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Floor Speech

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Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. President, I am honored to be here on the Senate floor for the first time. Each time I enter the Senate Chamber, I am humbled to walk in the footsteps of the Pennsylvanians who came before me, from founding father Robert Morris to Simon Cameron, from Joseph Clark to John Heinz.

It was the namesake of the Commonwealth, William Penn, who said:

Patience and diligence, like faith, remove mountains.

In my short time here in the Senate, I have found these words to be of comfort. At this moment, our circumstances and fellow countrymen require us to remove mountains and to do so with great haste.

I would also not be here today without the patience, love, and example of my parents Jim and Maryan. I am also so grateful for the love and encouragement and belief in me by my incredible wife Dina, who is in the Gallery today. She believed in me when few others did. Finally, Dina and I are both so grateful for the love and support of our amazing six daughters through two hard-fought campaigns.

I chose to rise today for the first time because something miraculous happened last week in Pittsburgh, the city that Dina and I are proud to call our home. In the middle of the so-called rust belt, President Trump, members of the Cabinet, the CEOs of the world's leading energy, technology, and investment companies, labor leaders, and political leaders from both parties came together at Carnegie Mellon University to commit over $90 billion in new investments--investments that affirm Pennsylvania's central role at the crossroads of America's energy and AI revolutions.

These projects announced at the inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit will bring enormous benefits to communities across our great Commonwealth: new data centers and powerplants in Northeastern Pennsylvania, data centers and hydroelectric power in York and Lancaster Counties, new natural gas power capacity and production in Western Pennsylvania, and plans by Pittsburgh's iconic Westinghouse to begin constructing 10 large nuclear reactors by 2030.

For Pennsylvania workers, this will result in tens of thousands of jobs for skilled labor, including electricians and welders, steamfitters, machinists, and countless other trades, and many, many more indirect jobs supporting these projects will come to Pennsylvania's communities.

Perhaps most important, the significant media focus on the summit allowed Pennsylvania to tell its unique and compelling story to the world.

Last year, President Trump and I promised to make America energy dominant and to secure our Nation's AI leadership and to create jobs and opportunity for working families in Pennsylvania and across America during our campaigns. Last Tuesday, it was clear to all that we were delivering on all those promises.

These investments come at a defining moment not only for Pennsylvania but also for the future of our great Nation. Embracing the AI revolution and achieving energy dominance will require us to do something very special: once again build in the United States. In this process, we can revitalize the American dream for all Pennsylvanians and for all Americans by training and deploying workers across our economy, from the trades, to engineers, to our very finest scientists.

The stakes could not be higher. If the United States does not rise to this challenge, we risk putting our future in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, which seeks to dominate industries and technologies that will define the 21st century. This is a competition we must win, and it is a moment that demands leadership, sound policies, and, yes, bipartisanship--bipartisan cooperation to ensure our Nation's prosperity.

That is what this summit in Pittsburgh was all about--bringing the President and his team together with many leaders who can seize this moment, who can chart a course forward to build the infrastructure, the talent, and the technology required to lead America's next chapter of growth and opportunity.

I will come back to the significance of the summit in a few minutes, but let me step back for a moment and describe the journey that has brought me here today.

I am a seventh-generation Pennsylvanian from Washington County. I grew up in a small town called Bloomsburg--the majority leader visited--in Northeastern Pennsylvania. I spent my Friday nights on the wrestling mat in high school gyms from Shikellamy to Shickshinny, from Selinsgrove to Schuylkill Haven. I spent my summers baling hay and trimming Christmas trees with my high school buddies. Many of them are still close friends today.

This upbringing, like for so many generations of Pennsylvanians, taught me the timeless lessons of toughness, hard work, and resilience.

My senior year in high school, I was nominated to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point--the first kid from Bloomsburg to attend the Academy in decades. There, I learned the three words that General MacArthur called the rallying points for every cadet: ``duty, honor, country.''

Three years after graduating, I saw those words put into action when I deployed with the 82nd Airborne Division to Saudi Arabia and later Iraq during Operation Desert Storm.

Following the Army, I joined and eventually led a successful technology company in Pittsburgh. I served in several senior positions in the government at the intersection of national security and our economy. And I led, as CEO, one of the world's great global investment firms. But nothing--nothing--I have done in my life compares to the honor of serving as the 54th elected Senator from the Keystone State. I am also proud, following the great Senator from Rhode Island, to be the ninth Senator in American history who is a graduate of West Point.

I decided to enter the political arena because America is a superpower in peril. I gave up a successful business career because I could see that despite the strength and the spirit of the American people, our future is threatened by a cycle of stagnation and disillusionment and decline. The American dream is out of reach for far too many families in Pennsylvania. And the Chinese Communist Party is actively subverting America's economic and military power.

Breaking this cycle and focusing on the renewal of our Nation is the only way forward, and I felt a calling to try to do my part in fulfilling this mission.

