Trillion. So its actually more than the previous four combined. And the legislation that shes proposing has a lot of items that arent directly related to the covid19 crisis, they are, as someone said, a wish list of priorities and others have said in the media that its more of a messaging bill. So well see. Among other things it says as an example that they want to change the current law which says that youre limited in terms of how much of a federal Tax Deduction you can take for state and local taxes, thats called the salt issue, and they want to repeal that. That cost, by the way, is about 180 billion dollars, Something Like that. And it would result in about 50 of the benefit, the tax benefit going to the top 1 of the taxpayers. So if that doesnt sound like something thats going to be, you know, impactful in terms of the coronavirus pandemic we face, i can think a lot of better ways to spend that money, including more testing, ensuring our Small Businesses can get back on their feet and our Health Care System is sound and that sort of thing. Well continue to work with that. My hope is with the previous four we can come together with the house and senate. Look how what we have has been spend and look at where the gaps might be and address those gaps, but as we are working on this issue, this pandemic is continuing to wreak havoc all over the country. Its been devastating, lets face it. We now have 30 million americans, 30 million of our fellow americans who have lost their jobs and are looking for Unemployment Insurance. Now, these are people who lost their jobs through nofault of their own. They lost their jobs because the pandemic infected the economy and they dont have a place to work. I know friends of mine, people ive known for a long time who have never been unemployed, theyre unemployed now for the first time, theyre getting Unemployment Insurance for the first time. They want to go back to work, but they dont have a job right now so, thats been devastating to them, to a lot of Small Businesses. Ive talked to people who have put their lives into their business, theyve poured their lives and resources into these businesses. A guy tells me ive been doing this for 40 years, started with a couple of people and a few more, a few more and boom, now my doors are closed. Think of the movie theaters and the bowling alleys and the small restaurants, the hotels, i mean, the anything to do with travel and tourism and these businesses are in tough, tough shape. So is the beauty parlor and the nail salon, and the barbershop. So this is testing our resolve, isnt it, in ways that we had never expected and i guess thats part of the point, we had never expected because we werent prepared for this kind of pandemic. Congress again has tried to help with these four measures that have already passed and i think they have helped, particularly with a lot of the Small Businesses, our Health Care System has been helped. You know, trillions of dollars, 2. 5 trillion of taxpayer funds have gone out to try to really be a rescue package, to help people weather the storm. G again, i hope the next package can help the economy moving. More stimulus, giving Small Businesses, tax relief encourage to add more jobs, maybe some smart spending in terms of infrastructure, rural bro broadband in rural areas of the country to do the Small Businesses and telehealth and do things through broadband. I think there are things that we can do to help stimulate economic growth. As we work to address these problems here at home, lets not forget how we got here. And my colleague from wyoming just talked about this, but theres a clear concensus now about one thing which is that this started in wuhan, china, which is a huge city in china, the province and the information about this horrible virus was concealed by the Chinese Communist party. Systematically and very deliberately they kept the rest of the world from knowing about it. And by the way they kept it from their own people, too. And to the point made earlier, this is not about the Chinese People, its the government telling, gosh, we have a problem and lets not tell anybody, which goes against all the rules. If youre a country and you have a virus thats spreading, your responsibility, particularly as a member of the World Health Organization is to tell your own people, but also tell the rest of the world so you can contain that virus. They concealed it deliberately. They must be held accountable for that. Think of the devastation that they have caused not just in our country, but around the world. The numbers who have died and peoples whose lives have been turned upsidedown, the economies that have been destroyed by this. So, this information, this critical information having been withheld from the Chinese People and from the world has had a devastating impact. At the start of this year in january, apparently the Chinese Communist party said dont worry, theres no human to human transmission of this virus. No human to human transmission of this virus. They knew otherwise and by the way, four million cases worldwide tell us they knew otherwise. Four million cases all started in one place in wuhan, china. Now four million cases. So this is something that is serious and we need to address it. Were also told that the Chinese Communist party allowed people to travel from hubei province, from wuhan city, not to parts of china, apparently, but to the rest of the world. If they had cut off travel to places like italy and the u. K. , and the United States, we would not be where we are now. Luckily our administration acted quickly to shut off immigration from china, from those hot spots and for american citizens and green card holders, they had to go into quarantine, that helped, that helped, but the virus was already here. Very disturbing to me is that apparently some Chinese Communist party disinformation went out claiming that america was at fault somehow. This was classic propaganda and disinformation. So its sort of adding insult to injury, right . Not only did they not do what they should have done to tell the world about this and to help us to be able to contain this virus and by the way, the World Health Organization