Hawkeye Reporter

Joni Ernst was mentioned in LEGISLATIVE SESSION on pages S1732-S1745 covering the 2nd Session of the 117th Congress published on March 23 in the Congressional Record.

The publication is reproduced in full below:

LEGISLATIVE SESSION

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will now resume legislative session.

The Senator from Oklahoma.

Border Security

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, there is a lot going on in the world right now: Ukraine; what is happening in China; what is happening with the Iran nuclear conversation right now with Russia and the United States and China; record inflation here in the United States. There is so much going on that I am concerned that we are not also focused on an area at our southwest border.

It is interesting; I have had folks who have caught me and have said: Things must be going better at our southwest border because I don't hear about it as much.

Actually, there is just so much other news that it is drowning it out.

So what is actually happening at our southwest border right now, and where are we? Let me give you a little bit of context and then to be able to talk through some of the issues that are happening.

Today, on our southwest border, about 6,300 people have already illegally crossed. Now, a day that they can manage is about 3,500 people. So we are still hearing record numbers of people illegally crossing the border.

To set this in context, during the 4 years of the Trump Presidency, there were 2.4 million people who were encountered illegally crossing the border during the 4 years of the Trump Presidency. During the first 14 months of the Biden Presidency, we have already exceeded that number. We have had more illegal encounters in the first 14 months than there were in the previous 4 years.

In this process of all these individuals crossing the border, it has been interesting. There was something that was put in place in January of 2020 called title 42 authority. Now, let me explain this briefly. Because of the pandemic that was happening, in March of 2020, the Trump administration put in place that, for single adult individuals who were crossing the border, they would be turned around at the border based on the pandemic that was happening. The Biden administration agreed with that policy, and when they came in, they kept title 42 in place. In fact, last year, 1.1 million people were turned around at the border under title 42 authority.

Title 42 authority was always intended to be temporary. It is not a permanent immigration policy; it is during the pandemic, although it is ironic that the administration is looking to lift title 42 authority on the border at the same time--this month--members of the National Guard are being forced to resign if they don't have their vaccine. So if you don't take your vaccine and you are in the National Guard, you are being forced out, or if you are in the military and you haven't taken it, you are being forced to resign the military, but people illegally crossing our border can come into the United States.

At the same month that there is conversation about dropping the title 42 authority, we are still wearing a mask on our planes, in buses, and in trains based on a requirement of the administration on a threat to COVID. At the same time that is occurring, the administration is looking to lift the title 42 issues at our southern border.

They have had a year to be able to plan for this. I have been in conversation with Ali Mayorkas and with DHS. We have had multiple conversations with the leaders. I have been on the border multiple times to be able to talk to the leadership there, to say we have all known that at some point, title 42 authority is going away, so when that occurs, what is the plan to deal with illegal immigration or what they call irregular migration? What is the plan at that point?

Well, we are finally getting bits and pieces of the plan. The plan is, apparently, from the notes that we are getting and the conversations we have had at the staff level and that I can piece together from multiple conversations with multiple leaders, after a year of considering what to be able to do about illegal immigration and increasing numbers at the border, apparently, within the next couple of weeks, they are going to stop title 42 to be able to more rapidly move people into the interior of the country faster so the border looks less chaotic. The plan is to move people into the country faster so there is not a camera shot on people backed up at the border. That is the plan.

I wish I was kidding on that, but in a briefing with my staff last week, DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis told our team that as soon as they release title 42, they anticipate tens of thousands of migrants crossing the border within hours; that they are literally camped up on the south side of the border and that they will flood the border. DHS Office of Intelligence anticipates hundreds of thousands of migrants crossing within 2 weeks and as many as a million crossing within 6 weeks of when they lift title 42 authority.

May I remind us, last summer, when we saw all the chaos on our southern border, that was 900,000 for an entire year. They are anticipating as many as a million in 6 weeks illegally crossing our border, and their plan is not to turn them around; their plan is to bus them to towns and cities all over the United States so they would move away from the border quickly. That does not feel like a plan to me; that feels like a recipe for chaos and frustration from American citizens across the country.

The plan continues to be able to give individuals a piece of paper that they would have a court hearing 6 years in the future--6 years. I wish I was kidding about this. They will come across the border, be given a piece of paper, told they have a hearing 6 years in the future, and if they would like to apply for a work status, they can get that after they are here 6 months.

Last year, we had the highest number of illegal crossings in the history of our country--last year. The administration is now planning for that number to skyrocket this year. Their solution is to give work permits, move people faster to the interior of the country, and repeat. That is not a plan; that is a formula for disaster. That is individuals and families moving into the country who don't have legal status by the millions.

May I remind this body that last year, we had individuals from every single country on the planet who were encountered on our border last year illegally crossing--every single country. Yes, that includes Iran, North Korea, Russia. You name it, every country on the planet illegally crossed our border. The plan this year is not to turn them around; the plan this year is to expedite them into the interior of the country, hand them a form, and say: Show up at court 6 years from now. Oh, by the way, while you are waiting, you can have a work permit.

That is going to just drive even more illegal immigration into our country. That is going to drive people from all over the world to be able to come here and to cross our border illegally. That is an invitation to chaos. And I cannot even believe, even with this administration, that after a year of planning, this is the plan for what they are going to do for illegal immigration on our southern border.

Last summer, we found out through a series of rumors that ICE was planning to put up what they were calling a surge overflow temporary processing facility in Western Oklahoma, at a private prison there. I contacted DHS, confirmed that they were actually planning this, and told them the obvious issues with that. There was no bus station in that area. There was no airport in that area. They were literally looking to move thousands of people from the border into Western Oklahoma, into a small town, and just release them at that point, and they can figure out what to do and where to go from there.

The administration, after 48 hours of our back and forth, of me pushing, pulled back their plan and said they weren't going to do it. But I have noted their response back to me at the end of that. They said that they had decided not to pursue this facility at this time.

What was threatened in my State a year ago is very likely coming to many States that are represented in this room in the weeks ahead, where individuals are moved all over the country, into small towns and large towns, to be able to move people away from the border--what even DHS estimates may be a million people in 6 weeks to every part of the country so the border doesn't look chaotic. Can I ask you, is your town set up to receive people coming from all over the world to come into your town--a million in a 6-week time period?

Interior processing is a terrible idea. It is a terrible idea. And after a year, DHS can do better than this. So what do we need to do about this? My Democratic colleagues have a unique relationship with this President. You have the opportunity to be able to call the office, to sit down with the leadership team, and to say: This looks like a particularly bad idea. The American people do not like chaos, and they do not like illegal immigration. The American people love legal immigration. We cheer at nationality events. We show up in droves and watch people pledge allegiance to the flag for the first time as an American citizen. But the American people do not like illegal immigration, especially one that is unlimited, chaotic, and from every country in the world.

So I made contact with the administration. I am laying this marker down. We are going to do everything that we possibly can as a team to be able to make it clear that this administration plans to bring chaos to the United States in the next several months, and we are going to do everything we can to be able to stop that. This is not some random threat.

The President of the United States has a unique responsibility to enforce the law. That is what Presidents do. And the people in my State are not asking for something odd or peculiar; they are asking simply for the President of the United States to enforce the law of the United States.

May I remind this body of a statistic you may or may not remember. Last year, ICE deported 57,000 people total in a year. We had 2.3 million people illegally encountered at the southern border, and ICE deported 57,000 total in a year. It was a record-low number of deportations and a record-high number of illegal crossings. And now they are planning to lift title 42. All 100 of us should be addressing this administration and telling them this is a bad idea, and I pray they hear us out.

To the President of the United States: Just enforce the law.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The junior Senator from Washington.

H.R. 4521

Ms. CANTWELL. I come to the floor to talk about the underlying bill that we are trying to get passed. That is the United States Innovation and Competition Act that we passed here in the U.S. Senate about 280 days ago.

One aspect of that bill is a provision that we just had a hearing on in the Commerce Committee today, and that is the funding of what are called semiconductors, the key technology enabling so much of the technology sectors today--from your phones to your smart devices, to automobiles, to the transition we want to make on clean energy, to just about everything that we see that is essential to be smarter, more connected, and to play off some of the advances in technology that allow us to be more efficient.

But we are here to talk about how chips are also a supply chain issue. And the supply chain of this product has definitely been impacted over the last few years, both by the fact that there has been a higher demand for them and because of what has happened during COVID.

In fact, 90 percent of the chips that are most advanced today come from Taiwan. Today's hearing was about how the United States of America needs to do more to produce the next generation of advanced chips for artificial intelligence, automation, and advanced manufacturing, here in the United States, and that an overreliance on the global supply chain--which every American can tell you about the supply chain now because there are products that they are not getting because of the supply chain or the price has gone up because of the supply chain--but we know that this issue of getting this Innovation and Competition Act and getting the funding for more production to be done in the United States on something as critical as semiconductors is a very key issue. So I hope our colleagues will help us get to conference and resolve this issue with our colleagues.

But I would like to talk about a few of those sectors that are really impacting and hurting Americans. First of all, in the automotive sector, thousands of American workers have endured layoffs due to the shortage. The global automobile industry suffered over 200 billion in losses, and Ford was forced to halt or cut production at eight plants as recently as last month.

The cost of a used car has gone up 41 percent, and the price of new cars 12 percent. A lot of this is due to the semiconductor shortage. Let me repeat those numbers: The price of a used car has gone up 41 percent; the price of a new car over here, 12 percent. And this is the price of a 12-percent increase on new equipment.

Well, if you think about it, right now, for most of those people trying to buy the new cars, they might be on a waiting list. But people who can easily afford a new car and need one but can't get it due to the shortage, they are buying used cars instead, and that is what is driving up the price.

So who feels the pain at the pump? It is not the person who has to wait a few extra months for that new car that they wanted. It is the person whose radiator blew out last week who just needs anything to drive to work--anything to get them to and from their job. But now that used car is 41 percent more expensive. That basic used car might have cost $5,000 last year, but if you add the 41 percent to that, it is now costing $7,000.

