other things are happening, too. our schools will receive critical assistance to update their infrastructure to hire more teachers and tutors and prepare to reopen as fast and as safe as possible. there's going to be money for broadband. there's going to be dollars for rural hospitals. there's going to be dollars to help our tribal nations, all who are suffering. the new restaurants act, so important to so many of our states, is becoming law. more money for save our stages to help our arts institutions is coming. and perhaps the thing that we are most proud of, although there are so many in this bill, helping people with their pensions, making sure those who are laid off still get health care by funding cobra, so many good things for average working families, but maybe the most important of all, who knows? there are so many good things in this bill, but maybe it's the child tax credit which will cut childhood poverty in half. when a child is born into poverty, no fault of his or her own, they don't get adequate nutrition. they don't get adequate health care. they don't get adequate housing. they don't get adequate education. then when they go into young adulthood, they have nowhere to go. and then they get blamed for their plight. the better, smarter, more effective thing to do is help them get out of poverty early so they can lead good, productive lives, as citizens and as taxpayers. we're doing that for the first time here, and i hope it's something that we can continue. simply put, the american rescue plan is one of the most significant pieces of legislation to pass the congress in recent history. yesterday, i started describing in more detail some of the lesser known aspects of the plan. everyone knows the vaccines are coming. $1,400 checks are coming. the money for schools is coming. and now people know of the child tax credit. but there are lots of other things in this bill. today i want to continue by talking about another unheralded provision, assistance to native communities, a topic very much on theme today, given the nomination of secretary haaland. one of the most tragic features of the covid-19 pandemic is how destructive it has been for america's tribal nations. native americans have faced the highest risk of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths due to covid-19, bar none the highest. early in the crisis, the navajo nation, to take one example, saw more cases per capita than any other state in the country. decades, decades of an unraveling social safety net, declining economic opportunity, an overburdened health system and the failure of the federal government to honor its trust obligations to american tribes left native communities unequipped, unequipped to handle the crisis, but in the american rescue plan, democrats will deliver the single largest investment in native programs in our nation's history. we are very proud of that. it is historic. the single largest investment in native communities in our nation's history. more than $31.2 billion in direct funding will go to the tribes and communities to defeat this pandemic and rebuild their communities. $20 billion directly to tribal government so they can stabilize essential services, $6 billion to the indian health service, not just for vaccines and testing and tracing, but to improve and restore these rural long-neglected hospitals. hundreds of millions more for native education. $10 million will go to just make sure communities can access clean water. listen to the items i just mentioned. clean water, keeping hospitals running, connecting kids to broadband, these are absolute necessities, and the american rescue plan is going to dedicate resources to all of them for indian country. i want to thank a whole bunch of my colleagues, so many contributed, but the chair of the indian affairs committee, senator schatz, senators tester, cantwell, smith, kelly, lujan, heinrich, very, very important. heinrich particularly pushed for broadband. so it's a team effort, and i'm proud of my colleagues. the american rescue plan takes us a giant step closer to fulfilling our trust responsibilities to all native americans, alaska natives, and native hawaiians. this is just one example, an important one, how the rescue plan will dramatically improve the lives of millions of people in this great country of ours. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: quorum call: mr. mcconnell: madam president. the presiding officer: republican leader. mr. mcconnell: i ask consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: madam president, a year ago coronavirus cases were beginning to climb on u.s. soil. shutdown measures were starting to take effect. americans have endured one of the strangest and most painful years in living memory. nearly two million americans have been hospitalized with serious cases of the virus. more than half a million have lost their lives. millions of students and workers have had their lives completely thrown off course. but these dark times have also spotlighted some of the best of america. heroism, selflessness, ingenuity. last march, the night we passed the cares act without a single dissenting vote, i said we'd see a new generation of american heroes, and so we have. doctors and nurses and first responders have worked tirelessly to help their fellow americans. essential workers kept manning their posts and prevented economic collapse. neighbors looked out for neighbors and small businesses shifted gears almost overnight. children and parents have fought to adapt to extraordinary disruptions. and incredible heroes in lab coats in america and worldwide worked at life steam to decode this new enemy and create lifesaving vaccines in record time. today together we're standing on the cusp of a new springtime for our country, not like anything we've experienced in our lifetimes. more than 95 million vaccine doses have reached american arms. another two million every single day. covid-related deaths have plummeted, now less than half of their high, particularly for the elderly and the vulnerable. science reaffirms kids can be safely in the classroom right now. states are starting to lift blanket restrictions freeing citizens and small businesses to follow smart precautions themselves. and for weeks every indicator has suggested our economy is poised to come roaring back with more job openings for americans who need work. none of these trends began on january 20. president biden and his democratic government inherited a tide that had already begun to turn toward decisive victory. in 2020 congress passed five historic bipartisan bills to save our health system, protect our economic foundations, and fund operation warp speed to find vaccines. senate republicans led the bipartisan cares act that got our country through the last year. the american people already built a parade that's been marching toward victory. democrats just want to sprint in front of the parade and claim credit. so when ten republican senator, went to the white house to suggest working together, a democrat said no. both the democratic leader and the white house chief of staff now indicate they think president obama's problem was that he was too bipartisan. this time as one journalist put it, the situation was, quote, democrats to g.o.p., take it or leave it. end quote. the it that we're talking about here was a bill that only spent about 1% on vaccines and about 9% on the entire health fight. the rest of the tab went to things like this. a $350 billion bailout for state and local budgets unrelated to pandemic needs with strings teached to stop states from cutting taxes on their own citizens down the road. take the money. you don't get to cut taxes. massive federal school funding spread over several years without requiring quick reopening. sweeping new government benefits with no work requirements whatsoever. a time to the bad times before welfare reform which democrats already say they want to make permanent. and agricultural assistance conditioned not on specific financial need but solely on the demographics of the farmer with some liberal activists celebrating as reparations. only about 20% of the spending went to $1,400 direct checks to try and keep all of the unrelated socialism out of the spotlight. this wasn't a bill to finish off the pandemic. it was a multitrillion dollar trojan horse full of bad, old liberal ideas. president biden's own staff keep calling this legislation, quote, the most progressive bill in american history. hardly the commonsense bipartisanship that the president promised. so we pause today at the one-year mark to remember and to mourn, but we also look with great optimism toward the future. 2021 is set to be a historic comeback year not because of the far-left legislation that was passed after the tide had already turned but because of the resilience of the american people. now, mr. president, on a completely different matter, at noon today the senate will vote on whether to pluck the becerra nomination out of committee after it failed to garner enough support to advance. every one of president biden's nominations the senate has considered so far has received bipartisan support for confirmation. there's a reason mr. becerra could not get one single republican vote to move out of committee. it's because he's such a thoroughly partisan actor with so little subject matter expertise and such a demonstrated history of hostility toward basic values like the freedom of science -- the freedom of conscience. there's nothing about mr. becerra's record in congress or california to suggest he's the best possible person to run the department of health and human services in the middle of a once once-in-a-generation virl pandemic. not even close. this is too important a job, too important a time for this administration to put raw partisanship ahead of qualifications. so i would strongly urge all senators to vote against rescuing this nomination from committee. let's give the president the opportunity to make a better selection. now, mr. president, on one final matter, as i've mentioned, it's customary for some top senate staff positions to \see you in\see new faces when party control changes hands. today it's my honor to pay tribute to mary suit jones, a huge asset to this institution. it's become an institution herself. tomorrow mary will finish her second separate run as assistant secretary of the senate and conclude a senate career that has spanned more than a quarter of a century. i first met mary jones in the mid-1990's when we brought her on board to help manage my offices. neither i nor mary's colleagues back then could have predicted that nearly 30 years later she'd depart as one of the most senior officers in the entire place. but the truth is if you had told us nobody would have been even a little surprised either. i've entrusted mary with a lot of different responsibilities over the years. she served as our officer manager just a few years out of college. she came with me to the rules committee first as deputy staff director and then the top job. senator frisk had the good judgment to ask her to be assistant secretary in the early 2,000's. then she returned to rules and resumed serving as our side staff director under senators bob bennett, lamar alexander, and then pat roberts. and finally, she generously brought all of her expertise and institutional knowledge back to the assistant secretary role six years ago. in her first job in my office, mary organized one team of people and our infrastructure. in her current job she's overseen 26 departments and scores of senate staff, pushing resources and guidance down and pushing information up. in between at rules she tackled things like helping run presidential inaugurations. through it all, i cannot name one time when mary jones did not deliver. she is consistent, competent, and completely reliable. no wonder her name has become a kind of catch phrase around the senate when anyone is trying to track down some key piece of wisdom or is puzzling over how to get something done. well, let's ask mary jones. have you checked with mary jones? i think mary knows all about that. everyone from junior staff to senior senators, republicans and democrats have been able to count on mary for expertise and execution. on a million different subjects she knows the answer to the question you're going to answer before you even finished asking it. a rock solid administrator, a consummate professional, she is just that good. so i'm sorry to see mary depart the senate but she's given generously to this place. she certainly earned the opportunity to apply her many talents to some new challenges and perhaps knock a few miles off of her famously epic commute while she's at it. the whole senate thanks mary for her excellent service. we wish her, her husband, and their kids all the best in the exciting new chapters that lie ahead. the presiding officer: morning business is closed. under the previous order the senate will resume consideration of the motion to discharge the nomination of xavier becerra from the committee on finance. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. the presiding officer: will the senator suspend. proceed. mr. wyden: mr. president, the senate is now debating the nomination to discharge from the finance committee the nomination of california attorney general xavier becerra to head the department of health and human services. as chairman of the finance committee, i'm going to begin with a simple message. holding up the nomination of attorney general becerra has been blocking urgent antivirus work that needs to get done now. so it is time for the senate to act quickly without politics getting in the way to confirm this nominee. i also believe, mr. president, moving quickly on this nomination will help to achieve something i heard a lot of senators talk about over the last few days. a few days ago i spent almost 24 hours here at this desk while the senate was debating a number of different issues. over the course of that debate and in the weeks before it, many senators talked about how important it was to get past -- get passed some of the long-standing -- past some of the long-standing disagreements and find unity. i will say to my colleagues there could not be a more unifying prospect for america than ending this public health nightmare as quickly as pos possible, preventing as many as covid-19 deaths as possible, and helping the american people get back to the activities that they enjoy, that they consider part of their normal daily routine. having a confirmed secretary leading the department of health and human services is a linchpin for accomplishing that task. the department is right at the effort, at the forefront to end this contagion. it's leading the distribution of vaccines. it's working to get p.p.e. into the hands of nurses and doctors who still, still desperately need more of it. it's getting new resources to rural hospitals to keep them afloat and to keep their doors open to patients who literally have nowhere else to go during this crisis. health and human services is right in the center of the governmentwide covid response. they coordinate work at the center for medicare and medicaid services with the centers for disease control, with the national institutes of health, with the national guard, with all 50 states, with the district of columbia, with private health care systems and doctors across the country and more individuals and organizations that are just too numerous to name. now, that's what the job is all about and why it's so critical right now. and i want to turn to some of what i've heard discussed with respect to attorney general becerra. i've heard some say, well, he doesn't have the right leadership experience. that's a comment being made about the head of america's second-largest department of justice. this nominee is in charge of a billion-dollar budget. this nominee is in charge of more than 4,000 employees. the top law enforcement official in what would be the fifth largest economy in the world. this is the work of somebody who really knows how to run a mammoth government agency. so then there's been suggestions about his health care background. this is one that, to me, is just bizarre given his track record. he spent years and years on the house ways and means committee, which is one of the key committees in the country with respect to jurisdiction over health care policy. he wrote and debated major pieces of health care legislation, including playing an important role in the development of the affordable care act. as california's attorney general, he defended the affordable care act in court. when the pandemic hit, he stepped up and fought to protect the health and well-being of millions of californians, particularly nurses and doctors and other workers who found themselves in harm's way. now, when you're in the senate, you understand that members of the opposing party are going to have disagreements on policy issues. that goes with the turf. women's health care was obviously one of those issues that came up during the nomination hearing. i will tell you that attorney general becerra's response is what we ought to expect of responsible public officials and of nominees. he made it clear to members of the finance committee, he said again and again and again that he will follow the law. he will be accessible to all senators. he's going to work to find common ground on key health care issues. and i can tell you, having specialized in health care since my days with oregon gray panthers, that is heavy lifting. and, by the way, i think it's pretty refreshing after four years of just blather about repeal and replace and empty rhetoric and promises on partisan prs price -- partisan price gouging and partisan views. in my view, attorney general becerra proved in his nomination hearing that he knows health care policy inside and out and that he is ready to lead the department of health and human services. i don't