Volume 166, No. 107 covering the 2nd Session of the 116th Congress (2019 - 2020) was published by the Congressional Record.
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“TAXPAYER FIRST ACT OF 2019--Continued” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the Senate section on pages S2861-S2872 on June 10, 2020.
The Department provides billions in unemployment insurance, which peaked around 2011 though spending had declined before the pandemic. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, claimed the Department funds "ineffective and duplicative services" and overregulates the workplace.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TAXPAYER FIRST ACT OF 2019--Continued
Justice in Policing Act
Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, something is happening in America. People across our country and in my home State of Michigan are coming together for the cause of racial justice in a way that we have not really experienced in a generation.
From Holland, to Bad Axe, to Marquette, to Detroit, people of all ages and faiths and backgrounds have been marching together, singing together, praying together, and kneeling together. In one voice, people are demanding change, imploring our Nation to finally be that place where all men and women are truly created equal. Unfortunately, we know that, far too often throughout our history and even today, our Nation has failed to live up to our highest ideals.
Eight minutes forty-six seconds--that is how long a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on the neck of George Floyd, an unarmed, handcuffed Black man lying on the pavement. For 8 minutes 46 seconds, George Floyd pleaded for his life. He said, ``I can't breathe.'' He cried out for his mother. He suffered. Then he was silent.
Millions of Americans watched the video in shock and horror. Why didn't the officer just lift his knee off of Mr. Floyd's neck? Why didn't he just lift his knee up for just a minute--just lift it up? Why didn't one--just one--of the other officers push his knee off of Mr. Floyd's neck?
What is happening in America that someone--let alone police officers--thought this was OK? Of course, we know it was not OK. It was not OK. It was a crime. It was murder.
Watching those images has awakened something deep in the souls of Americans across the country. We know that racial disparities in every part of our society--from healthcare, to housing, to jobs, to education, to the air we breathe and the water we drink--have existed in our country since its very beginning. We have known for a long time that experiences with the police are different for Black Americans than for White Americans. Yet, despite all of the other times, this time--
this time--there the violence was, right in front of us, in a way that people have decided cannot and will not be ignored.
There is much to do. For each of us, we have a personal journey--a personal journey to take concerning our own behavior with one another, and then we have a public journey to take together, to change laws and policies and work together toward the day when what happened in Minneapolis and across our country never happens again. That is the goal of the Justice in Policing Act. I am honored to cosponsor it, and I want to thank my friends Senator Booker and Senator Harris for leading us in this introduction.
The Justice in Policing Act takes important steps to improve transparency by collecting better and more accurate data on police misconduct and the use of force. This will help ensure that problem officers aren't simply getting a job with a police department in another city or State to avoid being held accountable for their previous actions.
The legislation improves police training and practices by ending racial and religious profiling, requiring officers to receive training on racial biases, banning no-knock warrants in drug cases, limiting the transfer of military-grade equipment to police departments, and banning chokeholds like the one that ended George Floyd's life. It finally makes lynching a Federal crime--something that I would have thought we would have done a generation ago. It makes important changes within our criminal justice system to hold police officers and departments accountable for their actions.
This legislation is not about defunding the police. It is not about defunding law enforcement. It is about funding the right kind of law enforcement, the kind of law enforcement that protects all of our neighborhoods and the people who live in them; the kind of law enforcement that officers I know in Michigan--including in my own family, across Michigan--do every day; the kind of law enforcement I know the majority of police officers believe in.
In short, this legislation is about treating people as professionals, with high standards, and expecting them to meet those standards. In any professional setting, including law enforcement, we should expect high standards and accountability for meeting those standards. We have a right to expect the best from our police officers.
Firing dozens of bullets into a Louisville apartment under a no-knock warrant, killing a 26-year-old emergency medical technician and aspiring nurse who grew up in Michigan, did not meet the high standards we have a right to expect. Breonna Taylor deserved the best from our police. She did not get it.
Shoving a 75-year-old man at a protest in Buffalo hard enough that his head cracked open while hitting the ground, creating a pool of blood, and then watching officer after officer walking past him without offering any help does not reflect the high standards we have a right to expect. Martin Gugino deserved the best from our police, and he did not get it.
Kneeling on the neck of a man who is lying on the ground for 8 minutes 46 seconds, as he cries out for his mother and the life leaves his body, is not meeting the high standards he had the right to expect. George Floyd deserved the best from our police. He did not receive it.
The U.S. Senate needs to pass the Justice in Policing Act now. I would love it if there was strong bipartisan support. Wouldn't that send a wonderful message across our country if we could do that?
However, holding law enforcement to high professional standards is only the first step in becoming the Nation we all want to be. Racism has been with us since slaves were brought on ships to this country. It is an immoral thread that is woven deep in the fabric of our Nation's history.
It is simply not enough to end racial inequalities in policing because the inequalities in our society don't end there. The pandemic has shone a brutal light on this truth.
Our Democratic caucus released a report on April 30 that showed that Black Americans are more than twice as likely as White Americans to die from COVID-19, and in some communities, this disparity is even greater. In Michigan, 14 percent of our citizens are African Americans. Yet African Americans make up 41 percent--41 percent--of the deaths from COVID-19. It is not hard to see why, if you look. Because of generations of structural racism, Black Americans are less likely to have health insurance, more likely to have preexisting health conditions and higher risks for Black moms during labor and delivery, more likely to be exposed to air pollution because of where they live, and less likely to live in housing where social distancing is even possible.
Black families also face challenges in accessing healthy food. While around 12 percent of American families overall are food secure, we know that more than 22 percent of African-American families are food insecure--more than one out of every five families.
At the same time, in this health crisis Black Americans are more likely to be the ones working on the frontlines--these are the frontline jobs that can't be done at home--even though their children are home from school or childcare because they have had to close. They have more costs, but they are on the frontlines, and they are the ones still working. In fact, 41 percent of our essential workers are people of color. The majority are women. That is exposing them to both COVID-19 and now layoffs.
While more than 12 percent of White Americans are out of work, nearly 17 percent of Black Americans have lost their jobs so far. No single piece of legislation, no matter how good, is going to solve these systemic issues all at once. We know that, but our continuing actions can do that, if we are aware and our eyes are open and we are paying attention and we are doing the best we can on everything that we do.
That is why we need to pass the Heroes Act, passed by the House, as soon as possible. It has been weeks now since the House took action, and it is critically important that we get that done. This bill gives premium pay to our frontline workers, so we are not just applauding them. That does not pay for their childcare while they are working or for food or for keeping a roof over their own heads. We need to provide hazard pay, premium pay, for the people who are working when we have the luxury of working at home. The House bill extends unemployment benefits that are critical, strengthens emergency paid leave, and offers food and rent and mortgage assistance to families who need it.
That is why it is so important to pay attention every time legislation comes to the floor and that we evaluate through the lens of how this affects everyone. How does this affect the poor? How does this affect communities of color? Are we doing everything we can to make sure we are not adding to the racial disparities or economic disparities that have lived with us for way too long?
Senate Democrats, looking at every piece of legislation, paid attention on the Paycheck Protection Act, and we were successful in amending it to ensure that minority-owned businesses and underserved communities would receive the same business help and the same access to capital as majority-White businesses.
It was a real fight to get that done. It was a struggle. It should not have been. When people say racial disparities are in the past, I say it is right here, right now. When we look at moving forward on legislation, we need to see who is helped, who is impacted, is it fair, and does everybody have a fair shot?
Today, once again, we see in Georgia why it is outrageous that Mitch McConnell has been blocking a vote on the Voting Rights Advancement Act that the House passed 187 days ago. It was 187 days ago that they passed a bill to restore the Voting Rights Act, with no action here in the Senate. This needs to be passed immediately. It is another piece of what is happening in terms of the racial inequality in this country.
Racial disparities are not in the past. Racism is not in the past. We are seeing it every day right in front of our eyes. Now is the time to keep our eyes open. Now is the time to lift America up to the best we can be. We need to pass the Justice in Policing Act, and we need to pass the Heroes Act to put people ahead of profits in this pandemic and close the gaps in investments in our communities that have created the racial disparities we see today in every part of our society and in every community, and we need to pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act right now. That would be a great thing to get done this week.
There is not much happening on the Senate floor right now. It would be great if we could come together and all stand behind something as basic as making sure that everybody fully has the right to vote in this country.
One of George Floyd's high school friends, Jonathan Veal, remembered that on their last day of 11th grade, George turned to him and said:
``I want to touch the world.''
George Floyd has touched the world. He has touched the hearts of people around the world. His horrific murder has inspired a worldwide movement against systemic racism and police brutality. I know that is cold comfort for his family and his friends who are missing him so much.