So where is the extra $2,000 coming from? For that American consumer who has to delay a family trip or do without things for their children or maybe not even be able to pay next month's rent, all of this is due to the impacts that we are seeing from this shortage.

So chips and the semiconductor effort that we are trying to address in the underlying bill are really the ultimate supply chain issue; that is, that some of the networking equipment that I mentioned here--a 12-

percent increase--sometimes people are selling chips for a hundred times their regular price just so that people will compete for them to build out the broadband access.

We also are seeing issues of security, now that the source of the chips are so concentrated in Taiwan, that at least 7 different chip manufacturers, people have tried to hack them to steal the designs of these chips. So these are all the reasons why we, today, here need to advance this bill and say to the House: We want to go to conference. We want to move forward on this legislation.

This legislation also supports $2 billion for, specifically, Defense Department efforts to secure the supply chain, as well, and to help us face this increase in demand.

I just want to say this to my colleagues. I know some people think: Well, this issue will be over. It will be down the road. It is not going to be over until we act. Right now, the world needs 1 trillion chips per year. You need 1 trillion chips per year. In 2021, that went up to 1.2 trillion chips per year. In 2031, it is going to be 2 trillion chips per year.

And this is driven by--you can see the demand. So there is a 200-

percent increase in what is going to be needed from the automotive sector, a 60-percent increase from the wireless sector, and an 80-

percent increase in the consumer electronics sector.

So the question is, Are we just going to wait and see what happens in Taiwan? Or are we going to make an investment here in the United States to jump from that 1.2 trillion a year to 2 trillion a year and make it be leading-edge U.S. technology?

So I am thankful for this underlying bill today, and I thank the witnesses who testified at today's hearing.

One particular industry that was there was PACCAR, a company based in Washington that is leading the way on transportation, automotive, and driverless trucks, and they explained what this has done to impact their business, why we need advanced chips, and why we need to continue as a nation to promote them.

So I definitely hope our colleagues will see forth to move forward on this kind of investment, get the underlying R&D bill onto the President's desk so we can do what we do best in the United States of America and that is invent, make our manufacturers competitive, and grow jobs.

Ocean Shipping Reform Act

Madam President, with that, I would like to turn to another issue. I have been joined here on the floor by my colleague Senator Klobuchar. We very much appreciate her and Senator Thune's efforts on trying to tackle some of the supply chain issues that are at the ports.

Our ports are seeing record amounts of traffic--a 20-some-percent increase in the amount of traffic coming into the United States--and that congestion has caused lots of problems at our ports.

Senators Klobuchar and Thune announced legislation that we marked up in committee earlier this week that I hope will see action on the Senate floor as early as next week. That legislation puts new tools into the hands of the Federal Maritime Commission, whose job it is to make sure that there aren't unreasonable rates or practices that impact negatively shippers in the United States.

And right now, what is happening is particularly our agricultural sector is getting very hard-hit; that is, that literally some of these foreign shippers that were at record profits and record millions have basically been leaving without the U.S. exports. They literally are coming to the United States, dropping product off, leaving less than full, and hurrying back to pick up more product and deliver it to the United States.

And our growers haven't been able to get their products onto those ships, and the result of that is they are left on the docks, without the ability to deliver the product to the customers that they would like to see.

So our farmers need help and solutions on this. One solution by the Biden-Harris administration that Secretary Vilsack has implemented is a popup space at our ports to help defray the cost of freight that has been caused.

I just want our colleagues to know that more needs to be done with the Klobuchar-Thune bill because the container cost has gone from

$1,300 per container to $11,000 per container. This is part of data that has been provided to us.

And what has happened is not only the costs that they are facing, as I said, sometimes they are called, and it is said: If your product isn't here, then we are leaving without it. And that is a big problem if you are talking about Washington apples, seafood, any of the other products that are big from our State.

One individual who testified--or came to a press event that we had in Seattle last week said that the dairy industry and supply chain last year and the problems cost U.S. dairy over $1.5 billion. And it means that more containers are leaving the port empty.

We believe that the loss of revenue to the ag sector may be as much as 22 percent; that is, that our ag sector isn't being able to get their product out.

So I want to thank the President for his infrastructure package and putting more money into ports and port development, as we did in a bipartisan way with our colleagues in the Commerce Committee, and also for getting this project up and running here at Terminal 46 in Seattle.

This popup storage helped facilitate and pre-position our agricultural products so that they could be ready to get on those ships and not face a penalty because of the congestion we are seeing.

USDA is providing our exporters with $200 to $400 per container to help with the storage cost, but it is literally getting them in position so that they can be right around the corner and get picked up quickly. So I want to thank the Biden administration for that.

But I also want to encourage our colleagues to move ahead, as I mentioned, on the Klobuchar-Thune bill, which is saying to the major Federal entity whose day job it is to oversee reasonable rates as it relates to shipping in the United States, please, let's get this legislation on the Senate floor. If we care about supply chain issues, if we care about the prices that are impacting consumers, then let's get this legislation on the floor.

Obviously, the amount of costs that we are seeing per container and the amount of increase in those container costs are impacting everyone.

So if those costs are on every container, whether they are coming in or leaving, then we are seeing increased costs to consumers and consumer products all across the board.

So let's get these supply chain issues, like USICA--the United States Innovation and Competition Act--let's get that supply chain moving. Let's get that supply chain of us making legislation with the House moving so we can fix real supply chain problems with our semiconductors. And let's get this Federal Maritime Commission bill on the floor next week so we can address the supply chain problems that are costing us more with ag and costing us more with imports.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hickenlooper). The Senator from Minnesota.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Washington for her incredible leadership of the Commerce Committee and focusing on the issues that matter to businesses, something the Presiding Officer, as the former Governor of Colorado and someone who knows a little bit about business understands as well. We have to fix these supply chain issues, and we have to actually take up the torch.

We have gotten through the worst of this pandemic; we see the lighthouse on the horizon; and it is time to move forward with our economy.

And instead of just diagnosing the problem, we actually have to do some things to fix it. And on that list, for my own State, I would say, No. 1 is workforce and getting people into the jobs that we have available; No. 2, something Senator Cantwell has made so clear, is the semiconductors and all of the things we should be making in America; No. 3 is infrastructure. We are so proud of the bipartisan infrastructure bill that we worked so hard on and the money going to improve our ports, including the port in Duluth, the busiest port on Lake Superior. And then, finally, something I am going to address today, the Ocean Shipping Reform Act, a bipartisan bill that I lead with Senator Thune, unanimously passed the Commerce Committee yesterday, and I want to thank Senators Cantwell and Wicker for their leadership and help on the bill.

Senator Thune and I are both in the middle of the country. In fact, we are neighbors in Minnesota and South Dakota, and we know that American farmers feed the world and consumers and businesses look to them for in-demand ag goods from soybeans to corn, to dairy, to poultry, to pork, to beef, to name just a few.

We also have tons of small and big manufacturers in the middle of the country--and it is not just Minnesota or Colorado or South Dakota that have been seeing the delays in shipping. It is everywhere in this Nation.

The past 2 years have highlighted significant supply chain disruptions and vulnerabilities for U.S. exporters, including many families across my home State.

U.S. companies have only been able to ship 60 percent of their orders because they can't access shipping containers during certain parts of this pandemic. At the same time, ocean carriers--almost all foreign owned--have reported record profits. It is estimated that the mostly foreign container shipping industry made a record $190 billion in profits in 2021, a sevenfold increase from the previous year.

Their financial performance certainly isn't the result of improved performance, given how many things we have not been able to ship out. No, they are fleecing consumers and exporters because they know they can get away with it, and this is all while exporters and consumers are paying the price, literally, for the supply chain disruptions caused by their unreliable service.

We need to get exports to those who need them. We need to be a country that makes stuff, invents things, exports to the world. That is why Senator Thune and I put together the Ocean Shipping Reform Act. We also want to thank our colleagues in the House who have a very similar bill.

Our bill protects American farmers and manufacturers by making it easier for them to ship ready-to-export goods waiting at our ports. It levels the playing field for American exporters by updating Federal regulations for the global shipping industry. It gives the Federal Maritime Commission greater authority to regulate harmful practices by big international ocean carriers.

It directs the Federal Maritime Commission to issue a rule prohibiting international ocean carriers from unreasonably declining shipping opportunities for U.S. exports.

Believe it or not, they bring in stuff from other countries, and then what do they export back? Air. Air. So many empty containers with nothing in them. This would fix that.

In addition to giving the FMC more authority to investigate bad practices, the bill also directs the FMC to set new rules for what the international carrier companies can reasonably charge and require ocean carriers to certify and ultimately prove that the fees they charge are fair. As rates continue to climb, this is more urgent than ever.

The sheer act of passing this bill will send a major message to the foreign-owned ocean shipping industry that it is time to ship our goods out of America and to charge our American manufacturers and our American farmers and, thus, our consumers a fair rate.

I want to again thank Chairman Cantwell and Ranking Member Wicker for holding a compelling hearing on this bill, all members of the Commerce Committee for passing it through, and Senator Thune and I have a bipartisan group of 27 cosponsors: Baldwin, Hoeven, Stabenow, Marshall, Peters, Moran, Blumenthal, Young, Kelly, Crapo, Tina Smith, Marsha Blackburn, Cory Booker, Joni Ernst, Cortez Masto, Braun, Warnock, Risch, Bennet, Cramer, Wyden, Blunt, Van Hollen, Boozman, Fischer, Padilla, and, yes, the Presiding Officer, Senator Hickenlooper.

We are excited about the bill, and I am going to end my remarks a little quickly because I know Senator Coons has some very important remarks himself about a fantastic staff member.

With that, I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.

Remembering Madeleine Albright

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I rise to offer some brief remarks about a dear friend, someone upon whom I have relied as a mentor, someone who has served our Nation across many decades, and someone whose passing earlier today is a moment of great significance for our Nation and our place in the world.

I happen to have been a Truman scholar; some of my best friends are Truman scholars; and the person whose passing we mourn today I first met because she was the chair of the Truman Scholarship Foundation Board.

