▶ 0:30:17Chair Cruz: Good morning, the senate committee on science, commerce, and aviation will come to order. We are gathered at a time when senate democrats have decided to be utterly and completely dysfunctional.
▶ 0:30:35Chair Cruz: For more than three weeks we have had the department of homeland security defunded and shut down because democrats have decided that their overwhelming priority is fighting for illegal aliens and they care so much about preventing gang bangers, murderers, and child rapists from being deported that they are willing to defund the department of homeland security at a time of heightened risk of terrorism.
▶ 0:31:04Chair Cruz: We have had for terrorist attacks in the last two weeks all from radical islamic terrorists. The department of homeland security exists to prevent terrorist attacks, and every democrat but one, but john fetterman, has voted seven times now to defund dhs.
▶ 0:31:25Chair Cruz: They voted seven times not to pay the tsa who now have 450 tsa agents who have been forced to quit. We have waiting lines of two to four hours or more at airports across the country. Tsa agents have missed two paychecks.
▶ 0:31:46Chair Cruz: What the democrats are doing to dsa agents is wildly -- to tsa agents is wildly irresponsible and they are deliberately inflicting massive pain on the american people. Again, because there are number one priority is illegal aliens. And apparently american citizens, who they were elected to represent, are not a priority. This markup was designed to be a markup to move bipartisan legislation that had overwhelming agreement.
▶ 0:32:18Chair Cruz: Today's markup, every one of the bills on the markup is bipartisan. Of the 28 members on this committee, 24 of the 28 cosponsored legislation on the agenda today. That is by design.
▶ 0:32:36Chair Cruz: The legislation scheduled for the markup includes the alex gate safety act from senators curtis and klobuchar, directing the consumer product safety commission to address automatic sliding gates named for alex quanbeck, who tragically lost his life to one of these gates in 2019 when he was just seven years old.
▶ 0:32:58Chair Cruz: The no fentanyl on social media act introduced with senators klobuchar and blunt rochester response to the tragedy of minors act -- minors accessing dangerous drugs online. This committee heard directly from a mother in texas whose son passed away after taking what he thought was a xanax.
▶ 0:33:25Chair Cruz: Increasingly, drug dealers are reaching young people via platforms like tiktok and instagram. Pitching supposedly legitimate pills that are in fact laced with sentinel. To address this issue the bill before us directs the federal trade commission in conjunction with the department of health and human services to report on the ability of minors to access fentanyl on social media. The stop the scroll act introduced with senator fetterman would require a warning label regarding mental health harms associated with social media.
▶ 0:33:57Chair Cruz: The bill has been scoped to avoid first amendment challenges and remind young users what we heard at our section 230 hearing last wednesday, that social media comes with risks. Next, several security-related bills. The secure space act from senators fisher and lujan would bar fcc licenses and U.S. market access for certain side of let -- certain satellite systems held or controlled by our adversaries.
▶ 0:34:27Chair Cruz: The satellite cybersecurity act introduced by senator peters with establish a centralized clearinghouse of cyber security resources at the department of commerce. The safeguards act introduced by senator moran makes changes to the mandatory security fee that passengers pay when they buy plane tickets. More of the money will go to the aviation security capital fund as well as a new bucket for security checkpoints.
▶ 0:34:53Chair Cruz: Finally, we turn to the realm of science with the two program reauthorization's. Senator wicker's bill to reauthorize regional ocean partnerships introduced with senator blunt rochester and senator markey, will reform and reauthorize a state-led nonregulatory model for coordinated ocean research and management.
▶ 0:35:15Chair Cruz: The national quantum initiative reauthorization act introduced by senator, cantwell, blackburn, senator budd, senator baldwin among others will federalize quantum research by supporting new centers and testbeds. I will not pretend quantum is easy to explain, but I know it has the potential to unlock computing power far beyond what is possible today. Because quantum could one day break the encryption that protects sensitive data, it is critical that america leads this field.
