Endless Frontier Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I want to give short remarks on three different subjects. Probably, for people wanting to speak, it will take me about 10 or 12 minutes.

Thanks to Operation Warp Speed, effective vaccines are available on demand to anyone who wants to take the shot. That means individuals and businesses are beginning to return to a degree of normalcy we have all been waiting for.

However, as I have made my annual tour through Iowa's 99 counties, I have heard from business after business that they are desperate for workers, but job applicants are scarce. Those that do apply often don't show up for interviews.

Nationally, the economy added over 700,000 fewer jobs than were expected last month. This is very concerning, as a vibrant labor market is vital--vital--to a strong economy.

I get that some individuals, even after being vaccinated, may be leery of returning to the market after a year of staying home to be safe, but the vaccines have been shown to virtually eliminate the chance of serious illness. Hopefully, the recent CDC guidelines that reinforce this by easing mask guidelines will reassure individuals that it is safe to return to work.

However, Iowa employers repeatedly informed me that the biggest impediment to finding workers is the over-the-top unemployment benefits extended as part of President Biden's so-called COVID relief bill.

I had 13 county meetings throughout Iowa during our last Senate recess, and in all but one of them, this came up as a very important issue.

The simple fact is this: Under that partisan COVID package, many individuals can earn more if they don't work than if they do work. That is wrong in principle and has proven disastrous in practice, and, as a matter of fact, in American society, a job is very essential and center to the quality of life.

As my Republican colleagues and I have warned for months, incentives matter. If you can earn more not working than working, it makes perfect sense not to work. I don't blame workers for taking that deal. I blame government policy that puts the individual workers in this predicament.

Even prominent liberal economists have acknowledged a problem with continuing to provide increased unemployment benefits. For instance, President Obama's former chief economic adviser, Jason Furman, admitted that if he were in a low unemployment State, he would be--these are his quotes--``thinking seriously about whether paying people more to not work than to work was a good thing to continue doing.''

This is the case in Iowa, which has an unemployment rate of 3.7 percent. That is low even in normal times, but it should be even lower as Iowa has more job openings than unemployed people.

I stand firmly behind Governor Reynolds, who recently announced Iowa would end its participation in the counterproductive enhanced benefit program, and that ending will be effective June 12.

President Biden talks about the government creating jobs by spending trillions of borrowed dollars, all while spending more borrowed money to pay people not to work. Now, that fails the commonsense test.

In Iowa, the private sector is already creating more jobs than we can fill. The economy is poised to take off if the government just gets out of the way. Politicians should live by the same principle as doctors: ``First, do no harm.''

We shouldn't continue pandemic-era policies longer than they are necessary. That will only slow our economic recovery. Just as the CDC updated its guidance based upon the new reality about masks and about the vaccine, it is time for Congress to conform its policies to the conditions on the ground. Pipeline Infrastructure

Mr. President, on another subject, yesterday I participated on a call with Canadian counterparts that serve in Canada's Parliament.

Just for a little background on these meetings, until the pandemic or until people got so busy they couldn't travel back and forth between the two countries, over a period of more than a half a century, there have been meetings of Canadian Parliamentarians and Members of the American Congress on an annual basis.

One time, the U.S. Congressmen would go to some place in Canada; the next year, the Canadian Parliamentarians would come down here.

In the recent 5 to 10 years, this has been done more like yesterday by Zoom or by a few people from Canada coming down here more often than we went up there.

But over the period of my years in the U.S. Senate, I presume I have participated in at least 15 of those meetings where we travel back and forth, and I found them very helpful in talking about problems between the two countries. The problem is, it is almost laughable that we have very many problems between Canada and the United States. So we would end up talking about two or three issues, but they were problems that had to be worked out.

So we had this meeting yesterday by Zoom, as I just said. We discussed issues of concern that impact both legislative bodies in our respective countries.

Canada and the United States share the same values and are closely tied to each other culturally and economically. Canada is our closest ally. We need to effectively work with Canada and Canadians on issues that impact both countries.

On his first day in office, President Biden made a hasty decision to shut down the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline--a decision that cost the United States and Canada over 10,000 jobs.

This decision by President Biden sent a clear signal to other democratic countries across the globe. That message is, it doesn't matter if it will cost your State jobs and raise gas prices or irritate an ally; you would be better to listen to ideologues in your party who say something like this: Pipelines that transport oil are bad.

But while the Keystone XL Pipeline is better known, the Canadians who were meeting yesterday were worried about the current pipeline in use that goes by the name of Enbridge Line 5. The pipeline, which has been in use since 1953, delivers the bulk of Canadian crude exports to the United States and also supplies fuel to Ontario and Quebec.

