Voting for the former president. And they New York Times said in 2020, 95 of black women and 87 of black men voted for mr. Biden, we will leave this here to take you live now to the u. S. Senate where today lawmakers will be voting on the confirmation of a u. S. Circuit court judge. Live coverage and out of the senate here on cspan2. The presiding officer the senate will come to order. The chaplain dr. Barry black will lead the senate in prayer. The chaplain let us pray. Eternal savior, we need you every hour of every day. We not only need you during crisis moments, but also in the solitary moments of daily living. Our lawmakers need you. As they open their hearts to you, fill them with power for todays tasks. Lord, show them your will for our times, and give them the wisdom to say, speak lord, for we are listening. May the inspiration they receive from you keep their hearts pure, their minds clear, their words true, and their deeds compassionate. And lord, we pray for the iranian people who mourn the death of their president. We pray in your loving name. Amen. The presiding officer please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. 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 presiding officer the clerk will read a communication to the senate. The clerk washington d. C. , may 20, 2024. To the senate under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable tammy duckworth, a senator from the state of illinois, to perform the duties of the chair. Signed patty murray, president pro tempore. The presiding officer under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. Morning business is closed. Under the previous order, the senate will proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the following nomination which the clerk will report. The clerk nomination, the judiciary, krissa m. Lanham of arizona to be United States district judge for the district of arizona. A serious conversation about the border. Democrat senator netiquette money deposit senator Kyrsten Sinema arizona and conservative center. We voice of the problem a serious in reference to National Security, economy spiraling out of control. The highest mother in the history of our country in December Chris the highest number with the largest date of illegal crossings in the history of our country. We sat down with a serious conversation is that we have differences on how to resolve is what we want to fix this so we spent months trying to them out a resolution. We hope to get to a conclusion but we failed to do that. It didnt have everything i wanted and it but it did have essentials to change the way you do asylum in the processing and bitterly took it from the very first person across the border each day would be detained, quickly streamed and deported. The very first person. A lot of caravan of up to 5000 a day, we cant control so in that situation instead of detaining, quickly screaming and deporting, we would just detain it deport. We were going to turn people around. It changed the structure dramatically from what was happening on the border. I felt like this was a good bill to move forward but its well known here something my own party beside this is not the time to resolve us. It is what it is. The political nature of whats going on right now. I understand that the problem is unresolved. Estimate 5500 people illegally crossing the border yesterday. Yesterday. Last month we had 174,000 people illegally crossed our border last month that would happen the highest ever in about 20 years if it wasnt for the last three years of the Biden Administration, higher than any month under president obama and bush and President Trump but it doesnt be directed in the previous months before. Dramatic change in policy. A Million People crossing the border fiscal year. They continued to come across our border emphasis a serious issue in my own party i said this is not the time to do that. And say lets do a political thing on the other side of the aisle. If we focus, lets sit down like adults in figure out how we resolve us together. With the messaging piece, why are we doing this . Everybody sees this is audible but everyone sees, why dont expect is that . Theres a couple things off, lately, put out a memo saying the script on his republican opponent leslie claiming her as on sears about Border Security into an advantage of democrats should learn the lesson quite simply, we risk losing the 2024 election if we do not see this opportunity to go on offense on the issue entering the table on publicans and feelings about. Saying its a winner republicans abandon us last minute. Everybody in america is happening on the border thing and needs to be fixed. The white house is proactively done but changed how order was enforced on the President Trump and under president obama. We had 500 people. The border would be very different. Everybody sees that. It has to be done and congress and but we have to take. Lets sit down and figure out how we will resolve it. It is doing nothing. It attacks a Law Enforcement officer level federal trouble wherever it may be attacks along officer, they will. Coming to the senate . Probably not. In a bipartisan way back to the house yesterday and to the provoked on the house bill passed hr to the company has a built in Border Security and past the house and came to the senate, to boats and failed both times. Republicans cannot think democrats take our bill and democrats looks like youll things up. The 5500 people across the border