Endless Frontier Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I have significant concerns with this legislation. I have made no ambiguity about that. I have been very clear from the outset that this bill concerns me, in part because it involves an attempt by the United States of America to compete with China but on terms that don't favor us, on a playing field that isn't ours, and in areas that play to our weaknesses, not our strengths. We ought to be playing to our strengths and not our weaknesses. Unfortunately, this bill does not get it right.

But separate and apart from my concerns regarding the merits of this legislation, which we will get back to in a moment, I want to talk for a moment about the procedural concerns that I have had. There have been a number of people in the Senate arguing over the last few hours--some in the Senate Chamber, some in the media--that we have had a very thorough floor process; that this has been regular order at its best.

I appreciate the fact that we have had 2 weeks of floor consideration time; 2 weeks, that is, on Senate time, which is just not 2 actual weeks. It is not 2 calendar weeks, not even 2 business weeks. It is a shorter subset of that. But never mind, it is a good thing that we at least had 2 weeks set aside to do this on the Senate floor. So that is a good thing.

It is not sufficient, however, to suggest that because we have had hundreds of amendments filed and because we have had a number of votes on amendments and because a few weeks have elapsed since this bill came out of committee, that that somehow means it is regular order and regular order of a sort that we ought to try to replicate.

You have to remember that regular order needs to be evaluated. It needs to be measured against several things. In other words, a simple resolution designating National Sofa Care Month probably need not receive a lot of floor time or a lot of opportunities for amendments, but the more substantive and the more costly, economically or otherwise, a particular bill might be, the more demanding regular order ought to be.

Regular order is not satisfied, particularly in a bill like this one that is likely to cost $200 billion or more and that is 2,000-plus pages long and that deals with some very significant geopolitical and economic issues--it is not something that you can really call regular order, when you are addressing a bill like that, when you are constantly making changes to it.

We talked last night about the fact that this legislation started out in committee a few weeks ago. It started out in committee where, I believe, it was somewhere in the range of 150 to 200 pages. It came out of committee, and it was longer than that; it was a few hundred pages. Then, over time, it has gotten bigger. It grew to 14- or 1,500 pages. By yesterday afternoon, it had grown an additional 900 pages, and then by 10:59 p.m. last night, it grew by a few hundred more pages. It is not just the addition of an additional page of text that triggers more concern. One has to understand how the entire piece of legislation interacts, how nefarious provisions, including the late-breaking amendments that we received for the first time at 10:59 p.m. last night--how those affect everything else.

Just as importantly, one has to, ought to, certainly have the ability to communicate to one's constituents what is in the legislation, seeking input from them so that any votes can be informed by having the voters informed and having them aware of what is in the legislation. One cannot make very significantly drastic changes to legislation in the middle of the night and then claim that it is regular order and that regular order demands an immediate vote on that measure.

What I and a number of my colleagues have been focused on, as we debated this through the night and starting early this morning when we reconvened, has been simple. We just want more time before being asked to vote on this measure.

It is not an unreasonable request, given that you are dealing with legislation that is over 2,000 pages long and that is likely to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter of a trillion dollars. That is a lot of money, and the way in which we spend it will undoubtedly have profound implications not just for years but for decades to come.

We need to, we ought to, we really must endeavor to understand what exactly this is going to do. In order to do that, we have to have text, and that does, in fact, matter. It is not something you can easily dismiss as an argument that says this has been regular order because it has been on the Senate floor for 2 weeks. When it changes as much as this one has, it expands as much as this one has, when it is as long as this one is and involves this amount of money and this many very significant far-reaching ramifications, it is not unreasonable for us to want more time to vote on it, to consider it, to seek public input, and to allow the American people to know what is in it before we cast our votes. It is a simple common courtesy that we ought to have extended to ourselves automatically, rather than trying to rush to a final vote in the dark of night.

On the merits of the legislation itself, it is important to remember that we got here because we are at something of a crossroads with China. We have all kinds of potential threats--some of them economic in nature, some perhaps cultural, some perhaps military, and some maybe involve cyber security.

But we have an awkward relationship with China, and it is one that we have to be focused on. That is why it is not a bad thing, in and of itself, that we consider legislation to try to deal with that. That doesn't mean that every piece of legislation designed to deal with the problem is, itself, something that must be passed.

You see, if we are going to try to pass something telling the American people that what we are passing will lead to a better outcome with China and our ability to compete with China--if we are going to make that argument, then we have to be able to back that up. In order to be able to back that up, we have to put ourselves in a position where we can be our best selves, where we know we are poised for success. We have to consider exactly what kind of strategy we are deploying, what kind of competitor we want to be.

The legislation before us--the legislation that has been renamed but started out and to this moment includes the Endless Frontier Act--is something that aims to counter China, primarily by boosting technology research and development. I think it is fair to say that is its primary aim.

