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“LEGISLATIVE SESSION” mentioning Michael F. Bennet was published in the Senate section on pages S2058-S2061 on April 20.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
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The publication is reproduced in full below:
LEGISLATIVE SESSION
______
COVID-19 HATE CRIMES ACT--Continued
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will resume legislative session.
The Senator from Oklahoma.
Defense Budget
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, last week--no, it wasn't last week; it was about 3 weeks ago, I guess, now, President Biden released his ``skinny budget,'' which gave us a top-line for defense of $715 billion. This is a reduction, and I want to make sure everyone understands this because the cut is actually below inflation, and that is not where we are supposed to be.
You know, we have this document here that everyone agrees with. I don't know one person--and this was written by six Democrats, six Republicans, and this was in 2018. This has been used as our blueprint ever since that time, and it is just remarkable the way it has come out. The recommendations on this, as I said, were made by six Republicans, six Democrats. All of them were experts in the field of defense, and they came out with recommendations. In this year, the amount in the budget for our military is supposed to be between 3 and 5 percent. This is in the document in front of us here. Of course, this is actually a reduction. So it is way below what has been prescribed.
When it comes to China, there are two big reasons we need to make sure our budget matches our strategy. First of all, China is spending more on their military than ever before. As a result, they are getting more technologically advanced and starting to sway the military balance of power in their favor. There is no question about it, and I will document that in a minute.
The threat the Chinese military poses is not a distant threat. It is not something that might happen in 2030, 2035, or sometime in the future. It is a problem we face today, right now, and it only gets worse over time.
Admiral Davidson told the Armed Services Committee that he expects the threat to manifest ``this decade, in fact, in the next six years.'' That is the sense of urgency. That is when they become greater than we are in many areas of defense and aggression.
So today I would like to spend some time dealing with the Chinese military and what they are doing. This is what we are up against. This is why it is so important that we get our defense budget right.
Let's start with China's military budget. Since 2000, Beijing's spending on the People's Liberation Army has gone up 450 percent--450 percent. Now, we knew that back during the Obama administration, that actually went up. Our reduction--it was a reduction in the last 5 years--was 25 percent. At the same time, China went up by 83 percent. So this is what is going on in the world today. Beijing's budget for the military went up 450 percent.
Now, you compare Beijing's buildup with the rest of East Asia. At the same time, our core allies and partners in the region--that is, Japan, Australia, South Korea, and Taiwan--have had basically flat defense budgets since 2000. Compare it with our own military spending. As I mentioned on the floor a couple of weeks ago, at the same time China was adding $200 billion to their defense budget, ours shrunk by $400 billion.
We are certainly not provoking them with defense investment, and we have barely touched our force posture in the Western Pacific over the past two decades. So, if anything, our lack of action, our lack of investment, is what is provoking China into thinking they can push around and threaten our friends in the region.
The Biden administration says they want to take our allies and partners seriously. So we should listen when they say they are concerned about Chinese aggression. And they are, and the administration knows this. I have had visits with the President. He is fully aware of that.
Another progressive talking point is that the United States spends more on defense than the next 10 or 12 countries combined. Now, that is not true. The reality is that any honest comparison of numbers shows that, combined, the Chinese and Russians almost certainly spend more than us in real terms.
China's purchasing power is significantly greater than ours because they pay their workers next to nothing and have much lower material costs. They also focus their defense spending on hard power. I am talking about airplanes, tanks, ships, missiles, and the like. Why? Because they don't take care of their people.
People don't understand this. At least 40 percent of our military budget goes to supporting our people. That is not true with any of the Communist countries that are out there. All they do, they give them the guns and say go out and kill people. We don't do that. And 40 percent is a conservative figure.
You remember the housing issue that was such a big issue; that you were concerned with; I was concerned with; we were all concerned with. That is something that other countries don't have to worry about. China doesn't worry about that. Russia doesn't worry about that. These are things that--and yet that is almost half of our total budget goes to those things for our troops.
We take care of our troops. The rest of them don't. That is the right thing to do. But that is just another reason you can't do a dollar-for-
dollar comparison between the Chinese and the defense spending. We need a better accounting.
And incidentally, Senator Romney introduced an amendment to our last year's NDAA, military defense act, to get us a real comparison in spending. And the Pentagon owes us that report by October.
Now, in October--we are going to talk about this. We are going to talk about this in our military because this is what the real spending is, not what a lot of people think that it is. All of this is to say, we don't have a good sense of China's true defense spending, but we do know it is going up.
