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.
“INFRASTRUCTURE” mentioning Mitch McConnell was published in the Senate section on pages S5148-S5149 on July 29.
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.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
INFRASTRUCTURE
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, yesterday, I joined a number of my Republican and Democratic colleagues and voted to begin floor consideration of bipartisan compromise legislation for our Nation's infrastructure.
Our country would benefit a whole lot from some targeted investment in the kinds of real, tangible projects that fit a commonsense definition of actual infrastructure--roads, bridges, ports, waterways, airports, broadband.
A bipartisan compromise to responsibly finance these kinds of investments is guaranteed to be big and complex. It is guaranteed to be the kind of legislation that no Member on either side of the aisle will think is perfect. But it is an important basic duty of government.
I am glad to see these discussions making progress. I was happy to vote to begin moving the Senate toward what ought to be a robust, bipartisan floor process for legislation of this magnitude.
This kind of focused compromise that our colleagues have been hashing out could not contrast more sharply with the multitrillion-dollar reckless taxing-and-spending spree the Democrats hope to ram through on a party-line vote later this year.
As I have said before, the Democrats' spree is reckless on multiple levels. We are all familiar with the staggering $3.5 trillion bottom line. We all know it would only amp up the painful inflation that is already hammering middle-class families, in large part because of the last partisan deluge of spending Democrats rammed through just a few months ago.
But just as alarming is the parade of leftwing ideas that comprise this mess: turning temporary pandemic welfare payments with no work requirements into a permanent dole, shoving through big chunks of the Green New Deal, government price-fixing that would leave us with fewer new medicines and new cures.
And then there is an effort to further inflame the Biden administration's border crisis with a far-left amnesty. We have now seen the highest unaccompanied child arrivals on record, the biggest month for immigrant encounters in 21 years. This month, total CBP apprehensions for the calendar year are expected to top a million--a million--for the first time in 15 years, and we still have 5 months to go.
So one might think my friends across the aisle would try to avoid repeating the missteps that created the crisis; that they would be careful to avoid doubling down on the perverse incentives generating so much suffering down at the southern border.
But, apparently, Washington Democrats intend to do the opposite. Their reckless taxing-and-spending spree would include an even bigger green light for this crisis at the worst possible time. Under the Biden administration's unenforceable catch-and-release policy, just 13 percent of the 50,000 individuals who have been released into the United States since March have actually reported to assigned ICE checkups. So in a sense, either intentionally or through incompetence, the administration is already practicing a policy that amounts to functional amnesty in many cases. What Democrats want now is to make that explicit and, believe it or not, permanent.
They would effectively like our southern border to be even more open than it is now, even during an ongoing public health emergency that has Federal, State, and local officials contemplating new batches of rules for American citizens. The message to Americans appears to be: Put your guard back up, even if you are vaccinated.
But to a jaw-dropping degree, the message to people arriving at the southern border seems to be: Come on in. Even if you are COVID positive, come on in.
CBP data are reportedly showing a huge uptick in positive COVID tests in the Rio Grande Valley sector. That is just one sector, and that is just among whatever fraction of the individuals are actually being tested. And among individuals in ICE custody, apparently one in three--
one in three--are declining to receive a vaccine. Yet it seems the Biden administration doesn't consider a COVID diagnosis any reason to make an exception to its catch-and-release policy. Alarming reports of COVID-positive detainees being turned out into Texas communities even have border-State Democrats sounding the alarm.
I hope President Biden is listening. Maybe Members of his own party will have better luck conveying what the American people have known for months: The situation at our southern border is a crisis. It deserves real attention and real solutions, not a reckless taxing-and-spending spree with amnesty policies that would make things considerably worse
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