think anybody ought to be particularly surprised because he has got a decades long track record of health care leadership and policy experience that will help him succeed in the job. we all understand that the country's health care system is still under extraordinary pressure and strain. on saturday the senate passed one of the largest public health packages in our country's history designed to crush this pandemic. so we're starting to see some light. we're starting to see the end of the tunnel and the biemtion is -- biden administration is doing everything it can to get more vaccine to get more shots into arms. i think we all understand it is not a task completed yet. i'll just close by way of saying that when our country faces a health care crisis, it needs a secretary of health and human services confirmed and on the job as soon as possible. it doesn't need more political games and delay that only sets back our effort to end the pandemic. so we'll be voting, i believe in less than an hour, mr. president, and i just want to say that i hope colleagues will support this nomination's discharge from the finance committee. i have known the attorney general for a number of years. as i say, this is the area that i have specialized over the years. and i know that senators have differences of opinion with respect to health care. i get that. but those differences of opinion shouldn't stand in the way of a qualified public official whose managed thousands of people in his current job. for example, from having the opportunity to do what has to be done for this country and that is to get a confirmed nominee for a critical position so that he can attack those challenges that are in front of us right now and help patients and speed up -- speed up the effort to end the pandemic. mr. president, i yield the floor. i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: mr. thune: mr. president. the presiding officer: the republican whip. mr. thune: is the senate in a quorum call? the presiding officer: yes, we are. mr. thune: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. thune: i voted for a null of president biden's nominees for defense secretary for attorney general, for director of national intelligence, for agriculture secretary, and others. his candidates were not the ones that i would have picked if i were president, but i believe it's important for our country that our president have a team in place and as long as a president's nominees aren't raising serious concerns, i think a president of either party is entitled to have the people he or she chooses serving in his or her administration. but by the same token if a president's nominee does raise serious concerns, i think we have a responsibility as senators to oppose him or her. today, mr. president, i rise to oppose the president's nominee to head the department of health and human services. a are number of president biden's nominees have been qualified, mainstream candidates. xavier becerra is not a mainstream candidate. he's an extremist who has used the offices he has held to advance an aggressively pro-abortion agenda and to target religious liberty and freedom of conscience. mr. becerra does not represent the views of a majority of americans. he represents the views of the radical pro-abortion wing of the democrat party. mr. president, the planned parenthood wing of the democrat party would like to -- would like americans to believe that unrestricted abortion on demand up to the moment of birth is a no-brainer, an unqualified good. but the truth is, despite decades of trying to convince americans of this, americans simply don't agree. just 29% of americans believe that abortion should be legal in all circumstances. the vast majority of americans believe that abortion should either be illegal or that there should at least be some restrictions undoubtedly because on some level every american is aware that when we talk about abortion, we're talking about killing a human being. mr. becerra, on the other hand, does not seem to support any restrictions on abortion. if he does, i would sure like to hear about them. as a congressman, he earned perfect ratings from planned parenthood and naral. he assembled an -- he opposed a plan on partial abortion, it is so difficult to describe. as california attorney general, he crusaded in favor of abortion. he's known for defending california's law forcing crisis pregnancy centers to advertise abortion, a case he lost at the supreme court on first amendment grounds. his activities were hardly limited to california abortion law. this is not a case of attorney general simply defending the laws of his own state. no. as california attorney general, mr. becerra repeatedly -- repeatedly inserted himself into abortion debates in other states. he joined other attorneys general to file amicus briefs challenging abortion laws in missouri, arkansas, louisiana and other states. he frequently led these efforts himself. a fact he proudly highlighted in press releases. mr. president, mr. becerra's extremist views on abortion would be enough of a red flag but to that we have to add mr. becerra's religious liberty and freedom of conference. his most famous effort to force religious people, including nuns to offer health benefits that go against their religious beliefs. he claimed i never sued an order of nuns. i sued the federal government. that's an answer only a lawyer could love, mr. president. yes, he didn't sue nuns. he sued the federal government to force nuns and other religious people to offer health insurance benefits that violate their consciences. that was the aim of his lawsuit, mr. president. to force nuns and other religious americans to act contrary to their consciences. and when an order of nuns, the little sisters of the poor, joined the case in an effort to ensure their right to live according to their faith was protected, mr. becerra apparently had no hesitation in continuing his suit. mr. president, mr. becerra's extremist views on abortion an his record on religious liberty would be troubling in any nominee, but they would matter a lot less if we were talking about a nominee for example, say, secretary of transportation. but that's not what we're talking about. we're talking about putting mr. becerra in charge of a cabinet department entrusted with interpreting and applying laws protecting religious freedom and freedom of conscience. and nothing i've seen suggested to me that mr. becerra can be relied on to provide robust protection for these cherished rights. in fact, i am profoundly concerned that mr. becerra would use his office to limit americans' religious freedom. under mr. becerra's h.h.s., are nuns going to be forced to offer health insurance benefits that violate their religious faith? will health care professionals be protected from having to perform procedures like abortions that violate their consciences? given mr. becerra's record, i'm concerned about the answers to these questions. in fact, mr. president, there's a reason -- there's reason to be concerned that a prime reason for nominating mr. becerra was his radical abortion advocacy and his attacks on religious liberty. it's diffi -- difficult to find another reason for nominating mr. becerra during a global health emergency. mr. becerra is not a doctor. he's not worked in the health care field. he's not a virologist or a vaccine expert. he does not have a background in public health. it's not unreasonable to conclude that his appeal to the abortion left, one of the most powerful interest groups in the democrat party, was a prime reason for his nomination. naral, planned parenthood certainly give credence to that idea with their enthusiastic statements in support of mr. becerra which highlighted his aggressive abortion advocacy. i also have to say that it's pretty interesting to nominate someone to head h.h.s. who in his last job proudly sued h.h.s. repeatedly. mr. president, i know that president biden is a man of faith, but he is doing a great disservice to people of faith and to the first amendment with this nomination. he's also doing a disservice to the american people by nominating a candidate whose views on abortion are so radical and so out of step with the views of most americans. mr. president, days ago, three of my democratic colleagues broke ranks with their party to stand up for the many, many americans who don't want their tax dollars going to pay for abortions. i urge them and all of my colleagues to join me in opposing the nomination of xavier becerra. mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana. mr. cassidy: mr. president, we have an issue in this country related to the pandemic. more specifically related to children not going back to school. and, mr. president, one thing that is of incredible concern is it appears that the biden administration which campaigned saying that they were going to follow science alleging that the previous administration was not seems not to be following science but to prejudice their recommendations to fit a political agenda. with that, mr. president, let me develop my case. the harms of prolonged closure to school children are remarkable. they are well known. it's been up to a year since the schools have been closed, and in mr. president's home state of california, there are some school systems which have still not reopened. now, think about this. a place where children go not just to learn but to have social workers make sure they aren't being abused at home, a dietary staff to make sure they have adequate nutrition, but also to learn have been closed for a year. now, we can say wait a second, don't worry about that because the children have been given remote learning. there is ample data, mr. president, which shows that particularly the children from lower income families are not logging on, even when they are given a broadband -- given an internet-equipped computer to take home or given wi-fi access to use at home. we can imagine it. mom has to work. there's no one to supervise the child, so the 7-year-old is home by herself while mom is working. we can also imagine a family does not have a culture of being online. we can imagine a big family of seven or eight kids where things just kind of get lost in the shuffle and there is not enough room for someone to be by themselves. whatever, it is established that there are kids being left behind by not being in the classroom, and those kids disproportionately are poor. and that's why the biden administration's pledge to follow science resonated, and that's why early indications that they are not is not just disappointing, it is a betrayal. and not a betrayal of a campaign pledge. a betrayal of those children who are home. now, by the way, data shows that children can safely go back to school. there was a c.d.c. study from january of 2021 finding little evidence of virus spread in the school setting when the recommended precautions were taken. which kind of called -- and by the way, there was a recent study by the following doctors -- henderson, ghandi, wheg and johnson from universities such as the university of chicago, u.c.-davis, and u.c.-san francisco showing how safe it is to go to school, not get infected, and social distancing as minimal as three feet distant one from the other. okay. just three feet distant. now, that is important, mr. president, because if you say you can't bring kids back to school because you don't have enough classroom space for smaller classes, it's one thing if you say there must be six feet between each child and another if there only needs to be three feet. so these doctors from these prestigious universities found you only needed three feet. that begs the question of why did the centers for disease control, in their february 26 document, say that six feet were needed? now, you may say six feet, three feet, why does it make a difference? because schools aren't reopening, and their excuse is they need six feet between students. they are finding a reason to keep kids at home not learning on a spurious reason. the doctors who wrote this paper just put an editorial in "usa today", and a nice quote here -- i say nice. it kind of summarizes. it's disappointing that they have to say this, is that they open up with the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, which is the quote from franklin roosevelt, but go on to say -- to speak of the lost wages for families and the poverty and eviction that this is resulting in, but that the research says there are greater risks to life expectancies with schools closed versus schools open. but they then ask that we overcome fear by following the science, and the science says we can safely reopen our schools now full time, nonhybrid, and keep them open. unfortunately, that is not what the centers for disease control is saying. now, by the way, there is a clear agenda here. part of the agenda is that teachers' unions in certain communities have not wanted to reopen. they are more concerned about the union than they are about the children. and so whether it is a democratic mayor of chicago trying to force the teachers' union in chicago to reopen, whether it is los angeles or san diego, which have still not reopened with teachers' unions objecting to reopening there, not based upon science, not based upon risk to the teachers of the children. they would just rather not be at work. isn't that amazing? now, let me tell you who has been open. first in louisiana, over 75% of our schools have reopened. hats off to my state. private and parochial schools have been open. hats off to them. kind of the business model. if you don't get paid, you show up for work, they show up for work. so let's give hats off. and that's why there should be school choice. if a parent can't get their child educated in los angeles, in san diego, or in chicago, then why are we keeping that child from going to a private school? oh, they can go, you say. not if they are poor. if they are poor, they don't have a revenue. we should take the money that we're giving to those public schools that will not open because the teachers' unions oppose it and give it to the parents so their children can go to the school where their children will actually be educated. and the fact that we don't do that is politics over what is best for that child. it is a betrayal of those children. and this administration's policy four months into their -- into their four years demonstrates betrayal after betrayal after betrayal. let's safely reopen schools now. we know we can do so. we knew that a year ago. science and the data shows that. congress has provided $68 billion before this latest bill in order to make sure we have everything we needed in order to do that. a lack of funding has not been an excuse to reopen. what is clear is a lack of will. and i will repeat where i started. this administration is betraying the most vulnerable children in our country. reopen schools now. with that, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee. mrs. blackburn: thank you, mr. president. i have to tell you, you can always tell how controversial a nominee is by how fast his supporters work to finish his confirmation process. last night at 6:12, we found out that the democrats tried to pull a fast one on xavier becerra's nomination. they were trying to fast-track this. i was able to object to that hotline request, but the fact that they tried it shows that they are worried about this nominee, and they should be. two unimpressive hearings and seeing the split vote on the finance committee. i think my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have come to realize that his lack of experience in the health care sector is one of those big things. you know, we have over 400 health care companies in tennessee and tens of thousands of employees in that sector. they all, each and every one of them, have more health care experience than the biden administration's nominee for the secretary of health and human services. his greatest hits from his job keep coming back to haunt him, and as much as his allies here in the senate try to spin his record, they just can't seem to convince people that he is fit to lead. i was curious how why the -- wide the divide is between tennesseans and the becerra nomination, so i asked my staff to look through our mailbag and see what people were calling and writing about. this nomination was in the top five issues of concern. people in tennessee are not happy. as i mentioned, health care. our religious organizations. what they are seeing is somebody who has crossed the line too many times. they do not see him as fit to lead. his lack of experience in the health care industry explains why so many people would oppose him. he thinks it would be a good idea to take private health insurance away from 160 million americans and throw them into a disastrous single-payer system. if that is what you want, then he would be a great secretary of h.h.s. for you. if he has his way, he will use his new position to further undermine our immigration laws. he's admitted, his own admission, mr. president, that given the chance, he would decriminalize illegal entry and extend medicaid benefits to anyone who managed to make it across the border. it's like winning the lottery. you get across that border, we're going to give you health care benefits, courtesy of the u.s. taxpayer. we cannot afford to keep confirming nominees who have zero respect for the rule of law, zero. and even less respect for the value of human life. throughout his career, mr. becerra has made his appallingly radical positions on abortion very well known. he's proud to support abortions up until the moment of birth. he even opposed the 2003 partial-birth abortion ban. he defended a truly evil california law that forced pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to advertise abortion services offered by state-run clinics. recently, a physician friend of mine made a comment about mr. becerra's nomination that has really stuck with me. she said i'm horrified. bear in mind this is a physician, mr. president. i'm horrified by his position on abortion because he would abort a baby that i would resuscitate. he would abort a baby that a family is willing to adopt. now, think about that. this is a guy in his congressional career, in his job as the attorney general for california, he is a radical on abortion. a radical. you have physicians who stand there to resuscitate these babies that have difficulty during birth. he would allow those babies to be aborted. when a physician would choose -- would choose life. would choose to help that baby live. according to mr. becerra, religious exemptions should be a thing of the past. he relentlessly harassed religious employers like hobby lobby and nonprofit organizations like the little sisters of the poor as part of his crusade to uphold obamacare's contraception mandate. i think it's clear why the senate finance committee split their vote on this nomination. it has nothing to do with politics. xavier becerra's obsession with dismantling american society and rebuilding it in his own image can't be boiled down to a simple policy position. instead it signals his desire to force americans to live their lives according to his twisted world view. he may have the approval of leftists, but the american people and thousands of tennesseans have already written him off as radically unqualified and, frankly, so have i. i urge my colleagues to join me in opposing this motion to discharge and opposing the nomination. he is radically antilife, antireligion, antiborder security, antifree speech. he is unqualified to lead. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from montana. mr. daines: mr. president, montana has a rich outdoor heritage. it's something we're known for not just across the country but even arrange the world and it's something montanans are very proud of. in fact, for generations montana families have enjoyed hunting, fishing, recreating on public lands. i myself am an avid outdoorsman. some of my fondest memories growing up in montana is spending time with my family, with my dad, with my mom, my grandpa. hunting, fishing, backpacking in our state. and thankfully i've had a chance to pass it on to our own four children, some weg still enjoy doing -- something we still enjoy doing today, my wife and i, as we are now empty nesters. recreation on public lands is part of our montana way of life. it's how we raise our families in montana. and just as we cherish our access to our public lands, we also value the conservation of our lands as well as the stewardship of our vast natural resources. energy development flourishes in montana. it provides over 16,000 hardworking men and women with good-paying jobs to support their families while funding conservation and protecting our landscape and wildlife. montana is still a state where hardworking moms and dads, they work hard during the week, thankful for many jobs provided by the natural resources in our state. they work hard during the week, but on the weekends they go down to walmart, bob's warehouse, any sporting goods store and buy afishing license and get within our public lands within 30 minutes of buying that license. it's uniquely part of our montana experience. these jobs that we have in the natural resource industry, these industry jobs are part of who we are as montanans. because we're a state full of diverse interests, competing priorities, sometimes opposing philosophies, but time and time again stakeholders have come together to find balance and achieve our most lasting conservation wins. that's a word that's missing in washington, d.c. as we're seeing the new administration come to power. it's the word balance. you see, as montanans, we're proud stewards of our beautiful landscapes, our rivers, our natural resources, and our wildlife. we take pride in following the science and listening to our local experts on the ground to do what's best for our environment and our public lands as well as our rural commu communities. and this legacy of balance is intertwined with the jurisdiction of the department of interior. because the secretary of the interior oversees much of america's lands, our water, wildlife, energy resources. in many ways they oversee our montana way of life. over the past few years, we've seen secretaries of the interior with a range of views. some i agree with, some i haven't. but one thing was consistent. they were consensus builders. they were able to listen to the needs of diverse stakeholders, bring folks together, come up with a solution that worked for most everybody. i would use the word balance again. unfortunately, representative haaland has a very well documented and hostile record toward made-in-america energy, toward natural resource development, toward wildlife management, and sportsmen. throughout her tenure as a congresswoman, representative haaland championed the green new deal. she advocated for the most extreme positions, including banning all fossil fuels. she cosponsored legislation to provide federal protections for grizzly bears forever without considering the science. it's very clear that supports delisting that species and returning it back to the states just like we did with wolves back in 2011. she's been enthusiastic in her calls to stop not just the keystone pipeline but all pipelines, calling for a ban for all pipelines. she even protested the dakota access pipeline herself. she has stated that trapping shouldn't be allowed on public lands and is noted by several sportsmen group, representative haaland would not even commit to maintaining current access on public lands during the hearing. i can tell you these are not mainstream views held by most montanans. i'm not opposed to representative haaland's confirmation because she's a democrat or because she was nominated by president biden. in fact, i've supported many of the president's nominees. this is about her record, her very far-left, divisive positions that will fail to represent the west, to be in the mainstream of common sense and balance. and i fear she will harm the montana way of life as we know it. this is about protecting our montana way of life. the ability to have a good-paying job during the week and enjoying our public lands on the weekends. because you kill the energy jobs, you kill all the pipelines, you kill our natural resources. montana is left to be simply a playground for the rich and famous. we've got to stand up for our hardworking montanans and protect their way of life. this is about maintaining a commonsense balance. we can develop our natural resources and protect our public lands at the same time. we can do both and we must do both. soy urge my colleagues -- so i urge my colleagues, especially those from western states that hold many of these same values to really think about what representative haaland would bring to the department of interior as leader of that organization. i urge my colleagues to consider the impact this will have and to vote against representative haaland's nomination for secretary of the interior. mr. president, i yield back my time. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from montana. mr. daines: i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: mrs. murray: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: i ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. cantwell: we're having a vote. i ask consent that that vote not start until i finish my remarks. the presiding officer: is there any objection? seeing none of -- ms. cantwell: i just wanted to make a few points. you know, our former colleague, representative becerra, spent much time in the congress -- i think 12 terms -- and much of that in a position of focusing on health care policy as a member of the ways and means committee. i say that because i know so many of our colleagues, particularly house members, have gone on to run agencies, run departments, basically be secretaries of defense and basically they just had some congressional experience in that policy area. so i'm not sure why we're discarding that important policy background, consideration, balancing of those issues, weighing in on parts of our constituencies as mr. becerra did. and, mr. becerra was the first hispanic to be a member of the ways and means committee. so i'm pretty sure he brought forth a context -- many of the health care policies, i know now, i bring a lot of focus on native american issues to the finance committee because i represent so many native americans. so i think mr. becerra represents somebody who has a lot of health care experience and then as attorney general took on one of the biggest fights we need to have right now, which is the affordability of prescription drug pricing and the shortages that i believe are artificially created on things like insulin and other drugs that are spiking out of control, the health care prices, for americans. if you had to say besides getting access to affordable health care insurance, what the second most important goal was -- or actually if you asked across a spectrum of millions of americans, they would say it's the high cost of prescription drugs. and we have somebody who's taken on this battle and is basically -- and basically really understand what we need to do as a nation in lowering prescription drug prices. so i hope the people at home who are listening, this is a unique individual who i think stands up truth to power, many times in his career, and i think that we would be great to have his vote and nomination out here on the senate floor so the american people can hear more about the important policies. if you want to vote against him because you don't want the affordable care act, well, that's your prerogative. but if you want somebody who has just as much experience as any other member of congress who's gone on to run an agency, i guarantee you he is as qualified if not more qualified. so i hope our colleagues will vote yes on this motion to bring xavier becerra before the united states senate. i thank the president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the question is on the motion to discharge the nomination of xavier becerra from the committee on finance. is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote: vote: vote: vote: the presiding officer: on this vote the yeas are 51, the nays are 48. the motion to discharge is agreed to. pursuant to the provisions of s. res. 27 the motion being agreed to, the nomination will be placed on the executive calendar. the senate will resume consideration of the following nomination which the clerk will report. the clerk: nomination, department of interior, deb debris of new mexico -- debra anne haaland of new mexico to be secretary. mr. schumer: mr. president, i move to proceed toking legislative -- proceed to legislative. the presiding officer: the question is on the motion. all those in favor say aye. those opposed no. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the motion is agreed to. mr. schumer: i move to proceed to executive session to consider calendar number 26. the presiding officer: the question is on the motion. all those in favor say aye. opposed, no. the ayes have it. the motion is agreed to. the clerk will report the nomination. the clerk: nomination, small business administration, isabella casillas guzman of california to be administrator. mr. schumer: i send a cloture motion to the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the cloture motion. the clerk: cloture motion, we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination of executive calendar number number 26, isabella casillas guzman of california to be administrator of the small business administration signed by 17 senators as follows. mr. schumer: i ask consent the reading of the names be waived. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: mr. president, i move to proceed to legislative session. the presiding officer: the question is on the motion. all those in favor say aye. opposed no. the ayes have it. mr. schumer: i move to proceed to executive session to consider calendar number 29. the presiding officer: the motion is agreed to. the question is on the motion. all those in favor say aye. opposed say no. the ayes have it. the motion is agreed to. the clerk will report the nomination. the clerk: nomination, executive office of the president, katherine c. tai of the district of columbia to be united states trade representative. mr. schumer: i send a cloture motion to the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the cloture motion. the clerk: cloture motion, we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination of executive calendar number 29, katherine c. tai of the district of columbia to be united states trade representative, signed by 17 senators as follows. mr. schumer: i ask consent the reading of the names be waived. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum calls for the cloture motions filed today be waived. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i note the absence of a quorum. i withdraw it. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. wyden: mr. president, on monday the senate will vote on the nomination of congresswoman deb haaland to serve as secretary of the interior. i've had a chance to vote on a number of nominations over the years. i want to tell the senate on monday the senate can make history. the congresswoman -- and she faced some strong questioning in the committee -- understands that protecting public lands and boosting rural communities and jobs are two sides of the same coin. too often in the debates in washington, d.c. the debate really involves something resembling false choices. you can either be for jobs or you can be for protecting your treasures. the congresswoman understands that those two are not mutually exclusive and that in the west, particularly when you look at our exciting recreation economic engine, this is a chance to really generate more jobs, protect treasures, and enhance our quality of life. i recognize that there have been powerful interest groups that try, for example, to protect the interests of the big oil companies at taxpayer expense, at the expense of clean air and clean water. everybody who wants to get outside. -- everybody wands to, wants to get outside. that debate is propping up a dirty environmental industry. in the long run what we need to do is find fresh ways to bring americans together around areas particularly for rural communities. they're going to bridge the urban rural p divide, reduce inequality in america and be a long-term solution for rural economies. the congresswoman, our nominee on monday, knows that there is a better way to protect and create rural jobs. and i'll give you just one example. congressman neguse and i have introduced a major piece of legislation to create a 21st century civilian conservation corps. our legislation would create thousands of jobs in rural america, and these workers would help preserve public lands and prevent the kind of massive wildfires america has seen in recent years. and what i can say to colleagues is a major effort like this will create scores and scores of jobs for local businesses and local vendors. certainly we're talking about the local hardware store, chain saw outlets, those who sell logging equipment. there are going to be lots of opportunities for private-sector employment stemming from the arrival of the 21st century civilian conservation corps. you also have a lot more opportunity for outdoor recreation, boosting tourism revenues and fewer communities reduced to ash by wildfire. a win all around. now the congresswoman also talked to us about another priority for rural america, and that's helping native american tribes across the country build and repair drinking water infrastructure, and that she would make a priority to help tribes where there is a lack of drinking water threatening the health of those tribal members. this is especially a problem in oregon where the warm springs tribe has burst pipes and regular boil water notices. but i'll tell you, warm springs is not alone in this country. the congresswoman understands. she said water is a basic human right. the next point that i want to touch on with respect to this exceptional member of congress is she has really got a track record of bringing parties with differing views together. i know some members of the senate have gone to great lengths to say, oh, she's some kind of far-out radical. colleagues, that just doesn't pass the smell test. she's been a leader in generating bipartisan support for efforts in the house. she's got one of the most conservative members of the house singing her praises, coming before the committee. and i went several times just because i wanted to hear the congresswoman address this crucial issue of how important rural jobs are, how rural jobs and protecting the environment aren't mutually exclusive, how you can bring people together. and on each of these points she conveyed the kinds of views that make her an ideal choice for serving as secretary of interior. i was also interested in her thoughts on a major piece of legislation for rural eastern oregon. it's the malhere county wahee legislation which seems to resolve differences in this extraordinary part of my state, the owahees that have literally gone on for decades. we brought together ranchers and tribes and environmental folks, and we said here again, what we can do is we can create rural employment. we can protect the ag economy, the farmers' way of life. and we can also create great opportunities for recreation in that part of the state. the congresswoman got it in a second. she said that's exactly what we need to do is build models that bring farmers and ranchers together with environmental folks and scientists who understand the nature of some of these challenges from a scientific and climate standpoint. so i will tell you, mr. chairman, i've gone to