▶ 0:35:46Chair Cruz: This overwhelmingly bipartisan markup was actually going to be the senate doing its job. But instead, and I guess it is fitting with the shutdown we are seeing, we are treated to a democrat temper tantrum. Our democrat colleagues have decided they are not willing to show up to this markup to pass their own damn bills.
▶ 0:36:10Chair Cruz: They are the author or co-author of every bill on the markup, and yet, apparently, they don't want to pass their own legislation. The origin of this dispute is last tuesday, the day before we noticed this markup, senator duckworth' a staff for the first time asked my staff to put a the markup with one day's notice. We did not have time to review the bill or assess it.
▶ 0:36:40Chair Cruz: So, senator duckworth had planned to introduce 50 amendments to be dilatory, to keep members here for hours and waste their time to try to block these amendments. I will say, that's a very strange way to conduct business. I will speak to my republican colleagues.
▶ 0:37:01Chair Cruz: I remember this committee knows when I became chairman I went personally to the office of every member of this committee and I asked every member of this committee, what are your priorities? What matters for your constituents, what do you want to move forth? I went to the office of every democrat and I said what do you care about moving in the commerce committee this year? I went to senator duckworth's office and I asked, what are your priorities?
▶ 0:37:31Chair Cruz: Neither she nor her staff raised this issue. With my team. Until tuesday of last week. This temper tantrum is bizarre, but sadly it is fitting with what we are seeing the democrats doing across the board. The united states senate is a body that is meant to be occupied by adults who are actually responsible and capable of doing their job. Half of this committee showed up to work today.
▶ 0:38:02Chair Cruz: Half of this committee is prepared to pass bipartisan legislation that would actually make a difference in this country. The other half, the democrats are more interested in throwing a fit than doing their job. That is unfortunate. Senator fischer has asked to be recognized. So, senator fischer.
▶ 0:38:28Sen. Fischer: Thank you, Mr. chairman. I would like to take a moment in advance today to recognize the incredible work of my longtime staffer, erica, whose last day happens to be today.
▶ 0:38:47Sen. Fischer: Erica, I apologize in advance for the embarrassment, but after a .5 years, you have more than earned a tribute -- after 8.5 years you have more than earned a tribute. You have been at the center of some of the most complex and issues this committee handles. Spectrum policy, usf reform. Across all of it you have brought the same, rare combination.
▶ 0:39:16Sen. Fischer: Precision, persistence, and sound judgment. You never lost the thread and you never cut corners. What has always set erica apart is her understanding that lasting policy change rarely arrives all at once. She has a genuine gift for putting points on the board, advancing careful, methodical wins that over time add up to something real and durable.
▶ 0:39:48Sen. Fischer: That patients and strategic thinking is harder to find than most people realize. Erica also carries a level of credibility that cannot be manufactured. It comes from being deeply knowledgeable, clear eyed, and grounded in clear substance. She represents the best of what this committee aspires to be, serious, objective, focused on getting the policy right.
▶ 0:40:16Sen. Fischer: Erica, you have been an invaluable member of my team and a genuine asset to this institution. You will be deeply missed, by me, by nebraska, and by everyone who has had the privilege of working alongside of you. So, I thank you for everything and I wish you nothing but success in your future. [applause]
▶ 0:40:56Chair Cruz: Erica, senator fischer and I were both elected on the same day, the lone remaining republican members of the class of 2012. In 14 years in serving with senator fischer I have seen her tear of precisely wants, and that was about 90 seconds ago. That's a tribute to your service. Senator wicker.
▶ 0:41:20Sen. Wicker: Mr. chairman, kudos to erica and god speed. She has been here a .5 years. Senator fischer has been here longer than that. I have been in this -- on this committee for 16 years. I started at the very end. I have been chairman of this committee.
▶ 0:41:49Sen. Wicker: I have been ranking member, and I have been in a number of capacities. What our democratic colleagues are doing today in this committee I don't believe I've ever seen in my 16 years as a member of this committee and member of the united states senate. I was speaking to my staff last night, yesterday afternoon, as we were about to leave.
