Motion to Discharge

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, on June 12, a bipartisan group of 20 Senators announced an agreement on legislation to protect our children and communities from the epidemic of gun violence. In the days since then, this bipartisan group, led by Senators Murphy, Cornyn, Sinema, Tillis, and others, have worked to move this agreement forward.

We took a test vote last night--our first Senate floor vote on the package. It was a strong bipartisan rollcall. Let's be clear: This bill is a compromise. In a 50/50 Senate, we expect nothing less.

It doesn't accomplish everything I want. It certainly doesn't accomplish everything which the Republican colleagues who voted for it want either, but the reforms and investments made in this bill represent an important step toward making our Nation safer.

It won't end gun violence, but it will help to reduce the number of shootings and killings which number 100 Americans each day, and it will end, perhaps, guns as the leading cause of death among our children.

Let me highlight a few important provisions: $250 million in grants for community violence intervention programs which have shown great promise in communities in my State. This would double the current annual Justice Department funding for these programs. The bill makes dramatic investments in mental health infrastructure, providing billions of dollars in school and community mental health grants and behavioral health clinics. It gives an additional $28 million to fund the trauma support in school program at HHS. This is a program that Senator Capito--Republican of West Virginia--and I created in 2018 to help break the cycle of trauma and violence.

The bill also provides three-quarters of $1 billion in Byrne/JAG grants to help States administer crisis intervention programs like the extreme risk protection order laws in Illinois and 18 other States.

The bill takes significant steps toward closing the boyfriend loophole: keeping guns out of the hands of dating partners who have been convicted of domestic violence offenses.

It creates a new Federal offense for the crimes of straw purchasing and gun trafficking. This will crack down on the illicit flow of guns into cities like Chicago.

Again, this bill is a compromise. There are provisions I would rather change and some I would rather do without; but, overall, it marks the most significant gun violence reduction legislation in nearly three decades. I commend the bipartisan effort that led us to this point, and we should pass this bill without delay.

I want to call particular attention to two sections of this bill that I mentioned.

One is to stop straw purchases. Straw purchases are when a person with a clean criminal record or with no criminal record goes to buy a gun for the sole purpose of giving it to another individual who has a criminal record and couldn't legally purchase a gun himself. That happens. It happened last year in Chicago. There was a straw purchase of a gun, and the gun was handed to a felon who turned around and used it to kill a Chicago policewoman named Ella French.

Ella French was 29 years old. She was a remarkable young woman. She had a great future ahead of her. She was, unfortunately, shot--gunned down--with a straw purchase gun. The same gun was used against her partner in his police vehicle. He lost his sight in one eye. He survived. But that just shows you that these straw purchase guns are being used by people against police and innocent people on a regular basis.

Straw purchasing--buying a gun with a clean record to hand over to someone who has a felony conviction--should be treated as a serious violent crime. This bill does that.

The second thing that we desperately need is to deal with counseling. Now, I know there is a traditional political argument where Republicans say: Guns are not the problem--it is mental health or other issues--and Democrats say: It is guns, and if you don't include guns in the package, you are not going to get the job done.

In my view, it includes both. You have to believe if half of the gun deaths in America each day are suicides, that the people who are the victims of those suicides needed, at least at some point in their lives, mental counseling. This bill provides counseling, and I hope it comes in the nick of time for people to turn their lives around and to restore hope in their futures so that they don't resort to the desperate decision toward suicide. Mental counseling, for them, is important.

Secondly, of course, we read about the mass shooters in theaters and in supermarkets and in schools, and we realize that they, too, should have been counseled at some point in the hopes that you could try to divert them from this vicious path that they are about to follow. That is an important issue.

The third group is one that I am more familiar with. They are those people who are involved in gun violence in our cities like Chicago and St. Louis and in so many other cities. These are young people who have diverted their lives away from what we consider to be normal because of a traumatic experience.

Now, trauma is more than physical trauma. It can involve types of posttraumatic stress that really lead to fight-or-flight syndromes and an involvement in gangs and the use of guns without having the feeling of guilt toward anyone you hurt.

These people need help. If we can reach them at an early age in schools, we might be able to turn their lives around. If we don't try, unfortunately, the violence will only continue on our streets. This bill that we are considering--this community safety bill that we are considering--provides resources to school districts to counsel young people.

I think it is long overdue and is desperately needed, not just for those who have been through serious trauma in their lives, but for those facing other mental challenges. Our kids who have gone back to school after COVID may need a helping hand and someone they can counsel with. This bill starts providing those valuable resources. I believe it will make an important difference in the future of our country. Inflation

On another topic, Mr. President, ``inflation'' is the word on everyone's mind. We see proof of it plastered on gas stations throughout the country and in the aisles of our grocery stores. Too many families are struggling to pay bills. Just last week, the Federal Reserve launched its most forceful broadside against inflation, the largest increase in interest rates in nearly 30 years.

As lawmakers, we owe the American people an honest, sober assessment of how we can start to bring down prices and help alleviate stress at the checkout lane; but, sadly, the inflation conversation has been twisted with dishonesty and deflection by some political critics.

Instead of passing legislation to help reduce the cost of essential goods and services like prescription drugs and childcare, many are pointing the finger of blame at the Biden administration as if he invented inflation or isn't doing his best to end it. Despite the fact that it was former President Trump who urged the Federal Reserve to keep the money printer running at the start of the pandemic and that the Republicans oppose a bill that would prevent big oil companies from price gouging, we see arguments that are made totally on a political level.

The bad-faith arguments we have heard from across the aisle ignore the essential truth: Inflation is not just an American problem; it is a global problem. It is happening in advanced economies like in the UK and France. That is largely due to disruptions in the supply chain.