In June of 2019, the State of Michigan filed a lawsuit to compel the decommissioning of the segment of Line 5 that runs under Lake Michigan. The basis of the suit is that the pipeline is a public nuisance that could become a source of pollution if it leaks. This month, the Canadian Government filed a request to stop the State of Michigan from shutting down the pipeline.

Shutting down the pipeline would have an immediate effect on crude oil supplies for refineries and, as a result, increase the price of gas for Americans. We saw it over the past 7 or 8 days, how the Colonial Pipeline's shutdown has increased the price of gas--if you could buy gas. So we ought to be thinking about these problems.

For the sake of North American energy independence and for American jobs and to mend relations with our closest allies, I am asking the Governor of Michigan to reconsider this lawsuit. For that matter, President Biden ought to step in and the entire Democratic Party ought to reconsider their stance on the use of pipelines. Take a cue from the former Governor of Michigan, now Energy Secretary Granholm, who said pipelines are ``the best way to move oil.'' Inspector General's Act of 1978

Mr. President, my last comment, which will be very short, deals with the subject of the Inspector General's Act of 1978.

When we passed that act, we required a President who wants to remove an IG to provide Congress specific reasons why that IG was removed. When Congress revised the IG act 30 years later, we amended that notification requirement and made it even stronger. We require Presidents to tell us their reasons and do it in no less than 30 days in advance of the removal. Neither of these provisions did anything to prevent the President from performing his constitutional responsibility to hire and fire people within the executive branch of government.

Unfortunately, Presidents from both political parties--let me emphasize ``from both political parties''--seem to have a hard time following this simple notice requirement.

When President Obama fired IG Walpin of the Corporation for National and Community Service early in his term, he sent a vaguely worded letter saying only that he had ``lost confidence'' in Mr. Walpin. When President Trump fired IGs Linick and Atkinson last year, he sent letters to Congress saying exactly the same thing.

As I explained to both Presidents when they sent those letters, merely telling Congress that you have ``lost confidence'' in an IG isn't enough explanation. The loss of confidence occurs only after something happens. When announcing their decision to remove an IG from office, Presidents need to tell us what that ``something'' is. They need to explain why they have lost confidence. Failing to do so misses the point of the notice requirement entirely. The notice requirement isn't about a President's confidence in the IG; it is about the public's confidence in the inspector general system across the board.

IGs are put in office to serve as government watchdogs. If IGs are carrying out their duties as intended, they are likely going to make more enemies than friends. They may uncover things that make the sitting President and his political appointees very uncomfortable. So what? No President is going to like every investigation that an IG undertakes or every report that an IG prepares. But IGs should not be fired just for doing their jobs or to prevent them from releasing findings that may be embarrassing to an administration, Republican or Democratic.

Requiring the President to explain in advance why he or she is removing an IG gives Congress time to evaluate those reasons. It helps assure Congress and the public that the termination isn't based on politics but on real problems with the IG's ability to carry out their job.

Of course, there has been no shortage of bad IGs who are deserving of removal. In fact, I probably had something to do with removing five or six of them in the years I have been in the U.S. Senate. Maybe some of those who ought to be removed are still in office.

Recently, I called on the President, President Biden, to remove the Federal Housing Finance Agency IG due to an independent report by the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency that verified longstanding claims to my office that she abused her authority.

Whistleblowers originally came to my office in 2015 with concerning reports that the IG was personally and publicly demeaning her employees. She referred to them with demeaning names such as ``weasel.'' The IG also allowed her deputy to threaten employees who blew the whistle to my office. That was over 5 years ago, and--can you believe it?--the abuse is still happening today.

Based on my investigations and the CIGIE's findings, I firmly believe the IG needs to go, but I don't get to make that decision. Only the President can make that decision. He gets to decide when to exercise his constitutional authority. He has a right to do so and will ultimately be accountable to the people for a decision that he makes. All he has to do, all that is required for him to do under this law, is to give Congress proper notice. That is how things should work. That is how things were designed to work, but unfortunately, that is not what has been happening.

It is clear to me that we have to be even clearer that when we say we want reasons, we actually mean it. When making the decision to remove an IG, Presidents must send substantive, specific reasons to Congress in advance explaining the actions they are taking and why they are taking those actions.

That is why I introduced S. 587, the Securing Inspector General Independence Act. In addition to making the notice requirement even more clear, my bill would limit who can be an IG in an acting capacity and require CIGIE to provide guidance for annual whistleblower training for all IG employees.

My cosponsors and I have an interest in keeping our IG system strong and neutral, and that is what this bill does. I encourage all of my colleagues to support it and ask that the Homeland Security Committee give it full consideration.

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