more than my share of nomination hearings, but what i saw was a nominee with exceptional backbone and decency being clear, being straightforward, and at times it was a little hard to take because the questioning i thought was not just strong, but i thought it was over the line. at the same time the congresswoman showed her calm, her knowledge, her perseverance in the face of this, and i'm just going to close with this. mr. president and colleagues, i have tried to ciemped make my calling -- tried to kind of make my calling card a public service, bringing people together, finding fresh ideas, and the very kinds of approaches the congresswoman talked about during two, i felt, very draining kind of sessions. and my view is that it's critical for the senate to be able to recognize there are going to be disagreements. the senate is made up of a lot of people with very strong views and what i believe we ought to insist on of all candidates is a level of decency and respect for all concerned. the congresswoman showed that in the face of some very strong questioning. and when i was done, i said not only am i going to support you because of your views on rural jobs that you recognize that protecting jobs and the environment are not mutually exclusive -- we can do both -- your track record of bipartisanship featuring congressman young coming here, but also i would come to the floor of the united states senate and say i was there for both sessions, and i saw an elected official, a congresswoman handle a lot of very tough, strong questions. and at every level, she tried to stick to the facts, she tried to make the case for what she thought was a great opportunity, especially in the west, but that she would be in all of the communities that the department of interior is responsible for and that everyone would get a fair shake. every -- every democrat and every republican would get a fair shake. that's the kind of fundamental decency we want in a nominee. and i'll close with this. it sure stands in sharp contrast to what we saw over the last four years, two secretaries, essentially infamous rather than famous, who too often were willing to set aside the science and support the powerful and those who were going to walk away making quick dollars at the expense of the environment. people of this country now have a chance, almost like you take a dilapidated stage out of an auditorium and now we've got a chance to start anew. we've got a nominee who's qualified, she's fair, she's going to concentrate on bringing people together and she is going to make history. it is long, long, long past time, colleagues, that this country had a native american leading the interior department. so i pledged at that second hearing, mr. president, i was going to come back on the floor and not just vote for her but speak for her because her decency, her thoughtfulness. i see my friend from new mexico here, and that sense of caring and fairness in the face of some very, very aggressive questioning, makes me feel that this is a very special sort of leader. congresswoman haaland has my full unqualified support, we westerners look forward to getting her and get her to oregon and see what her challenges are. i urge all members of the senate on monday to support the historic nomination of congresswoman haaland to head the interior department. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. ms. lummis: thank you, mr. speaker. the only thing he and i agree on is that it is time that we had a native american woman to lead the department of interior. i oppose congresswoman haaland to serve as the secretary of the interior. as secretary she will continue the job-killing, anti-energy attack -- attack. let's recap how bad president biden's executive actions are for my state. a university of wyoming analysis found that wyoming stands to lose nearly $13 billion in tax revenue if we don't lift the biden band on new oil and gas leasing and drilling on federal lands. to put this in context, $13 billion in tax revenue would educate 60,000 wyoming students from kindergarten through high school graduation. it would fund the university of wyoming for the next 59 years. it would fund our public safety and corrections budget for the next 68 years. and it would fund the wyoming department of health for the next 26 years. these are real numbers and the biden ban is having real consequences. in wyoming we put the tax revenue from land leases to care for the sick and funding public infrastructure. maybe this sound like my complaint is just with president biden, that's how congresswoman haaland would have you see it. congresswoman haaland says that she will simply be following the administration's orders and implementing its agenda at the interior department. this isn't exactly encouraging for a number of reasons. the white house's very first action in implementing their climate change agenda is on track to cost my home state a whopping $13 billion in revenue. i shutter to think what their next action will cost us, especially with department heads blindly enacting the biden agenda without consideration for the extraordinary impacts it will continue to have on energy states like wyoming. second, secretaries have an incredible amount of power to make decisions on how an administration's agenda gets implemented based on her own public statements and actions congresswoman haaland is more radical in her positions than president biden. none of these facts are particularly encouraging to folks in wyoming and the west who will be devastated by the policies that congresswoman haaland plans to champion. what we need is a secretary who understands the issues that westerners face. we need someone who knows the ways that states like wyoming are contributing to america's energy independence and doing so in increasingly environmentally friendly ways, banning permitting on federal lands in wyoming means banning access to 68% of wyoming's minerals. for our state and our country to remain energy independent, we need someone at the department of the interior who recognizes that if we shut down producers at home, we are only increasing the power of polluters like russia and china abroad. mr. president, conservatives are regularly attacked as antiscience and anti-environment. this couldn't be further from the truth. i can tell you there are no greater stewards of our land than the people who actually work it, be it farmers, ranchers, or energy producers, we care more about the land and natural resources than just about anyone. it's our livelihood. but it's more than that. it's our way of life. we know that responsible care for the land means that we have to have a healthy give and take with the land. in wyoming, we support both energy protection and conservation, fossil fuels and clean energy technologies. wyoming leads the nation as the biggest net energy supplier at the same time that we're driving the future of carbon capture and utilization technology. representative haaland and the biden administration claim their ban on leases supports the environment, but this ban actually hurts environmental conservation efforts. energy development on public lands helps to fund conservation, including the land and area conservation fund to the tune of billions of dollars. additionally, since 2000, the u.s. has had the largest absolute decline in emissions of any country. we did this while at the same time rising to become the world's top energy producer. the truth of the matter is you can be both environmentally friendly and energy friendly. in wyoming we are doing both. under the biden and haaland administration we will do neither. i want to add one more thing. i recognize the longstanding -- long-standing connection of native americans to the land, representative haaland has that connection and i honor her heritage and how significant of a native american to the department of interior is to the tribes and indigenous people but there is no connection between her heritage and the support of the green new deal and attacking oil and gas production is a means to address climate change. if our goal is to reduce emissions, you we should focus on attacking energy production. we can achieve our environmental goals through things like carbon capture. for these reasons, mr. president, i urge my colleagues to oppose representative haaland's nomination to serve as secretary of the interior. thank you, mr. president. i yield back. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator for new mexico. mr. heinrich: what is the status of the floor? the presiding officer: the senate is -- is considering the haaland nomination. mr. heinrich: mr. president, i rise today in support-my colleague -- support of my colleague in the new mexico delegation, my representative in the house of representatives, and president joe biden's nominee for secretary of interior, congresswoman deb haaland. congresswoman haaland is what we like to call in new mexico, a 35th generation new mexican. as many have noted, she'll make history as the first-ever native american cabinet secretary, frankly, something that should have happened a long, long time ago in this country. deb also has lived experience as a single mother, as a small business owner, as a tribal administrator. experiences that will serve her well and bring real representation to president joe biden's cabinet. she grew up in a military family. her father was a decorated marine combat veteran and her mother is a navy veteran. she grew up like a lot of kids with parents in the military, moving frequently, actually attending 13 different public schools over the course of her childhood. before being elected to congress, she owned her own business. she was the chair of the board of a tribally owned business and served as tribal administrator for the pueblo san philipe. thanks to all of that experience, congresswoman haaland knows first hand how the decisions we make here in washington and particularly the interior department affects communities across the country, especially in tribal communities and rural western states. as representative of the first district of new mexico, my former district, congresswoman haaland has served as vice chair of the house committee on natural resources. and the chair of the subcommittee on national parks, forests, and public lands, a position where she made us very proud. as a committee leader, she routinely demonstrated her commitment to working across party lines. of all the members of congress newly elected in 2018, she introduced the most bills with bipartisan cosponsors. she has always shown the ability to bring people together, something evidenced by her introduction in -- in our committee by congressman don young, republican of alaska. she has an open door, she has an open mind and will listen and consult with a diverse range of stakeholders to try and build real consensus. i'm confident that she is the leader that we need at interior to take on the important work of restoring our landscapes, opening up new outdoor recreation opportunities for all americans and putting our public lands to work in confronting the climate crisis that too many of our colleagues have long ignored. americans want the department of interior to create more equitable access to our public lands, to stand for environmental justice, to find real solutions for the climate crisis, to protect wild life and clean water and support rural economic development. many of us here in this body, in the senate, demonstrated just last year when we passed the historic and bipartisan great american outdoors act that making conservation and outdoor recreation a key part of our national economic recovery is a goal that has the ability to unite us all, republicans and democrats. implementation of that new law will allow to put many americans back to work, repairing our camp grounds, repairing our care centers and visiting centers. congresswoman haaland is prepared for that work and she is uniquely qualified to restore the department of interior's nation to nation relationship with tribal nations and help indian country recover and rebuild from covid-19. the interior department will play a leading role in implementing president biden's rescue plan in indian country. that historic rescue package, which the senate just passed over the weekend, and i would point out did not have a single republican vote, includes more than $31 billion in emergency support for indian country. let me put that into perspective. that represents the single greatest investment in indian country in american history -- in american history. and in emergency support is desperately needed in tribal communities. over the past year, american indians and alaska natives infected by covid-19 have been hospitalized at four times rates high -- four times higher than white americans and have died from the disease at nearly twice the rate. that is not just some statistic. i know firsthand because of the people i know and have lost in indian country. on top of these unacceptable public health outcomes, tribal communities have also been disproportionately impacted by the educational and economic devastation of the past year. the lack of broadband, for example. and these disparities reflect the persistent inequities that are the direct result of decades, decades of chronic underinvestment by congress in indian country. that's why the american rescue plan includes $20 billion in emergency funds for tribal governments that have taken on enormous, unprecedented costs to protect the health and safety of their members. it also includes billions of dollars of investments in indian country to expand access to health care, education, transportation, housing, and even essentials that many of us just take for granted. things like broadband, like internet, like electricity or water. the senate urgently needs to take up congresswoman haaland's nomination to lead the department of interior so that tribes will finally have the partner they need in effectively implementing the american rescue plan and to help them steer their communities out of this perilous moment. finally, it's unfortunate, frankly, that this needs to be said, but i do need to take a moment to address characterizations of congresswoman haaland that were raised by some of my colleagues in the energy and natural resources committee. that were neither accurate nor frankly appropriate to the kind of debate that we have in that committee. i was disappointed by the tenor of the debate in our committee as some of my colleagues described congresswoman haaland as radical or extreme for holding policy views that fall well within the mainstream and fairly represent many of her constituents. i would say the vast majority of her constituents. as a westerner, congresswoman haaland well understands that confronting the climate crisis, not denying it, and transforming our economy will not come without cost. we need to be honest about that. that is especially true for fossil fuel workers including many of our fellow new mexicans who have long powered our economy and deserve our respect and support. but we need to be thorough on the details and thoughtful in preparing our traditional energy communities for a transition to the clean energy future that the market has already told us is coming, is here, and we need to be honest with them. i am absolutely certain that congresswoman haaland will be a true partner to western states like new mexico, alaska, colorado, montana, wyoming, as we navigate this challenging transition. as we confront the climate crisis that is already an existential threat to our land and water resources and the communities that depend on those resources in the west, we must diversify our economy. we must invest in those communities and remain a global leader in producing and exporting energy. now, despite the objections that have been raised against her nomination and the holds that have unfairly held up her confirmation, i am confident in congresswoman haaland's commitment to work with every single one of us on these pressing challenges. and i am eager for the senate to finally take up congresswoman haaland's confirmation so that she can get to work protecting our natural heritage for future generations. thank you, mr. president. i yield back. mr. barrasso: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. mr. barrasso: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, today the senate is debating the nomination of deb haaland, a member of congress, to serve as secretary of the interior. if confirmed, she would be the first native american cabinet member in united states history. this is a historic moment, and it should be recognized. i want to be very clear with you, mr. president. representative haaland's policy views and lack of substantive answers during her nomination hearing, in my opinion, disqualify her for this job. in may of 2019, representative haaland said unequivocally in an interview with "the guardian," i am wholeheartedly against fracking and drilling on public lands. on her campaign website, she stated she wanted to keep fossil fuels in the ground. and on the same site, she pledged to vote against all new fossil fuel infrastructure, period. while i along with many western senators have consistently opposed nominees who hold such views and in my opinion and the opinion of my constituents, mr. president, these views are extreme. representative haaland's views aren't just statements. they are backed up by legislation that she has cosponsored. as a member of congress, she was a day-one cosponsor of the green new deal. we're talking about destructive legislation that would not just overhaul american energy but would impact almost every sector of society and cause great harm to america's economy. that bill was so extreme that when it was brought here to the senate floor, it received no support, none. she also cosponsored legislation to provide permanent federal protections for the grizzly bear. i believe that legislation