was there to help them. We were there to help them. We offered to go in, they wouldnt let the World Health Organization experts come in for well over a month after they knew. Some say it was a few months because they probably knew the end of last year, they must have given the number of cases they had, but they also kept the experts out from the United States who could have been helpful. The World Health Organization is an International Body where you have membership and they have requirements where youre required to report data. Youre required to have them come in when you have a virus like this that, of course, we didnt know it was a pandemic at the time, but we had a virus here that was concerning. Instead, it appears the World Health Organization, instead of being a Early Warning system for the rest of us around the world. Which they should be, a virus starts theyre the ones that go in and deal with it. Instead of being an Early Warning system in a sense they were apologists for china. Thats why some of us have called for an investigation. World health organization. Weve asked the United Nations to convene a special panel, some of us, to be able to look into this issue. Its not just america, the rest of the world should be involved as well. All the members of the who ought to be concerned and i believe they are about the deference that they showed to china at a time when we needed them to be on the spot helping. So we now find ourselves forced to rely on the source of the virus, china, for a lot of our ppe. You know, personal protective equipment, think of the masks and the gloves, and the gowns, that our frontline healthcare workers need and others who are now introduce r interfacing with customers and workers. We have to rely on china for this. In order to safely treat the covid19 patients that are sick and because of this virus that originated in china we have now got to rely on china for this safety equipment. Thats unfortunate. And that needs to change. We need to produce more of this here from reliable sources. Were hearing reports about delays in shipments now. Were hearing about poor quality products. All of this is combining to affect our ability to be able to respond. The virus has brought pain and suffering to our shores and to countries all around the world and again, if they had followed the rules, if china had played by the rules, again, not the Chinese People who were also kept in the dark, but the Chinese Communist party, if they had followed the rules, we wouldnt be in the situation were in. By the way, none of this is news when it comes to chinas behavior on the international stage. Getting china to play by the rules has been a constant theme of mine and others for a long time. 15 years ago i was the u. S. Trade representative and i brought forward the First Successful case against china in the world trade organization. Because they werent playing by the rules. I also wrote a report entitled top to bottom review of China Economic relationship that made policy recommendations to improve the equity, durability and balance of our trade relationship with china. It was my number one priority was china. When i was there, i established for the first time a ustr, u. S. Trade representative prosecutor just for china. I also one of the recommendations to put a negotiator in china thats there now. And here as the senate, as the senate subcommittee, ive led through investigations on china, including the Chinese Communist partys use of whats called the confucious institutes at our high schools, seems grade schools, colleges and universities. Weve learned that more than 100 universities allowed the Chinese Government to hospital these centers which often come with stipulations requiring them to comply with chinese law, chinese law, even when theyre operating in the United States. We know some of these confucius institutes have been used as platfor platforms for economic east speast espionage. Since we published the report, more than 20 confucius institutes in the United States closed their doors. Why . Because people looked into this and determined this is not just a cultural exchange, this has other aspects to it, as an example, not being able to teach the real history of china, as if things like Tiananmen Square did not exist. Thats not something that we should allow to happen here in this country. That doesnt comply with our standards here of honesty and intellectual standards that say you have to teach the actual history not what the Chinese Communist party says is the history. Our students shouldnt have that. The schools have taken money and they have not properly reported it. Thats what our report indicated and as a result the department of education is now cracking down on some of these schools to say youve got to at a minimum report the funding. Our subcommittee is right now wrapping up its review of three Chinese Governmentowned Telecom Firms that the fcc, the federal Communications Commission licensed 20 years ago. We shared concerns with the Justice Department recording these companies complying with u. S. Law enforcement requests and whether these entities pose a National Security risk by being vulnerable to exploitation by the Chinese Government and the Chinese Communist party. Last year, the fcc denied a license to china mobile to operate in the United States for these same reasons. So that investigation is coming to a head and were going to have a report coming out soon. Well learn more about this. But again, weve got to be sure were not naive that we understand what goes on when the Chinese Telecommunications firms are here in this country. The subcommittee investigation is another instance china has not been playing by the roles, stealing u. S. Technology often paid for by the u. S. Taxpayers. Before the coronavirus put so much of our country on hold we were preparing to introduce legislation that is a result of our bipartisan report and our yearlong investigation. That report details how china has used whats called talent recruit amount programs, most notably, the thousand talents plan to steal u. S. Taxpayerfunded research. It turns out this has been going on for a long time. For 20 years this has