yesterday, i havent seen the number yet similar to other days several dozen were designated by the department of Homeland Security and special throughout the border as a potential National Security risk and released into the country awaiting a hearing. As a large percentage of the people crossing the border everyday not from the western hemisphere. There from pakistan, india, china, russia in areas where we know theres a good terrorist cells we dont know this person. Because we dont have derogatory information, they are released everyday. Been ringing for months now. Immigration issue is not the same as what was two years ago. Crossing the border, we are not this seriously. This is a National Security risk and we need to be attentive to who is crossing our border of ascorbic and taking it seriously. This body knows full well i am not and immigration, we are a nation of all over the world and wishes that. A Million People eager to become citizens of our country. Without one and a half Million People illegally crossing to our country. We were vetted and went through the process and they are being welcomed. The million and a half others, we have no idea. It actually does. Press conferences take one person passing law 60. That means we have to sit down together we have to figure out how look at that and we are doing it. A rebranding and Homeland Security of hsi. Mr. Mcconnell madam president. The presiding officer the republican leader. Mr. Mcconnell last night, iran confirmed that its president and foreign minister died in a helicopter crash. The condolences from sympathetic regimes were swift. The prc declared that the Chinese People had lost a good fr friend. The kremlin mourned a reliable partner. And Prime Minister orban of hungary, whose government has pursued deeper trade relations with tehran, in spite of western sanctions, offered his thoughts and prayers. Well, i too would like to extend my condolences to the people of iran for their long suffering under the brutal, theocratic rule of the Islamic Republic. I suspect a great many iranians would rather western admirers stop lionizing a man known as the butcher of tehran for executing political prisoners. They might prefer that the foreign leaders not further legitimize the regime that actively represses all of them. In the meantime, conjecture about key players in the chain of succession and the relative strength of reform and hardline elements has already begun in earnest. To focus on this sort of speculation is to miss something more fundamental about the regime in tehran. Something i warned the Biden Administration about when president raisi was installed through a customary sham election three years ago. We should remember the president of iran is just a figurehead. The real power rests with the apply named Supreme Leader and the state institutions he controls. Supposed reformers and moderates, along with hardliners, have come and gone from irans presidency without fundamentally changing how tehran operates at home or abroad. Meanwhile, the regimes revolutionary orthodoxy has endured for decades, preserved by the clerical establishment and the irgc. Irans leaders, its diplomats, and its enablers abroad can say anything they want about the regimes character and outlook, but actions speak far louder than words, and for years tehran has moved steadily in just one direction towards more terrorist violence abroad and more repression at home. And no matter who irans president has been, the regime in tehran has continued to engage in rampant proliferation of ballistic missiles, crews missiles, and uavs, while making steady progress toward Nuclear Weapons capability. So, id also like to extend my condolences to irans neighbors, who still live under the constant threat of a regime that practices what it preaches death to israel, death to america, war on International Commerce, and chaos across the middle east. The untimely death of the president of iran does not change the underlying threats this regime poses to its own citizens, to its region, and to the free world. These threats continue to demand our collective attention. On a related matter, since the immediate aftermath of october 7, israel, her allies, and jewish people around the world have faced pernicious efforts to equate a sovereign nations selfdefense with barbaric acts of terrorism. Weve seen it in the specious media tropes about, quote, cycles of violence, end quote, in university statements bemoaning israels selfdefense actions, and in our own elected leaders attempts to browbeat israels Coalition Government for seeking to restore its peoples security. But today, the most noxious attempt at moral equivalence comes from unelected International Bureaucrats bra brandishing a contrived and perverted authority. In the same breath the selfaggrandizing prosecutor of the International Criminal court applied for arrest warrants, arrest warrants for both hamas chief terrorists and israels duly elected Prime Minister. Its a damning development, but not for the supposed subjects of the application. The icc has succeeded only in discrediting itself even further as a rogue Kangaroo Court utterly untethered to morality or justice. But those of us whove long rejected this International Farce of a court and its efforts to gobble up jurisdiction, this fact was hardly news. Ive refused to acknowledge any icc authority to conduct politicized investigations of american servicemembers as it has tried illegitimately to do literally for years. And