This is something that nobody dislikes. Nobody dislikes research and development. To my knowledge, these are good things and, undoubtedly, our ability to compete with China will depend on the nature and extent of our investments in research and development.

But that does beg the question, What is the best kind of research and development? Is it best when it follows from, and is directed by, it could be modified along the way as a result of self-interest, rightly understood--enlightened self-interest--free markets, the decisions of individuals who have something at stake or is it best when government acts, when government directs it, when it is done by Federal bureaucrats instead of innovators, technology experts, and people who have something that belongs to them--an idea, an ability to make something--people who actually know how to see their ideas all the way through to the end and are willing to make the necessary sacrifices along the way to see to its success?

You see, when you start to confuse government research and development with actual research and development--that is private nongovernmental research and development--you run into some problems.

Some of this, I think, perhaps stems from a misapprehension, a misunderstanding of the nature of government itself and the capabilities of government in any system to do things

We have to remember that government, ultimately, is best understood as the official use of coercive force. That is what government is. It is force--force with the perimeter of official authority, force and taxation backed up by force. That is what government is.

I don't mean to say that in a dismissive way. We need government. Government can't operate without force. It can't collect taxes without force. It can't enforce laws without force. We need government for that reason--to make sure, first and foremost, that we don't hurt each other, that we aren't harmed by outside aggressors who would harm us, and that we don't take that which doesn't belong to us. We need governments to do that. Only governments can do that. That is why we have governments.

Political philosophers going back centuries, including many of those who influenced the founding of the United States of America, who influenced the documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, those who influenced the waging of America's Revolutionary War understood that, at a fundamental level, the purpose of government is to protect life and liberty and property.

You see, if we left individuals to do that on their own, they might be able to do that, but human flourishing really wouldn't occur in that circumstance. If everyone had to be the law for him or herself, human nourishing wouldn't occur. When government exists, it frees people. It frees them, not just because freedom sounds great in the abstract or because it is fun to yell at a rally or it looks good on a bumper sticker, but we like freedom because of the things that free people do when they are allowed to be free, when they are able to come together and form what I refer to as the ``twin pillars'' of American exceptionalism. In fact, I would go so far as to call them the twin pillars of any thriving human civilization. Those twin pillars are free markets and voluntary institutions of civil society.

When you have robust free markets and voluntary institutions of civil society, human beings do better. They can't, of course, function in a state of anarchy nor can they function in the absence of a government because that always involves anarchy necessarily.

But when there is government and that government properly understands its role of protecting life, liberty, and property, it is freeing and liberating, and human beings in that setting can do amazing things. It is what has led to the development of the greatest civilization of the strongest economy the world has ever known. It is what has led more people out of poverty than any government program ever can, ever could, ever has, or ever will.

When we lose sight of what government is, when we start to forget that government is just force and taxation backed up by the use of force, it can easily be manipulated for nefarious ends. It is not that government is bad. Government isn't inherently good or evil. Government consists of that principle of force backed up with the legitimacy of the imprimatur of the State or, in our case, a union of States.

It is that force that is necessary. That same force that is necessary can become destructive of the very ends that it was created in order to uphold and protect and defend, so we can't lose sight of it. We can't lose sight of the fact that government is neither inherently good nor inherently evil. Government doesn't have eyes to see you. It doesn't have arms to embrace you. It doesn't have a heart with which to love you. It is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, not all-knowing, not all- powerful. It just is force and taxation backed up by force.

So the further afield you take government authority and you take it away from the protection of life, liberty, and property, quite ironically and very tragically, it can become destructive of the very ends that it was created to serve.

One of the ways in which we see this manifest from time to time is when people will harness the immense power of government and the immense financial resources that can be accumulated by a government through the power of taxation backed up by force for their own political ends--even worse, for their own economic ends. When you see people's political ends marrying up with the financial interests of those who want to capitalize off of government itself, bad things can happen.

Ultimately, the American people become poorer as a result of government action; that is, every dollar that we spend is a dollar that won't otherwise be spent--could otherwise be spent in the free market doing good, resulting in everything from charitable contributions to job creation, and many, many other things that support our ability to be free and prosperous as a nation.

China, importantly, doesn't quite see it this way. They didn't get the memo. They are not steeped in Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu. They are not steeped in the stories that we know about our American Revolution.

They weren't raised understanding that their country became a country as a result of their conscious choice to depart from a mother country after that mother country had proven itself to be menacing, had proven itself to be a government that was taxing them too much, regulating them too aggressively, sending them off to war, then making them pay for those wars, all without allowing them fair representation within that system of government. They weren't steeped in that.

They were steeped in different traditions, and they have chosen a very different set of paths. They have, essentially, a command-and- control economy. That is what a country that is run by a Communist Party does; it commands and it controls. It is a very different mindset.

