Investing in A New Vision for the Environment and Surface

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about where our country is in the fight against coronavirus.

The simple message on the coronavirus is this: Vaccines work. The single most important thing you want to do to protect yourself and to protect your family is to get vaccinated. That is the only message we ought to be sending out.

I am a doctor. I have been vaccinated. My wife has been vaccinated. Our kids have been vaccinated. There is overwhelming evidence that vaccines are highly effective against serious illness.

Yet we are talking about this issue today because of the chaos and the confusion that have come about due to messaging coming out of the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is why, with limited floor time during this important debate on spending, I come to the floor today to discuss this specific issue.

President Biden and the CDC ought to be found guilty of medical malpractice for the comments that they have been making. Back in May, the Centers for Disease Control said, and the President repeated it at the White House, that if you have been vaccinated, if you have been fully vaccinated, you don't need to wear a mask either indoors or outdoors. Now they are saying that even if you have been fully vaccinated, you need to wear a mask again indoors.

At a time when we are trying to encourage people to get vaccinated, I ask, how is this going to help someone who hasn't been vaccinated, encourage them to get vaccinated if you are telling them that even if you get vaccinated, you still have to wear a mask?

This flip-flopping in policy is why Americans, I think, are very worried and concerned and somewhat anxious about the activities of this administration. They are wondering: What comes next--flip-flop on masks? Is this administration going to flip-flop on lockdowns, on shutdowns, on closing schools?

People say: Oh no, don't worry about that.

Well, Mr. President, let me tell you, just this past weekend, Randi Weingarten--she is the head of one of America's biggest teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers--she refused to commit to in-person learning this fall, this coming school year.

The president of America's biggest teachers union refused to commit to in-person learning this fall. So the American people have every right to be concerned and anxious and angry with the communications coming out of this administration and the directives this week. Parents are angry that kids have already lost too much.

And think about this: Now Nancy Pelosi is requiring fully vaccinated Members of the House of Representatives to wear masks or they will be charged a fine. She has even threatened--threatened--to tell the Capitol Police to arrest staff members--fully vaccinated staff members--who aren't wearing masks. These are people who have been vaccinated.

At the same time, the Biden administration is throwing our southern border wide open to 180,000 illegal immigrants a month, with almost every disease known to man. We are talking about people who are undocumented and unvaccinated.

When I went to the border earlier this spring, our border agents told me that they had arrested people from 50 different countries. Of course, these people are all coming from places where vaccination rates are much lower than they are in our country.

Since the start of the pandemic, more than 8,000 Border Patrol officers have tested positive for coronavirus. Thirty-two of these agents have died. When I visited the border, roughly 1 in 10 of the unaccompanied children in custody had tested positive, and they were intermingled with others who had tested positive and those not tested positive. They were all crammed in like sardines, and the testing occurred only when they were getting ready to be released and then sent all around America, spreading the coronavirus wherever they went.

And it is interesting to listen to Democrats in the national media and on the Hill who want to blame Republicans for any vaccine hesitancy that is out there. Well, let me set the record straight on that.

Republican elected officials have gone out of our way to encourage vaccinations. It is the responsible thing to do. I have traveled from one vaccination site to another all around the State of Wyoming; made public service announcements with other doctors and doctors who are members of the Doctors Caucus in Congress, in the House and the Senate; made public service announcements; put them out on videos and sent them around the country.

The truth is that there are a large number of Democrats who are still unvaccinated. Forty percent--forty percent--as of today, of New York City public school employees have not been vaccinated, and it is ready for the school year to start. And yet we don't have a commitment from the head of the teachers union to have in-person learning this year. Forty percent of the public hospital workers in New York City are unvaccinated. Forty-one percent of Chicago residents are not vaccinated. If you take a look, city by city--Democrat-run cities--a high percentage of people are not vaccinated, and yet President Biden and the Senate majority leader continue to point fingers.

It does seem to me that Democrats have utterly failed to communicate a clear message to get the American people vaccinated. In fact, I think Democrat politicians have been a big part of the problem from the beginning.

Early on, when the vaccine was currently being developed, people were hoping for a vaccine. We saw the Vice Presidential debate--57 million people watching--and then, at the time, Vice Presidential candidate, at the time Senator Harris, now Vice President Harris, said she would not get a vaccine developed under the Trump administration.