I am speaking of the former Ambassador to the United Nations, the former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, whom I first got to know decades ago, but whom, in my dozen years here in the Senate, I got to know as a mentor and a friend, someone whose lilting humor, whose brilliant insights, whose force of personality, and whose charisma were unmatched.

One of the greatest memories I will have in my life was a dinner I got to enjoy last year with former Secretary and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell, and former Secretary of State and Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, and the Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

We sat in her garden and talked for hours about the world, about conflict, about Russia and China, about Putin, about the Balkans, about a whole range of things, and I learned so much.

Madeleine never lost her love for this institution, for the Senate. It was here that she, as a relatively young staffer, cut her teeth on politics and on being engaged in policymaking.

And one of the things that always amused her was that this desk--the desk of Senator Biden and Senator Kennedy--was also the desk of Senator Ed Muskie, a Senator from Maine for whom she worked for a number of years. She was his chief LA from 1976 until 1978 and then went to work for Zbigniew Brzezinski on the National Security Council.

I will simply say this. Today, we have lost one of our best and one of our brightest, one of the most passionate in her dedication to democracy.

As someone who was born overseas in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and who, along with her family, fled communism to come to the United States, she never stopped offering her insights, her advice, her passionate dedication to democracy. In the books that she read, in the pins that she wore, in the speeches that she gave, in the students that she mentored, Madeleine Albright touched so many lives.

Yet she on occasion was gracious enough to give me just a few minutes of her time. Through her, her daughter Alice and her grandson David became great and dear friends. David's service in my office was an enormous blessing to me and my team.

I just wanted to ask for prayers for them, for their family, and for all whose lives were touched by Madeleine Albright.

Tribute to Tom Mancinelli

Mr. President, I rise today to make some comments about a truly bittersweet moment in my career of service.

I have been an elected official for 22 years. I have had the opportunity to work alongside dozens--actually hundreds of dedicated, capable, and hard-working staff. None have earned my trust and my confidence, driven my agenda, set my priorities, and been so central to my service and my life like my national security adviser, Tom Mancinelli.

Like me, a Truman scholar, Tom is someone who decided early on to set his sights towards a life in public service. In the 7 years he has been a member of my team, he has been an incredible mentor, a great leader, and someone upon whose advice I have always been able to rely.

I hired him from service at the Department of State, where he was chief of staff of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. He was a Presidential Management Fellow before that, but most importantly, he is a Naval Academy graduate and was an officer in the Marine Corps. I note that brings a smile to his face even now.

As I had a chance just last week to say to the Commandant, I have seen, through Tom's service in my office, a gentleman, an officer who has lived the values of the Corps with honor and courage and commitment; someone who has lived his life with an uncompromising code of integrity, respect for human dignity, respect for others, and an intense commitment to his service and a joyful and whimsical spirit.

As a result of our years together traveling around the world and our time here in the United States, a number of phrases and terms have become a part of my lexicon that I did not know before:

``Once a Marine, always a Marine.''

``Every Marine a rifleman.''

``No plan survives contact with the enemy.''

``Officers eat last.''

Tom has been an exemplar of the sort of servant leadership embodied in the phrase ``Officers eat last.'' It means you take care of your team, of your squad, of the men and women entrusted to you. In his two tours in Iraq and in his 7 years with me, Tom has shown that exemplary.

I have celebrated the Marine Corps' birthday with him. I have heard him talk about Tun Tavern. I have seen him brighten the days of countless marines deployed as parts of security detachments at Embassies around the world with a hearty ``Semper Fi.'' He has always made sure that we respected and paid attention to the lives and the service of the men and women of our Armed Forces.

Although it is with great regret that I congratulate him on this, I congratulate him today on his next tour, which will be at the Department of Defense.

Through our time together, we have traveled to 54 countries. That is nearly a third of the countries on Earth. We have pressed dictators and autocrats for democratic progress and human rights. We have visited refugee camps in some of the toughest places on Earth to hear those fleeing persecution and civil war. We trekked to see mountain gorillas in Virunga National Park in Rwanda, and I have watched him with, just over the rise, an elephant in the near distance. We carried out a Presidential mission to go to Ethiopia in the middle of a civil war, and we helped deliver vaccines to our partners, from Guatemala to Taiwan. We visited American troops stationed abroad more times than I can count.

Tom has helped me write and introduce and get marked up and pass bills that would invest in our strategic competition with China, advance electrification across Africa, combat wildlife trafficking, address the root causes of violence and extremism--the Global Fragility Act--and support young Palestinian entrepreneurs. There is a long, long list. But the one of which I am proudest for him and I hope something of which he is proud as well is the huge amount of effort he dedicated to leading the BUILD Act, signed into law in 2018, to establish the new U.S. Development Finance Corporation--$60 billion in capability deployed to do everything from vaccine manufacturing to sustainable agriculture, from women's empowerment to deploying solar energy in the developing world. The DFC will have a remarkable impact for a very long time to come.

As I have said, it is not just the hard work of policymaking but the inside-the-room work of mentoring and guiding fellows and staff members, becoming the sort of person upon whom I can rely to execute a flawless congressional delegation trip overseas, or codel.

Frankly, I think one of our most recent trips, among the most memorable, was also among his most successful. We crisscrossed the world with a constantly shifting constellation of Members of the House and Senate, leaving from Andrews Air Force Base, flying overnight to Brussels for visits with the EU, NATO, and Belgium, and then continued that same day on to Scotland. We spent time at both the COP26 global conference on climate change and in Edinburgh, looking at new means of generating electricity and power, and capped off that day with a celebration with the Scottish Government at Edinburgh Castle.

We then loaded back on the plane and went all the way to Qatar, had dinner with the Emir, breakfast with the Foreign Minister, and visited Afghan refugees and an Air Force base at which Americans were deployed.

We went on from there to Jerusalem, to Tel Aviv, to Ramallah, to meet with the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and Defense Minister of Israel and the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority.

Not yet done, we got on a plane and went to Berlin to meet with the now-Chancellor central to our response to Russia's aggression in Ukraine and members of the Bundestag before flying home.

All of this was in 1 week--no mess, no fuss, flawless, excellently executed, perfectly planned.

Tom takes the time in the course of a codel like that, rather than being frenetic or self-important, to make sure that the other staffers on the trip are learning about how they will lead future codels, that all the Members are attended to and supported, and that it is a purposeful investment of the time and resources of the American people, all while taking a little bit of time to go celebrate with the marines who helped execute that fantastic codel.

Most impressively to me, Tom has found a way to excel at his career in my office while still being a great father to his children George and Ruth and a husband to his accomplished wife Sarah. On a few occasions, I have had to chase him out and say: Don't miss that. Often, he has already gone to a parent-teacher conference, to a baseball game, understanding that is his first mission and something to which he is tirelessly dedicated.

He will continue his record of public service as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs, and I have warned him, dealing with Congress is a really miserable duty. But there is no one--no one--they could have hired who would carry this duty out better or more thoroughly, with more character and competence, than Tom Mancinelli.

Hiring Tom was one of the best choices I have ever made. For as many years as he will return my calls, I will continue to call on him for advice and counsel. I very much look forward to his next chapter in public service.

As I was talking with my own children just this weekend, my youngest said to me that of all the people she has gotten to know in my office, he most exemplified to her what it means to be an American, a patriot, and public servant. I can offer no greater compliment than that--well deserved, well performed, well served.

To my favorite marine, thank you.

With that, I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.

Ukraine

Mr. REED. Mr. President, today marks 1 month since the illegal and unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine began. Since that time, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has proven himself a courageous and inspiring leader, the Ukrainian military has performed heroically in the face of overwhelming violence, and the Ukrainian people have shown the world what true courage looks like.

There is one person who is responsible for so much suffering and catastrophe: Vladimir Putin. Faced with this senseless attack, Ukraine and the international community have rallied together to stand up to Putin with a unified front. It is stunning, therefore, that many of my Republican colleagues now seem intent upon suggesting that Russia invaded Ukraine because of something the Biden administration did or failed to do.

There is no polite way to put this: This attempt to score political points by blaming the Biden administration for Putin's invasion is unacceptable and inappropriate.

I think it is important to remind my colleagues of some important facts they are ignoring.

To be clear, the Biden administration has done more than any previous administration when it comes to support for Ukraine. In the roughly 14 months since taking office, the administration has provided more than

$2 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, including weapons like Stingers and Javelins that are proving so effective today. This is far more than any previous administration, and I applaud those 17 Republican Senators who voted for this military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine.

Further, since last fall, the Biden administration has worked tirelessly to build a coalition of nations committed to supporting Ukraine. So when the time came to stand up to Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the United States stood with more than 30 countries from across the globe to condemn the violence, to execute the largest sanctions and export controls in history, and to support the Ukrainian people by surging humanitarian and security aid into the country. This overwhelming international response would not have happened without President Biden's leadership.

We also should not forget a major reason Vladimir Putin felt so emboldened to invade Ukraine and challenge NATO. For 4 years, President Trump treated our allies like adversaries and pandered to dictators and despots--especially Putin. Mr. Trump's animosity toward NATO created lingering doubt about the United States' reliability and the cohesion of the alliance, jeopardizing our greatest advantage against Russia.

The Trump administration's failure to hold Russia accountable for numerous violations of international norms served only to embolden Putin in challenging U.S. leadership and the rules-based international order.

Most disturbing, of course, was the offense that led to Mr. Trump's first impeachment: his efforts to extort Ukraine's security for political favors at home. That an American President would abuse his office to pressure a foreign government to interfere in our democracy as part of a reelection bid remains deeply troubling.

Mr. Trump's actions damaged NATO, weakened Ukraine, and ceded political leverage to Putin. Now, the Ukrainian people are paying the price. Fortunately, at this critical time, the United States and our allies are no longer hamstrung by Mr. Trump's erratic leadership--a fact Vladimir Putin must understand very well at this stage.

If Putin thought his actions over the past month would drive a wedge between NATO members and within the international community, he has found himself badly mistaken. Led by President Biden, the international community has united in a way not seen in generations, and Russia is already straining under the immense costs we have levied against it and the courageous actions of the Ukrainian people.