General McMaster called it ``the largest peacetime military buildup in history.'' That is what General McMaster said just the other day at one of our hearings. It is not just expanding their military; they are modernizing and professionalizing at the same time.
Secretary Austin, our Secretary of Defense, rightfully, calls China our ``pacing threat.'' But here are a few of the ways that they have been outpacing us because they are investing where we are not investing. The American people think we are, but we are not.
China has a 355-ship Navy. You know, we have been talking about that for a long period of time here--how we are going to grow to a 350-ship Navy, and we haven't done it. Well, China has done it. They have achieved that last year. And while we were just talking about it, they were on the attack to get 460 ships by 2030.
By comparison, our Navy is around 300 ships, and it is likely to stay there if our defense budget doesn't grow.
In the air, the combatant commanders assess that China will have more fifth-generation aircraft than we do in the Pacific by 2025, again, the fifth-generation aircraft. We are down right now to the F-35. There are not any others. We had the F-22. The F-22 was our first fifth-generation fighter, and it was one that we were all very excited about. They started out wanting 700 of them, and we ended up with 187, just for fiscal reasons. Again, that is where China is right now. That gets worse if we have a flat or declining budget here.
China is expanding its arsenal too. The Pentagon's missile experts tell us that China is now over 350 launchers for medium-range ballistic missiles, which are capable of hitting Guam and striking the U.S. warships in the Pacific.
They have produced exact copies of our bases, our ships, and our aircraft to serve as targets. And they are out there right now shooting those targets. That is us. That is America, and they are shooting on the replicas of our equipment to show that they can down them. By the way, they hit those targets successfully, I might add. And that is going on today.
They also have thousands of short-range missiles. Many of those are going right at Taiwan. China is also dubbing its nuclear stockpile and completing their own nuclear triad. That is something that we have criticism in this country, that we have a triad; that is, three ways of deflecting nuclear attacks on America.
So that is what is going on right now. China's military is charging ahead in just about every area. But a lot of the people who don't think China is a problem--they say that none of the Chinese weapons are as good as ours. Well, that was true in 1990. That was true in the year 2000. That is not true anymore.
The Office of Naval Intelligence said in 2015 that China's latest surface warships were comparable in many ways to the mos modern Western ships. China has deployed thousands of ground-base missiles. We are still developing ours. They have fielded hypersonic strike weapons. We are still in the research and development.
You might remember, because we saw that, the parade that was taking place in Beijing. They were demonstrating that they have these weapons that we don't have. And that was invested a year ago.
Just last month, the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence assessed that the China rate of investment--they will soon dominate us in artificial intelligence unless we do something different than we are currently doing.
And while the Chinese will spend almost $50 billion on tech infrastructure over the next few years, national security infrastructure is apparently the only thing that President Biden doesn't consider infrastructure.
Not only is China spending more on its military, but it has the tools to beat us. Don't take my word for it. The bipartisan NDS--again, this is the document that we have been using, and it has been remarkably accurate, since 2018. That NDS Commission said, right in this book, the U.S. military might struggle to win or perhaps lose a war against China or Russia. That is what they said in 2018. And China has been going up ever since.
Admiral Davidson told us the other week--only 2 weeks ago--that
``there is no guarantee that the United States would win a future conflict with China.''
China's military buildup isn't just investment for the sake of it; they are already flexing their new muscle to challenge America and American allies and American interests. And the PLA has deployed missiles, radars, stealth jet fighters, and bombers to islands in the South China Sea, claiming and militarizing islands in violation of international law.
Just last year, the PLA fired anti-ship ballistic missiles into the South China Sea, clearly practicing to target U.S. Navy ships in the area. And that is what they are doing today. Those are Chinese troops walking on Woody Island in the South China Sea. And the PLA has been expanding its network of strategic ports and bases around the world from Djibouti to Pakistan and Cambodia and Sri Lanka and elsewhere.
Last year, China started going after the territory of India, which has resulted in dozens of dead Indian soldiers. They have continually harassed Japan and Taiwan in the air and on the sea. Their fishing fleets have terrorized small Pacific island nations. Over 200 Chinese boats are staking out a reef in the South China Sea claimed by the Philippines.
China has just completed a new satellite constellation over Taiwan that allows for almost constant coverage of the island, the highest known frequency of satellite coverage in the world.