It is time for us--all of us--to set high standards for law enforcement and the quality of life we want for all of our families. It is time to hold each other accountable to live up to our highest and best ideals as Americans. George's last breath cannot be the last word.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma
H.R. 1957
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, the Federal Government currently owns about 640 million acres of land in the United States, which means 640 million acres is owned by the American people, and that is about 28 percent of all the land mass of the United States. If you round the number up, let's say, a quarter of all the property in the United States is owned by the Federal taxpayers. When you can break that down, people immediately think it is all the National Park Service. Actually, the National Park Service is a small amount of that.
The Bureau of Land Management holds about 244 million acres, followed by the U.S. Forest Service with 192 million acres, Fish and Wildlife Service with 89 million acres, and then the National Park Service right at 80 million acres. The Department of Defense and some other agencies hold another 34 million acres. All together, there are 640 million acres and growing.
This doesn't even account for all of the land that is controlled by the Federal Government. That is the amount just owned by the Federal Government. That 28 percent of all the property in the United States that is owned by the Federal Government doesn't take into account the 27 million-plus acres that are also controlled by the Federal Government. Those are areas where they do conservation mitigation. Those are areas where they have land in trust for other aspects.
All told, around 30 percent of the United States is owned or controlled by the Federal taxpayer, by the Federal Government. That would all be fine and good if we were managing it well, but we are not. On those properties right now, we have almost $20 billion in deferred maintenance backlog. That is almost $20 billion just in things that haven't been done and where the Federal Government has proved to be a bad land manager.
There is a bill that is coming this week. It is on the floor now being debated. The conversation is about this: How do we get better at maintaining the land that we have and how can we actually purchase additional property?
There is something that has been around a long time called the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The Land and Water Conservation Fund has dollars set aside from offshore oil revenue to be able to purchase areas of property. That has happened for decades now. The problem is we haven't maintained that. Even with the property that we buy that has maintenance issues, we don't fix the maintenance issues when we purchase the property.
The proposal on the table this week is to double the amount of land acquisitions that we have and to be able to solve the maintenance issue that we have had for a long time. This conversation about the backlog and maintenance has been an ongoing issue. There is finally a resolution to it.
Here is the resolution. After years and years of debating a resolution about how to reduce spending in one area so we can make sure we can do the maintenance we need to do, the final decision was made to be able to put a bill together that just says: Forget it; let's just all add it to debt. Let's just completely do debt purchasing of all of our maintenance stuff. We will figure out some decades in the future how to be able to pay for that, rather than discerning how to pay for it now because there is not an offset on how to be able to pay for the maintenance.
The maintenance needs to be done. It is not a shock to anyone. I brought proposals to this years ago, saying: Why don't we split the dollars we have in the land and Water Conservation Fund, use half of those dollars to purchase new properties and half of it just to be able to work on maintenance?
That was denied. They said: No, that is an irrational approach. We want to buy more land and figure out later how to maintain it.
We are at that point where we have to figure out how to maintain it because an almost $20 billion backlog in maintenance is rising up and screaming at us all over the country. Instead of actually deciding how we are going to do it, this is a punt saying we will figure it out later.
Here is the fiscally responsible portion of it. We are not going to do this forever just to work on maintenance backlog. This is just for the next 5 years that we will have additional debt. Every single year we will spend about $2 billion, all in debt money, to be able to do this, and then we will figure out in the sixth year how to be able to take care of the rest. The fiscally responsible portion of this is to say we are not doing infinite amounts of debt. It will just be the next 5 years.
The problem is that in the sixth year we will still have a maintenance backlog. We will still have issues, and there is still not a plan to pay for the first $20 billion for what is still coming.
My challenge is figuring out what we can do with a bill that we need to fix. We need to be better managers of our land, but we are managing our land by not managing our debt and not making the hard decisions that people have to make. At your home, you can't just say: Everything needs to be fixed, but I can't afford it; so I will take out more debt, and I will fix everything.
We have to make decisions on what is going to have to wait so we can do this because it is more important. That is the kind of thing I would like to be able to see with this.
Let me run through basic ideas. They are all amendments that were already brought up that say: Here are logical ways to be able to fix this, beginning with the most basic of them. Take part of the money that already exists for the Land and Water Conservation Fund to purchase new land, and then split it, saying we are going to dedicate dollars to maintenance and also have dollars to buy new properties. We will not be able to buy as many as fast as we want. We will not be able to fix as many things as we want, but we are not adding additional debt spending to do it. These are the same decisions that families make all the time. I would love to have the nicer car. I can have the nicer car if I just save up for several years to get it.
That is one recommendation.
There is a second recommendation to this. There is a portion of this that gets into the budget scheming of everything that goes on. Part of what is happening to the Land and Water Conservation Fund is moving it--brace yourself from budget gimmicks here--to what is called appropriated dollars that we vote on every year to mandatory dollars you only vote on once and every year it keeps going. Think of it like Social Security. Social Security was voted on a long time ago and keeps going year after year. We don't vote on it each year. It happens because it is mandatory.
The idea in this bill was to move the spending from being appropriated each year like we do with the Department of Defense or Department of Education or Health and Human Services, to take it out of that area and move it toward mandatory. Then they still left the funds over in the appropriated side and said: We are also going to spend those dollars as well.
The gimmick that this sets up is it allows those funds that were spent last year to be spent on the mandatory side this year and leaves a big hole on the normal side that will just plus-up to spend for other things.
My second idea is this: If we will not split the dollars we normally use for half of the purchase and half to maintain, at least dedicate the dollars that were left and aren't spent on something else and spend those on maintenance, because then we will only have half a billion dollars of new deficit rather than what this does at $2.5 billion of new deficit spending.
The first challenge is to split it.
The second challenge is take the dollars that were ``left over'' in appropriated dollars and just dedicate that to only doing the maintenance funds that need to be done.
The third idea is pretty simple, as well. This has a 5-year tail on it on the maintenance, at about $2 billion a year of additional debt spending. I would just say that if we are only going to do maintenance for 5 years, we should only do the purchasing, which is the big chunk of this, for 5 years, as well, so that we sunset both of them. We are not going to have this big plus-up and more and more purchasing at the same time we have no plan to maintain it long term. As long as we are going to maintain it, we will also do purchasing. Just sunset it. That seems common sense as well.
Here is a fourth idea. When you purchase new properties, make sure that with the dollars that are used to purchase it, there are also dollars set aside to fix what is broken on it.
We often find that when people want to sell property to the Federal Government, it is because there are major problems on the land already, and they can't get another private seller. So they want to sell it to the Federal taxpayer, knowing there are problems in infrastructure on that property.
We buy property with major maintenance needs already on it, and it just backs up our backlog of maintenance even more. Put a requirement in that says when we buy property, part of the purchase of it is also setting aside dollars for maintenance, so we have to fix it right then, rather than add it to the backlog of maintenance issues. That makes common sense.
That also is not getting a hearing right now. I think that is a problem. There are commonsense things that don't drive us further into debt, that aren't going to cause years and years of problems in our budget, that maintain the properties that we have--maybe not as fast as we want to, but its starts getting after our backlog of maintenance--
that continue to allow us to purchase new properties, but to make sure that we are actually managing the properties that we purchase.
It is a frustration for me that we are not having amendments in this process, that we are not having the opportunity to be able to fix some of the things that are wrong with this bill--because we do need to have Federal lands, we do need to maintain the lands that we have, but we do need to honor our budgets for the future, as well.
Why would we say we really need to maintain all of this and purchase this, but we don't have a plan for how to do it now and so we will just wait 6 years? We will have 5 years of debt spending, and then we will somehow figure it out 6 years from now.
Five years ago we were talking about this very same issue. We haven't come up with an answer in the past 5 years because no one has been willing to say we have to do less so we can take responsibility for what we have. We just want to do more and not have the accountability. So from 5 years ago to 5 years later now, to 5 years from now, when this bill ``expires,'' we will still have maintenance issues.
We need to start making hard decisions. Some of those hard decisions deal with the budget and making choices and saying that there aren't any options to instead saying: There are options that I may not like as well as the ``just do everything all at once'' option.
But there are options on how to do this, and we should have this debate to be able to figure out how to manage these dollars better. Maybe we will 5 years from now.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
Unanimous Consent Request
Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, a free society depends on the rule of law, which is the foundation for public order and peace. Police are the indispensable guardians of that law. We rightfully honor them for the risks they assume every morning when they put on the badge and sometimes the bulletproof vest, knowing they may not come home at night to take them off.
But the police have a sworn duty to wield their power with justice. They take an oath never to betray their character or the public trust. They must hold themselves to the highest standard and overwhelmingly do so.
But in the cases when they do not, the consequences can be devastating. What happened last week to George Floyd in Minnesota was horrific. He was killed by police officers--dying at the hands of men who pledged to protect and serve their communities.