is also extreme, and i'll tell you why, mr. president. the legislation that she proposed as a member of the house completely disregards the scientific conclusions of the bush administration, the obama administration, and the trump administration. how many things, mr. president, can we name that both -- that all three of those presidents agreed upon, but the three of them did. they all concluded, the obama administration, the bush administration, and the trump administration concluded that it was time to take the grizzly bear off the endangered species list. both democrat and republican interior departments determined that the grizzly bear was fully recovered, but representative haaland has chosen instead to ignore the science and the scientists of the very department that she is now nominated to lead. representative haaland's policy views are squarely at odds with the mission of the department of interior. that mission includes taking species off of an endangered species list when they are recovered and the grizzly bear is fully recovered. that department also manages our nation's oil, gas, and coal resources, and does it in a responsible manner. not eliminating access to them completely. just as troubling are her polics were her answers to questions during the confirmation process. she struggled to refuse to answer the basic questions any nominee for the department of interior would be expected to know and answer. she was unwilling and -- or unable to respond to questions about the department, about resource policy, and about the laws that she was asked to implement. i asked her why the biden administration wouldn't just let energy workers keep their jobs. no good answer. american jobs are being sacrificed in the name of the biden agenda, and representative haaland wouldn't defend it or couldn't defend it. senator risch had to ask her multiple times if she supported shutting down the keystone pipeline before she admitted that she did. he then asked her multiple times why she thought that was a good idea. she never really gave an answer. her written answers to the questions for the record were equally vague and unacceptable. in one response to a question of mine, she refused to acknowledge, mr. president, that the united states has higher environmental standards for oil and gas production than russia or nigeria. would not acknowledge that. the american people deserve straight answers from a potential secretary about the law, about the rules, and about the regulations that are going to affect so many lives and livelihoods. mr. president, she gave very few of those at her nominating hearing and in her written responses. representative haaland's extreme views, cosponsorship of catastrophic legislation, and a lack of responsiveness disqualify her from this important position as secretary of interior. if she is allowed to implement her green new deal-inspired policies at the department of interior, the results for america's energy supply and economy will be catastrophic. so i cannot support and will not support her nomination, and i urge other senators also to vote against the nomination. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: quorum call: mr. manchin: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator for west virginia. mr. manchin: i ask unanimous consent to have three minutes of comments. the presiding officer: we're in a quorum call. the senator would be advised. mr. manchin: i vitiate the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. manchin: i ask consent for three minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. manchin: mr. president, i'm pleased to speak today on the nomination of representative debra haaland to be the secretary of interior. her nomination was carefully considered by the committee on energy and natural resources which i am privileged to chair. her hearing went well. and it went for two days. every member of the committee questioned her. most asked her two rounds of questions and some asked three. within 70 page also for the record, nearly 300 questions, many with multiple subparts. the committee questioned her closely on her beliefs, her opinions, the president's policies and what she will do if confirmed. in the end the committee voted to report her nomination favorably 11-9. i'm proud to have voted to report her nomination. i am proud to speak in favor of her confirmation today. while i may not personally agree with some of congresswoman haaland's positions, as secretary she will be carrying out president biden's agenda, the agenda that the voters elected president biden to pursue. at her hearing she confirmed that she and the administration recognize that our country will remain dependent on fossil fuels for years to come and a transition to a cleaner energy future must come through innovation, not elimination. she also affirmed her strong commitment to bipartisanship. she understands the need to work across the aisle to find the bipartisan solutions needed to address the diversities of our country and has demonstrated that she can do so effectively. i was also deeply impressed by the strong endorsement they received from congresswoman don young for whom i have the utmost respect. he has been in congress long enough to be able to read people and know their heart and soul. he took the time and trouble to appear before the committee and testified of the productive working relationship he has had with congresswoman haaland and her willingness to work with him on important issues. that meant a lot to me and i hope it will also resonate with my colleagues. president biden is perhaps the most difficult position -- in the most difficult position a modern day president has been in bringing us after the brink of january 6. that day changed me and i feel strongly that with a deep -- the deep divisions running through our country and the halls of congress today, we have to have people who have demonstrated they have the temperament and willingness to reach across the aisle. congresswoman haaland has demonstrated that she does and she will. as the president works to bind together a nation spliment by deep political, racial, social and economic divisions, he is also trying to assemble a cabinet that reflects the rich diverse of our nation, one that looks like america. 230 years after washington called his first cabinet meeting, it's long past time to give the native american woman a seat at the cabinet table. for these reasons i support her nomination and will vote to report her to support her and i look forward to working with her to protect our public lands and ensure the responsible use of our natural resources in the most bipartisan manner. i strongly support her nomination. i urge all of my colleagues to vote to invoke cloture today and to confirm her nomination next week. thank you, mr. president. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture. the clerk: cloture motion, we, the undersigned senators in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination of executive calendar number 31, debra anne haaland of new mexico to be secretary of the interior signed by 17 senators. the presiding officer: by unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived. the question is, is it the sense of the senate that debate on the nomination of debra anne haaland of new mexico to be secretary of the interior shall be brought to a close. the yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule. the clerk will call the roll. vote: vote: vote: the presiding officer: the yeas are 54, the nays are 42. the motion is agreed to. mr. lankford: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma is recognized. slainchg --. mr. lankford: we're a year into the covid epidemic. a year. think about this year, a year ago in oklahoma city there was a basketball game against the utah jazz, two minutes away from tipoff and the announcer came on the speaker and said ladies and gentlemen, a case of covid has been discovered by one of the players. this game is postponed. with that one announcement a year ago this week, all professional sports stopped across the entire country. and the country for a moment woke up and realized this is more serious than we thought. and everything shifted. within a week the united states had shut down for eight weeks, and we went into lockdown. at the beginning point of that, this congress came together in a bipartisan way and passed something called the cares act, $1.6 trillion, an enormous relief bill, because we were walking into uncharted territory. we created things like the paycheck protection program. we created ways to be able to assist behind the scenes. we even created a way to be able to help not-for-profits knowing that if the not-for-profit sector collapsed, there's no way government could possibly keep up. lots of work went into that in a bipartisan way to be able to resolve that, and that cares act stabilized our economy. $1.6 trillion. it was one of five bills that we passed in this body last year, all bipartisan. all of us working together to try to find out what are the essential things we have to do, knowing every single dollar that was spent on covid was not budgeted. every single dollar is borrowed, all of it, from last year. a total of $4 trillion. only 3 trillion of what was actually allocated last year has actually been spent. there's -- there's still a trillion dollars that has been unallocated. a trillion dollars. until this week, over the weekend this body passed on a straight partisan vote, and the house did the same, to be able to add another $2 trillion to the spending for covid-19. but this bill is different. there was no bipartisan conversation. in fact, ten members of the republican conference went to the white house and tried to sit down with president biden and say, let's do a bipartisan issue. there are issues that are unresolved. but thankfully we're on the back side of this pandemic. we're not in the spot where we were a year ago. we can now see the end. we know that every adult will have access to the vaccine by the end of may. the economy is turning around and things are shifting dramatically, thankfully. let's do the same thing we have to do now and keep the commitment we had last year. last year's commitment was simple. do the things we have to do knowing every dollar was borrowed but not more than we have to do because none of this is budgeted. none of this has gone through committees. let's try to do what needs to be done and not more of than what needs to be done, until now. starting the next couple of days, the treasury will begin the process of borrowing another $2 trillion. i had an oklahoman that i talked to this morning and said, how you doing spending my mcconnell at this -- my money at this point? i said this time it is not even your money, it's borrowed money from the chinese, the open market, from wherever we can get $2 trillion to be able to spend it. while many people will be eager to able to receive a check for $1,400, because there are a lot of people having a hard time right now coming outside of the backside of the pandemic, getting to work, paying some bills, they may be surprised to find out they are getting a $1,400 check, but so are prisoners, they are also getting a $1,400 check. they are also finding out that people not legally in the country are getting a $1,400 check. there was an interesting interchange on the floor during the debate, whether people were getting these checks. there was a fact check on people getting a $1,400. they published their fact check and came out through. people not legally present in the united states are about to receive $1,400 checks in the mail based on the bill that was just passed on a partisan basis. there's billions of dollars in this bill that's allocated for vaccines. republicans asked what it is going towards, is says vaccines, but the problem is the biden team announced they've done the purchase for every single vaccine for every single adult in america. in other words, every single person who can get the vaccine, the vaccine purchases have already been done. those are set and ready to go by the end of may because we still have $6 billion left in the vaccine fund from last year, but this bill that just passed this week, adding another 2 interested in debt, also includes tens of trillions of dollars for vaccines. so the immediate question is that for international vaccines? no. that's a different account. there is money for international vaccines, but this is for the united states purchase of vaccine. where is that money going when we already purchased ahead of time all of the vaccines for every single adult in america? we don't know. and, unfortunately, this bill was not taken through committee so no one even had the conversation time to even find out why. there's a lot of money for education in this bill and there's a lot of need in education across the country. in fact the bill that just passed, this $2 trillion actually spends almost three times, in this one bill, almost three times for education what typically the united states federal government does for the entire year for education. and i would say there's a great need, except when you actually look at the unspent money from education from the five bills that were passed last year, there's still $68 billion unspent from the education funds from the five covid bills last year and there's no requirement that the schools actually open or use that money to open the schools. in fact, 95% of the money allocated for covid relief for education, c.b.o. said can't even be spent this year at all. the earliest it could even be spent would be next year and it's well in excess of $100 billion. there's a provision on this, the small business administration, as i was reading through the 600-plus pages of this bill, that is a real picture of what this bill is shaped like. one provision the small business administration allocates $389 billion to administer the loan program but the loan program itself disperses $70 million. let me run that number past us again. the program cost for the administrative washington, d.c., cost for running the program, $390 million, the actual amount that they anticipate that they will actually distribute is $70 million. totaling $460 million program total, just $70 million of it actually gets to people, $390 million stays in washington, d.c., for the bureaucracy. all those things could have been fixed if we actually went through committee. and in this covid bill, there's things like new customs duty for south korea that have yet to figure the out what south korea and customs duty has to do with covid. there is also slipped in for the first time ever federal funding for abortion and i've yet to see what abortion has to do with covid, but this bill, for the first time in 44 years, uses federal tax dollars to start paying for abortion. that's not been done before. in fact, when joe biden used to sit in that chair right over there, he often spoke about that we should not use federal funds for abortion funding, but, yet, in the covid bill somehow abortion funding has become relevant to fighting off covid. i've had some people ask questions of could this bill have been better if we actually had done it in a bipartisan way? it could have been significantly better. if you ask how i know that, it's because i saw the five bills we did last year and they didn't have problems like this in this last year. because we worked it out together. this one's different. this bill could have been significantly improved in a major way. one of them is the way we deal with charities. you see, in previous bills, we sat down and talked about our not-for-profits. i have a very strong belief personally that we have three safety nets. the family is the first safety net, nonprofits, churches, faith-based houses of worship, are secretary safety net in society and the third safety net is government. government can never keep up with all the needs in america. if families collapse and if not-for-profits collapse, the government will never be able to keep up. so in previous versions, we've actually addressed that with not-for-profits. we did that in the paycheck protection program to make sure that not-for-profits could get assistance to get help to be able to survive through this. we also added in a way that we would encourage individuals to donate to not-for-profits. we gave them a write-off. in the very first bill we added in $300 if you gave to a not for profit, you could write that off your taxes right away. in the september bill, we upped that, $300 for an individual, $600 for a family that you could write off your taxes immediately if you donated to a not for profit. why did we do that? i brought that up and brought it up in committee because we said that is a good idea because we need them for the safety net. not-for-profits are the face that's take care of the hungry and the homeless and the hurting in our society. and we need them to be strong. but in this bill that came out, we didn't address the not-for-profits. we didn't have the option to be able to bring it up and debate it and say what should we do so it just got left out. why should we continue to be able to push on this issue? because we need them to be strong. they are a remarkable are part of our economy, our safety net, and of our community. they are americans doing what we do best, serving each other, serving our neighbors, and helping in every possible way that we can. so a group of us have gathered together to be able to drop a bill dealing with these not-for-profits and encouraging us again to accelerate this issue of giving americans the ability to write off on their taxes whether they itemize or not a below the line deduction for taxes to be able to encourage people to give to not-for-profits and it matters. wanting to do something significant, help those close to you and the ongoing work that they are doing. those folks felt it a lot. according to the johns hopkins center for