The phrase ``supply chain'' didn't mean much to America a few months ago, but now, we know it is an important part of our challenge. This began 2 years ago with the pandemic, and it has been aggravated by Vladimir Putin's barbaric invasion of Ukraine. It has caused the cost of everything from food to energy to spike.

In the words of one conservative commentator at the Wall Street Journal:

War in Ukraine Fans the Flames of Global Inflation. Immigration

Mr. President, it is crucial to recognize the United States can't solve these global drivers of inflation on our own, but there is one driver of inflation that is within our control: labor shortages. We have twice as many jobs that need to be filled in this country as unemployed people to fill them.

What can we do?

The chart tells you part of the story. This chart indicates that, under the policies of the previous administration and due to the COVID- 19 pandemic, as well as lengthy backlogs, America has experienced a marked decline in immigration that has had a direct and detrimental impact on working families.

According to EconoFact:

[N]et migration to the United States . . . has significantly declined over the last five years due to policies of the Trump administration, processing backlogs, the pandemic, and other factors. This slowdown has implications for the number of workers available and for fiscal sustainability.

By the end of 2021, there were 2 million fewer working-age immigrants in America than there would have been if the pre-2020 migration trends had continued.

Now, perhaps your first instinct is, Well, that is a good thing; that means more jobs for American workers.

But the reality is not that at all. This decline in immigration is hurting working Americans and is contributing to inflation. There are a number of industries in America that rely on foreign-born labor to provide affordable goods and services to our country--industries like construction, agriculture, transportation, to name just a few.

Consider the healthcare industry. Nursing homes depend on a reliable supply of immigrant workers to provide care to the elderly and disabled, but since 2019, nursing homes have lost more than 15 percent of their workforce. Today, nearly every nursing home in the country--99 percent, according to the Wall Street Journal--is experiencing staffing shortages. As a result, many of them have had to limit the number of new clients they accept.

In the words of one leader in the industry:

We're just looking for people to fill the roles that we need. And time and again, we find it is the immigrant population that tends to respond to us.

So it is our grandparents who end up paying the price for the shortage of working-age immigrants, and they are not alone.

If you are in the market for a new home, you may have noticed prices are prohibitively high, and these skyrocketing costs aren't just hurting potential home buyers; they are hurting renters as well. The cost of rent is actually outpacing inflation in America.

One obvious way to bring housing costs back down to earth is by expanding the supply of homes in America. There are plenty of homebuilders who are willing to help fill the void, but they have got a problem: not enough workers.

Down in Dallas, TX, one homebuilder named Joshua Correa has been forced to delay home construction projects for months because he can't hire field crews.

In his own words:

Immigration is very important for our workforce in the United States . . . We're feeling [the shortage of workers] . . . and if we're feeling it at the end of the day as builders and developers, the consumer pays the price.

From building new homes to providing healthcare in our homes, we rely on immigrants to fill critical roles; and in the absence of immigrant workers, we as customers end up paying higher prices.

If we want to solve America's worker shortage, we need to drastically increase the number of immigrants we welcome into this country. Don't just take it from me. The CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of America has called for doubling the number of legal immigrants into this country.

In her words:

If we can alleviate the worker shortage, it might be the fastest thing [we can] do to impact inflation.

And that is just a short-term benefit for fixing America's broken immigration system. In the long term, comprehensive immigration reform would drive America's economic growth for years to come.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, undocumented immigrants already pay nearly $12 billion in State and local taxes annually, but many of them are not on the books. By providing them with a path to legal status, we can double the amount of Federal tax revenue our Nation collects from this group. That is money that will fund the construction of roads and bridges and which will make Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid payments. That is especially important when you consider the growing number of senior citizens in America who rely on these programs. By the end of this decade, more than a fifth of our population will be over the age of 65. These Americans need a reliable, working-age tax base to support them.

A path to legal status for undocumented immigrants also would boost our Nation's GDP by more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Passing immigration reform will also help keep America on the cutting edge of innovation. Despite our former President's destructive immigration policies, America is still one of the top destinations in the world for innovators and entrepreneurs. In fact, more than half of our Nation's billion-dollar startups were founded by an immigrant. Let me repeat that. More than half of our Nation's billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants. Every day that we fail to enact immigration reform, we are allowing a generation of potential innovators and skilled workers to fall through the cracks.

I want to briefly share the story of one amazing person who almost fell through the cracks. His name is Dr. Alfredo Quinones, but he is more commonly known as Dr. Q. Today, Dr. Q--listen to this--is the chair of neurologic surgery at the Mayo Clinic.

Decades ago, when he first arrived in the United States as a teenager, he was an undocumented farmworker. He earned little more than $3 an hour picking crops in the San Joaquin Valley in California. Eventually, he began working as a welder for a railroad. One day, he suffered a bad injury after falling into an empty petroleum tank. When he woke up in the hospital, Dr. Q decided to pursue his passion.

He enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley and wrote his honor's thesis on neuroscience. That caught the attention of admissions officers at Harvard Medical School, where he was accepted as a student. He studied hard and discovered his calling: neurosurgery. Today, he removes about 250 brain tumors every year. Outside of the OR, Dr. Q devotes countless hours to pioneering research. He has a very modest goal--curing cancer--and is exploring novel methods, like using human fat cells to fight brain cancer.

How many other Dr. Qs are out there, hiding in the shadows of our immigration system? Isn't it time we found out?

In the meantime, I would like to pose a simpler question to my Republican colleagues: If you are genuinely interested in addressing inflation, will you help us move forward on this issue before the election?

Your willingness to work on immigration reform will reveal the answer. It is one of the most consequential steps we can take to combat inflation.

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