I am glad that justice appears to be moving swiftly in George Floyd's case. The officers who participated have been terminated from the department, and the criminal process is well underway.
But this is little consolation to many Americans, including many Black Americans, who feel they have experienced unjust, unequal interactions with law enforcement. Many have protested peacefully for change in the finest tradition of our country. And in sharp contrast to the rioters and looters, who have exploited this tragedy for their own purposes, we must now seek to reveal national unity from the wreckage of broken trust and broken glass on our streets. To do this, we will need to be guided by our Nation's noblest principles, while rejecting the anti-
American suggestions of radicals who want a revolution.
Every American deserves to be treated equally by their government, as guaranteed by our Constitution and our country's most fundamental principle that all men are created equal. There is no greater bulwark to tyranny and injustice than that old, simple proposition. But we must reject efforts to scapegoat and demonize all police for the actions of a few, and we must reject radical proposals to dismantle and defund police departments, as some have suggested.
These proposals are offered in the spirit of revenge that would lead only to more crime, more lives lost, and more sorrow. The communities that would be hit the hardest by the disappearance of police would be the most disadvantaged. When police are understaffed and undertrained, there is greater risk of mistakes and misconduct, not to mention higher rates of crime.
By contrast, a well-staffed, well-trained, and well-respected force is a blessing to its community and a scourge to criminals who threaten it. Defunding the police would be deadly. It isn't a solution but an insult to good officers, and a threat to law-abiding citizens.
Americans are not blind to injustice. We all understand the hard work that is needed to repair trust in this country, but defunding the police is not the answer. We need the rule of law and equal just under law. We need them both.
I urge my colleagues to join with us in passing this resolution, which calls for justice for George Floyd and other victims of excessive use of force, while also honoring the law enforcement officers who keep us safe.
Therefore, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of a resolution that is at the desk, calling for justice for George Floyd and opposing calls to defund the police. I further ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. SCHUMER. Reserving the right to object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader is recognized.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, there are millions of people in America marching in the streets to reform our police practices, to ask for equality, to ask for racial justice.
We have seen in the savage death of George Floyd, we have seen with Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, and in so many other instances that our police departments need real reform.
There is a demand of Americans that we act--and act soon. The resolution my colleague offers is rhetoric, not action, and the great worry so many Americans have is that so many on the other side will feel rhetoric and then try to let this go away.
We demand action, and we demand it now--real action, not rhetoric--to reform our police departments in a fair and comprehensive way. That is what the Justice in Policing Act does. We need it on the floor now, as soon as the House passes it.
Very few of us believe that Leader McConnell will put it on the floor, but we want him to. We demand he does.
Again, the resolution by my friend will do nothing--nothing. It is rhetoric. We demand action.
And so in a minute, I will be asking unanimous consent that upon receipt of H.R. 7120, the Justice in Policing Act of 2020, the pending business here in the Senate, after it passes the House, be that bill, so that we are forced and required to debate it.
And at that point, my friend from Arkansas or anyone else can do whatever they want, but not in an empty field of rhetoric and no action, when Americans demand action.
We need justice. We need racial equality. I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Arkansas is recognized
Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, if the Senator from New York would like to enter into a colloquy, I did not hear an objection to a single sentence of that resolution, to a clause of that resolution, to a word in that resolution, which calls for justice for George Floyd and other victims of excessive force and also says that the Senate opposes radical ideas to defund the police.
So if the Senator from New York would like to explain to the Senate what part of that resolution he opposes and why he is objecting, I would welcome to hear his answer.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I have a resolution at the desk.
Mr. COTTON. Reclaiming my time, I have not yielded the floor.
So I would just point out this. Let's be clear what just happened here. We have a resolution. It is a couple of pages long. The Democrats have had it for 24 hours. Until just moments ago, we had no indication that they planned to object or that they had any other contrary resolution.
We have heard objection from the Senator from New York not to a single word of that resolution itself--a resolution which, I will say again, calls for justice for George Floyd and for all victims of excessive force, as well as opposes radical efforts to defund the police.
So I will only conclude that the minority leader is here to speak on behalf of the Democratic Party and defend this radical idea to defund the police, since he is unwilling to cite what part of that resolution he opposes.
And now, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, as the gentleman heard, we need action, not rhetoric. That is the objection because we believe that too many on that side of the aisle will not want to act and, therefore, for them to be content with rhetoric will not serve any good purpose.
We can debate all of these issues when we have a real bill on the floor and we are moving forward to bring justice. My resolution does just that. It says very simply--very simply--that the minute the House passes the Justice in Policing Act, the pending business here in the Senate is that act, so we can debate it and we can hopefully pass it. Some may choose to modify it in whatever way they choose, but rhetoric is no substitute for action when the American people, overwhelmingly, in the streets, peacefully, proudly, strongly demand action.
Unanimous Consent Request
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of a resolution at the desk that would make H.R. 7120, the Justice in Policing Act, the pending business upon receipt from the House. I further ask that the resolution be agreed to and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Arkansas is recognized.
Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I am a bit mystified about what has happened here. We had a resolution on the floor, a couple of pages, calling for justice for George Floyd and victims of excessive use of force, as well as condemning the radical idea of defunding the police.
Now, the minority leader wants to offer a resolution that would immediately make the pending business of the Senate--at some distant, speculative time in the future--a piece of legislation which, if I am not mistaken, hasn't even been written and filed yet in the House of Representatives. Now, maybe it has been written in the last day or two and I am not aware that they filed that bill, but it certainly hasn't been debated and voted on in the House of Representatives.
There is all the time in the world to decide what is going to be the pending business in the U.S. Senate when the Senate acts, but we have a resolution right in front of us that condemns the unjustified killing of George Floyd, calls for justice for his death and all those victims of excessive use of force, and also--since the Senate opposes the radical idea--of defunding the police.
Yet, the Democratic leader, on behalf of his party, objected to that without citing a single word, a single clause, a single sentence that he finds objectionable. I assume it is because they do, in fact, want to defund the police.
I know he keeps talking about rhetoric versus action. I will just remind you that the Senate, on almost every day we are in business, passes multiple resolutions by unanimous consent. If I am not mistaken, I think the Democratic leader was on the floor last week trying to pass a resolution condemning the President once again. So the idea that we don't pass resolutions expressing the sense of the Senate or, for that matter, there is a choice between passing such a resolution and taking action is simply foreign to the way the Senate acts every single day.
I will just say again that what we are seeing here is the Democratic leader apparently objecting on behalf of the Democratic Party in defense of the radical idea that we should defund the police. I object to the Democratic leader.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Democratic leader.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, the gentleman from Arkansas has made my point. He talks about business as usual. This is not business as usual. The typical rhetoric, the kind of avoiding action which has been so, so endemic in this Republican Party is showing itself again. If they wanted to act, they could have supported our resolution. They are trying to avoid it. We will not let that happen.
I yield the floor.
Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, if the Democratic leader, again, would like to engage in a colloquy, I will ask him, is the bill that he wants to make the immediate pending business of the Senate even written in the House of Representatives?
Since he has departed, I guess the answer to my question is, no, that bill is not even written and filed in the House of Representatives, and certainly it has not been voted upon in the House and sent to the Senate for us to make it the pending business.
So the objection you just heard, again, didn't object to a single word in our resolution, much less a clause or a sentence--a resolution that calls for justice for George Floyd and the victims of the excessive use of force, while at the same time opposing radical Democratic proposals to defund the police. I can only infer, since I didn't hear a single objection to the language of our resolution, that the rub of the matter is that the Democrats really do support defunding the police.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana
H.R. 1957
Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, it is an honor to stand here today in support of one of the most historic pieces of conservation legislation in decades--some are saying 50 years.
The Great American Outdoors Act will have a lasting impact on generations to come. That is why, as Montana's voice in the Senate, I am standing here today to make the Great American Outdoors Act a reality.
Over the last few days, we have seen very strong bipartisan support both here in the Senate and around the Nation. Senators from both sides of the aisle, representing States all across our great Nation, have been coming down to the floor to share stories and photos and to show support for the bill. It is a very personal piece of legislation because we all love the outdoors.
At this point, plenty of us have spoken in support of this bill, but today I want to share some quotes from Montanans who are also in support of the Great American Outdoors Act.
David Brooks from Montana Trout Unlimited says:
As the Senate takes up the legislation this week, we are also excited to see progress on addressing decades of maintenance backlogs on our public lands that benefit our wild and native fish and their habitat.
Speaking of trout, this picture was taken at the Yellowstone River. The main channel is over here. There is a little side channel as well. That is Emigrant Peak. That is in a valley called Paradise Valley. It is appropriately named. It is south of Livingston--between Livingston and Gardiner. If you were to come visit Yellowstone National Park, one of the entrances is in Gardiner, and that would be on the way to Yellowstone Park.