▶ 0:42:17Sen. Wicker: They told me about the impasse and number of proposals. I said, it will be solved. It is always solved by the morning. Sometimes it has worked out in the late hours of the evening before markups. Sometimes it is in the early 6:00, 7:00, 8:00 time of the day of the markup and it has always worked out.
▶ 0:42:46Sen. Wicker: This is the first time I've seen a complete attempt to shut down the committee on the part of an entire membership of one party. And this is unfortunate.
▶ 0:43:05Sen. Wicker: We have always worked on these bipartisan bills, as the chair says, that have democrats as primary sponsors, and certainly democrats as cosponsors. This is a shame on this committee and on our colleagues, who I have great affection for on a personal basis. I've worked with in many capacities.
▶ 0:43:34Sen. Wicker: Here is what is about to happen with the department of homeland security, which has little to do with the bill, but the back-and-forth we've had for the last number of weeks has everything to do with this.
▶ 0:43:54Sen. Wicker: We've had an impasse over funding the department of homeland security, and we are beginning to see more and more distress among the american people. It's time for a compromise. We have seen the lines at airports. I believe, Mr.
▶ 0:44:14Sen. Wicker: Chairman, member s, employees of the department are about to lose -- are about to have postponed their third paycheck. They have families and bills to pay, tuition payments, grocery payments, and I'm sure credit card payments. This needs to end. It needs to end today, this week.
▶ 0:44:47Sen. Wicker: The president of the united states, who is -- he is hard to budge on issues, but basically he has agreed to give the democrats virtually everything they have been asking for for the past two weeks.
▶ 0:45:05Sen. Wicker: And now that he has understood how important it is to end this madness and get these people back to work and prevent these long lines and be adults as americans, the democrats have said, no. What we offered, we take that back and it's not good enough. We want something else. That is what has happened. I asked members of the press to check us out on that. This is outrageous.
▶ 0:45:36Sen. Wicker: It is an insult to this committee. What is about to happen on the floor, where our colleagues across the aisle will not take yes for an answer from the president of the united states, is outrageous. It offends us as members who have seen this committee work in a bipartisan fashion for decades.
▶ 0:46:00Sen. Wicker: But it hurts american citizens and american families and it needs to stop. I yield.
▶ 0:46:12Chair Cruz: I fully agree with senator wicker. Senator blackburn.
▶ 0:46:19Sen. Blackburn: Mr. chairman, thank you. I think it is so egregious that our colleagues across the aisle have decided that they are not going to show up for work today. It is really unfortunate for the american people. I want to comment on quantum, which you mentioned. This is something that has been bipartisan. Several of us have worked on the quantum initiative.
▶ 0:46:44Sen. Blackburn: Getting this restarted, it had lapsed, it is important to do for tennessee, it is important to do. Chattanooga, tennessee is the first, the first, they are developing the first commercially available quantum network in the country.
▶ 0:47:05Sen. Blackburn: This is important to innovators and doing things with chattanooga, with oak ridge national lab which is handling much of the innovation when it comes to quantum and ai and our lab network. This is vital to our country as we look at the computational sciences and the race in quantum, ai, digital assets.
▶ 0:47:33Sen. Blackburn: So, it's unfortunate they decided to stall on this and not move forward. I want to draw the committee's attention to the decision against meta and the new mexico case, that verdict that was announced yesterday. A jury found meta knowingly misled consumers and children on their networks and the dangers and the harms.
▶ 0:48:03Sen. Blackburn: Now, I bring this up because the kids online safety act did not make it on the markup today. I know you have agreed to move this forward. We need to move this legislation forward. It came out of the senate last year. 91-3. The parents deserve.
▶ 0:48:25Sen. Blackburn: Now, we have this court finding, this verdict in new mexico that shows it is a decision that they knowingly allowed this harm to happen. I would encourage you, Mr. chairman, I encourage my colleagues, the house has passed a version of cosa.
▶ 0:48:51Sen. Blackburn: We need to get this out of the senate and work with the house so we can have a bill to the president's desk and see this signed into law.
▶ 0:49:02Chair Cruz: Thank you, senator blackburn. I fully agree.