civil study societies, our nonprofits are projected job losses around 1.6 million workers. they leaned in and helped anyway, even though they were in real trouble. as of sees december 2020, the nonprofit workforce remained down by about 930,000 jobs. we have a long way to go to that sector actually fully recover because they are such a significant part of our economy, according to the latest data, again, available from johns hopkins found that nonprofit organizations employed the third largest workforce in the u.s. economy. nonprofits. a group that people just drive past all the time. but many people drive to or walk to because they need real help. what happened when we actually passed the cares act and we added this deduction in and encouraged americans to donate to not-for-profits to help them survive this year? what happened with that? well, i can tell you what happened because we can see the data. the most recent data we have for the fundraising effect for this, shows there was an increase in the third-quarter of 2020 of charitable giving, 6% increase in donors and 11% increase in new donors when compared to 2019. we put that insettive out and people saw the need across the country and the opportunity to do that, people gave. we saw increases in all donor categories in the third-quarter of last year, the largest increase in giving, coming from donors giving $250 or less. that increased by 17% just in the third-quarter of last year. i understand there's a lot of factors to that there's a lot of needs and people are doing what they do best in engaging, but we need to continue to encourage the strength of not-for-profits. if there's a focus for government should do that, government can send checks, the government has a hard time actually meeting human needs. that requires a face and a person and a commitment and that is done different when it's a not for profit. we've great federal workers all across the country that work really hard, but they also work often from a distance. local nonfor profits in small rural communities will have much greater connection to individuals to be able to help in their time of crisis and someone 1,000 miles away who means well but doesn't see them on a daily basis. we want to help human needs, we'll find able to help not-for-profits. tuesday of this week, senator coons, senator lee, senator shaheen, senator scott from south carolina, senator klobuchar, senator collins and senator. ms. cortez masto: and myself, -- and senator cortez masto and myself introduced the recovery act. mr. lankford: can we continue to strengthen our not-for-profits and encourage americans to give to knows not-for-profits with their time, with their money and with their passion and joy? when you actually engage with a not for profit, you will find you're the one that really receives. i'll tell you, thereto not a -- there's not a movement that i talk to somebody who serves in ma not for profit that they don't tell me how hard the work is and how draining the work is and then with a smile they'll say how rewarding it really is. there's not a time that i don't walk into a homeless shelter or food bank that they don't tell me about the people they meet on a daily basis and the joy of them for going home, talking to their own family, and remembering the blessings that they have. and the joy they have to get up the next day to be able to help the folks in greatest need. let's encourage that. if you want to have a biblical example, bib biblly it is to punish those who do wrong. we have a lot of not-for-profits doing good. let's encourage them and let's encourage americans to be able to be engaged in volunteering an in giving. with that, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from ohio is recognized. mr. portman: mr. president, i'm here on the floor today to talk about the unfolding urgent situation on our southern border. and i do so as the ranking republican on the homeland security and government affairs committee. this includes this unfortunate situation at the border. it includes a lot of kids coming over the border. u.a.c.'s as they call them, unaccompanied children. these children are making a long and dangerous journey north, putting themselves at risk, and bringing our immigration system and our shelter system along the border to a breaking point. you may have heard that the biden administration insists this is not a crisis, but here are the facts. you decide. this chart shows the dire situation that we're in. on tuesday, the most recent confirmed information we have, there were 3,400 of these children in border patrol custody. ten days ago, that number was 1,700. so in ten days, this number has doubled. to put this in perspective, at the very height of the border crisis in 2019 that we all remember being talked about a lot on the floor of this senate and around the country, families and children were coming in in big numbers at the very height, it was 2,600 unaccompanied kids. again today, based on some information we just received anecdotally from the customs and border protection folks, it's over 3,500. so it's a 35% increase even from where it was during the crisis. and it's growing. under law, these children have to be transferred to the federal department of health and human services, h.h.s., within 72 hours of their being apprehended, and why? we had that law in place to be able to help protect these kids. so instead of being in a border patrol detention facility -- by the way, which were all designed for single males and don't have any separation, don't have any trained people to help provide care to children and its law enforcement officers, border patrol agents, but within 72 hours, we had said you have to transfer these children to a health and human services facility that's appropriate for children. so how is that working? again, as of tuesday, there were 3,400 of these kids in border patrol custody in the wrong kind of detention facilities for children. there were 2,800 children who were ready to transfer to h.h.s. in other words, they had been screened, gone through a process. but as of tuesday, there were 500 beds available. meaning 2,300 children are remaining in border patrol custody in overcrowded, adult facilities without proper care because there's nowhere to take them. so, look, it's a bad situation. h.h.s. contractors are supposed to be trained to care for the kids. the border patrol agents are not trained in that. they're doing their best, but it's not a good situation for the kids. by the way, nobody in the border patrol believes it's a good situation for the kids. these facilities, the border patrol facilities at the border patrol stations and the h.h.s. facilities are all at a breaking point. they are busing at the seams. is that a crisis? i don't know. you decide. this influx comes, by the way, during a season when you normally don't extra lot of people coming over the border. this is in the winter. normally in the spring and in the fall, you see the biggest influxes of families, kids, individuals. so we expect these numbers to get a lot worse. we expect it to get a lot worse into the spring. by the way, we spoke to the customs and border patrol folks today. they told us the numbers are up again today. in fact, we have some internal document from the department of homeland security that a media organization reported on, an official document that says daiches themselves predict there will be 117,000 children who will be placed in this situation this year, so they know that this is growing. and again, is it a crisis? you decide. it's certainly a dangerous situation. by all accounts, many of these migrants, including children, face serious threats to their lives and well-being on the trip north. just as happened in the past surges in 2014 and in 2019, we know this includes many victims of human trafficking who were deceived and coerced by traffickers and smugglers as they were taken from central america up to the u.s. border. the trip is treacherous. we have evidence that exploitation and sexual abuse occurs along the way. in 2019, again, the last time this happened, estimates of migrants who were victims of sexual or physical abuse along the journey ranged from 30% to 75%. and individual individuals have described incredibly disturbing accounts of being subjected to violence, sexual assault, rape by traffickers and other criminals. so it's a bad situation. and by the way, this situation is the direct result of policy changes. the new administration came in determined to dismantle all of what the previous administration had done to try to disincentivize people from coming to the border, and they have been effective at doing that. they have dismantled the immigration practices and proceedings that were working to reduce these incentives and that have resulted in very few kids coming to the border as an example, almost none. last week, the secretary of homeland security said in a press conference that the surge of unaccompanied kids is, quote, a challenge but not a crisis. he then deflected blame to the previous administration. that's fine. look, i wish it were just a challenge that didn't require an urgent response, but that's not the reality along the border today. i frankly don't care what we call it. call it a difficult situation, a challenge, whatever you want, but i care a lot what we do in response. there is an old saying that says washington only responds to a crisis. i think unfortunately there is a lot of truth to that. we have to respond here. we have to do something. that's why i think we need to consider this dire situation a crisis before it gets much worse. the next chart shows the reality, which is this surge happened almost immediately after president biden and his administration were sworn in, and they made these announcements about changes in policy. here we had the election. here we had the swearing in. look at this huge surge in both family units and in these kids. as i said, we have twice as many kids today as we had ten days ago. this is surging up. nearly 10,000 unaccompanied children and twice as many family members crossed our border in february. that's the shortest month of the year. these surges stopped under the previous administration because they put in place policies that reduced the incentives for individuals, families, and unaccompanied minors to try to unlawfully enter the united states. in less than two months, the biden administration has systematically taken away these tools that were being used to reduce these incentives. on day one, the new administration revoked the emergency declaration for the border, stopped construction of the border fence, and placed a 100-day halt to deportations. not surprisingly, this gave traffickers the green light to exploit the situation, and more people and more drugs are now moving across the border. next, the new administration reversed what is known as the migrant protection protocols or the remain in mexico policy which required asylum seekers to wait in mexico rather than being released in communities around the united states while waiting for their asylum claims to be adjudicated. about 20% of the asylum seekers who went through the entire application process, including all of the hearings, were granted asylum in 2018. so if you go through all the process, about 20% of those individuals actually got asylum. now, that's a self-selected group because not everybody goes to their hearings. in fact, the best data shows that most don't show up for all the hearings. the long-term data shows about half of all asylum accomplish cantses eventually get removal orders due to them not attending all of their asylum hearings. so we don't have great data on this to be honest. and some people say, you know, that very few go to the asylum hearings. some say more do. the point is about half are getting removal orders, we know that, for not attending all of that i asylum hearings. given there is a 1.2 million case backlog in america today for asylum applicants, and there were only less than 5,000 noncriminal deported last year by i.c.e., that tells us understand the current system, a noncriminal asylum seeker who is denied asylum and subject to one of these removal order, it's highly unlikely that you'll actually end up being deported from the united states. asylum seekers know that. so do the traffickers. it's no wonder there's a surge of those who want to live in the united states coming to the border and seeking asylum in recent years. i went to the border in 2019. many of my colleagues have been down to the border to see the situation. i'll be going back soon to see firsthand what is happening and see how we can help. it should not be a partisan issue. it should be one where democrats and republicans alike see what's happening, see the tragedy unfolding along the border and do something to address it. this migrant protection program put in place by the trump administration had resulted in a sharp reduction in the surge of asylum claims as people realized they weren't going to be released in u.s. communities pending their asylum hearings. now we're seeing the reverse happen. second, the biden administration actually suspended safe third-country agreements with the governments of el salvador, guatemala and honduras which awhried migrants to apply in the first foreign country they crossed into for asylum. that reduced incentives from those countries to make the arduous journey to the southern border. these agreements were in the process of being fully implemented but they were already helping and had the potential to find a much more expeditious way to identify and process those who qualified for legitimate asylum or refugee status before they come all the way to our border. all that work that has been accomplished is now lost. i urge the administration to reinstate those third -- those safe third-country agreements with guatemala, honduras, el salvador. third, the new administration has also significantly changed the way we process migrants during the covid-19 crisis. instead of establishing the practice of turning away most immigrants and nonimmigrant visa orders to protect the health and safety of the american people, we're now learning from media reports including "the washington post" that this new administration has made an unofficial exception to the covid-19 rules for children and for families. border patrol agents and officers on the front lines are telling us that they are returning to the pre-covid practice of bringing intoam into the country despite -- bringing people into the country despite the health crisis that all of us understand. reports are that either they are not testing families for covid at all or if they are, they are still releasing some of those who test positive to shelters or into the united states with the with that they quarantine after they travel to their final destination in the interior of the united states. in fact, we know of one instance where more than 100 unlawful immigrants in brownsville, texas, who tested positive for covid-19 were simply told to quarantine when they reached their final destinations regardless of how many people they interacted with taking a bus which in that case most were taking the bus apparently, or taking a plane to their destination. obviously that doesn't make any sense. the final policy changes that encourages illegal entry is the new administration advocating amnesty for those here illegally without making it clear that such an amnesty would not apply to anyone not already there. that's important as the experience of the last amnesty in 1986 demonstrates, unless it is very clear that illegal entry won't be rewarded, it will spawn more illegal entries. now, let's face it. the traffickers and the smugglers are going to take advantage of this and they're going to misrepresent the reality. but still it's important that all of us as policymakers make it very clear as we're talking about amnesty that is not as to people who might come in the future. that's as to people who are already here. i will say that the state department has announced that it will be reinstating the central american minor program which is a streamlined refugee process that existed under the obama administration run by the u.s. government and the u.n. high commissioner for refugees but was discontinued under the trump administration. i think that's a positive thing, that they're reinstating that. we don't have all the details yet but i will tell you that standing up this program without incentivizing people to use it is not going to be very effective and even if it was as effective as it was at the height of the program during the obama administration, it's not nearly enough people. in two years the program resettled 3,300 individuals. so 3,300 children were resettled in two years. that's not going to make a real impact when we are receiving right now 3,300 children every couple of weeks at the border. but again, i hope they do reinstate that program. i think that would be positive. but they've got to do much more in order to avoid this tragic situation from continuing and getting much worse. the decision by the new administration to change all these policies that were working without viable alternatives is causing this chaos. it was done without thinking through the real safety and security concerns for both communities and citizens of the united states as well as these unaccompanied kids and their families. as a result we have a surge of people who are being incentivized to enter our country unlawfully and our systems are being strained during a public health emergency. and this influx is even worse than 2019, not just because the numbers are greater but because we now have the covid-19 pandemic. and children and families are being forced into tight quarters in detention facilities. they are being released into our communities and customs and border protection officers who haven't been able to receive the vaccine yet, which is a problem, are