As I mentioned before, that is, in fact, where in 1979 we had our high school homecoming dinner, and I proudly took a date in a Griswold station wagon with some couples, and we drove down to Chico's. It is right by where this picture was taken. There are a lot of memories when I see a picture like that. There was a lot of fish caught as I fished that river many, many times. I do it several times a summer.
Ben Horan with Mountain Bike Missoula says:
There is a good reason the Land and Water Conservation Fund has enjoyed bipartisan support since the 1960s. It is just good policy. For more than 55 years, LWCF has supported and funded open spaces and public lands that we in Montana rely on for our work, for our play, and for our way of life.
Kyle Weaver from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation had this to say:
This important conservation program allowed the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation to complete more than 80 land protection and access projects that conserved more than 152,000 acres of habitat for elk and other wildlife. RMEF strongly urges Members of the Senate and House to rally alongside Senator Daines, pass this measure, and forward it to President Trump's desk so it can be signed into law.
Land Tawny with the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers said this:
Sportsmen and women have been the leading voices in this effort to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund as well as providing maintenance funding for the agencies that manage places critical for public access and fish and wildlife. Our public lands and our waters have traditionally been places of refuge, of solace, and of adventure.
Never has this been truer than right now when we need to recenter and get our minds right. Now is the most strategic time for investing in these places of refuge by funding shovel-ready projects that sustain important habitat, increase public access opportunities, and get people back to work.
Mayor Bill Cole of Billings said:
Over the years, Billings has received almost $2 million to fund construction repairs on our parks. The Great American Outdoors Act will be a great help as we plan future projects that address the backlog of maintenance needs. Parks and trails are critical to our Western quality of life, they attract visitors, and they support our economy.
The city manager of Great Falls, Greg Doyle, said this:
For many years, the city has utilized the LWCF appropriations to complete a wide variety of projects. These projects help support and develop park land and recreational facilities for Great Falls residents and visitors.
Alex Kitchens with the Mystery Ranch. The Mystery Ranch--that sounds kind of mysterious, doesn't it? They actually make some of the best backpacks in America. In fact, when my wife and I and children get out in the wilderness area every summer, we all are carrying Mystery Ranch backpacks. They are some of the very best. In fact, in the early days of this company, back in the seventies when I was going to high school in Bozeman, I had a Kletterworks pack. Kletterworks was the precursor to Mystery Ranch. In fact, the book bag that I then took to Montana State University and carried my books in throughout my college experience in Bozeman--I took that same pack to the top of Granite Peak, our highest point in Montana, and the summit of the Grand Teton, just south of Montana there--beautiful country outside of Jackson, WY. It was a small pack. We went very ultralight with bivy bags, kind of a sense of a quick up and down because of weather. We wanted to get up there quickly on both peaks, and we made it. That was the precursor to the Mystery Ranch, which are the packs we have today. They are larger packs. You can carry more weight into the backcountry.
Alex said this: The Great American Outdoors Act is landmark conservation to protect our public lands. The full funding of the LWCF is a benefit to our parks and our forests at the local and State level.
We have Glenn Marx with the Montana Association of Land Trusts. I will quote Glenn:
Passage of the Great American Outdoors Act means LWCF funding and tremendous rural community, national park, and outdoor recreation economic benefits for Montana and the nation. More legislative steps to go. Let's finish the journey.
I couldn't agree more, Glenn.
Finally, I want to highlight a letter. It is a letter signed by every former Secretary of the Interior, from Secretary Babbitt, who served in 1993, to Montana's very own Secretary Ryan Zinke.
In fact, Ryan and I were Boy Staters together back in 1979. Ryan was a junior, soon to be a senior, at Whitefish High School, and I was a junior, soon to be senior, at Boozman High in 1979. Little did we know when we were Boy Staters then that Ryan, after a distinguished military career in the U.S. Navy as a Navy SEAL, would go on to be our Secretary of the Interior.
The letter says this: ``The Great American Outdoors Act will help ensure a better, brighter future for nature and for all of us.''
By the way, if you look at those Secretaries, those are Secretaries who served under Democratic Presidents and Republican Presidents.
Needless to say, Montana has its fair share of support for the Great American Outdoors Act, and the list of support goes on.
Montanans know what it takes to conserve their public lands. Ensuring full mandatory funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund will make sure our public lands are managed correctly and that Montanans and Americans around the country will have better access to share public lands.
Dealing with the $12 billion maintenance backlog in our national parks will be so beneficial for the employees who are working so hard in national parks. We are seeing record visitation levels in many of our parks, but our employee housing in many cases is terrible--
crumbling infrastructure, wastewater treatment systems that are in desperate need of repair and upgrades. That maintenance backlog needs to be addressed, and that will improve the visitor experience.
When I think about our national parks, I think of these parks as the office of first impression. For visitors who come to our great country from around the world, when they visit our national parks, they leave with a profound impression. It is what sets America apart from any other country--our national parks, our outdoor heritage, and preserving and protecting that for generations to come.
The Great American Outdoors Act will directly impact everybody who visits, who recreates, and who enjoys our public lands. This will be truly one of those defining moments for conservation that so many will remember for generations to come. It is one of these laws that we will pass, and when the President signs it, it will truly be a legacy for future generations. It makes me smile just knowing that so many others will be able to have our public lands to enjoy, just as my wife and I and my children all have done and continue to do, once we pass the Great American Outdoors Act.
Thank you.
I yield back.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware
Free File Program
Mr. CARPER. Good afternoon, Mr. President and colleagues. I rise today to highlight some recent work that we have done on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that could help not hundreds, not thousands, not tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, but millions of Americans save some money when filing their Federal income tax returns this year and in future years.
As the ranking member of the subcommittee called the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in the Senate, my staff and I worked closely with a fellow named Rob Portman of Ohio, who is the chairman of our subcommittee, and with his team. He put us all in a room together--
Senator Portman's team, Republicans; our team, Democrats--and wonder who is who and whose side they are on. You wouldn't know one side from the other. It is sort of like the Presiding Officer and I working together on recycling issues, with his team and mine.
Senator Portman and I, along with our staffs, studied big problems and big challenges facing Americans in America. We tried to identify commonsense solutions in a truly bipartisan, almost nonpartisan approach. That has characterized the work of the subcommittee not just for a couple of years but for decades.
For years, I have heard the following question over and over again back home, and the Presiding Officer probably has too. People in Delaware and I am sure in the Presiding Officer's State asked this question: Why can't you all work together in Washington and get something done? That is what we do on our Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. We work together, and I think we get a lot done. It is our bread and butter. I want to talk for a few minutes today about some of the work here on the Senate floor.
Over the past year, our subcommittee has examined a whole bunch of issues, and one of those issues is relating to the IRS Free File Program. Earlier this week, we released a short staff memorandum laying out our findings.
Over the next couple of minutes, I want to explain the genesis and the importance of the Free File Program, what our subcommittee learned about it, and some of the things Congress and the IRS could do to improve the program and better serve taxpayers.
I say to the Presiding Officer, I don't know if back in your home State you do townhall meetings, but I guess you have done a bunch of them. I did a bunch of them especially when I was a Congressman--
hundreds of them--and as Governor and even now.
When I was a Congressman, every year we used to--we only have three counties in my State. The Presiding Officer has a lot more in his. Once every year, a month or so before the tax-filing deadline, usually March, I would host townhall meetings in each of our counties, and we would invite the IRS to come, along with the State Division of Revenue, to participate. We would offer to the people of Delaware the opportunity to ask questions not just of me and my staff but of the IRS and the State Division of Revenue about tax returns that were being filed. It was something I loved. I love helping people, and I know the Presiding Officer does as well. It was a real chance to help people in a timely way.
If you take that idea--and that was an idea for, I will say, the 20th century, a 20th century idea, and it was a good idea. But we have a 21st-century idea, and it is called the Free File Program. That is what I want to focus on now.
Some people might be asking: What in the heck is the Free File Program anyway? Going back to 1998--I was Governor then, and I think our Presiding Officer might have been a House Member. I am not sure. But Congress directed the IRS to work with the tax preparation industry to create a way for Americans to file their taxes electronically.
This is around the time when the first version of search engines like Yahoo! and Google were being developed and coming forward. Email addresses and web portals, like America Online, were rapidly expanding the availability of internet services not just for homes but for schools and other places too. Suddenly, it was possible to do a whole lot of things on the internet for the first time, including filing our taxes electronically.
Free File is the program that grew out of a mandate Congress issued, and taxpayers were first able to take advantage of the program in 2002. So my guess is the mandate from Congress to the IRS to make this program available was about two decades ago, and the first time taxpayers were able to take advantage of that was a couple of years later, in 2002.