weeks ago, several of our colleagues and i warned the institution specifically against lighting any last shred of credibility on fire in an attempt to equate, equate hamas calculated cruelty with israels right to selfdefense. Putting its arrogance on full display, the judicial junta in the hague responded by claiming that holding it accountable for this power grab would somehow violate international law. Unfortunately, there are still plenty here in the senate and in the administration who need reality to be spelled out more clearly. This isnt about Prime Minister netanyahu. It isnt about socalled international law. In fact, the leader of israels opposition condemned the icc decision as a complete moral fai failure. But too Many Senate Democrats require frequent reminders of how israels National UnityGovernment Works and what the israeli people expected of it. Even as glaring served exposed the moral rot and terrorist complicit of another International Organization, unrwa, the Biden Administration was reluctant to ignore its loud base of campus radicals and end u. S. Funding. Well, todays news lays down another gauntlet. Its time for the president and other western leaders to findly pick it up to finely pick it up, support israels right to defend itself against terrorist savages, reject the fiction that unaccountable bureaucrats in the hague have any power over a sovereign nation that isnt a signatory to its authority. Commit to imposing significant costs on the court and its agents if it pursues shameful and baseless charges against is israel, and choose, choose once and for all between actual justice and the rule of the loud campus mob. Mr. Durbin madam president. From illinois. The presiding officer the senior senator from illinois. Mr. Durbin thank you, madam president. Madam president , tomorrow, the Senate Judiciary committee, which i chair, will hold a hearing on competition in the Prescription Drug market and its impact on the prices that americans pay for medication. Patients in the United States pay the highest Prescription Drug prices in the world, nearly three times what people in other developed countries pay for common medications, and sometimes for exactly the same drug as prescribed in america. Take a wellknown name, jardiance, a diabetes treatment. You can almost hear the young lady singing the song, cant you . It retails for 700 a month in the United States. Do you know what the exact same drug, made by the same company in the same place goes for in canada . 150. 700 for american citizens, 150 for canadians, for exactly the same drug. Whats the difference . The difference is the canadian government cares and the canadian government started acting, years ago, to protect the consumers in their country. The average new cancer drug entering the market last year had an annual list price of more than 200,000. And the prices keep going up. In 2022, drug manufacturers raised prices on more than 1200 medications by an average, an average of 32 , four times the rate of inflation. For patients already facing a gutwrenching diagnosis, the last thing they should have to worry about is whether they can afford lifesaving treatment. Yet 20 of seniors report that skyhigh costs of their medication forces them to skip doses or cut pills. No drug is more representative of this problem than insulin, the or death drug for those with diabetes. You know when it was discovered . A hundred years ago, by americans . Not this time. Canadian inventors, not only found this new lifesaving drug, they surrendered their patent rights, the rights to control it and the rights to receive profit from it, for 1. Why . They said a lifeanddeath drug should not be bargained. When eli lilly launched itsing insulin product in 1999, a vial cost a modest 21. Over the next 20 years the Company Raised its price more than two dozen times to more than 330 for a vial. Thankfully President Biden and democrats in congress capped the price of insulin at 35 a month under medicare and the Inflation Reduction Act. It is unfortunate, impossible to explain, not a single republican joined us in voting for this historic legislation to cap the price of insulin at 35 a month for medicare. And eight pharmaceutical companies raced to federal courthouses in hopes of stopping another component of that bill which enables medicare to negotiate for lower drug costs. Big pharma participates in the Veterans Health administration, which has the authority to bargain for lower costs for our veterans, thank goodness. Theyve had that authority for decades. Yet weve heard cries of price controls and socialism from big pharma. Last fall President Biden announced the first ten drugs that would see Price Reductions from these negotiations. These drugs cost the Medicare Program more than 50 billion last year alone. When the president announced his list, im sure Many Americans already recognized the names of all ten popular drugs. Why would we recognize them . Because theyre the most heavily advertised drugs on television. Heres a trivia question he with a want to take to the next party he attend. How many countries on earth make it legal to advertise Prescription Drugs . Two. We know one its the United States. Anybody know the other one . New zealand. The United States and new zealand are the only countries in the world where you can legally advertise Prescription Drugs. Americans see an average of nine drug ads on television every single day. By filling the airwaves with these ads, big pharma is in