With that in mind, I would like to take a few moments to correct the record on a few debates about our ongoing support for Ukraine.

First, on the issue of arms transfers, the United States has led the international effort to identify capabilities the Ukrainian military can put to immediate use, and I think we have to emphasize ``immediate use.'' Transferring equipment that cannot be used effectively because of the combat conditions in the area or because we need to train or refit the equipment is not going to give the Ukrainian forces immediate assistance, and that is the kind of assistance they need.

In fact, over the past few months, the State Department has worked with incredible speed to facilitate the transfer of U.S.-origin equipment from partner nations to Ukraine. However, all of these transports, whether it be former Soviet-era air defense systems or former Soviet aircraft, occur on a bilateral basis, and ultimately, it is a decision for each partner nation to make within their own internal channels.

With regard to a no-fly zone, the United States has enjoyed air superiority for the past 20 years of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, so it is, perhaps, understandable that some of my colleagues think such endeavors are easily achieved and without risk. However, establishing and enforcing a no-fly zone against a near-peer competitor like Russia is far more complex. To do so would almost certainly drag the United States and the entire NATO alliance into a direct armed conflict with Russia. It would also put the women and men tasked with flying such missions at great risk. President Biden has rightly said that the United States will not seek direct conflict with Russia, and establishing a no-fly zone would almost certainly defy that aim.

So, to my colleagues both on this side of the aisle and on the other side of the aisle, enough with trying to blame the Biden administration at every step in this conflict. This crisis demands unity and strength, and I call upon my colleagues, particularly my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, to join me in condemning the one person who bears responsibility for the horrific violence against the people of Ukraine: Vladimir Putin.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I am here today with my great friend, the senior Senator from Missouri, to talk about an issue we both care passionately about and that we have partnered on now for a number of years.

I ask unanimous consent to proceed in a colloquy with Senator Blunt.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Excellence in Mental Health Act

Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, on October 31, 2013, Senator Blunt and I stood here on the Senate floor to mark a very important anniversary. It was 50 years to the day after President Kennedy signed into law the Community Mental Health Act. It was the last piece of legislation he was ever able to sign.

As we know, his life was tragically cut short, and one important part of his life's work, that of providing full funding for comprehensive mental health services in the community, never came to happen. Instead, behavioral health is funded far too often through grants, and while these grants are important, they are just not enough.

You would never say to somebody who needed heart bypass surgery,

``Yep, you need surgery, but so sorry; the grant ran out,'' which is what happens to someone with a mental health crisis or an addiction all the time. You wouldn't say to somebody with bipolar disorder or substance abuse--well, we actually would say, ``So sorry; the grant ran out,'' and we should not be saying that.

Why should healthcare above the neck be funded differently than healthcare below the neck?

This is something that Senator Blunt and I started to work on. We know that that should not be true. Healthcare is healthcare. President Kennedy understood this, and so does my friend Senator Blunt.

Right, Senator Blunt?

Mr. BLUNT. Exactly.

I am so glad to be here with you, Senator Stabenow. We have been friends for a long time and have worked together on a number of issues both in the House, to which we came at the same time, and in the Senate, when I got to the Senate.

Clearly, this is one of the things of which, I think, we both have a strong sense that we have really made a difference in not only how we look at mental health but in also the way we talk about mental health.

To Senator Stabenow's point of treating mental health like all other health and ``what happens when you do that?'' we got an award last month when I was home and Senator Stabenow was virtually in Jefferson City, MO, for a few minutes with the Missouri Behavioral Health Council, and we received the Excellence in Mental Health award. Brent McGinty, the head of that council, gave a talk about what they were doing and what they were seeing from what they were doing. Also, we talked about the partnership with community health centers, another thing we have worked together on.

Joe Pierle and Brent McGinty are actually both here today, coincidentally, as we are talking about this issue that is so important to both of them.

I have often thought about the same type of discussion we had in 2013 as Senator Stabenow just pointed out. We went through the Community Mental Health Act from 1963, and it became apparent that many of the things that probably should have been closed but were serving a need, did get closed, but then the support system didn't come in, in the way that anybody would have envisioned when that came together. I can remember it in Missouri when some of our mental health facilities or hospitals were closed, and that was a fine thing if you had what the bill that President Kennedy signed had in mind and, I think, what we have had in mind.

One of the things we have looked at is--we have looked at 41 States now that have some efforts, some unit, of excellence in mental health--

the Certified Community Behavioral Health Centers--in their States. Maybe it is a big county. Maybe it is a city that was able to qualify with the 365-days-a-year, 24/7 standards and with the kind of staff available that you have to have to meet that criteria first. We now have eight States, including Michigan and Missouri, in this process.

One of the things that is happening in all of those units is keeping track of the person's other healthcare challenges when you are dealing with their mental healthcare challenges. The NIH says about one in five adult Americans has a diagnosable and almost always treatable behavioral health issue, and one in five adult Americans probably has other health issues as well. In fact, obviously, they would have.

One of the things we have been trying to keep track of is what happens in the real, confined healthcare world when you deal with people's mental health problems like they were any other health problems. Do they start showing up at appointments more frequently? Do they take the medicine that they are supposed to take for either behavioral health issues or other health issues? Are they eating better or sleeping better or feeling better about themselves? I think it is pretty clear and totally logical that that would be exactly what happens.

Another thing we have seen, after the 50 years of whatever happened in mental health between October 1963 and the day we were on the floor in 2013, is that, in so many ways, the police department, law enforcement, and the emergency room became the de facto mental health system for the country.

We have had people come and be part of the press conferences with us, Senator Stabenow, when we are talking about fewer people being taken to the emergency rooms and the importance of having a contact that you can make or have, maybe, a place that is not only a place to spend the night but also a place for you and your family so you know that you are going to have an ongoing opportunity to have a relationship to deal with your mental health problem just like you would if you had to be taken to the hospital with other problems.

We have seen some things there, Senator Stabenow, that you may want to talk about a little bit--everything from the iPad that law enforcement officers and the crisis intervention team uses in Springfield, MO, and other places in our State to where they can immediately link the person they are dealing with up on the screen on the iPad with the behavioral health counselor who is there any time of the day--fully manned, 24/7--and see what begins to happen when a professional is dealing with a person in crisis.

I have seen that happen, and I am sure I was there with, probably, the best crisis intervention center person the police department had. You can tell the difference when they start looking at that screen and talking to somebody who is always a behavioral health specialist but also who is just a little bit removed and is totally prepared to enter into that discussion. We have had lots of people talk about the impact on departments and emergency rooms, Senator Stabenow.

Ms. STABENOW. Senator Blunt, I couldn't agree with you more.

I don't know about you, but when we first started and knew this was going to be a step-by-step process, we weren't able to go nationwide. We had to prove the concept would work with, really, providing comprehensive services, not just what is done in most States, like in Michigan, where there was Medicaid funding for people who were seriously mentally ill, but if you weren't seriously mentally ill, there was no support for anybody else.

So doing a concept like federally qualified health centers, which I have been so proud to be your partner on--where you say, ``OK. If you meet high standards, we will fully fund your capacity then to provide services if you meet high standards''--is what the whole point is. After only 2 years of doing that with the eight States' demonstration project, I was really blown away, and I think you were, too, in that, after only 2 years, the kind of results that they were able to get were so meaningful. HHS--by the way, both Democratic and Republican Presidents have embraced this and supported this, which has been wonderful. But, after only 2 years, they found 63 percent fewer emergency room visits.

I remember being in one of the press conferences we did with a police chief from Oklahoma, who was talking about how it was so difficult if they had someone who needed care. They would drive hours and go sit in the emergency room with them, and an officer would be off of their regular duties all day, sitting with somebody in the emergency room.

So, with a 63-percent reduction in the number of folks sitting in the emergency room because they couldn't get help and then to have a 60-

percent reduction in the amount of time in jail, I am not surprised that sheriffs and police chiefs and law enforcement officials across the country are our biggest supporters in terms of having comprehensive community behavioral health clinics. They want people to get help. They don't want them going to jail, just sitting in jail.

The other thing that was so important, I thought, was that there was about a 41-percent decrease in homelessness. Oftentimes, with the iPad that you are talking about, there may be someone on the ground, on the street, and an officer will be asked to respond. The fact that they can put someone--a social worker or a psychologist or someone--on the iPad, on FaceTime, basically, to talk to someone and get an initial diagnosis of what is going on, what kind of help they need, where they should go, and so on has been so effective and I know, for law enforcement, such a relief in that they have tools that they can use, and we are seeing that over and over again.

One of the things we require, of course, is to be able to get this full funding as healthcare so that you have a 24-hour psychiatric crisis operation, which I think has been one of the most important pieces of it.

I don't know about you, but the results, to me, have been amazing, and we now have 10 States in the demonstration projects, and we are ready to offer this opportunity to States across the country.

Mr. BLUNT. Well, we are.

As to what you were talking about with getting people into the healthcare system instead of the criminal justice system, it is, obviously, one of the goals we should have.

Missouri's really got started in January 2017, and in the first 4 years in these certified centers, they served more than 150,000 Missourians and more than 3,500 veterans. That was a 41-percent increase over the 4 years of not being in the program to being in the program. Not only is it able to serve people, but because of the way this is set up, you are able to serve people so much more quickly. You are able to have the staff that you can have because you know you have got the funding you need to have the staff--largely, this is an increase of the Medicaid coverage, but the other Medicaid costs go down more than the behavioral health costs add to the system.

We have always known that this was the right thing to do--right thing to do in the long run, right thing to do for police officers, right thing to do for the emergency room, right thing to do for the prison system, right thing to do for the people being at work.

I think what we are showing here is, not only is it the right thing to do and saves money over time, but it is the right thing to do and largely pays for itself and maybe more than pays for itself within the immediate context of healthcare; and that is one of the things we are looking at.

What we saw in the last 2 years with COVID was the real crisis that became part of that healthcare crisis with a mental health crisis, of isolation, of people who developed some kind of dependency. If you don't have a mental health problem before you become dependent on opioids or something else, you have one as soon as you become dependent on those. The suicide numbers went up.