It is a mindset that focuses not on free markets and civil society. In that kind of system, in a system run by a Communist Party, with a command-and-control economy, the state is everything. The government is imbued culturally with almost a sense of reverence, entitled to deference. People assume--or they are at least asked to assume, and many are forced to play along with the assumption--that it has a degree of omniscience, omnipotence, and always the best interests of the people; the ability to foresee and prepare for the future and use the immense force of government to bring about their aims. In every single respect, the Chinese regime grows and centralizes the power of government always at the expense of free markets and free citizens. This is an experiment that has expanded into dangerous and even deadly territory.

Let's just consider, for a moment, China's record on human rights. China has gone so far as to enslave and subject the Tibetan and Uighur people into forced labor, reeducation, and torture.

Under China's infamous one-child policy, it has brutally and barbarically forced families to undergo IUD implantation, sterilization, and abortion.

China, of course, has a long, dark history of religious persecution and of silencing dissidents of every stripe. Under President Xi Jinping, Chinese authorities have detained millions of Muslims and arrested thousands of Christians. They have seized control of Tibetan monasteries and closed or demolished dozens of Buddhist and Taoist temples.

You see, the destruction of sacred places not built by the government, not designed by the government seems to be a hallmark characteristic of Communist systems because sacred places must be for the betterment of the government, and if they are not, Communist regimes don't like them and often do everything they can to destroy them and the communities that formed them. They have even practiced forced organ harvesting of members of the Falun Gong religion.

Or consider China's actions in the realm of foreign policy. In true imperialist form, it is pushing its Belt and Road Initiative--a massive, predatory infrastructure project, stretching from East Asia to Europe, designed to massively expand its coercive economic and political influence.

It has spread Confucius Institutes across American campuses, entangling American universities with Chinese state policies, and turning them into megaphones for Chinese propaganda.

In multilateral organizations, China continuously undermines longstanding democratic norms, instituting policies that, instead, benefit the Chinese Communist Party's authoritarian values. It has also held a tight cronyist, command-and-control grip over its economy, heavily subsidizing industries with money that it has taken through its power of taxation, backed up by its use of force, ultimately picking winners and losers, which tend to be more reflective of those close to leadership within the Chinese Communist Party than those who build a better product or work better to serve their fellow beings.

While China has picked up some steam through these actions, we must not--we can't ever--ignore that whatever momentum it may have acquired is of dubious success and doubtful sustainability over the long run. China, under the control of the Chinese Communist Party, has, in reality, one of the least efficient economies in the world. In terms of GDP per capita, it is not at the top of the heap. In fact, one could say that it is very close to the bottom of the heap, next to Cuba and Kazakhstan.

It turns out that political corruption and state-owned enterprises come with some financial dead weight too. Now, the financial costs alone of enslaving, sterilizing, and brainwashing 12.8 million Uighurs and other oppressed groups is steep, even as the human cost of this indefensible moral depravity is far worse and infinitely steeper.

Of course, killing future generations' potential through abortion is also as foolish as it is inhumane. As a result of its decades-long abortion and one-child or two-child policy, China is on track to lose a third of its workforce--a third--and age out faster than any society in modern history. The ratio of workers to retirees in China, which is currently 8 to 1, is projected to whittle down to just 2 to 1 in the coming decades, with only two employees for every retiree. China's pension system, which is already showing very significant signs of buckling, will inevitably crack under pressure.

Now, it is true that China is aggressive, and it is true that China is really big, but it is not ironclad in its position of global strength. As its population ages more and more and as more of its land falls into wasted, polluted squalor, it will have neither the inhabitants nor the resources to continue on its current course.

There is nothing about China's principles or China's trajectory that we should seek to emulate--no, not in the slightest. In nearly every single way, the Chinese regime consolidates power to trample over the rights of men and women and quash free expression, the free exercise of religion, and free enterprise.

All of us in America who know of our own struggles know of the bad things that can happen when human beings and governments combine to take undo advantage of difficult circumstances of minorities, whether racial, ethnic, in language, religious, or otherwise. Bad things happen. China has not only allowed bad things to happen; it has made them happen. It has directed that they happen. It has been the reason that they happen.

Nothing could be more antithetical to the American system of government or to the American way of life or to our values. In fact, it is just the opposite formula that has made us the greatest civilization the world has ever known, with the strongest economy, with the greatest opportunities, with immense, upward economic mobility. This is uniquely a land in which someone can be born into poverty and, in most circumstances, carry the reasonable hope and expectation that, if one works hard, one day, one can retire comfortably.

The Founders gave us a Constitution precisely to disperse and limit the power of the Federal Government and to keep the power in government as close and accountable to the people as possible. We focus on this, and we focus on principles of freedom and of liberty, not just because they sound nice. We do these things because it is how human beings thrive. We do these things because it is the best way to protect life and liberty and property. We do these things because it is the only way to allow for upward economic mobility and the thriving of the human condition.

We should continue to double down on those things. We should continue to make sure that our markets are free and that our institutions of civil society are voluntary and robust. We do that not by expanding government but by allowing human beings to do what they do best and by allowing them to be free.

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