The program is really a partnership between the IRS on the one hand and tax preparation companies, like H&R Block and Intuit, to offer complete and free online tax preparation and filing services--not to all Americans but to most. Sixty percent was the original goal, the original target. Today, it is available to about 70 percent of all Americans.
This year, most taxpayers earning less than $69,000 could use Free File to file their taxes for free. That is why we call it Free File. I will say that again. This year, most taxpayers earning less than
$69,000 could use Free File to file their taxes for free.
A lot of times, when you hear somebody offer you something for nothing, for free, you say: Well, I am not sure I would want to do that. This is one that a whole bunch of taxpayers--about 100 million of them, in fact--can take real advantage of because according to the IRS, over 100 million taxpayers are eligible to use this program, Free File.
Over 100 million taxpayers can file their Federal taxes for free. One might ask: Well, how do they do that? All they have to do is to visit this website to get started. The website--I am looking to see where that website is listed. I don't see it here. Maybe it is on the back. I don't think it is back there either, but I will just say it. Here it is. All they have to do is visit this website to get started: IRS.gov/
FreeFile. That is it. That is a mouthful, isn't it? That is IRS.gov/
FreeFile.
As much as I do it--it is this close. There it is: IRS.gov/FreeFile. I am blind. There it is.
To my staff who prepared this for us, thank you.
From there, whoever clicks on this address can choose to visit the individual Free File website of one of several companies offering this service and choose the one that works best for them. It sounds pretty simple, even to me. But only a few million taxpayers out of 100 million who are eligible use the program every year. Clearly, we can do better than this.
On our subcommittee, we started looking into Free File about a year ago, after reading news reports alleging that some of the companies that participated in the program were making it harder, not easier, for taxpayers to find their Free File websites. This is important, colleagues. This is important because very few taxpayers go directly to the IRS.gov address that I mentioned right here--website. Instead, when most taxpayers are ready to file their taxes, they use search engines like Google, and they type in phrases like ``free online tax filing'' or ``free tax return.'' For search terms like these, Google might return thousands, maybe millions, of results. Those results could oftentimes be confusing. Imagine that you are trying to get some information, and you get thousands of ideas from searching on Google. That can often be very confusing or just too much for a lot of us to try to wade through.
On top of that, we were able to confirm that 5 of the 12 companies that participated in the Free File Program in tax year 2018, 2 years ago--that includes H&R Block, Intuit, TaxHawk, Drake Software, and TaxSlayer--apparently took steps to actually prevent their Free File websites from even appearing in search results. So when someone searched on Google last year for free tax help, they were likely to land on the website for one of the heavily advertised commercial tax filing products.
Some of those commercial products have names that are similar to the names companies have given their Free File offerings. For example, H&R Block has a commercial product called Free Online, and Intuit has one called Turbo Tax Free Edition. These names sound a lot like the names given to the IRS Free File products, but they are not the same. In fact, there is no guarantee that they will actually be free, despite their names.
I want to be clear. There is nothing wrong with Free File partner companies having their own successful commercial products and continuing to innovate. There is nothing wrong with that. I am told there are legitimate reasons someone might want to prevent a website from appearing in a Google search result. However, it is important that we make sure not to confuse taxpayers any more than they might already be confused when it comes to preparing their tax returns.
It is also imperative to Senator Portman, his staff, and my staff that the lowest income taxpayers are able to access the free filing services that Congress wanted to be sure were available for them. It is too easy for a taxpayer to click on a search result that looks like a free filing option and wind up being charged for extra services they didn't want and, frankly, didn't need.
In fact, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration estimates that more than 14 million taxpayers who qualified for the Free File Program used commercial software offered by a Free File partner company and may have paid a fee to file their 2018 Federal tax return when they did not need to do so. Just think about that. Fourteen million taxpayers could have filed their Federal tax returns completely free but instead ended up paying a fee.
While it is entirely possible that some of those 14 million people knew they were using a commercial product and chose to pay more, many simply didn't know they might have a better option. We have an obligation to make sure they know about it. Both Congress and the IRS need to do more to make certain that taxpayers who are eligible for a free product and want a free product don't end up paying for something they should not have to pay for. It is that simple.
So how did this happen? Well, we have learned that part of the blame belongs to the IRS, which apparently has designated only three full-
time employees--think about that--for how many people we have in this country? Three hundred-plus million? The IRS has designated only three full-time employees to work on Free File and, I am told, has not conducted sufficient oversight over the program for years. For example, our Subcommittee on Investigations learned that the IRS has not completed a customer satisfaction survey for the Free File Program since 2009. That is 11 years. That is right--since 2009, even though the Treasury Department's Inspector General for Tax Administration recommended greater use of customer satisfaction surveys not last year or the year before that but as far back as 2007.
Despite Americans' growing tendency to use search engines like Google to navigate the internet, the IRS and its Free File partner companies apparently never discussed online search practices until very recently. This allowed individual companies to make their own choices about how their Free File websites could be accessed.
There is also the fact that the IRS has not had a marketing budget for the Free File Program in more than 6 years. When we asked IRS officials to explain the lack of marketing, they told us a couple of things. Here is one of the things we heard. They said: ``Well, it may have been an IRS budget decision as part of the broader reduction in spending the agency received over the last several years.'' He said
``as part of the broader reduction in spending.'' Actually, it was the broader reduction in appropriations the Agency received over the last several years.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration came to pretty much the same conclusion. Here is what we got from the Inspector General of the Treasury: The IRS was trying to ``save money and be more efficient.''
Well, we should make sure that we save American taxpayers money, no doubt, especially at a time when every dollar counts for our family and, frankly, for our government.
With that said, what can Congress do? What is our role here in the Senate, in the House, in the Congress, and in the White House, in the executive branch of our government and Treasury?
As senior members of the Finance Committee, Senator Portman and I have listened to former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, a great leader, and to the Government Accountability Office led by Gene Dodaro, a wonderful Comptroller General. We listened to them lament the fact that, for years Congress has appropriated the IRS with far less money than it needs to provide adequate tax enforcement and good customer service, as well as to better ensure that all Federal taxpayers are paying their fair share to fund our government and meet our many obligations.
Despite a recent bump up in funding for the IRS in the past year, since fiscal year 2010--so over the last decade--funding for the IRS overall has declined by $3.1 billion, after accounting for inflation, while the number of individual taxpayers has increased by 13 million. That makes no sense to me. My guess is it doesn't make much sense to most people. Let's listen to that again. Funding for the IRS--our job is to appropriate money, among other things. Funding for the IRS, overall, has declined by over $3 billion, after accounting for inflation, while the number of individual taxpayers who need to be served, who have questions to ask and tax returns to submit--that number has gone up by 13 million people.
These IRS budget cuts have impaired both tax enforcement and taxpayer service operations. For example, reduced funding has led to a reduction in the number of employees assigned to answer telephone calls. The inevitable result is fewer taxpayer calls answered, longer wait times to get through to the IRS representative, and a lot of needless frustrations from the people we and the IRS are serving, the people who have sent us here to work for them.
All of this was before the coronavirus pandemic forced the IRS to send thousands of its employees home.
So as I prepare to wrap up here today, let me say to all of our colleagues, those who are gathered here and those who are not--our colleagues both here in the Senate and in the House of Representatives at the other end of this building--while it is important that we ask why the IRS didn't do a better job of overseeing the Free File Program and make clear that it must do more, it is equally important that we in the legislative branch of government and in the administration--this administration and future administrations--provide the IRS with the tools and resources it needs to do the important job it does.
The last time the IRS had a marketing budget for their Free File Program, it spent between $750,000 and $1.5 million marketing the program annually to, gosh, probably 200--over 100 million--we will say close to 200 million taxpayers. That sounds like a lot of money, but when you are talking about over 100 million taxpayers, it doesn't go that far. I am not sure that is a big enough budget given the large number of taxpayers who seem to be unaware of Free File. Even a modest amount of funding would go a long way toward ensuring that millions of eligible taxpayers do not have to pay a dime to file their taxes online.
Well, colleagues, my staff and my other colleagues often hear me say these--I think they are called aphorisms. One of my favorites is, find out what works and do more of that. Think about it. Find out what works. Do more of that. Well, we found out on our subcommittee how we can strengthen and support this Free File Program. Let's do it. Let's not just talk about it. Let's not just complain about it. Let's do it. Let's begin by doing our part to provide--this year and in the years that follow--the IRS with the resources it needs and, where necessary, the additional guidance it needs to make Free File work the way we intended it to work almost two decades ago.
Another thing I would like to say is that in adversity lies opportunity. Think about that. I wish I could claim that as my own. That is Einstein. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the filing deadline for taxpayers has been pushed back, as we know, to July 15--
not April 15, a month or a month and a half ago, but July 15. Here is what that means. It means we have--taxpayers have--we have more time to get the word out, the IRS has more time to get the word out to eligible Americans that they can file their taxes for free--more time to get the word out to eligible Americans that they can file their taxes for free. Get the word out to whom? To tens of millions of American taxpayers.