Having a structure in place ready to reach out and man the suicide hotline to get people to where they need to get--there is no waiting list for somebody who is thinking about doing harm to themselves or others. We need to have a society where we understand that is an immediate problem; it has to be dealt with immediately; and it is a societal--not only a societal goal, but, actually, it should be one of our primary responsibilities in this society. And I think that is what we are seeing here over and over again, Senator Stabenow.

Ms. STABENOW. I agree.

You know, when I think about COVID and all the increased stress on children and young people and, as you said, the increase in number of suicides--all the pressure is on everyone, from those on the frontlines who are taking care of patients in the hospitals and the stress of families and so on.

We know that it is even more important that we eliminate the stigma of what it means to ask for help--mental health help--or if you have an addiction to be able to ask for help.

It is not enough just to eliminate the stigma; you have to have the service. You have to have the service in the community. It has to be quality services. It has to be funded in a structural way where you are supporting the staff and, again, modeling this after community health centers, which are widely supported--every community in the country, strong bipartisan support.

By our picking up that model and basically saying, We need to do that for mental health and addiction as well as physical health, we are just extending something that has shown such success in the community. And now, because of what has happened and all the pressures of COVID and so on, it is even more important that folks who need help can be able to get that.

You know I think of someone who has struggled with addiction their whole life and they finally get the courage up; they are going to ask for help. The ability to walk into a clinic and say, ``I need help'' and to have somebody say, ``Come on in''----

Mr. BLUNT. I think in almost--in all of the States, once they get this fully running the way they hope it will, that everybody who needs to be seen the first day is seen the first day.

Ms. STABENOW. Right.

Mr. BLUNT. There may be an occasional evaluation where you talk to somebody and realize this is something that you don't have to put at the very front of that day's line; but if you need to be at the front of the line, you get to go to the front of the line. If you need to be seen the first day, you get to be seen the first day. No more 7-day waiting period for a crisis moment.

Ms. STABENOW. Right.

Mr. BLUNT. People still may have to occasionally wait and come back tomorrow or come back Wednesday or whatever the schedule might be--and I think that is critically important.

Now, Senator Stabenow, what you and I are trying to do is to further expand the opportunity. You know, the President said in his State of the Union message:

Let's get all Americans the mental health services they need.

That is a quote: ``Let's get all Americans the mental health services they need.'' That was a goal in the President's State of the Union message; it should be a significant goal for the country.

What we would like to see happen in this Congress is the expansion of excellence in mental health to every State that wants to do it. Initially, we had 24 States apply to be part of the 8 pilot States. Nineteen of them went all the way through that entire process.

You know, all 50 States may not apply, but we would like to create an environment where all 50 States could apply.

Frankly, every time we get a score on this bill, the score is a little lower than it was before because I think the facts are beginning to persuade even the Congressional Budget Office that this makes economic sense to do. And there may be some startup costs, but the long-term costs may be actually long-term savings. If you do the right thing and save money while you are doing it, Mr. President, that is a pretty good place to be in for a society or a government or a country; and that is what we are trying to get done, Senator Stabenow, in this Congress.

Ms. STABENOW. Absolutely.

And we invite all of our colleagues to join us. We have a great bipartisan effort going on with our Excellence in Mental Health and Addiction Treatment legislation of 2021 that would open the door for all States. We know that many, many States and certainly local communities are very interested. We can do this. We can actually get this done.

When I heard the President speaking about this, I know I had a big smile on my face--and I think you as well, Senator Blunt. We were like, All right, this is the next step.

Mr. BLUNT. Right. Right.

Ms. STABENOW. I am so excited to see the President agreeing with this and speaking about it in his State of the Union. I am looking forward to his including this in his budget, which will be coming out very soon, and his supporting and embracing a nationwide program.

I am just so very, very pleased that this is a model that, frankly, has survived both Democratic and Republican Presidents, Republicans, Democrats, House Members, Senate Members, local communities, Governors because it works. Everybody is looking at this. Everybody is looking at this.

Mr. BLUNT. You can have a community behavioral health center working with a primary care center or you could have an independent provider working with their other healthcare provider or vice versa. It is very interchangeable.

The one criteria for the certified community behavioral health centers is the level of staffing--24/7, 365 days a year, always available to be that critically important partner that people with a mental health challenge need. And, frankly, their families and people who care about them need it as well.

Ms. STABENOW. Yes.

Mr. BLUNT. This is a big challenge for the individual that has a behavioral health problem, but it can be an equally big challenge for people who care about them.

Ms. STABENOW. It really is about families.

So, Mr. President, I just want to close by saying I am so grateful for the partnership that Senator Blunt and I have had. He thinks he is retiring at the end of the year. I am actually going to put him in a closet and not let him leave because he has been such a champion both in his role on appropriations as well as partnering for long-term funding. This is important; this is something real and tangible and meaningful that we can all do together; and I am excited and hopeful we are going to take the next step this year together.

Mr. BLUNT. We are, too.

Mr. President, we look forward to you joining us in this effort.

Ms. STABENOW. Absolutely. Thank you.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

USICA

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we have begun the long-awaited process of moving forward on legislation that will bolster our domestic semiconductor manufacturing and confront the growing threats posed by China.

This legislation has had many different names over the last year or so. We started with the Endless Frontier Act in the Senate. Then, miraculously, it became the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, affectionately known as USICA. And then it became the Make it in America Act. But now it has a new name, the Bipartisan Innovation Act.

Well, regardless of what you call it, it is absolutely critical that we get a strong version of this legislation to the President's desk as soon as we can. The Senate passed the original legislation last summer with significant bipartisan support. We urged our colleagues in the House to treat this legislation with the sense of urgency that it deserved, but they wasted months with no action. To be charitable, I guess they were preoccupied with other matters.

But it wasn't until last month, just ahead of the President's State of the Union, that they finally leapt into action. The President, of course, wanted to talk about this legislation in his speech. So House Democrats had to cobble together a bill in short order. Unfortunately, it was a highly partisan one. Their bill passed almost entirely along party lines, and now, the two Chambers--the House and the Senate--have a critical task ahead of us to reconcile those two versions. We need to begin the formal conference committee process, dive into negotiations, and get that strong bill to the President's desk.

The cornerstone of this effort, as far as I am concerned, is bolstering our domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Even more concerning is that 92 percent of the world's most advanced semiconductors come from one place, and that is Asia. Sixty-three percent come from Taiwan alone. If that supply chain were cut off, it would lead to very serious consequences. And, unfortunately, that potential is not just a doomsday scenario that is farfetched by any means.

A few months ago, I led a congressional delegation to Asia to learn more about the need to confront China in a variety of ways in that region. One of the leaders we met with was the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, the regional command that covers that part of the globe, and he described the current power dynamic rather succinctly. He said it is not a question of if China invades Taiwan but when.

Well, we have one rough idea of when that could potentially happen. President Xi Jinping himself said he wants to be ready to unify the People's Republic of China with Taiwan by 2027, just 5 years from now. But, truth be told, we don't have any idea when President Xi will call that play. We won't have any more notice for that than we did for Putin's invading Ukraine.

It is tough to overestimate the impact this would have on the United States and our allies. And, even absent some military action by the People's Republic of China seeking to swallow up and absorb Taiwan with its manufacturing capacity for the semiconductors, if we had another pandemic, if we had another natural disaster, any one of those three things could disrupt that critical supply chain, much to our detriment and that of the rest the world.

We learned one thing in COVID-19, and that is that these supply chains are very vulnerable. I still remember the first call I had with my Governor when COVID broke out, and I said: Well, what do you need? What can we do to help?

He said: I need two things. I need testing, and I need PPE, personal protective equipment.

Those are gowns and masks used by healthcare professionals and others to protect themselves when treating people with COVID-19, and the fact of the matter is, almost all of it is made in China.

This notion of globalization of the economy has led us to believe that the only thing to think about when it comes to manufacturing a product is where can it be made the cheapest, but, obviously, there is more at stake than just who can make it the cheapest. We learned that in COVID-19--thus the need to bolster our critical supply chains across a whole range of products, including semiconductors.

Semiconductors are something that most of us don't know a lot about. I have had to learn a lot myself about it, and I still don't consider myself an expert. But I asked my staff: Please tell me; how important is this?

And they said: Well, Senator, everything with an off-and-on switch involves semiconductors.

And if you think about how technological our lives are and how much we depend on everything from the sensors in our car to the backup camera when we back our car out of a parking place, to the laptop computers that our kids were using during COVID-19 to study virtually--

and then there is farming equipment, communications equipment, and medical equipment--all of these rely on semiconductors. And 90 percent of them come from one region of the world, and that is Asia.

The shortages we have experienced recently would seem insignificant compared to the complete chaos that would ensue if this supply chain were disrupted. This gets downright dangerous when you think about how a global chip shortage would impact our national security and, more broadly, global security.

Russia's attack and invasion of Ukraine is a wake-up call for the United States and our allies to examine our defense posture across the planet. One of the bright spots of this, if you can call it that, is that countries in Europe, including countries like Germany that were reluctant to contribute 2 percent of their gross domestic product to the joint collective defense effort of NATO, have turned around and stepped up. That is a welcomed development. But the fact of the matter is, our military and our national security depend on access to these semiconductors because, increasingly, our military depends on technology to perform their mission.

One advantage that the United States has typically had against our adversaries around the world is our advanced technology and our capacity to innovate and to solve problems using that technology. But here is the bottom line: That technology cannot function without semiconductors. It is that simple, whether you are talking about advanced fighters like the fifth-generation fighter, the F-35, or you are talking about missile defense systems like Iron Dome, which was used by Israel to defeat the rockets that were raining in on it in recent months. A single interceptor used by the Iron Dome missile defense system--rocket defense system--contains more than 750 semiconductors, just a single one.

So semiconductors are our key to confront threats by any adversary, not just China, and are essential to our economy here in the United States.