A few weeks ago, Taiwan reported the largest ever Chinese incursion when 25 combat aircraft flew into its airspace. And as the cochair of the Taiwan Caucus, this is of specific concern to me. Some people have forgotten that aggression by nation states is not a thing of the past. People have forgotten how costly it is when deterrence fails.
That is why I am arguing for sustained real growth in the defense budget. We know it is necessary. We know that it is attainable because the burden of defense spending on the economy today is half what it was at the height of the Cold War.
The Biden administration is trying to tell us that we can invest in economic and technological competition or the military competition. That is a false choice. We have to do the military.
The reality is, the Chinese are engaged in every dimension of this competition, especially the military dimension, and they are not going to stop anytime soon.
I would have to say, do we really want to be there for our allies or partners? Do we want our children and grandchildren to live in a world where our status of leader of the free world is in name only?
You know, my wife and I have been married for 61 years. We have 20 kids and grandkids so I have a stake in this thing. I have a real concern. Do we want them, these kids, to grow up in a world where China--the same country that is committing genocide against the Uighurs, silencing free speech, and jailing activists in Hong Kong--
gets to set the rules of international engagement?
This isn't a hypothetical question. That is a question that we are answering each year when we set our military budget, and, frankly, I am disappointed in how the current administration is answering that call.
We have to be prepared to take on China from all angles of national power. And this begins with adequate resourcing of our U.S. military with real growth in the defense budget.
It is kind of a myth floating around. I know every time I give a speech someplace in the State of Oklahoma or elsewhere, there is a kind of an assumption that we in the United States have the best of everything. And following World War II, that was true, but that isn't true today. And if America chooses to sit on the sidelines in this competition, and we ask our allies and partners to face China alone, the failure of military deterrence becomes more likely. And that is an outcome that nobody there or here wants.
With that, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Election Integrity
Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, it wasn't enough for Democrats like Stacey Abrams and President Biden to lie about the new Georgia voting law. Now, today, Chuck Schumer is sending his lawyers to swarm Montana courtrooms and has taken to the Senate floor with more distortion.
This time, it is about Montana's new voting laws.
I have a message for Leader Schumer and the Democrats who are trying to distort the facts and the will of Montana voters: Please get your facts straight. In Montana we are putting in place some commonsense reforms that enjoy the strong support of Montanans. Why is the leader so determined to strike down commonsense efforts to provide integrity and transparency to our elections?
Let's talk about voter ID. A majority of Americans support needing a photo ID to cast a ballot. According to the Honest Elections Project, 77 percent of Americans support needing a photo ID to vote--77 percent. Why? Because it is common sense and because you need a photo ID to do many tasks, some quite mundane. You need a photo ID to get a hunting or fishing license. You need a photo ID to rent a hotel room, to drive a car, to rent a car, to get on an airplane, to pick up tickets at will call. If these simple tasks require a valid ID, shouldn't protecting the integrity of America's election process require at least the same?
This isn't the first time Leader Schumer and the Democrats have tried to stick their nose into Montana's business and tried to overturn the will of Montana voters. In fact, this past election, dark money groups backed by Chuck Schumer pushed to loosen election standards, such as ballot harvesting, in Montana, and they won. This is despite the fact that nearly two-thirds of Montana voters passed a law to prohibit ballot harvesting.
How is this listening to Montanans? It is not.
Montanans want election integrity. They want to trust their elections. Yet Leader Schumer continues to undermine their direct appeal to put commonsense practices in place.
In Montana we want everyone legally allowed to vote to be able to, and we want there to be zero doubt that those votes should count. All Montanans--Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Libertarians--should have faith in our elections.
Montana's legislature, Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, and Montana Governor Greg Gianforte wanted to strengthen this trust, and that is what they did with these commonsense bills.
The distortion by Democrats in this country is eroding this trust. This must stop.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Nomination of Vanita Gupta
Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor today to just say a brief word and maybe set the record straight a little bit about President Biden's nominee for Associate Attorney General of the United States, Vanita Gupta.
Let's start with some facts about Ms. Gupta. She is the daughter of immigrants who worked hard to receive some of the best legal education this country has to offer. She spent 2 decades as a civil rights lawyer, where she has fought to defend Americans' individual rights and freedoms, often against abuses by the government, something you would think some of my colleagues on the other side would appreciate.
When a small town in Texas wrongfully convicted 40 Americans of drug charges, based solely on the false testimony from an undercover police officer, she fought to have them exonerated, and she won them a $6 million settlement for that miscarriage of justice.