I want to encourage all eligible taxpayers to visit IRS.gov/
freefile--right here--IRS.gov/freefile--to ensure that they have access to the free resources that are available to them.
I would also ask everyone to help spread the word. Talk to your friends. Talk to your family. When you are cooped up at home and you can't go anyplace, you are still locked down in quarantine, what will you talk about? Talk about Free File; say: Here is a way we maybe could save some money, and our friends could too--instead of taking a different course.
That is it. I will close with this. I like movies. I know the Presiding Officer likes movies. One of my alltime favorite movies and our colleague who has joined us, from Alaska, one of his alltime favorite movies--he has talked about it many times--is ``Back to the Future.'' This is, in a way, back to the future.
Back when I first got to the House, we used to do this--as I said before Senator Sullivan and Senator Cruz came to the floor--I talked about how every year, in every county in Delaware, we would do--there are only three counties--we would actually do townhall meetings, and we would have folks in from the IRS and from the State Division of Revenue to actually help people prepare and file their taxes. We don't do that anymore. Actually, we have something that is even better, a whole lot better, and it is this Free File Program that the IRS has. It is available, if people just knew about it.
I will close with these words. I wish I could claim this as well. I wonder who said this. Maybe one of our smart pages--if our pages were here, I would ask one of the pages to figure it out. Have you ever heard the saying: If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody there to hear it, is there really a noise?
Think about that. If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody there to hear it, is there really a noise? Well, if we have a great program through the IRS to help millions and millions of people file their taxes for free and they don't know about it, is there really a benefit? I think, arguably, not. We can do something about that. Let's do it.
I yield the floor to my friend from Alaska.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cruz). The Senator from Alaska.
Racism
Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, there is no doubt that there is a lot of anger in our country right now. We have seen that anger being given voice all throughout our communities and small towns and big cities. We have seen it in our households, among our families, our children, our friends.
The killing of George Floyd has shocked us all. The video of a police officer so nonchalantly kneeling on George's neck as he begged to be released and three other officers standing by as if nothing was happening, as if it weren't a human being's life being taken--this shocked us.
By now, we all know how George Floyd called out, calling out for his mother, who had passed years ago, a mother who loved him, whom he must have seen coming to him in his final moments. ``I can't breathe,'' he said--the last words of a man on a street in Minneapolis that have rocked the Nation. They are three simple words that mean so much and have so much resonance throughout our history; words that, at their very heart, have helped to define the moral issue of our country, and that is slavery and the struggle--the long struggle for civil rights.
The freedom to breathe and your life as your own are what were taken from men and women and their children when they were ripped from their countries and brought, in slavery, into this Nation. That is what was taken away from Native Americans and Alaska Natives when they were forced off their lands.
The freedom to take the full breath of life is what is taken away from people when they are denied a quality education or housing in safe neighborhoods; when they are denied jobs or promotions when they get those jobs; when they are viewed, because of the color of their skin, as less deserving or as less able.
I applaud those who have peacefully taken to the streets throughout our communities to protest against racism, and I also applaud the brave police officers and National Guardsmen all across the country who are protecting those who need protecting and reaching out to constructively engage peaceful protesters. The vast, vast majority of these law enforcement officers are honorable and risk their lives daily for their fellow citizens, and we need to remember that.
We are witnessing something that I believe is an important moment, one that has potential to move our country in a direction toward a more perfect Union. This moment has promise.
Senators are discussing with each other what kind of legislative action should be taken. For example, we had a very good discussion on these issues just yesterday led by my friend and colleague Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. State and community leaders are also having these discussions.
Of course, we are a big country, and what might seem to be a good idea in one place wouldn't be a good idea in some other place. For example, one of the enormous challenges in the great State of Alaska that I have been focused on for years is not enough law enforcement, particularly in our rural and Native communities, dozens of which don't have any law enforcement officers at all. So this is a huge problem in Alaska that can create horrible situations, particularly when it comes to violent crimes like sexual assault and domestic violence.
So I am not a proponent of defunding the police, but something else that is happening in America right now at this moment are discussions--
not just in the halls of government but around dinner tables, among families and parents and their kids and their friend groups--on what can or should be done at the individual level, the individual American level. This is certainly happening, for example, in my family.
That was the main point of a powerful and wisdom-filled op-ed by my former boss, friend, and mentor, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week, in the Washington Post
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this op-ed be printed in the Record following my remarks.
It is entitled ``This Moment Cries Out for Us to Confront Race in America.'' Condoleezza Rice was the daughter of the segregated South, raised in Birmingham, AL, during the height of the struggle for civil rights, with sit-ins, riots, and even bombings happening in her city.
When she was 8 years old, the Ku Klux Klan bombed a local church in Birmingham, killing four school-aged girls. One of those girls, Denise McNair, was a friend of Condi's. They used to play dolls together.
Over five decades later, through hard work, grace, dignity, and supreme intelligence, she rose to become one of the most powerful people in the world as Secretary of State of the United States, and I had the honor of a lifetime to work for her for 5 years.
She recounts some of her journey in this op-ed, which I encourage all of my colleagues and all Americans to read. She reminds us:
Our country has a birth defect: Africans and Europeans came to this country together--but one group was in chains. In time, the very Constitution that counted slaves as three-fifths of a man became a powerful tool in affording the descendants of slaves their basic rights. That work has been long and difficult, but it has made a difference. We are better than we were.
She notes one harsh indicator of progress. In Jim Crow Alabama, in her youth, she says:
[N]o one batted an eye if the police killed a black man. There wouldn't have been even a footnote in the local press.
Yet now we are seeing hundreds of thousands across America take to the streets peacefully to protest such injustice.
In her piece from last week, she emphasizes that finger-pointing at this moment will not help the cause:
And if we are to make progress, let us vow to check the language of recrimination at the door.
Very wise words. We all need to focus on emphasizing unity and empathy at this moment--all of us. Senators, Governors, the President, the media--all of us have this responsibility, and it is what the vast majority of our fellow Americans want. It is what they want and what they want us to do and to see and hear from us.
Perhaps most importantly, Condoleezza Rice, in her op-ed, emphasizes something seemingly so obvious but not spoken much: individual action and responsibility. She ends her piece with this challenge that I put up here on the posterboard. It is a really important challenge for every American:
So I ask my fellow Americans: What will each of you do? My personal passion is educational opportunity, because it is a partial shield against prejudice. It is not a perfect shield, I know, but it gives people a fighting chance. In my conversations, I want to discuss why the learning gap for black kids is so stubborn and what can be done about it. What is your question about the impact of race on the lives of Americans? And what will you do to find answers?
Those words in her op-ed--the challenge--really struck me, and I have thought long and hard all week about them since reading those words in the Washington Post.
Of course, as a Senator, I, with many of you, my colleagues, am taking part in discussions which I hope will lead to collective action by our Federal Government to address some of the challenges our Nation certainly continues to have regarding race. But Condoleezza Rice's question and challenge is about personal passion and action, and it is a question for every American to consider.
I have an amazing Alaska Native wife from whom I have learned much about the serious issue of racism in my State against indigenous Alaskans and among the first peoples in our great Nation, but I have never experienced the kind of racism that many across our country have.
I am a colonel in the Marines, an institution I am very proud to be a part of, an institution that--like the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard--at its very heart, it isn't supposed to matter what the color of your skin is, what religion you practice, or what part of the socioeconomic ladder you come from. The fundamental ethos of the Marine Corps and our military is supposed to be this: It doesn't matter what race you are. You are just a U.S. marine.
Now, of course, the Marines and the rest of the military don't always meet this ideal, but they strive for it, even in ways that might seem puzzling to those who haven't served.
There is the story of the tough Marine Corps drill instructor shouting at his raw recruits on day one of boot camp:
There is no racial bigotry here. In my eyes, every one of you are equally worthless. My orders are to weed out all non-hackers who cannot serve my beloved Marine Corps. Do you maggots understand that?
That is the drill instructor. Again, it is the ideal--equality in the U.S. military--but it is not always met.
I remember how the first rifle platoon I commanded as a young second lieutenant was literally about one-third White, one-third Black, and one-third Hispanic. My platoon sergeant was an African-American marine named Willis Towns. He was outstanding in every way, Sergeant Towns. I learned so much from him about leadership.
His dream in life was to be the first African-American sergeant major of the entire Marine Corps. He never reached that goal. A few weeks after I attended a Martin Luther King, Jr., ceremony with him in which he received an award for his leadership in the community, he was killed in a training accident. That was the worst day of my life. Just a few years later, the Marine Corps named another outstanding African American to be Sergeant Major of the entire Marine Corps. I remember thinking when the announcement came out: Congratulations, Willis. You did it. You did it.