Earlier this week, two national security and foreign policy experts at the University of Texas wrote an op-ed piece in The Hill magazine--

or newspaper--and they made the national security case for CHIPS funding. They noted this is not the first time that semiconductor supply chains were regarded as a matter of national security. Back in the 1980s, President Reagan pushed to maintain our competitive edge in these chips, thereby helping us lead in the advanced weapons and aircraft that they enabled.

As they said, Reagan didn't just outspend the Soviets; we also out-

innovated the Soviets, winning that arms race. And that is what we need to do again today. We can't just rely on our ability to spend more than Russia or China or any other adversary. We need to out-innovate them as well.

Considering the fact that China is the No. 1 master thief of intellectual property, it is all that much more important. Now, there are some critics of the CHIPS Program that has been introduced by the Senator from Virginia Mr. Warner and myself. Both of us serve on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. It is one reason why, because of the briefings we get, this became a matter of grave concern to both of us. But the good news is that concern is shared by a broad bipartisan majority in the Senate. There are some, though, who said that this initiative is just a bailout for domestic energy. But that is not the case at all. This is not a handout. It is, frankly, one of the tools we have to reshore--to bring back onshore--this essential manufacturing capacity, as well as incentivize domestic industry to build out our capacity here at home.

Here are the numbers. Over the last three decades, the United States has gone from producing 37 percent of the global chip supply to just 12 percent today--12 percent here in America. The rest of it is in Asia and in other places around the world. Now, that is a big flashing red light when it comes to our national security.

Without some Federal incentives, companies cannot afford to invest the enormous amount of time and capital needed to stand up new chip fabs or expand existing ones, and that is because it costs about 30 percent more to build these fabs here in America than it does overseas.

But, again, going to the low-cost producer is not the only consideration when it comes to these vulnerable supply chains that are so important to our economy and our national security. That is why it is absolutely critical for us to bring this semiconductor manufacturing back home, and full funding for the CHIPS Program is the best way for us to see results.

We began to establish this program more than a year ago in the National Defense Authorization Act, and the only thing missing now is--

well, you guessed it. It is money. We need the appropriations in order to fund this CHIPS Program that we began to embrace over a year ago in the National Defense Authorization Act.

That is why it is absolutely critical that we begin the conference committee process for the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act or whatever it is called today. I will have to refresh my memory--the Bipartisan Innovation Act--since it has had so many different names. But we need to get this done, and we need to get this done now, and we need to get it done right.

Now, I expect the final bipartisan conference committee report to look a whole lot like the Senate version. That is because, as I mentioned a moment ago, the House decided to take the low road and pass purely a partisan bill. The Senate bill was the product of intense bipartisan negotiations and represented a good-faith compromise by all sides.

I think that is the best place for us to begin once the formal conference committee process is underway. I hope we can work quickly to reach a final agreement and one that will serve the interests of the American people, our economy, and, most importantly, our national security.

I urge all of our colleagues to wade into this process so we can begin that conference committee and reach a bipartisan resolution promptly.

This is not a time for us to dawdle or to play politics. It is a time for us to get the strongest possible bill we can to the President's desk, and that begins with passing this appropriations portion of this bill to bring that manufacturing capacity back to America.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Smith). The clerk will call the roll.

The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

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

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

North Platte Canteen Congressional Gold Medal Act

Mrs. FISCHER. Madam President, I would like to tell you a story about North Platte, NE.

During World War II, this small, West Central Nebraska town was one of the most famous cities in America, and it was the epitome of homefront patriotism. From Christmas Day 1941 to April 1946, North Platte was the site of one of the many community-based canteens that offered hospitality to soldiers on their way to join the fight or on their way back home.

There were nearly 120 of these canteens across the United States, mostly along railways, like the Union Pacific line that still runs through Nebraska. Of these 120 canteens, North Platte was by far the biggest. It served more than 6 million servicemembers over the 4\1/2\ years it was open. The country's second busiest canteen in Ohio served well under half that many soldiers over its lifetime.

As many as 24 different troop trains, carrying up to 8,000 uniformed personnel overall, rolled through North Platte on any given day.

Here is a quote from a local newspaper about what the residents of just two Nebraska towns, Merna and Anselmo, donated to the North Platte Canteen on a single day in 1944: 53 birthdays cakes, 127 fried chickens, 58 dozen homemade cookies, 32 dozen cupcakes, 73 pounds of coffee, 163 dozen eggs, 68 dozen doughnuts, 41 quarts of pickles, 3 crates of oranges, 9 pounds of ham, 160 loaves of bread, 40 popcorn balls, and 50 pounds of sandwich meat.

It took 22 cars and 3 pickup trucks to drive all those donations 70 miles west to the train station in North Platte.

Members of the community organized regular benefit dances, scrap metal drives, and other events to support the canteen's operations. In all, volunteers raised more than $137,000--worth more than $2 million today--to support the canteen, and they did it all on their own.

As you might imagine, the soldiers who were fortunate enough to stop at the North Platte Canteen didn't soon forget the hospitality that they received.

Russ Fay, a Wisconsinite who was barely old enough to be drafted when he was shipped off to basic training in California, was one of those lucky soldiers. More than 60 years after his 10-minute stop in North Platte, he told journalist Bob Greene, who wrote a book about the North Platte Canteen called ``Once Upon a Tow'':

I can still taste it. I would say that a majority of the men on the battlefield know exactly what North Platte was. .

. . They would talk about it like it was a dream. Out of nowhere, [other soldiers would say]: How'd you like to have some of that food from the North Platte Canteen right about now?

The thought of the North Platte Canteen kept our soldiers going during one of the darkest periods in world history. And more than 55,000 people, nearly all of them women from 125 different communities, chipped in to help run it at one point or another. Most were Nebraskans, but many were from our neighboring States of Colorado and Kansas.

One of those Nebraska women was my mother, Florence Strobel. She moved from Lincoln to teach kindergarten in North Platte in the fall of 1944, and she was proud to be among the volunteers at the canteen.

To honor everyone who helped give our soldiers a good memory to hold onto while they were away from home, I recently introduced the North Platte Canteen Congressional Gold Medal Act.

This bill would award a collective Congressional Gold Medal to all of the individuals and communities that volunteered or donated food and other items to the North Platte Canteen. This is the highest honor Congress can give civilians, and the tens of thousands of people who made America's busiest World War II canteen a success are certainly deserving of it.

Under my bill, after the Treasury Department strikes this Congressional Gold Medal, it would be on display at the Lincoln County Historical Museum in North Platte, which has an outstanding exhibit about the canteen.

This wouldn't be the first time that Congress has given the volunteers at the North Platte Canteen the recognition they deserve. Almost 20 years ago, the 108th Congress acknowledged their efforts with a resolution introduced by Nebraska Representative Tom Osborne. I hope the 117th Congress will do so, as well, by passing this bill.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.

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

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Remembering Madeleine Albright

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, today we lost a towering figure in American and world history. Madeleine Albright was one of the smartest, strongest diplomats that we have ever had. She came to America as a refugee and helped move the country closer to the promise that it was founded upon. She made the world a better place.

Madeleine Albright was born in the former Czechoslovakia in 1937. When the Nazis took power, her family was forced into exile, ending up in London, where they survived the Blitz. After World War II, they returned to Czechoslovakia but were again forced to seek refuge, this time from communism.

As an 11-year-old, she arrived with her family at Ellis Island. She became a U.S. citizen, graduated college on a full scholarship, and went on to earn a Ph.D. while raising her three daughters, Alice, Katie, and Anne.

She worked here in the U.S. Senate on the Foreign Relations Committee under Edmund Muskie, then at the White House National Security Council, before becoming a renowned professor at Georgetown University. In 1993, President Clinton nominated her as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. She was the second woman to hold that position.

In 1997, she became the first woman in our Nation's history to serve as a Secretary of State. As Secretary, she was a strong supporter of NATO, encouraging the alliance to add new members and to protect vulnerable populations. She urged military intervention to save lives in Kosovo. She worked to prevent rogue States from getting nuclear material and supported the Kyoto Protocol. And she strengthened American alliances across the planet.

But Madeleine Albright is not the sum of her accomplishments. Madeleine Albright is something more. She embodied the ideals of our country. She was a constant light in the struggle between freedom and oppression, relentlessly advocating for people to have rights that she knew didn't exist under authoritarian regimes. She broke the highest glass ceiling in her field and then spent the rest of her career fighting for opportunities for other women. We will remember her as a diplomat and a trailblazer.

But I will also remember her as something else: family. My oldest brother Jake is married to her daughter, Katie. When I first became a U.S. Senator, she was thrilled to have a politician in the family and wanted to be helpful without casting a long shadow, so she discreetly called Barbara Mikulski and told her to look out for me.

We were fast friends--not acquaintances, not friends in the political sense, but actual friends.

She was a tireless and sharp political strategist. She was the kind of person who would watch C-SPAN for fun and was endlessly fascinated with politics at all levels, from municipal elections, State elections, Hawaiian politics, the United Nations--she loved this stuff.

She was also a trusted confidante. We had long talks about everything but mostly about our two shared loves: family and politics. And it was always over a meal, which she would occasionally let me pay for.

But most of all, I will remember her as Grandma Maddie, someone who was kind and curious with my kids. She was one of the most decent human beings whom I have ever known. May her memory be a blessing.

I yield the floor.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Alaska.

Remembering Don Young

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, Senator Sullivan and I are here this afternoon on the Senate floor, and we are here with heavy hearts. We are joined in the Galleries by friends of Alaska because, last Friday, our Congressman, Congressman Don Young--the Congressman for all Alaska and the dean of the House, who served our 49th State ably and faithfully for the last 49 years--passed away as he was flying home to be with the people of Alaska. Seated next to his wife, Anne, he passed peacefully and left this world.

There is no doubt--there is no doubt--that Congressman Young lived a large and full life. He was 88 years young, and we always referred to him as ``young,'' not old. He accomplished an incredible amount across the many decades that he served Alaska and served his country, but that doesn't make the loss any less sudden or any less devastating, and it doesn't change the fact that we are now left with a hole the size of Alaska in our congressional delegation.

