Senate Legislative Agenda

Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, as I do every week, this past weekend, I went back to Tennessee. I will tell you, it really did my heart a lot of good to see people who are out and about and enjoying beautiful weather and enjoying our beautiful State. Nashville is beginning to open the doors of our music venues. Our church bells are ringing, people are attending services, and our hikers are back exploring our beautiful State parks and the Smokies.

Here on Capitol Hill, though, things really do look a lot different. When we come back into town, we still return to empty offices and emptier hallways. I will tell you, I have had a lot of people ask me: What in the world is happening in Washington these days? Well, even though the Chamber will look empty to those who are watching on TV, I want everybody who is watching to know that the Senate is here, and the Senate is at work.

Before the pandemic sent everyone home, we had made great progress repairing our Nation's judiciary and filling empty seats at important Federal agencies. The Senate has placed 198 well-qualified, constitutionalist judges on the Federal bench. This week, we are going to hit that 200 number. We will be considering more of our district court nominations in coming weeks.

We are also preparing to consider the nomination of a former member of our House Republican Study Committee team. Russ Vought has been serving as OMB's Acting Director since January of 2019, and soon we will decide whether to make that position permanent. I will tell you, I think Russ is more than worthy of that honor, and I encourage my colleagues to support his confirmation when the time comes for that vote. China

At this point, we know for a fact that the Chinese Government withheld information about the novel coronavirus that could have spared the American people a lot of heartache and even prevented the COVID-19 outbreak from escalating into a global pandemic. Their lies have already had catastrophic effects on the American economy, on loss of life, on people's livelihoods, and on their well-being. But I think it is important to reiterate that this kind of behavior from China is not new. It is not new. It is just newly realized.

For a long time now, corporations, educational institutions, and even Members of this body have been happy to ignore the problem because of profits. I have spoken at length about the many ways that Big Tech's entanglement with Beijing has jeopardized our privacy, intellectual property, and our Nation's security.

Everyone here is familiar with the Chinese Communist Party's shameless use of political violence against the Uighurs, the Tibetans, and the Hong Kong freedom fighters, but what many don't know is that the Chinese Communist Party has been using their Confucius Institute program to fly under the radar at American colleges and universities and to suppress information about the true nature of the Chinese Government's role.

These so-called institutes are pitched as opportunities to promote cultural studies, but in reality they are propaganda mills directly funded by the Chinese Communist Party. By design, they threaten academic liberty and free speech. But somehow Beijing has managed to place 72 Confucius Institutes on American college campuses. It is hard to believe, but 72 of our Nation's colleges and universities are hosts to these Chinese Communist Party-funded Confucius Institutes. They even say that this is part of their soft power and their propaganda.

American students deserve to know who is really talking to them at these institutes. Last week, we took the first step toward protecting the integrity of our universities by passing the bipartisan CONFUCIUS Act by unanimous consent. The bill would grant full managerial authority to the universities that host Confucius Institutes and prohibit the application of any foreign law on any campus of a host institution. This is one piece of a larger effort to expose the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to pollute the minds of our young people. We thank Senator Kennedy for his leadership in passing this legislation last week.

Earlier this year, I introduced the Transparency for Confucius Institutes Act, which would require ``program participation agreements'' between these institutes and their American hosts to address the way Chinese officials influence what can and cannot be taught in these programs.

I also led a group of colleagues in urging Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to increase agency oversight of these programs so that we--the American people, the American taxpayer, students, and their families-- know what is being taught and the programs that are being offered in these institutes and, also, know who is paying for this.

Since March, life in America has changed dramatically, but the challenges and threats this country faces have not gone away. Because of that, it is important that, yes, we keep our attention on these issues that are still out there. Even though our attention has been placed on the crisis and the matter at hand, we still have a duty to govern and to protect the country and her institutions from destructive influences at home and those that come from far away.

I encourage my colleagues to remember this and to stay focused as we begin another week of negotiations and votes.

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