I believe that the military--desegregated in 1948, nearly 20 years before the passage of civil rights legislation by this body--is one of the most important civil rights organizations in America. I am passionate about our U.S. military, but it can improve in terms of race. There are questions that need to be asked about the record of our military on these important issues.
Yesterday was an important day in the Senate with the unanimous vote to confirm Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., to be Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force. For a whole host of reasons, I was probably more involved in his confirmation than any other Senator. I had the opportunity to come to the floor yesterday to speak strongly in support of his Senate confirmation.
I have had many discussions with General Brown over the past year, but what surprised me was that I learned recently that yesterday's vote was actually a historic vote for America. His confirmation, 98 to 0, was so historic because General C. Q. Brown was just confirmed yesterday by this body as our first African-American service chief in the history of the United States of America.
Let me explain a little bit more about that. The Joint Chiefs of Staff consists of the service chiefs, the top four-star generals of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, and Coast Guard, as well as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, with the notable exception of GEN Colin Powell, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the early 1990s. General C. Q. Brown, whom we confirmed yesterday, will be the first African-American service chief ever for any military service. Of course, this is good news in terms of racial progress for America, but it also begs an important question: Why did it take so long for this to happen, especially in one of America's institutions with probably one of the best, longest records on positive civil rights in our Nation?
Some of the answers are surely hinted at in General Brown's very moving video address that he gave last week when he talked about what was on his mind in the wake of the horrible George Floyd death. I would recommend that everybody take a look at that. In the Air Force, he says he was often the only African American in his squadron, and as a senior general officer, the only African American in the entire room. What is he thinking about during these challenging times? ``I'm thinking about wearing the same flight suit with the same wings on my chest as my peers and then being questioned by another military member, are you a pilot?''
What else is he thinking?
``I'm thinking about my mentors and how rarely I had a mentor who looked like me.''
``I'm thinking about the pressure I felt to perform error-free, especially for supervisors I perceived had expected less of me as an African American.''
He continues saying he was thinking about the conversations he was having with his sons and the immense responsibility that comes from his historic nomination. He was thinking about how with this confirmation, he could make things better in the Air Force and America.
Here is how I am going to take up Condoleezza Rice's challenge, as she put forth for each individual American. I am going to ask questions--as she prods us to do in this piece--on why, until yesterday, no African-American four-star had ever been confirmed to be a service chief in the U.S. military in the history of our country.
We are introducing an amendment to this year's NDAA to get data on minorities and senior enlisted and officer billets in the military--
African Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans and others. We know these are very patriotic segments of our population. For example, Alaska Natives and American Indians serve at higher rates in the military than any other ethnic group in the country--what I refer to as special patriotism.
Is this patriotic service reflected at the highest leadership ranks of our military? If not, then, why not?
I suspect that a lot of our military leaders who have risen to the general officers ranks--like General Brown or other outstanding African-American generals whom I have gotten to know or have the privilege of serving with, like Army GEN Vincent Brooks, former CENTCOM Commander GEN Lloyd Austin, and Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Ron Bailey--will have insightful views on these important matters.
Our military is something I am very passionate about, not only because it protects and defends our Nation, but because for decades, it has provided Americans of all colors and creeds with the opportunity to rise up individually and as a collective force for good in our society and to enable members of the military to achieve their full potential and have a promising future after their service is completed.
If there is some kind of obstacle for minority advancement that stifles opportunities at the highest ranks of our military, then we need to know why and we need to work on addressing it together. As a matter of fact, I just came from a full day of marking up the NDAA with Democratic and Republican Senators, and we will be trying to look at this issue, which we had a great discussion on in our markup today. We need our military--like we need the rest of the country--to be a place where everyone who joins can breathe freely. This is one of the ways I am going to take up Condoleezza Rice's challenge to her fellow Americans--this important challenge--and I hope my fellow Americans will find their own individual ways to do this, as well
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
This Moment Cries Out for Us To Confront Race in America
Condoleezza Rice was secretary of state from 2005 to 2009. She is a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow on public policy at the Hoover Institution, where she will become director on Sept. 1.
Words cannot dull the pain of George Floyd's family. Like many black families before them, they find themselves in the spotlight for reasons that every parent, sibling and spouse dreads. While his death has catalyzed a symbolic call to action, he was not a symbol to his loved ones--he was a father, brother and son. I can only pray that they find the
``peace that passes understanding.''
In the wake of Floyd's death, Americans and people around the world are experiencing shock, grief, outrage--a set of emotions that too often are repeated. If the past is a guide, these feelings will fade and we will return to our lives.
But something tells me--not this time. Floyd's horrific death should be enough to finally move us to positive action.
Perhaps this is like the moment in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus. Or perhaps this is like that fateful Sunday in September 1963, quite personal to me, when a bomb in a Birmingham church killed four girls from my neighborhood and shook our nation to its core. Some six decades later, perhaps all of us--regardless of skin color--are, to quote Mississippi sharecropper and civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, ``sick and tired of being sick and tired.''
Our country has often moved forward and been made better through peaceful protests. But our cities must stop burning. Innocent people, including many minority and immigrant business owners, are watching their livelihoods go up in smoke. There is no excuse for looting and criminality, and offenders must be stopped. But a call for calm is not enough, either. This time, we must remain vigilant and maintain our determination to make a difference.
Beyond justice for Floyd, systemic change is necessary to make our institutions more just. Yet all the structural reforms in the world are insufficient to remove the shadow hanging over every incident of this kind. To be black is to be forced to overcome implicit and explicit reactions to the color of your skin. It might be dismissiveness or underestimation or presumption of how you think. In some circ*mstances, it might be fear. We encounter these responses even among decent people who sincerely do not want to react that way. The good news is that these emotions can be overcome--and often are--with the respect that builds when people know one another as human beings--as friends, neighbors, co-workers and teammates.
Still, we simply must acknowledge that society is not color-blind and probably never will be. Progress comes when people treat one another with respect, as if we were color-blind. Unless and until we are honest that race is still an anchor around our country's neck, that shadow will never be lifted. Our country has a birth defect: Africans and Europeans came to this country together--but one group was in chains. In time, the very Constitution that counted slaves as three-fifths of a man became a powerful tool in affording the descendants of slaves their basic rights. That work has been long and difficult, but it has made a difference. We are better than we were.
I grew up in segregated Jim Crow Alabama, where no one batted an eye if the police killed a black man. There wouldn't have been even a footnote in the local press. So it is a source of pride for me that so many have taken to the streets--peacefully--to say that they care: that they, too, are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Yet protests will take our country only so far. The road to healing must begin with respectful but honest and deep conversations, not judgments, about who we were, who we are and who we want to become. Let us talk with, not at, each other--in our homes, schools, workplaces and places of worship. And if we are to make progress, let us vow to check the language of recrimination at the door. As united Americans, we can then turn our fears into faith, hope, compassion and action. And then we can accept and carry out our shared responsibility to build ``a more perfect union.''
Yet, any call to action will be empty if it does not move us to individual responsibility. We all have a role to play in moving our country forward, in ensuring that our democracy delivers not just for those who have but also for those who seek and for those in need.
So I ask my fellow Americans: What will each of you do? My personal passion is educational opportunity, because it is a partial shield against prejudice. It is not a perfect shield, I know, but it gives people a fighting chance. In my conversations, I want to discuss why the learning gap for black kids is so stubborn and what can be done about it. What is your question about the impact of race on the lives of Americans? And what will you do to find answers?
Mr. SULLIVAN. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
Coronavirus
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I have been thinking about the last time I was in an airplane. It was mid-March. One of the many great things about my State is I can drive back and forth in the car for 6 hours. The last time I was in an airplane was mid-March. That day in mid-
March, South Korea had 90 diagnosed cases of coronavirus. On the other side of the world, in the United States of America, we had 90 cases of coronavirus.
Since then, fewer than 300 South Koreans have died. Their unemployment rate is under 4 percent. More than 110,000 Americans have been killed by this virus, and our unemployment rate is the worst since the Great Depression. This isn't because South Korea has smarter scientists or because South Korea has better doctors or because South Korea has harder workers. It is because of leadership.
Of course, Mr. President, you know because you ran against him. You know the President is going to deny responsibility. He is going to point fingers. He is going to blame others. It is what he did as a failed businessman. It is what he did as a TV celebrity. It is what he did as a Presidential candidate running against you, and it is what he has done as President. It is his whole life. He has denied responsibility. He pointed fingers. He has blamed others. My colleagues all know that the buck never stops in this Oval Office.
But what is disappointing is the whisper-in-the-woods silence and feet-in-concrete inaction on the part of so many of my friends this side of the aisle. We know the President's playbook is to divide, to distract, to play to race, to divide the country and distract from his failed leadership. So far, it has marginally been ``like President, like Senator.''