She said: ``If Donald Trump tells us we should take it, I'm not going to take it.''

Before Democrats point the finger at Republicans, they should get their own cities vaccinated.

There is much more to talk about.

There have been many mistakes made by this administration and Democrats over the last 6 months, but it is no coincidence that, over the last 3 months, we have seen a historic drop in national optimism. A majority of the country says America is now on the wrong track. Just one in three Americans is satisfied with the way things are going in this country. Fully, only one in five Americans has switched from optimistic about our future to pessimistic about our future in just 3 months.

Fully, one in five Americans flipped on their thoughts on the direction of the country, and it is easy to see why. They see inflation eating away at their paychecks. They see Democrats piling up debt on our kids and grandkids. They see their taxes are about to go up again. They see an open southern border. They see rising crime in Democrat cities. And independent voters are running away from Democrats as fast as they can.

It is time for Democrats to get the message. We want to get the virus behind us. The answer is not open borders. The answer is not more flip- flops, and it is not more mandates on the American people.

It is time for the Democrats to stop pointing fingers. The school year returns in just a matter of weeks. Every school in America must be open. It is time for Democrats to follow the science. No more flip- flops, no more mandates, no more lockdowns--no more excuses Nomination of David Chipman

Madam President, I come to the floor, at this point, to oppose the nomination of David Chipman as Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

David Chipman is an anti-gun extremist who would politicize one of the world's greatest law enforcement Agencies, the ATF. If confirmed, he would be the most radically anti-gun Director in ATF history.

David Chipman's views are completely out of touch with those of the American people. He opposed the Supreme Court case that struck down Washington, DC's ban on handguns, the Heller case. He was party to a legal brief in the case which said the Second Amendment, he said, only protects militias. He supports bringing back the 1994 assault weapons ban, which President Biden often brags that he wrote. Congress let that ban expire because there was never any proof that it brought down crime.

During his hearing with the Judiciary Committee, Senator Cotton specifically asked Mr. Chipman to define what an ``assault weapon'' is.

Mr. Chipman said: ``An assault weapon would be whatever Congress defines it as.''

Senator Cotton went on to ask Mr. Chipman for his own definition of an ``assault weapon.''

He said: ``Any semi-automatic rifle capable of accepting a detachable magazine above a 22.''

Well, as Senator Cotton rightly pointed out, this would ban most sporting rifles in America. If David Chipman made our gun laws, most sporting rifles would be banned. States could ban handguns. Private gun sales would be illegal.

These views are completely out of touch with the views of more than 100 million Americans who are law-abiding gun owners.

Worst of all, David Chipman does not have the character and integrity to lead the ATF. He has repeatedly mocked gun owners and impugned people's motives for owning a gun.

David Chipman said: Gun ownership ``is a way you can act patriotic without having to'' serve in the military.

He said: ``I [would] compare gun ownership . . . to the same reason Americans might want a muscle car.''

This is not why people buy guns. The American people buy guns to protect themselves and to keep their families safe.

The American people are buying guns by the millions right now because they are afraid of Democrats' gun control policies, and they are afraid of crime in Democrat cities.

Last year, Democrats cut $1 billion in police funding across America, and as a result, we saw the largest increase in murder in 60 years. In response, the American people bought more than 20 million guns, including 8 million guns by first-time gun owners--first-time gun owners--because they realized they weren't able to be protected when those are trying to defund the police. Gun ownership is still going up because the Democrats are still defunding police, and Democrat cities are in chaos.

We don't need an ATF Director who mocks nearly half of the country.

Recently, we found out another serious concern about Mr. Chipman's character. According to media reports, multiple ATF agents say David Chipman was accused of making racist comments about African Americans. I won't repeat them here. The comments are of great concern. According to the reports, the racist comments were reported to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and a complaint was filed against him.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have called for another hearing in light of this new information that has come out. I commend my colleagues for their due diligence.

Yet I don't think another hearing is necessary. What is necessary is for President Biden to withdraw this nomination. There are plenty of qualified Democrats out there who could be nominated to do this job.

The men and women of the ATF deserve a leader with integrity and with respect for the Second Amendment to our Constitution. More than 100 million legal gun owners in this country deserve it, too.

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