been going on and helped fuel the rise of both the Chinese Military and the chinese economy during those 20 years. You might ask, how has this happened . Well, every year federal grant making agencies like the National Institute of health, the department of energys National Labs or the National ScienceFoundation Give out taxpayer dollars for research. Both way, its about 150 billion a year. Its a lot of money. These are Important Research projects, this is a good thing for our country, it leads to new breakthroughs in science and technology, its helped make the United States the world leader in innovation. So your tax dollars coming to washington, going to the department of energy, National Institute of health, National Science foundation out to researchers and college and universities and research institutes, 150 billion a year has led to a lot of breakthroughs. The opening collaborative nature of the research thats done here in the United States is one of the reasons we attract some of the best and brightest researchers from all around the world to take part in this research. But what we have learned and through our report we prove is that this system is very vulnerable. Its vulnerable to theft by other countries and thats exactly whats happened in the case of china. China has made it no secret that its goal is to surpass the United States as the world leader in scientific research. One way its been doing that is by using secret contracts here in the United States with resear researchers. Again, funded by tax dollars, doing research, medical research, scientific research, military research, the Chinese Government has actually been paying these people to provide information to the Chinese Government to take this research paid for by u. S. Tax dollars. Its wrong. It needs to stop and our legislation is intended to do just that. A state Department Witness at one of our Senate Hearings on the report said, and i quote, the Chinese Communist party has declared the Chinese University system to be on the front line of military civilian fusion efforts for technology acquisiti acquisition. In other words, Chinese Communist party has decided this talent Recruitment Program is going to be wellfunded,er woo going to pay american researchers to give us their stuff and also connect them to the University System which the Chinese Communist party as a way to acquire technology. Again, its not a new problem. This has been going on for two decades, but weve done little in this country to stop it because weve been so open and accessible with our research and the fbi came to our hearing and they acknowledge at the hearing, i quote from the federal bureau of investigation, quote, it should have taken more rapid and comprehensive action in the past, end quote, to respond to these chinese talent Recruitment Programs. Yes, they should have. Yes, they should have. Fortunately the fbi and the department of justice have now taken a different approach. Theyve begun stepping up their efforts, this year with several recent high profile arrests and charges filed, but again, more laws and practices need to change to stop u. S. Taxpayer funded research from being stolen in this way to benefit our number global competitor, thats why were introducintrod safeguard American Protection act to strengthen our National Security. The legislation makes five necessary reforms to address the flaws in our Current Research enterprise and to stop intellectual property theft and promote a more secure and transparent process consistents with the recommendations laid out in the report. First, the report found numerous cases of u. S. Funded researchers who failed to disclose foreign sources of compensation on their federal Grant Applications. This issue has been highlighted this year, youve probably heard about it because you may remember earlier this year there was the shocking arrest of dr. Charles lieber, the chair of Harvard Universitys chemistry department, who was being paid by both harvard and the thousand Talents Program by the Chinese Communist party, it turns out. According to the fbi without harvards knowledge, he didnt tell harvard, dr. Lieber was paid up to 50,000 a month in salary by the chinese and 150,000 annually for living expenses, and more than 1. 5 million to establish and run a shadow lab in china. Interestingly the lab was in wuhan, china. None of this was disclosed on his federal Grant Application where he got u. S. Taxpayer money. If it had been disclosed, he wouldnt have gotten the money. Thats just wrong. The criminal complaint is based on his not telling the truth to the federal investigators, even though he was essentially defrauding harvard and defrauding the u. S. Government funding sources. But thats not a crime. Failing to disclose compensation from a Foreign Government is not currently a crime. We make it a crime. Thats part of our legislation. The bill gives the Justice Department the ability to hold federal grant recipients accountable for hiding their financial ties to Foreign Governments by failing to disclose it on federal Grant Applications. Transparency and honesty on Grant Applications is critical to the integrity of the u. S. Research enterprise and to stopping this theft. So thats in our legislation. Number two, despite more than 150 billion dollars in taxpayer funding going to these federal Research Agencies every year, there is no unified tracking process to determine where these funds go. The National Science foundation, for example, doesnt have anyone that handles grant oversight. Again, weve been too lax. Thats why the bill requires the federal office of management and budget, omb to streamline and coordinate between the agencies to ensure that the billions of dollars of taxpayer dollars going towards research every year can be accounted for every step of the way. Having this information is also going to save time and money for our Research Institutions and our universities. Theyll know now where the funding is, where its going. How its being used. Third, the state department is on the front lines here in vetting visa applications for visiting scholars and visiting students, but it is not permitted to deny a visit to individuals