We were a team. We were small but mighty. The Presiding Officer has heard me, on this floor, talk about the Last Great Race, the Iditarod, and that no dog team--no dog team--can make it without the leader. We all know that. You have got the swing dog, and you have got the wheel dog, and we have all kind of taken different points on that team, but it has always been with Don Young.

I was home over the weekend. I spent the weekend there, reflecting on Don Young's life and on his legacy. I had the chance to speak with his wife, Anne, over the phone. I talked with his daughters--Joni, whom we know well, and Dawn, her sister. I talked to a lot of friends who shared some stories about our Congressman. Many of those stories are probably not fit to print in the Congressional Record, but there was a lot of reliving of the life and times of Don Young.

For those who didn't have the privilege of knowing Congressman Young, as so many Alaskans did, he was really all of the things that have been written about him and all of the things that have been said about him these past several days. He was all that, and he was more. He was larger than life. We keep saying that: ``larger than life.''

He was colorful--as colorful as they come. He could be tough; he could be gruff; he could be very feisty, but he was also warm, engaging. He was charming, but, most of all, he was passionate. He was a passionate man about Alaska and Alaskans--to his very core. And he was loyal. He was loyal and devoted to his family, to his friends, to his staff who served him, and was loyal to the people he loved so dearly.

So we think about Don as forever being Alaska, but Don's life didn't begin in Alaska. He grew up in California, working on his family farm. His father would read Jack London to him at night, and that inspired him, later on, to head north. He served in the Army with the 41st Tank Battalion. Then, after graduating from Chico State college, he answered

``The Call of the Wild.''

He eventually made his way north to the village of Fort Yukon, just above the Arctic Circle. He tried his hand at just about everything. He was into construction. He was into mining. He taught at a BIA school in the winter. He was a tugboat captain in the spring and summer. He hunted. He fished. He trapped. He took well to Alaska, and Alaska took well to him.

By then, Don had fallen in love with Alaska, and he was also head over heels for his first wife, Lu, who was a bookkeeper from a respected Gwich'in family. They married in 1963.

He was elected mayor of Fort Yukon the next year, but he didn't spend much time as mayor. He moved on to the Alaska State House of Representatives and then to our State senate, but where he would really make his mark was at the Federal level, as a Member of the House of Representatives, which he joined in 1973.

Initially, it didn't start out so well. He lost the election in 1972 to Nick Begich, only to win it in a special election in March of 1973 after Congressman Begich went missing after an airplane accident. Once in office, Don Young never stopped winning for Alaska.

In his first year in office, Congressman Young helped to authorize the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which has been the economic backbone of our State ever since. Not long after, his colleagues chose him as their Freshman Congressman of the Year. There are so many, many legislative accomplishments over the course of the Congressman's life--too many to list here--but I will just highlight a few.

In addition to the pipeline authorization, he helped to establish the 200-mile fishing limit and contributed to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which has allowed Alaska to maintain its world-class fisheries. He wrote the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act, which guides the use of millions of acres of those lands. Congressman Young passed legislation to open a small part of the non-wilderness 1002 Area in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and he did this a dozen times before we steered it into law in 2017.

Believe me, Congressman Young reminded me every time how many times he had actually gotten it across the finish line in the House, but Don never ever gave up. Given the way of the world now, his commitment to energy security should be more appreciated than ever.

He enacted important measures as chairman of the Natural Resources Committee and a landmark transportation bill, SAFETEA-LU, as chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He was also a strong, strong champion for Alaska Natives and Native Americans.

Don was pretty independent. He was independent in his thinking, and he was not afraid to vote his conscience to help Alaska.

Just before he left Washington, DC, this past week, he was involved in the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act and helped considerably with the Tribal title in that act.

I also credit him--seriously credit him--for garnering enough Republican votes in the House last year to ensure that the bipartisan infrastructure bill could finally move across the finish line. He knew that that measure was good for Alaska, and he said: Not only am I going to give my vote, but I am going to work to make sure that we have the votes over here to sign this into law.

There are a lot of stories in this body about our former Senator, Senator Stevens, being legendary and pretty tenacious in his pursuit of Federal dollars to help build Alaska, but just know that Congressman Young was right there, every step of the way, making sure that Alaskans received what we considered to be our fair share.

On December 5 of 2017, Alaskans were just filled with pride for Congressman Young when he became the 45th dean of the House--its most senior Member. At the time, I gave him a little gift. It was a star designated in his name. You can actually get a certificate that says,

``This star up there is designated to you,'' but it was given as a sentiment, reflecting his stature as the North Star of our delegation and our northern State.

When you think about this remarkable journey that Don Young had--from teaching fifth graders in Alaska, to running dog teams, to guiding barges along the Yukon River, to becoming the longest serving Republican Member of Congress of all time--of all time--and being the most senior Member of the House of Representatives--of all that Congressman Young accomplished and of all that he did for Alaska, you have to know that this was no easy task. This was no easy task. For 49 years, he stood alone in the House of Representatives as the sole voice for Alaska. We only have one Congressman for all of Alaska. Only seven States have just one Congressman.

And, of course, Alaska is farther away from Washington, DC, than all of those States, bigger than all of them combined, and our vast amount of Federal acreage means that we have more issues and perhaps more complicated issues that have to be addressed as well, but none of that mattered to Don Young.

He took the long trips back home in stride. He would use his time on the plane to meet people, to talk to them, to just have conversation, try to understand their priorities and concerns, but he was making friends.

He did the same here in Washington. He worked tirelessly here to build relationships, build alliances that would help him help Alaska, help address our State's challenges. It wasn't as if he was seeking out bipartisan relationships necessarily; Don was just the kind of guy who would make friends.

The record shows that Congressman Young was one of the top legislators of our time. He was the primary sponsor of 123 bills that became law. You go over to his office, and you will see pictures on the wall of 10 different Presidents who signed into law different measures that Don had participated in. Again, recall Don Young was one of 435 voting Members of the House and the only one there to represent Alaska, and he was repeatedly named one of his Chamber's most effective Members. Don Young was old school because his relationships really ran on both sides of the aisle, starting with Speaker Pelosi, Leader McCarthy, and spanning the spectrum of all who would work with him. He really did work tirelessly to do what was right for Alaska because, at the end of the day, that is all he cared about, and he was pretty open about that.

Being a Congressman for Alaska requires every last bit of you. It requires tremendous sacrifice from you and your family. If you don't trust that, if you doubt that, just ask Anne Walton Young. Since they married in 2015, she has been by his side literally every day, in the office, traveling with him. She knows. She knows the work ethic of this man, she knows the heart of this man, and she knows how hard he worked for all of Alaska.

From his first day to his last day, 49 years and 13 days, Don Young gave it his all. As a true man of his people, he was just the right Alaskan to serve in the people's Chamber.

Senator Sullivan and I are going to have a lot more to say about our dear friend, our partner, our team leader in the coming days and weeks. We will have a number of occasions to honor his life and legacy, including on March 29, when he will lie in state in Statuary Hall for a well-deserved tribute.

For today, however, our reality is that for the first time in 49 years, Alaska does not have a Congressman in the House of Representatives. For the first time in 49 years, Alaska does not have Don Young there to defend, to advocate, and to legislate on our behalf. And I am heartbroken and so are countless Alaskans and individuals across the country whose lives happen to intersect with this legendary legislator.

On Saturday morning, I got a text from a former staffer who left years ago, a young man, and in his text, he says:

Don Young was the only Congressman for all of Alaska for all of my life. I will miss him.

We have lost a giant whom we loved dearly and who held Alaska in his heart always. We thank him for everything he did for us to build our State and fulfill so much of our promise. We owe his family--his wife, Anne; his daughters, Joni, Sister--a debt of gratitude for sharing him with us for so long. Together with them, we mourn for our late Congressman, Alaska's champion, and our dear friend, Don Young.

With that, Mr. President, I yield to my fellow Senator from Alaska.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Alaska.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, like my good friend and colleague Senator Murkowski, I rise today to recognize a giant, a larger than life man, certainly a legend in our State, and certainly a legend in the House of Representatives, Congressman for all Alaska, Donald Edwin Young.

As Senator Murkowski mentioned, we lost this great Alaskan, this great American, while flying home with his beloved wife, Anne, by his side just this weekend. He was flying back home to Alaska, the State he loved so much and served so well. It is a State that loved him back and showed him that love by electing him to office every 2 years since 1973. Think about that. Unbelievable. He was the longest serving politician in Alaska's history, the longest serving Republican Member of the House in U.S. history, our North Star, Don Young. As Senator Murkowski mentioned, he was 88 years young.

I just want to say, like all Alaskans, my wife Julie and I, when we heard the news, we were saddened, shocked, devastated by the sudden passing of Congressman Don Young. And we heard this from so many people over the weekend: his spirit, authentic, tenacious, indomitable, a man of the people--a true man of the people--epitomized our State to such a degree that there was this sense that he would always be there, that he would live forever. There was this sense, and the shock back home is so palpable because of that. Think about, almost three-quarters of our State's history, Don Young was our Congressman.

So I, too, want to spend a little bit of time talking about this incredible man, this life in full, as Senator Murkowski mentioned.

A lot of stories about being raised on a small ranch in Central California, where he began the hard work of ranching as a young, young boy. Don Young once said: My dad was a good man, but he believed when you turned 7, you became a hired man. So he was working at the age of 7, Sun up to Sun down. It was hot, riddled with snakes and poison ivy. Evidently, Don Young did not like snakes or hot weather because he mentioned often about his father reading him Jack London's ``The Call of the Wild,'' a book about a dog, a man, the harsh conditions of the Yukon, and loyalty.

Senator Murkowski already mentioned that one of the things--and I love this man so much--but one of the things about him that you always knew was loyal, loyal, loyal. What a great quality. What a great quality.

Then, of course, Alaska captured his imagination--no snakes, no poison ivy, snow. Those of us, all of us who saw Don Young over the years carry around that battery-powered portable fan, we knew that, well, Don Young ran hot with that fan.