During his campaign, President Trump uniquely grasped this challenge. He saw the struggling communities next to the shuttered steel mills along the Monongahela Valley on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, and he understood the devastation in small towns like Bloomsburg, where I grew up, 50 miles from Scranton. The Magee Carpet Mill once employed more than 2,000 workers, including the parents of many of my high school classmates, and is now occupied by a mere 200.

Like the President, our fellow citizens saw thousands of brave men and women who fought for two decades in the endless wars in the Middle East. Too many--too many--returned home with broken bodies or troubled minds, like Michael Wargo of Lehighton, the son of Dina's and my dear friends Michael and Sally. They lost Michael to suicide years after he returned from a tour in Afghanistan. I share their heartbreak--and I know many of you do, too--and disbelief that 18 veterans a day still take their own lives, every single day.

Finally, we all saw the wide-open southern border bringing millions of illegal immigrants into our towns and cities and violent crime and deadly fentanyl into our communities. More than 4,000 Pennsylvanians lose a loved one every year to a fentanyl overdose. One of those families is that of my good friend Blair County Sheriff Jim Ott, who lost his 33-year-old son Josh to the scourge of fentanyl.

Last year, I heard these concerns over and over and over again from my fellow Pennsylvanians in hundreds of campaign stops I made across the Commonwealth. And in November, the people spoke. Pennsylvania voters gave President Trump and me a mandate for change. They wanted a dramatic turnaround from 4 years of open border policies, soaring prices caused by reckless spending, and weak leadership on the world's stage that emboldened China, Russia, and Iran.

After only 6 months, the results speak for themselves. President Trump, with the support of this Congress, has made enormous progress. Illegal border crossings are at a record low, with more resources on the way. The One Big Beautiful Bill just delivered and made permanent the largest tax cut in history for working families. And the U.S. economic indicators across the board are getting better by the day.

We are making America safer. We are rebuilding our military. President Trump ordered a flawless attack on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities so the mullahs can never wield a nuclear weapon. And we are working together to end the Russia-Ukraine war while preserving Ukraine as a free and independent country.

As a Senator, my job is to deliver for the people of Pennsylvania whether they voted for me or not. We are going to have some tough fights in this Chamber. This year, we already have had many. But when I look back on my time serving the people of Pennsylvania, I want to be able to tell my children and my grandchildren that I worked with anyone, regardless of their party, who shares the goal of delivering results and much needed change for Pennsylvania and our Nation.

That is why I appreciate my collaboration with my colleague and friend Pennsylvania senior Senator John Fetterman. Despite our differences, we found a way to work together on critical issues, such as fighting anti-Semitism at home and abroad.

In the months and years ahead, I hope to serve my constituents not only inside this Chamber through legislation, hearings, and votes but also outside this Chamber by using my platform, my voice, and my leadership to bring about meaningful change.

That is why I began today by talking about the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit. Our vision for the event came from a realization that Pennsylvania sits at the crossroads of America's energy and AI revolutions. Yet the key political, business, and labor leaders had never actually been brought together in one place to make things happen.

I highlight this summit not because it is the answer to all the problems we face but because it exemplifies the key ingredients that I believe we need as a country at this unique moment.

This moment demands bold, innovative leadership across the political spectrum to build coalitions--unique coalitions--required to tackle these challenges.

This moment--this moment--demands a willingness to discard conventional wisdom to improve the lives of our fellow countrymen.

This moment demands embracing partnerships between our Nation's public institutions and the private sector, where much of the innovation that is required is taking place.

This moment--this moment--demands urgency, moving at the speed that is necessary to overcome the obstacles facing working families each and every day that we all hear about when we are home in our States.

I have the privilege, the true privilege, of representing the birthplace of our Nation during its 250th year, but the Keystone State's special place in American history extends far beyond our Nation's birth.

In the summer of 1787, Philadelphia gave our young Nation new life at the Constitutional Convention. As Benjamin Franklin emerged from the convention, he famously said that the United States would be ``a Republic, if [we] can keep it.''

More than 100 miles to the west at Gettysburg, almost 100 years later, the Civil War put Franklin's warning to the test. On that hallowed ground, Abraham Lincoln told his audience to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that task, of course, being the preservation of our Union.

Our Nation's history and Pennsylvania's history are full of such significant milestones, and today we face another make-or-break moment for America's future. I have seen our country at its best, as many of you have, from the brave men with whom I served in Iraq to the shopkeepers and the storekeepers along the streets of vibrant, small Pennsylvania towns, to the farmers whose plowed fields dot our Commonwealth's beautiful landscape, beautiful countryside.

I have witnessed firsthand our uniquely American ability to get to the edge of the cliff and to pull ourselves back in times and moments of national peril. We can do it again. A bright future can and should be ours, but it depends on what we do next. We must confront the difficult task ahead, while staying true to the values and ideals that have made America the last best hope of man on Earth.

And what I can say with certainty today, Mr. President, standing in this esteemed Chamber with so many friends, is that this Senator and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania can be counted on to do our part.

(Applause, Senators rising.)

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