▶ 0:49:11Sen. Lummis: This question is addressed to you and senator fischer who is a member of the rules committee. Does any committee have a rule that would allow for a call of the committee? As opposed to a call of the senate, it would seem logical that if one party doesn't show up for his scheduled markup and they show up deliberately and en masse, the committee should have the ability to invoke a call of the committee so committee work
▶ 0:49:44Sen. Lummis: Can be done. The reason I ask is I fear that this is going to spread like a cancer around the senate and we will see additional committees suffer the same fate as did the commerce committee today. If there is not a committee that has a call of the committee, is there a way to amend the committee rules and authorize this committee to have a call of the committee?
▶ 0:50:13Chair Cruz: It is an interesting idea. I'm not aware of any provision in the rules that governs that, but you are right. If this obstructionism proves to be a persistent pattern I'm sure we will discuss all sorts of creative ways to deal with it. You know, newton's law of thermodynamics, every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. It see unprecedented obstruction we will see the majority have to respond.
▶ 0:50:44Chair Cruz: Senator moran.
▶ 0:50:44Sen. Moran: Mr. chairman, I will echo what senator blackburn said in this regard. I don't know if the camera operators can take the camera off of me and panned to the democrat side. What the american people are witnessing is democrat senators literally not showing up for work.
▶ 0:51:08Sen. Moran: Just a couple of days ago they blocked a measure in the united states senate by objecting and running out of the chamber for a measure that would say if we haven't done our job and funded the government your paycheck should also be withheld. It literally so that the objector would be caught on camera, said I object and sprinted. I thought he was going to trip. Sprinted out of the chamber.
▶ 0:51:38Sen. Moran: Here they are not paying 260,000 people who are going to work to defend this country while they get paid $175,000 a year and not doing their job. They are a total disgrace.
▶ 0:52:00Sen. Moran: Quite frankly, I hope that what somebody does is files a wage an hour lawsuit against the democrat senators, because if I owned a business, Mr. chairman, which I did, my colleague did as well, if we did not pay our colleagues for one hour that they were entitled to we would suffer an wage an hour lawsuit.
▶ 0:52:25Sen. Moran: To the 200 60,000 employees of dhs, sue the hell out of the democrats today for not paying you, free of being hypocrites, for not showing up for work and yet still getting paid, and refusing to hold their paycheck. This is a dark day, Mr. chairman, in the history of the united states senate. I try hard to be bipartisan and they are making it really, really difficult.
▶ 0:52:52Chair Cruz: Senator mo
▶ 0:52:57Chair Cruz: Senator moreno, very well said. Any time anyone of us at home, if you go to the airport and are flying on a flight right now, I would encourage you to take the opportunity to thank the tsa agents who are there, because none of them are getting paid. They are showing up to work without a paycheck to keep planes flying, to let you and your family go on spring break, to let you travel to visit relatives, to let you work. They are showing up. In contrast, the democrats are getting paid and they are not showing up.
▶ 0:53:28Chair Cruz: And I would note, to the best of my knowledge every one of the democrats on this committee and every democrat in the senate is drawing their paycheck. I instructed the clerk of the senate to withhold my paycheck as long as there are workers and the government being denied their paycheck. I don't know of another democrat who is doing the same so the hypocrisy is stunning. Senator sullivan.
▶ 0:53:51Sen. Sullivan: Thank you, Mr. chairman. Like my colleagues I want to reemphasize what is happening right now. Senator wicker mentioned the agreement that we end of white house had come to with our democrat colleagues and they moved to the goalpost again. They moved to the goalpost again. We all know what is going on here. The minority leader of the senate, chuck schumer is not the leader.
▶ 0:54:20Sen. Sullivan: It is the far left of the democratic party. When they say jump, he says how hi. Everything -- when they say "jump," he says, 'how high." everything that is happening is because of his fear of the far left. Mr. president, one thing I want to emphasize, Mr.
▶ 0:54:47Sen. Sullivan: Chairman, is it is not just tsa that does heroic work, it is the united states coast guard. The united states coast guard. They are protecting our country. Not just the coast. We have coast guard members in the middle east right now serving alongside marines, sailors, soldiers and of those brave military members are being paid but not members of the coast guard.