being exposed to this influx of migrants who haven't been tested. so it's even a bigger problem for getting the numbers given the situation we're in. and that ties to another concern i have about the way this crisis has been handled so far which is the administration's response to the overcrowding at the shelter facilities. it's been to rush and potentially cut corners to place these unaccompanied children with sponsors. because their goal after h.h.s. detention, the h.h.s. facilities, is to get these children out to sponsored families. the standards of due diligence required to ensure these children are not being place in danger are not being met as far as we can tell, continuing a troubling trend that goes back years. and administrations. it's an issue i've worked on since 2015 when we had a terrible situation in my home state of ohio where kids were given back to the traffickers by h.h.s. the traffickers who had brought them up from central america by lying to their parents about what they were going to do, taking them to school and so on, these kids ended up working on an egg farm six, seven days a week, below minimum wage. so i've seen this. i've seen what happens when h.h.s. does not take its time and do it right and it's very difficult for them to do that with the surge they've got. over the course of three bipartisan reports and hearings as part of the permanent subcommittee investigations that i chaired, across two different administrations we found failures to ensure the safety or even keep track of these vulnerable children once they were handed off to sponsors as well as a fundamental refusal by agencies to accept that they were responsible for the welfare of these kids. that's the reality. our bipartisan investigations also found the office of refugee resettlement failed to exercise appropriate oversight at their facilities and wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on organizations, on contractors that could not acquire state licenses to safely open the planned shelter facilities. so as this administration attempts to process this influx of unaccompanied kids and safely get them to longer term housing solutions, it's urgent that they do due diligence on who is going to be looking after these children, not cutting corners as some reports are indicating. that means fingerprinting the sponsors. that means background checks. that means home visits. because the federal government cannot allow these kids to fall victim to human trafficking, to abuse, or other harm. i along with my bipartisan cosponsors will be reintroducing the responsibility for unaccompanied minors act again in the coming days to help ensure these requirements to protect our kids are met. here's the reality. once these children arrive at the border, they're -- there are no good options. the answer is to stop providing the incentives, the pull factor. that's the short-term impe imperative. we should not be encouraging these young people to make that arduous journey and ending them up in a detention facility that's wrong for them, a place where single males are crowded together but where kids are not taken care of and then when they've got to go to the h.h.s. facility, there's not enough room, again making the point 3,400 kids in detention, 2,800 kids are ready to be transferred to h.h.s. to a more appropriate facility, there's only 500 beds. they are kept in these overcrowded facilities meant for single males. it's not a good option. there is no good option. the option is to keep them from coming up to the border in the first place. yes, we can do more on the push factors also. that means investing in central america and other places to try to make those countries places where people would want to stay rather than come to the united states. but my colleagues, that's what's called a long-term solution. let's be frank. i'm for it. but we've got to recognize that's not a solution to the current crisis that we face. in the last five years we have spent $3.6 billion of u.s. taxpayer funds in aid for these northern triangle countries of guatemala, el salvador, honduras. president biden is proposing to spend another $4 billion in those countries. i support smart investments that don't get wasted because of corruption or other challenges, but it won't fix the crisis. this month, this year, or next year. the development of the northern triangle is a decades-long effort, one that we need to do. i urge the biden administration to also step up efforts to tie any aid to a better collaboration with our international partners, including the government, of mexico, guatemala, honduras and el salvador, to address this challenge, discourage migration and provide alternatives to those seeking to make the dangerous journey north. the trump administration, we had a valuable partner in mexico, as an example. they used tens of thousands of their own military to patrol their own southern border to ensure migrants could be processed if necessary and turned away if they didn't meet the requirements. that was very helpful. i'm concerned that these troops have now been pulled back. that's the information we're receiving. partly because as we're told, president biden is not encouraging the current mexican leadership to continue this practice. i hope that changes. the current surge in unaccompanied children at our border in the midst of a global pandemic is a situation where no one wins and the children lose the most. i'm disappointed that the biden administration chose to overturn the policies put in place by the trump administration to help control the flow of migrants during this pandemic without any viable alternatives and i'm concerned that leaders at key agencies involved in the response to this crisis are somehow seeing it in their interest to downplay the severity of the situation. i urge the biden administration to change course, put back in place smart policies that reduce the pull factors, and address the need for legal and orderly processes for migration. i yield the floor. mr. cornyn: before he leaves the floor, let me congratulate our colleague from ohio. that's perhaps the most concise and informative speech i've heard on that topic, including speeches that i've given on that topic. and representing a border state as i do and serving on the judiciary committee and the immigration subcommittee for my entire time here, the way he described it i thought was entirely accurate and i think you can call it a crisis, a challenge, whatever you want to call it, but it's getting worse all the time, and i think it will get much, much worse if we don't act and act together. so i thank him for his outstanding remarks. madam president, i've had the privilege of working alongside some truly incredible public servants throughout my career. without a doubt one of the finest is howard baldwin. howard was a brilliant, effective, humorous, and exceedingly humble, a rare combination made even more striking because of his kin kindness, but he's an extraordinary person. over the weekend i received the sad news that howard had passed away, and i want to shairp just a few -- share just a few words about the incredible life and legacy of my late friend. howard and i crossed paths as young lawyers in san antonio, texas, where we used to play a little pickup basketball together. he graduated from st. mary's school of law a few years before i did and much to the benefit of families across our state, he quickly found his calling working on child support and family issues. howard spent time as a private lawyer, as a state-appointed judge, and as a regional director for child support enforcement. he bounced back-and-forth between the texas attorney general's office and the texas department of protective and regulatory services, and his colleagues would joke, howard, how can we miss you if you won't stay gone? but a man as talented and devoted and as effective as howard is always in high demand. when i was elected as attorney general of texas in 1998, he was one of the first people i called. at the time the child support division of the attorney general's office was a disaster. staff were completely overwhelmed by the sky-high number of cases. the office ran a computer system that was so dysfunctional, it actually managed to decrease productivity. a understand a lack of support from previous -- and a lack of support from previous leadership made even minor improvements impossible. i knew turning things around wouldn't be easy, but it was absolutely essential that we do so and i knew that howard was the only man that i knew for that be jo. -- toker that job. a -- for that job. a news article summed up the task by saying, howard baldwin will look either like a fool or a hero, and there won't be much middle ground. today, with the benefit of hindsight, i can assure you that howard came out looking like a hero. unlike previous leaders of the child support division, howard didn't view it as purely an enforcement or collection agency. he truly cared about the children in family welfare and he wanted to help families get a place where both parents could be involved in their children's' lives. to better serve these families, he shifted our focus to customer service. he hired more staff, he brought the division into the technology age, and he empowered the incredible attorneys and staff we worked with to implement changes at every level to effect not only the quality of service but also the quality of outcomes. and the results speak for themselves. during my time as attorney general, the child support division collected more than $3 billion in child support for more than one million texas children. we broke records annually for the most child support ever collected in a year and the biggest year-to-year increases in collection. the texas child support division at the attorney general's office went from an unproductive mess to the premiere organization of its type in the country. we became a model for other states, and howard was the guy with all the answers. i had so much trust in howard and his ability to steer the ship that i later asked him to serve as my first assistant attorney general. this is the person who oversees the day-to-day operations of the ag's office which at the time employed more than 3,800 texans. howard used his deep-seeded knowledge of texas state government to improve the attorney general's office across the board. he built relationships with folks on both sides of the aisle. and when something needs to be done, all he had to do is pick up a phone and call a friend and colleague. he knew who to call, what to ask for and how to convince the biggest skeptic in the room to see things his way without ever breaking the smile on his face. i say this in all candor with the greatest admiration -- howard was the most effective bureaucrat i've ever met. as big an impact as howard had on my state, our state, his influence has reached beyond the borders of the lone star state. howard was an active member in the national child support enforcement association where he spent more than a decade as a board member and nearly two years as president. est earned the respect and admiration of folks across the country who shared his passion for helping children and helping families. when a friend and former colleague of howard's shared the news of his passing with his national network, the response was immediate and overwhelming. friends and colleagues from washington state, kentucky, and new york said that howard, the texas bureaucrat, was their mentor. for those who had the privilege of knowing howard, this wasn't a surprise. after all, howard had a wonderful way of advancing the careers of others around him. he wanted them to succeed as well. when their joint efforts were successful, he then made sure that they, not he, not the credit -- got the credit. he was generous with his time and knowledge, whether helping someone with an entry-level job or a division leader in another state. howard was consistently driven by his passion for helping children. more than two decades ago he said, itest goes -- it gets into your blood because it makes a difference in people's lives. and i can tell you that i've seen the ditches first"time" -- the difference firsthand time and time and time again. during my first term in the senate, i was traveling to el paso, texas, and i was about to get on my flight when a guy named joe -- i could see it on his uniform -- who was part of the ground crew there came up to me and said, are you jon cornyn? i said, yes, i am. and he asked, i bet you don't remember me, do you? well, as you can mealing, it caught me a little off guard, so i smiled and said, i'm sorry. can you remind me? he said, i'm joe. you sued me and threatened to put me in jail for not paying my child support. well, that's not the response i expected, but he said, you took me to court because i wasn't paying my child support, but i didn't want to pay it because my ex-wife wouldn't allow me to see my children. he was holding up the chalks that go under the wheels of the airplane to keep it from rolling. and at this point i was thinking, this guy is is going to take a swing at me -- or worse. he then surprised me again. he said, but you know what? after i started paying it, after you sued me, the judge ordered my ex-wife to let me spend time with our daughter, and i realized what kind of father i needed to be, what kind of man i needed to be, and i made things right. he raised his left hand and pointed at his wedding ring. he said, my wife and i got back together. well, i was in awe not only of joe but the power of people like howard baldwin and every one at the -- and everyone at the child support division trying to protect children and trying to restore families. i don't think any one of us could have expected to help reunite a divorced couple, but howard did everything in his power to help parents support their children, both financially and emotionally. -- to encourage positive outcomes. there's no way to quantify the amount of good howard did throughout his career and throughout his life. but i can say without a doubt, he changed lives -- many, many lives. howard's advocacy for children was his calling, but if there were no -- but there were no children he loved more than his two boys, james and eric. howard's family was his entire world, and his wife, rita, was at its center. throughout their 46-year marriage, rita wholeheartedly supported and encouraged howard. i know she was proud of him. so, madam president, on behalf of the state of texas, i want to thank the baldwin family for sharing their beloved patriarch with us for so many decades. i personally am grateful, profoundly grateful, for howard's friendship and his impact on my life and the great example of service that he set. sandy and i send our deepest condolences to rita, james, and eric, and the long list of friends across texas and the country who are mourning the loss of this incredible public servant. -- and friend. madam president, i yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from nevada is recognized. ms. rosen: thank you. madam president, i rise today to speak in support of an historic nomination of congresswoman deb deb haaland to serve as our nation's next secretary of the interior. this cabinet position is of great importance to our nation and especially to western states like mine, like ours, madam president, and i can't think of anyone more qualified to fill this position than congresswoman deb haaland, one of the first native american members of congress and a proven leader. let me start by telling you why this cabinet position means so much to nevada. in the silver state, over 50 million acres of land is managed by the interior department. that's over 70% of our entire state. people come to nevada from all over the world to experience our pristine and majestic public lands and monuments. these lands, they are not just a source of beauty. they're also a source of economic opportunity for nevada. and in previous administrations, we've seen efforts to put those public lands on the chopping blocks. but that won't happen under deb haaland's leadership. i've had the chance to speak with congresswoman had aland one on one, hear directly from here and get to know her. she spent her entire career fighting to protect public rands, waters, monuments, cultural sites and natural beauty around our nation and of course in our great state of nevada. and i know, if confirmed, she will work with me and senator cortez masto to strike the right balance between critical protections for our public lands, environment, and wildlife and the needed economic development across nevada. deb haaland, well, she's been committed to conservation as a member of congress, and she will be just as committed to conservation as our next interior secretary. congresswoman haaland, she will take the bold steps needed to confront climate change, and if this historic confirmation succeeds, she will bring new and needed perspective to the presidential cabinet, one that's been missing since the president's cabinet was formed all the way back in 1789. as secretary of the interior, deb haaland will be the first -- the first -- native american cabinet member, and she will give a voice to tribal communities in nevada and across our country. she will take steps to restore and respect tribal sovereignty. she'll continue to be an advocate and an ally to native communities. and she will help to restore the right to many historic wrongs -- she will help to right the many historic wrongs and injustices that have been committed against native americans and tribal communities. deb haaland, she is exceptionally qualified to lead this agency. she brings a breadth of experience and diversity to the table. she will be a positive force for good. she will guide our nation forward. i urge my colleagues to vote yes on deb haaland's nomination. thank you. i suggest the absence of a quorum -- i notice the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: quorum call: a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from utah is recognized. mr. lee: i ask unanimous consent to suspend the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. lee: madam president, i come to the senate floor today in recognition of an anniversary of sorts. my late father, rex lee, died 25 years ago today after an extended and heroic battle with cancer. i prefer to remember my dad not as someone who was ill but someone who was full of life and healthy for most of his life, in fact his entire life, even while battling with a significant illness. rex grew up in a small town of st. johns, arizona. it's a really, really small town. in fact, he used to joke that he may have been 21 years old before he realized that the true name of the town wasn't resume speed. it was a little dock along the highway in eastern arizona. it was a place he loved, and it was a place where he learned to love those dear to him and close to him. and a place where he was taught in school and in church and where he learned to serve his fellow beings. he attended brigham young university as a freshman in the fall of 1953 somewhat under protest. he wanted to attend the university of arizona like his cousins mo and stewart udall before him. his parents told him you can go wherever you want, but your first year needs to be spent at brigham young university in provo, utah. he went there and was immediately smitten with the place and commenced a relationship that would extend for the rest of his life and significantly impact his life in many, many ways. halfway through college, he left to serve a two and a half year mission for the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints in mexico. during that time, they say he became fluent in the spanish language and mexican culture would be an understatement. it was a fluency that never really left him. while i was a missionary many decades later, he used to write me letters in spanish, even after i had been speaking and studying the language for some time i knew i had to keep my spanish dictionary close to me when i read letters from my dad written in his adopted native tongue of spanish. while serving as a missionary there, he briefly met janet griffin, who he would later marry and who was my mother. janet was the daughter of an employee of the u.s. embassy, u.s. treasury attache in the mexican embassy. while they didn't interact much then, they reconnected when they were both back at brigham young university about six or eight months later. he wasn't exactly -- it wasn't exactly love at first sight for my mom but it was for my dad. they went on to have seven children together and i'm grateful they did. i'm the fourth of those seven. my dad ended up going to law school at the university of chicago. it turned out the law suited him well. he liked it and it liked him back. he finished first in his class at the university of chicago and clerked at the u.s. supreme court for justice white. shortly after that he joined the phoenix law firm of jennings, strauss and samon and represented clients big and small and corporate, mostly civil but also criminal cases. he loved the law. he loved the opportunity he had to represent clients. he loved the challenge that each case brought him. he loved the opportunity to digest large volumes of information and condense it down into a single legal brief and then into a single oral argument that he could present in court. his enthusiasm was so intense that once in a while a judge would pull him aside afterwards and ask him why he was so intense about the case. he would respond by saying, okay, i'll try to dial down the intensity next time. little by little he became more conversant in court, never to the point of being chatty or inappropriately familiar, but to the point where he felt he was able to have a conversation with the judge and able to communicate to the judge the facts and the law of a case in a simple way. as they were raising their seven children, there were a lot of things that were unexpected in life, including seven very loud, rambunctious children and including the fact that one day as he was practicing law in phoenix, he got a phone call informing him that brigham young university would be opening a law school and they wanted him to be its founding dean. that i was just a year old at te time. that's how my family ended up in utah. we ended up being connected to brigham young university basically for the rest of my life ever since then. my dad, in addition to serving as the dean of b.y.u.'s law school, served as the assistant attorney general during the ford administration over the civil division of the department of justice and during president reagan's first term served as solicitor general. this is when i had my first real exposure to the law. i found during that era of my dad's service that i could miss school once in a while if i asked my parents if i could just go with my dad to court. he would go into court. it felt a little bit like sitting in an extended session of church in a different language. it may not sound exciting, but i was impressed by the majesty of the whole event. as much as anything, i was impressed by how much my dad general -- genuinely loved being in court and making arguments. he had a way of making it fun. after serving as solicitor general of the united states, he went back to b.y.u. and resumed his teaching career while simultaneously continuing to argue cases in front of the supreme court as a private practice litigator. it was during that period of time in june of 1987 that my father, at the peak of physical condition and avid runner and marathoner, got the news he had nonhodgkin's t-cell lymphoma. a pretty deadly form of cancer. with a young family still at home, this hit us pretty hard. we were afraid that we were going to lose him. through the able help of some excellent doctors, and as a result of circumstances culminating in him receiving experimental treatment then going on at the national institutes of health, they were able to prolong his life and he lived nearly another nine years. they put him into remission within a few months, very nearly losing him in the process but then he came back. he had some of the best years of his life after that bout with cancer. it was just a couple of years after that he was asked to serve as president of brigham young university. i still remember, this happened shortly after i had been accepted as a freshman at b.y.u., just as i was graduating from law school. later that summer as i was preparing to enter as a frebman at b.y.u., i got a letter in the mail. it was signed by my dad. it was a letter that welcomed me to the university and then ended with the words, i look forward to meeting you at campus this fall. i put it on the refrigerator with a note, thaks for the personal -- thanks for the personal note. my dad had a great sense of humor and notwithstanding his love of law and professional accomplishments, at home he was just our dad and our friend. in fact, calling him just our dad doesn't even really do it justice. he was someone who had so much energy and enthusiasm for life. when we were little kids, he would come home from work. we played a great game. we called it run around dad. we didn't know that wasn't necessarily an entertaining game. we didn't know that it was that much fun for him, but we would run around him and he would figure out ways to trip us and it was hilarious every time it happened. my mom would watch patiently, and realized after four or five trips somebody was going to cry but it worked out okay. my dad taught us to work hard, he taught us to be kind to each other and towards others, and he did it not just through the profession of his faith with words, and he did that, of course, he was a devoutly faithful father and husband and he taught us to pray and to read and love the scriptures. but he also taught us though things through his very actions. i remember when i was a boy i decided i wanted to set up a small business enterprise shoveling driveways. and after a couple of particularly heavy snowstorms, i wasn't sure whether i could complete all of the jobs i had. he offered to be my indentured servant. i graciously offered to pay him. he said, no, this one is on me. you're not going to pay me. you get paid for the fact that i'm going to work for you. it was fantastic deal. it was one of the favorite memories of my life. he had a lot of other things to do but he chose to help me not just to teach me to work but also to spend time with me. and it was a lot of fun. he loved amusement parks. he loved roller coasters and he loved being really, really exceptionally, unusually, embarrassingly loud while going down said roller coasters. he loved the ride and every aspect of it even when he knew how it was going to end. as my brother tom once remarked, recalling a circumstance in which my brother tom had asked my dad for the name of a particular tool my dad was using while assembling a swingset. he said, dad, what is that. my dad looked at it and couldn't tell whether it was a wrench or something else. it was a specialized tool used only for a swing set. my dad said, i don't know what it's called, but when you need one of those, nothing else will do. tom later remarked, that same description can be used of my dad. there's not a single word you can place to describe him, but when you need one of him, nothing else will do. during most of the last six and a half years of his life, he was serving as president of b.y.u., he stayed exceptionally busy. even managed to argue a case or two in front of the supreme court even during the time he was at b.y.u. even though his cancer came back, it was in a slightly different form, slower growing, but less treatable. notwithstanding the pain he was enduring and the discomfort caused by the treatment, he never lost his optimism, his zeal for his work or his love for his family. it was such a blessing to all of us to watch him go through all of that. we didn't feel sorry for him as much as we should have, but part of the reason that we didn't feel as sorry for him was that -- unless you really paid attention, you couldn't tell he was in pain. he didn't complain about it. it certainly didn't slow him down, not at least until the very end. i will always remember, as if it were yesterday, the moment when i took him to the hospital for what i feared would be the last time and, indeed, it was. it was just a -- just a couple of weeks before his death, i was in my second year of law school and my mom and my wife let me know that things weren't going well and i needed to go and help my dad get to the hospital. as we were wheeling him into the hospital that day, i could hear him -- he was almost unconscientious once we got him into the hospital, they put an oxygen mask over him, his voice was muffled, but he was mumbling something and i listened closely and because i was a second-year law student i recognized some of the legal vernacular, and i learned because of some of the appellate briefs i read, he was waiting for what he hoped and expected and believed would be the next argument before the u.s. supreme court. and i thought, way to go. there to the bitter end he's ready for what's next. he's ready to stand for vindicating the interest of his client and for doing his job and doing it well. at no moment during any of this, notwithstanding his service in education and government and the practice of law and his extended church service as a lay minister in my faith, did i ever feel that we were neglected as a family. to be sure he, -- to be sure, he was gone ar fair amount of times, but when he was home, he was all in. he loved or at least -- if he didn't love it, he at least had us convinced he loved being at home and loved working with his kids, studying with them, helping them with their homework. when someone serves you that well, that faithfully, that consistently over that many years, it has an effect, and a very positive one. to this day i still from time to time hear his words echoing in my head, reminding me to do things as best as i possibly can do them, reminding me as a lawyer when you're in court, when you've won your court and you know you've won it, sit down and don't say another word, reminding me when you've got a choice between a 10-cent word and $3 word, choose the 10-cent word every time if it will do the job, be kind to others and you will never regret doing so, reminding me to give others the benefit of the doubt. those are things that stick with all of us. so i know i speak certainly for myself and for my siblings, diana, tom, wendy, stephanie, melissa, christie, and my mom janet, that we miss him. in the state of utah, the western united states, and the united states of america is a better place because of the fact that he was here. i'll never forget on the morning of march 11, 1996, again at exactly 25 years ago today, i saw the sun rising over the wassatch mountains to our east in provo, utah, it was at that moment that it would likely be the last time the sun would rise with my father on the earth. the sun has risen and set on that same mountain range many, many thousands of times since then. we remain better off for the fact that he was here. if he were here, i would tell him, i miss you, dad. i love you and i thank you. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: quorum call: mr. schumer: madam president. the presiding officer: majority leader. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent that the -- i ask unanimous consent the quorum be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: now, madam leader, i -- madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to legislative session and be in a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of senate resolution 108 which was submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 108 to make technical corrections to the amendments made by senate resolution 30, 117th congress to senate resolution 458, 98th congress and for other purposes. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. schumer: i ask -- i further ask the resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: madam president, i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to consideration of senate resolution 106 submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 106 recognizing girl scouts of the united states of america on its 109th birthday and so forth. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the judiciary committee be discharged from further consideration and the senate now proceed to senate resolution 96. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 96, designating march 8 through march 14, 2021, as women of the aviation workforce week. the presiding officer: without objection, the committee is discharged and the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. schumer: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the rosen amendment at the desk to the preamble be considered and agreed to, the preamble be amended be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: madam president, i have seven requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the approval of the majority and minority leaders. the presiding officer: duly noted. mr. schumer: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the appointments at the desk appear separately in the record as if made by the chair. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 3:00 p.m. monday, march is a. following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed. further, that following morning business, the senate proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the haaland nomination with all postcloture time expiring at 5:30 p.m. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: now, at 5:30 p.m., there will be a roll call vote on the confirmation of the haaland nomination to be secretary of the interior. as a reminder, cloture was filed today on the guzman nomination and on the tai nomination. if there is no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until senate stands adjourned until tonight the u.s. senate today the biden administration and lawmakers to begin debate on nomination to be the health and service secretary while they voted to limit debate develop mexico, solomon. [inaudible]. to be interior and more lives senate coverage lawmakers return pretty on "c-span2". be with us tonight president biden speaks to the nation and his primetime address the one-year anniversary of the coronavirus pandemic. i coverage starting in a pan money spent on c-span and also watch on line as he spend org, artisan with free c-span radio app. book tv on "c-span2", top nonfiction books and authors every weekend, sunday night at 9:00 p.m. eastern, on afterwards, claremont reveal a books editor charles cussler talks about his book crisis of the two constitutions. the rise decline in recovery of american greatness. is interviewed by author and george mason law professor. and then at 10:00 o'clock, author journalist and biographer walter isaacson, looks at the developer of the crisper method for genome entity in his book, the code breaker, jennifer and the future of the human race. and then 115, in her book, the daughters, journalist gail - a group of female warriors who are fighting and winning against isis and state and syria party to watch book this weekend, on "c-span2". you are watching c-span to your unfiltered view of government predict he spent it was created by vargas cable television company and today brought to you by the television company to provide "c-span2" to viewers is a public service. we joined now by the chair of the veterans affair committee, california democrat, commerce been huge $1.9 trillion bill that passed congress yesterday. what is in this bill specifically for veterans printed. >> the $17 billion that is carved out for veterans, is to

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