So, as Senator Murkowski mentioned, he got his associate's degree from Yuba Junior College in 1952. He served in the Army--I always loved to give him a little grief about his Army service as a marine--Chico State, and then at an Elks Club in Chico, he heard then-Alaska Territorial Governor Mike Stepovich give a speech about Alaska, talking about the wonders of Alaska, and Don Young was hooked. In 1959, the year we became a State, he heeded the call of the wild, headed up the Alcan--much of it still unpaved--in a brandnew Plymouth Fury, and the great State of Alaska would never be the same.

According to Don Young, in Alaska, you could ``do anything you wanted to,'' so he did. As Senator Murkowski mentioned, he fought forest fires. He owned a skating rink for a short time. I would have loved to have seen that, by the way. He owned a movie theater, tried his hand at commercial fishing, trapping, prospecting for gold. Of course, he was a tugboat captain, teacher at a BIA school, importantly, in Fort Yukon, and that is where he always called home. In fact, he still has a home there. He used to joke he is the only Congressman who, when he goes home, uses an outhouse when he goes home.

He eventually met Lu, his wife--incredible Lu, who stayed by his side for 46 years until she passed in 2009. Since that time, Don found another wonderful partner in Anne. So, Anne, thank you and the family for sharing him with us.

Don, with Lu's prompting, caught the political bug. He served in the State house in Alaska and the State senate. Now, he discovered that he didn't like the senate much. ``All they did was stand around with hands behind their back and talk''--that is what he said about the Alaska State Senate.

Well, guess what. His attitude about the U.S. Senate wasn't that much different. ``You Senators are always late,'' he would often growl at me and Lisa--and we were when we had our frequent Alaska delegation meetings. But even as Senators, we always knew our place with Congressman Don Young, dean of the House. All those Alaska congressional meetings were over in his office--were over in his office.

One of my favorite things I did with Don Young, as dean of the House, wherever I saw him--particularly in public in Alaska--the first time I would see him at an event or something, I would say, ``It's the dean of the House.'' I would grab his hand, take a knee, and kiss his ring. Now, he always said, ``Stop that. I hate it when you do that.'' But do you know what? I think he actually kind of liked it. I actually think he kind of liked it.

So he didn't like the Senate; he liked the House, the place where bills move fast, where elections are right around the corner no matter what--think about that, 25 elections. Jeez Louise. I could never think about that--and where the action was. Mostly, he was a man of the people, and he belonged in the people's House.

Along the way, he had two wonderful daughters, Joni and Sister, whom he loved fiercely. He always said the most important thing in his life were those two daughters.

Lu was nothing if not persuasive. She was no doubt the boss in the family, and so when she told him he needed to run for Congress, he did. And with the help of many people--and I would like to say my wife's grandmother, her Sitsoo, was an avid Don Young supporter, flew all over interior Alaska during those early campaigns to help him introduce himself to a wider audience.

So when Don was appointed to his seat in 1973, the original knock against him, he said back then, was that he didn't know anything about DC. People said: You don't know anything about DC; it is going to take you 2 years until you can find the bathroom in your office building.

I am sure some of you heard the story that the first day in office, he combed the Rayburn Building looking for the bathroom, when someone finally said, ``Congressman, why don't you use the one in your office?'' which I don't think he had noticed. So he was learning.

But on a more serious note--and I love this story. The day after he was sworn in, there was a hearing on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act.

After being held up for years by litigation and studies--imagine that; sound familiar, America?--Don successfully pushed through an amendment--to me, one of the most brilliant amendments ever conceived in the Halls of Congress--that said: No more studies and no more litigation. We are done. We are building the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System now.

He said:

It was a hard fight. Half of my side was [initially] fighting against me.

But when the vote was called, he prevailed. His amendment prevailed by four votes, and Alaska's history was changed forever. America's history was changed forever.

And, by the way, what a great idea: Stop endless litigation. Stop studying things. Build infrastructure. The country and the State of Alaska need energy. Practical, commonsense, get it done--this is why Alaskans loved Don Young so much.

The day of that vote, when it was successful, 1973--remember--Ralph Nader stood outside the hall and declared Don Young the most powerful Member of Congress--brandnew, baby freshman from Alaska, Don Young. Now, you can say a lot of things about Ralph Nader, but he knew power when he saw it, and Don Young had it, kept it. He went on to win every election after that.

And, as Senator Murkowski mentioned, more than 90 bills that he sponsored became law, thousands more that he cosponsored--mostly to help Alaska but to help our whole country. And he became a fierce advocate for helping people--thousands and thousands of Alaskans and Americans.

Every 2 years since 1973, Alaskans could count on Don Young, during 1 of his 24 elections, standing on a corner with his supporters--many here today--waving signs in the cold in November back home, wearing his old winter coat. And if you didn't know it then--and few Alaskans didn't know--you wouldn't guess that the man in those clothes had so much power and had done so much to help his fellow Alaskans and fellow Americans. Nearly everything--and I mean everything--that has advanced to benefit our State in the Congress has Don Young's fingerprints on it. The Alaska we know today is only possible because of Don Young.

As I mentioned, there is, of course, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which transformed our State and our Nation, as well as many of the victories that Senator Murkowski just mentioned.

I always like to talk about the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which, of course, transformed America's fishing industry. Among others things, it created a 200-mile limit to keep foreign fishermen from plundering our fish and sustained our fisheries. It used to be just 3 miles. Now, we all know it is the Magnuson-Stevens Act, but, of course, Don Young moved it in the House with Congressman Gerry Studds of Massachusetts. So I used to like to say, in events with Don Young: Magnuson-Stevens, or maybe a better name would have been the ``Young-Studds Act,'' which, of course, he loved that idea. So I kind of liked calling it the

``Young-Studds Act.''

But here is the thing, the story that is such a great story that a lot of people don't know: The executive branch wasn't thrilled about this bill, wasn't thrilled about it at all, to such a degree that President Ford was considering vetoing it. Why? Because he had a really smart, clever Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, who thought it would raise tensions with our allies--the Koreans and the Japanese in particular--who loved fishing off the coast of Alaska, taking our fish. Two hundred miles off, they were going to lose out. They were mad. So he was encouraging a veto.

Whether it was on the racquetball court, in the Halls of the Capitol, or a potlatch in rural Alaska, Don Young knew where to be to get things done for Alaska. And he knew that the President and Kissinger were heading to Asia, stopping over in Alaska. So Don and his two daughters and Lu got a ride on Air Force One. A few martinis later, Don Young, the new Congressman from Alaska, was debating one of the most brilliant men in America--the Secretary of State, former Harvard professor Dr. Henry Kissinger--on Air Force One in front of President Ford: Veto the Magnuson-Stevens Act or not.

Well, guess who won that debate: the Harvard professor or the tugboat captain? It was the tugboat captain. Now, Don jokingly credits the martinis, but we all know that he was the one who got that done. And, again, our State and our country's history wouldn't be the same. And, by the way, Henry Kissinger and Don Young were great friends ever since.

Mr. President, that is just one example of many, as Senator Murkowski mentioned. Don Young served with 10 Presidents, and he knew them all. President George H.W. Bush called him ``Moose.'' They played racquetball often. He had Dungeness crab flown in to eat with President George W. Bush.

He and President Clinton were at the White House together one night when the vote was called. They were having so much fun that President Clinton said: I don't want you to leave, Don.

Don said: Well, Mr. President, I will need a hall pass.

So he got a handwritten note from President Clinton, writing to the Speaker of the House: Dear Mr. Speaker. Please excuse Don Young from voting tonight. We are having cigars at the White House.

And when Don Young went to the White House to sign the ANWR legislation that we had been working on and that he had been working on for over 40 years and were able to pass--again, our small and mighty team working together, 2017, with President Trump--he turned to President Trump and said: So you are the other Don in this town.

So Don Young has been great friends with Presidents, world leaders, but what really motivated and moved him was helping people, especially Alaskans. It didn't matter their title, their political affiliation. He just wanted to help people.

He said: As long as you respect the other person and their beliefs, you can be successful. Whether in the majority or the minority, I try to work with people to solve problems. My job is to listen to what they want and how I can then help them get it done.

Like I said, commonsense, practical--no wonder so many Alaskans loved Don Young. And we all know he could tell a story, holding court.

As we know, in the House there isn't assigned seating, but there was one seat in the House that nobody sat in: Don Young's. And, by the way, if you did, you may be taking your life into your own hands.

He sat, and Members gathered around him, listening to his stories. The story of the oosik might come up, how he used that in debates, how he sat during a committee hearing with his fingers caught in a bear trap to make a point, and his legendary office Christmas parties. Young staffers and Members from all over the Congress stood in a long line that snaked into the hallway just to have a few minutes to hear him holding court.

But his true love was always Alaska. He could have done anything, been anything, but he chose to stay and work for the people up until the last moment of his life.

You can make all the money in the world. But if you aren't happy, it doesn't count for anything.

And Don Young was a happy man.

When we lost Don Young, we lost a piece of Alaska, a piece of ourselves, a piece of his indomitable, irascible spirit. But it will live on forever, and I know that he has an army of loyalists he has amassed through the years in the Gallery, in addition to family, his wonderful family.

Dozens of staffers are here to pay tribute. Some of them now work for my office. In fact, early on in my Senate career, I learned something very smart. I frequently stole Don Young's staff to come work for me: well-trained, smart. I still do it. And he never minded. As a matter of fact, he always said: I just want what is best for my people.

Larry Burton, Erik Elam, Chad Padgett, Liz Banicki, Scott Leathard--

so many are still here with me. So many cut their teeth at Don Young's office. And like so many who know Don Young, they are intensely loyal to this great Alaskan.

His spirit will live on in the House of Representatives and the people's House, and his spirit will live on in everything he has done for our State and every Alaskan from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, to the Ketchikan shipping yard, to the many, many land exchanges, the health clinics dotting our State, the state-of-the-art Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage.

And his spirit will live in his wonderful family: Joni and Sister, his 13 grandchildren, Anne, and so many others. Don was a dear friend and mentor to me, to Senator Murkowski, to my wife Julie, and so many others. He was truly a man of the people, a great man of the people.

We miss you, Don. Rest in peace.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kelly). The Senator from Wisconsin.

____________________

SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 168, No. 52

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.

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