▶ 0:55:16Sen. Sullivan: This happens almost every shutdown. It happened in november. It is happening now. I cannot imagine another service that is doing more important work to protect our country, certainly in my state where we have a cute alert costar presents, and they are -- coast guard presence, and they are not getting paid. This committee has oversight of the great men and women in the coast guard.
▶ 0:55:45Sen. Sullivan: To the brave men and women in the coast guard and their families, you should know that we are working every single day to get you paid. Every single day. We appreciate what you are doing to keep our country safe. And I have seen it in my career and it makes me mad as hell. Chuck schumer doesn't give a damn about you, not a damn about you.
▶ 0:56:13Sen. Sullivan: We will keep trying to make sure you get paid, but the democrat leader in the senate is more scared of his left wing than paying the brave men and women of the coast guard and it is obscene. Like senator moreno mentioned, I work across the aisle with my democrat colleagues all the time. They know this is wrong. I've talked to several of them.
▶ 0:56:40Sen. Sullivan: In private they know this is wrong, but they are scared to stick their head up and vote with us because they think the left will come after them, and that is the dynamic that is happening in the senate right now. It's a shame. To the men and women of the coast guard, again, we've got your back. We are trying to fund you every day and your families. We are not forgetting about you. Thank you for your heroic service. The military members have got to go to work. They cannot quit. They got to go to work. That is what they are doing.
▶ 0:57:11Sen. Sullivan: We should be paying them.
▶ 0:57:13Chair Cruz: Amen. Senator sullivan, thank you for your passionate and constant defense and advocacy for the coast guard. It is enormously important. Senator capito.
▶ 0:57:27Sen. Capito: I have been on capitol hill for a long time, in a lot of committee meetings. I have never experienced a walk- out like I see today. I'm trying to find what the reason is. You say a member came to you a day before and wanted something put on the list of bipartisan bills. I didn't know the option was if you don't get your way you just quit.
▶ 0:57:58Sen. Capito: No, the option that we've all done through our careers is to start working across the aisle to see, can I catch on the next one, the next mark up, we know something is coming, we know you and your staff will be working. Do not show up? I look at the list of bills you diligently went through and I hear my fellow senator sullivan talk about the coast guard. Guess what.
▶ 0:58:22Sen. Capito: One of these bills is a promotion for somebody who works in the coast guard, has dedicated their life to the safety and service of this country through their service. I think, externally -- I'm wondering, have people lost their mind here?
▶ 0:58:46Sen. Capito: Is there no longer a way to say, I don't get everything I want every time, every day so I quit, and I'm going to punish everyone else in this country, whether you are with fema, the coast guard, the secret service, whether you are with border patrol, whether you are doing investigations to prevent fentanyl to come into this country. Your option is I just quit and walk away? That is the choice they made today.
▶ 0:59:15Sen. Capito: We have worked, I worked with many members on the other side, and I'm sure we will continue to do this, but not if you just quit. Sometimes I try to frame what we do here in terms of what I've tried to teach my children. I have three children and nine grandchildren. I tell them if you don't get your way you just walk away, you don't show up? No. You tell them every day, keep trying. Try to present your case. Try to make things make sense.
▶ 0:59:47Sen. Capito: You don't quit on your country. To me, this is quitting on your country. We've seen this over the last several months but this is the height of it. It's not like we are discussing the deepest issues that we need -- these are issues that we all pretty much agree on. For you, Mr. chairman, to be able to vent and express -- I am aghast. I kept going, where is everyone?
▶ 1:00:18Sen. Capito: Why aren't they here? They are not showing up? Is that an option to not show up? To our coast guard members who won't get his or her promotion today, I offer you my sincere empathy and apology. These folks, they have to answer to that. Thank you.
▶ 1:00:35Chair Cruz: Very well said. I want to thank the republican members of this committee for showing up to work today and I look forward to the time when the democrats do the same. At this point the committee will take a recess and reconvene at a later time. The committee stands in recess subject to the call of the chairman. [gavel falls]