She defended 25 children who had been separated from their parents and thrown into prison-like conditions at a private detention center in Texas. Her success in that case forced the center to improve its conditions and prevented more kids from being held there.
President Obama recognized her leadership by making her the top civil rights official at the Department of Justice, where she protected servicemembers from eviction, cracked down on human smugglers and sex traffickers, defended religious freedom, and protected Americans' fundamental right to vote.
Over the past 4 years, Ms. Gupta has led the largest civil rights organization in America, where she has been at the forefront of efforts to reform our criminal justice system, strengthen our democracy, and make sure COVID relief reaches those who need it most.
That is her record. It is an outstanding record. I think my colleagues on the other side of the aisle know that it is an outstanding record because they don't want to contend with her record. They don't want to contest her record. They can't defeat her nomination with the truth. So they are just using talking points that aren't true.
I heard the junior Senator from Texas say Ms. Gupta's record ``is that of an extreme partisan ideologue.'' He called her ``an extreme political activist,'' a ``radical,'' and a ``zealot,'' when all she has done her entire career is uphold the rule of law and defend our democracy, just like the 60 judges, many of them confirmed by Republican colleagues, who rejected President Trump's utterly unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the 2020 election; just like the election officials who stood up to conspiracy theories about the election at great risk to themselves and to their careers, who were all undermined by radical Members of Congress who sought to overturn the will of the voters for their own power.
I also heard the junior Senator from Texas say Ms. Gupta's beliefs
``don't align with the majority of the American people.'' I am willing to bet every single dollar in my pocket that most Americans are quite aligned with Ms. Gupta's views.
Most Americans are very interested in having a Department of Justice that protects their right to vote, that keeps families together and kids out of prison-like conditions, to make sure that LGBT sons and daughters and neighbors can live free from discrimination.
I will tell you one other thing. Unlike some people around this place, Ms. Gupta actually has a record of reaching across the aisle to get things done. She worked with Grover Norquist and the top lawyer for the Koch brothers to pass criminal justice reform. It is why they both endorsed her, along with President Bush's former Secretary of Homeland Security, and virtually every major law enforcement organization in America, including the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Sheriffs' Association, the Major County Sheriffs of America, and the Major Cities Chiefs Association.
So it is hard to take seriously all this talk on the other side about how Ms. Gupta wants to ``defund the police.'' She has never supported that. When someone asked the head of the Fraternal Order of Police what he thought about these attacks, he called it ``partisan demagoguery.'' And that is exactly what it is, and he is right.
There isn't a serious debate about her record. It is a political campaign to defeat her nomination. The American people see through it, and I hope my colleagues will see through it as well.
We would be lucky to have someone with Ms. Gupta's experience and leadership at the Department of Justice.
Many years ago, I had the privilege to work at the Department, and I know how seriously the men and women there take their jobs, and I know how grateful they would be to serve alongside someone as talented and committed to the mission as Ms. Gupta. It is why I believe tomorrow we should come to this floor and give her a resounding bipartisan vote to confirm her as the next Associate Attorney General of the United States.
I urge all of my colleagues to put aside the rhetoric and the false claims. Look at the record for what it is. The police organizations have supported her. And vote yes for her nomination.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Hassan). The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Cloture Motion
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on amendment No. 1445 to S. 937, a bill to facilitate the expedited review of COVID-19 hate crimes, and for other purposes.
Charles E. Schumer, Richard J. Durbin, Mazie K. Hirono,
Tammy Baldwin, Tammy Duckworth, Alex Padilla, Maria
Cantwell, Sheldon Whitehouse, Cory A. Booker, Debbie
Stabenow, Brian Schatz, Tim Kaine, Kirsten E.
Gillibrand, Benjamin L. Cardin, Gary C. Peters, Patrick
J. Leahy, Christopher Murphy.
Cloture Motion
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on Calendar No. 13, S. 937, a bill to facilitate the expedited review of COVID-19 hate crimes, and for other purposes.
Charles E. Schumer, Richard J. Durbin, Mazie K. Hirono,
Jeff Merkley, Debbie Stabenow, Richard Blumenthal,
Tammy Baldwin, Tammy Duckworth, Alex Padilla, Maria
Cantwell, Sheldon Whitehouse, Cory A. Booker, Brian
Schatz, Tim Kaine, Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Benjamin L.
Cardin, Gary C. Peters.
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum calls for the cloture motions filed today, Tuesday, April 20, be waived.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered
____________________
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