Yesterday, the President started attacking a private citizen whom he is supposed to serve, spreading conspiracy theories about a 75-year-old man peacefully protesting for change. What was my colleagues' reaction? It was the same whisper-in-the-woods silence, the same feet-in-concrete inaction, the hiding behind a column, behind a desk, hiding behind a post, hiding from the media. When the free press tried to ask them about it, when one journalist even printed out a copy of the President's statement, some of my colleagues physically refused to look at it.
You might be able to escape to your office in this building, but you can't ignore the people in cities and towns and neighborhoods in your State--in all of our States--who are demanding change. You can't ignore the people whom we serve. I implore my colleagues to listen to the calls for change. The President may ignore them. When he is not dividing, he is ignoring what citizens want to do, but we can do better in the Senate. We can step in to fill that leadership void. We can answer those calls for change. We can tackle the problems we face as a country.
We can start with the proposed solutions my colleagues and I have introduced to help people get through this pandemic. We have a rental assistance bill to help people pay their bills and stay in their home. Can you imagine anything worse than when the unemployment benefit runs out at the end of July?
In the State of Texas, there are twice as many. In my State alone, there are more than a million people unemployed. They are not all going to get called back to work by the end of July. If the unemployment benefit stops, as a number of people and Senator McConnell seem to want it to, there will be evictions. There will be a wave of evictions and people losing their apartments. Can you imagine anything more ludicrous in the middle of a pandemic than that people are put on the streets or people are forced to move in with a cousin in an already-crowded second floor apartment? Do you think that is not going to spread this pandemic even worse
We have to have a rental assistance bill. We have a plan to put more money in people's pockets so they can stay afloat and keep spending in our communities. We have a plan to actually protect workers on the job so they feel safe going back to work.
Yesterday, in committee, the Secretary of Labor told us there have been 5,000 workplace complaints against employers by employees saying their workplace wasn't safe. Do you know how many citations the Department of Labor issued? One. There were 5,000 complaints and 1 citation. The Department of Labor is supposed to represent--surprise--
labor, not corporate interests who have corporate leaders who have no interest in keeping their workplace safe.
We have a plan to truly scale up testing in this country so we can begin the real test-trace-isolate plan we need to reopen safely. Leader McConnell, the leader of this body, the Republican leader--elected, I assume, unanimously by his Republican caucus--says he sees no urgency. Those are his words. He sees no urgency on any of this.
We also have solutions to begin to finally tackle systemic racism that puts Black and Brown American lives at risk. This week my Democratic colleagues and I joined Senator Booker and Senator Harris to introduce legislation to make real meaningful reforms on how we do policing in this country. Americans of both parties agree we need to rethink the role of the police and how we invest our tax dollars in education, healthcare, and housing, and so much else.
I am also introducing a resolution declaring racism a public health emergency. Let's be clear: This pandemic and racism in America are not separate problems. They are intimately connected. A headline in the Atlantic put it well: ``The Coronavirus Was an Emergency Until Trump Found Out Who Was Dying.''
It is disproportionately Black and Brown Americans dying of this virus. It is Black and Brown workers who have been on the job for months, exposing themselves to the virus so grocery stores stay stocked and packages keep getting delivered and hospital linens keep getting changed. It is Black and Brown communities grieving the losses of their friends and neighbors.
Here is what I wish more of my colleagues would understand: They are our neighbors too. Breonna Taylor was our neighbor. George Floyd was our neighbor. The 110,000 Americans who have died of this virus were our neighbors.
Some of you expressed words of sympathy. Thank you for that. Some of you issued statements saying you want to see reform and you will not tolerate racism. All of you wish the President would stop tweeting. But those words aren't good enough. People are dying. Platitudes and press releases don't get us very far. They are not enough. You need to put actions behind your words.
It is time for colleagues to join us to pass real solutions. It is time to stand up to Leader McConnell and say: Let us do our jobs.
President Trump is not doing his job; that is for sure. Leader McConnell is not doing his job; that is for sure. It is time for all of us in this body to do our job.
It is time to stand up to the President, to use every ounce of leverage we all have to stop the racism, to stop the division, to stop inciting violence. There is a leadership void in this country. I am waiting for my colleagues to join us to fill it.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cramer). Without objection, it is so ordered.
H.R. 1957
Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, right now we are debating the Great American Outdoors Act, which would be great if only it were balanced. My problem with the Great American Outdoors Act is that it spends billions on places where we vacation, but the authors of the bill would not allow a few million to be spent to protect the places where we live and we work and we help create livelihoods for many.
There is an amendment that would do that that is bipartisan and that would not take any money away from the billions that the bill is already allocating for those places where we vacation.
First, let me kind of make my point. Forty-two percent of Americans live in a county or parish adjacent to a coastline--42 percent. Eighty-
five percent of Americans live in a coastal State. But of the billions that go into the Great American Outdoors Act, of those billions, 50 to close to 60 percent are spent in seven States, seven localities, and if you exclude Washington, DC, and areas around Washington, it is not spent on coastal areas.
We are spending billions on places where we go to vacation, but the authors of the bill will not allow millions to be spent to protect where we live. That is foolish public policy. We should be investing in coastal resiliency.
Now, of course, the irony is, we are going to spend billions on the coast. Why? We have seen it. Harris County flooded--that is Houston; Florida flooded, the panhandle, other parts of Florida; Puerto Rico; the American Virgin Islands; North Carolina; South Carolina; Georgia; Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey and New York; Hurricanes Rita and Katrina on the coast of Louisiana; also Mississippi and Alabama.
We are going to spend billions. We are going to spend billions, but we are going to spend those billions in the wrong way. We are going to spend those billions on the coast repairing damage that could have been prevented if we had spent millions now.
I draw attention to a flood wall, a levy, in Terrebonne Parish, LA, which was recently completed. So we had a high-water event where flooding came off the Gulf of Mexico. Ten thousand homes were not flooded because that flood protection had been erected. Ten thousand homes were not flooded.
All I am asking is for the authors of this bill to allow a few million to be spent where people live, where people work, where people help others earn their living, and they can still have their billions to spend on the places where we vacation.
I don't want to minimize the need to take care of our national parks. When someone speaks of a leaky roof, and if you fix it early, then fixing it early keeps the damage from getting greater--that makes sense. We should find a way to pay for it, but it makes sense that you would do that. How much more so when we are speaking about coastal resiliency?
I was told recently that the Army Corps of Engineers wants to build a
$3.5 billion floodgate in Miami to prevent Miami from flooding--$3.5 billion. We are going to spend billions on the coast; it is just a question of whether we do it in reaction, or whether we do it in kind of ``we have to fear the worst,'' or whether we do it like in Terrebonne Parish--building a flood wall now so that 10,000 homes don't flood.
It is my disappointment that the authors of this legislation will not allow this bipartisan amendment to be added.
By the way, we have heard that Democrats are OK with the amendment, but for whatever reason, the authors will not allow it.
Let me show you one other thing, just to make the point. The Great American Outdoors Act actually has two pots of dollars, if you will. One is for deferred maintenance--again, 50 to 60 percent of that goes to seven States. But this shows where the Land and Water Conversation money goes.
These are the coastal States. This is where people live, and these States, on average, per capita, get $7.53 from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. These blue States in the interior--some of them populated, some of them not--on average get $17.66 per capita. We are sending money to where people don't live to fix vacation spots, which are important, but it is not where we live, and we are not spending money where people do live, where their homes are, where their cities are, and where, if we don't enhance resiliency, we are going to spend billions when the hurricane hits. This is foolish public policy.
By the way, some of my fiscal conservative colleagues--and I consider myself a fiscal conservative--have weighed in against the Great American Outdoors Act, saying that we are not paying for it; we are pretending to pay for it. We are taking dollars that would otherwise go to the Treasury--otherwise go to the Treasury--and pretending like they are new dollars. That is actually true. But what we can also say is that if we add the amendment, the Coastal Act, which I worked on with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse--he has been a great partner to work with--
we actually would be paying for it. We would be paying for it by putting in the coastal resiliency that will prevent the future billions from having to be paid to pick up the pieces after a hurricane hits a populated area.
I will speak again on the floor tomorrow, but I just want to make the point that the Great American Outdoors Act spends billions where we vacation, fixing things that we don't wish to get worse. The Coastal Act does not take away from these billions--these billions that are spent on places where we vacation; these billions spent where people do not live--it just spends millions, a paltry few million trying to add resiliency to where we do live, to where we do work, to where we do create livelihoods not just for ourselves but for others, and that is a fiscally sound, fiscally conservative way to spend dollars. That would save Treasury money, and it would save lives and maybe give people a little extra money to spend in these parks we are spending billions to fix up.
Mr. President, I thank you, and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
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