coming from overseas who are intent on stealing u. S. Research. Thats just wrong. Our Research Enterprise in this country must remain open, we agree with that, we want to attract people from around the world, of course, but weve got to have common sense safeguards to prevent bad actors from taking advantage. This does that. Denying visas to foreign researchers seeking Sensitive Research when doing so is a threat to our economic or to our National Security. The state department, by the way, wants this authority. The career officers who came and testified before us said we would like to have this authority because we know were letting people in who are coming for one reason and one reason only and thats to take u. S. Research. Fourth, a report detailed a systemic lack of knowledge at the u. S. Research institutions about the threat posed by the thousand talents plan and other forms of academic espionage. The thousand talents recruit add member who downloaded more than 30,000 files from national lab. These are highly secretive. 30,000 files were downloaded without authorization of course and took those files with that researcher took those files with him back to china. Our bill requires that Research Institutions have safeguards in place to prohibit unauthorized access to Sensitive Research. Theyve got to tighten it up. Finally, we found that nearly 70 , 70 of u. S. Universities consistently failed to report substantial foreign gifts as required by current law. Our bill ensures transparency by requiring universities now to report any governor gift of 50,000 or more and empowering the department of education to fine universities. These are new fines, that repeatedly fail to disclose these gifts. Now, there are some in the University Community that dont love our legislation. I would just ask them, given whats happened, given what we know is happening in terms of theft of u. S. Research are you really going to stand in the way of legislation that says you have to report when you receive more than 50,000 from a Foreign Government . Is that too much to ask . I dont think so. Right now theyre supposed to report its a higher level, and 70 of them have failed to do so. So its not too much to ask. And i would hope that the University Community will be supportive. Many are, but some apparently are saying theyre going to try to block this legislation. Dont do that. That would be wrong. The failure to stop the coronavirus early on has highlighted how china does not play by the rules, whether its the World Health Organization rules, whether its the trade rules we talked about earlier and now with regard to this issue that were dealing with in terms of taking u. S. Research back to china to fuel chinas military, chinas economy. When this pandemic passes, and our universities and Research Institutions reopen their doors, i have no doubt that we will once again continue to attract the best and the brightest. Why . Because our Research Enterprise is the best. Were innovators and we provide funding for it and we have such great opportunities here to do research and people like to come here, but we cannot stop idly by as our top global competitor steals that research. Safeguarding American Innovation act is to protect it for the safety and security of every american. Now more than ever weve got to adapt to the fact that china is it not going to play by the same set of rules as the rest of the world. Its been 15 years since we put out that usdr report saying that our relationship with china lacks, and i quote, equity, durability and sustainability. Equity, durability and sustainability. Right now our number one problem is solving the coronavirus crisis, weve got to do that and no question that ought to be your focus. In the context of this crisis we need to reevaluate how we do business with china. Weve got to look at this with fresh eyes. My hope is that this legislation we talked about this evening will help to reset the way we conduct our research so we can continue to reward those who come to our shores to discover new breakthroughs in science and technology while keeping china and other nation state competitors from stealing that research for its own purposes. We can achieve that balance and we must. Watch testimony from rick bright, the former high ranking federal scientist whose focus was Vaccine Development and recently removed from his post at the National Institutes of health. The National Energy and Commerce Committee will hear from mr. Bright on science and integrity during the response. Watch the hearing live today at 10 a. M. Eastern on cspan, online at cspan. Org or listen live on the cspan radio app. Friday the u. S. House will meet for the first time in more than three weeks to again address the coronavirus pandemic. A fifth relief package will be on the floor. This one providing more than 3 trillion. Money would go to support state and local governments, coronavirus testing and treatment and deliver new Cash Payments to americans and the house plans to take up a temporary rules change to allow members to vote remotely and lawmakers plan to continue social distancing measures on the house floor so a lengthy day is expected. Watch live house coverage friday, 9 a. M. Eastern on cspan, online at cspan. Org or listen free with the cspan radio app. Cspan has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events from the president ial primaries during the impeachment process and now the federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online or listen on our free radio app and be part of the National Conversation through cspans daily Washington Journal Program or through our social media feeds. Cspan created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Provider. The senates back at 10 30 a. M. Eastern today to finish debate on a bill to reauthorityize and reform products unthe inintelligence act that expired in march. On cspan2. Now a look at the floor debate yesterday. Great nations and confront profound challenges at home. Their enemies and competitors do not politely pause their own efforts until the situation becomes more stable. Rather, from beijing to moscow, to caves in the middle east, our adversaries would be tid