Legislative Session
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will resume consideration of the following joint resolution, which the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Democratic leader is recognized.
Mr. President, when Donald Trump and DOGE began their work, they kept saying the same thing. Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE said: This is about cutting waste; it is about efficiency; it is about meritocracy. Unfortunately, the truth has not been as advertised. It has been utter chaos.
Yesterday, the Department of Veterans Affairs said they were reversing course on canceling billions of dollars in contract work because, as it turns out, slashing billions in funding that helps veterans is extremely harmful for veterans. These VA cuts were lauded by DOGE as an example of eliminating waste. The VA Secretary claimed these contracts were for consultants ``to make PowerPoint slides and write meeting minutes.'' That is not even close to the truth.
Let me read some examples of what DOGE was actually prepared to cut: Funding for chemotherapy and imaging services, those were going to be cut--hardly make-work, hardly writing meeting minutes. Funding for veterans with disabilities--cut--even funding to help veterans suffering from toxic exposure in burn pits. One contract would help over 20,000 veterans track down their military service records from DOD in order to prove their toxic exposure, as is required. Without these records, getting affordable treatment would not likely be possible, and DOGE said: Let's cut that, too.
Even if the VA reverses course, canceling these contracts and firing VA staff is still immediately damaging--very damaging. There is the risk that you can't rehire workers back in time because they have moved on to other jobs or contracts aren't available because they took their business elsewhere, and, by then, the damage is
Yesterday, Elon Musk led his first Cabinet meeting of this administration. He admitted that DOGE's approach has led to many erroneous cuts to staff and programs that are not wasteful but, on the contrary, vital.
For example, he said:
Those are his words.
Are you kidding me? Cutting funds to stop one of the deadliest diseases in the world is reckless, especially when there is an Ebola outbreak in Uganda as we speak, and flights leave Kampala every day and go all over the world. When epidemics hit America, they oftentimes begin abroad, and U.S. funding is essential to prevent those diseases from reaching us here at all.
I should also note that the claims that Ebola funding is back online are false. Reports are out from last night that 95 percent of all USAID funding is now being cut. So we are not sure where it all is.
What DOGE is doing is not what efficiency looks like. If DOGE actually cares about efficiency and meritocracy, then it is failing, in many ways, its own test. It would be better to look at these programs, see which might be wasteful, see which are needed, and then make the cuts to the wasteful programs, not take a meat-ax or a blowtorch--call it what you will--cut everything, and then say we will restore some of the things that we shouldn't have cut, because once you make those cuts, it is very hard to put the pieces back together.
Mr. President, on Republican taxes, last month, consumer confidence took its biggest nosedive in 4 years--the biggest nosedive in 4 years. This is how confident consumers, average Americans, feel about the economy. Inflation is trending back up. The price of eggs is sky high. The threat of a trade war looms over our country, and Americans are fearful that things are not going to get any better anytime soon. And what are Republicans doing about all of this? They are trying to cut taxes for billionaires--trying to cut taxes for billionaires--and make the American people pay for it.
The Republican agenda is quickly taking shape. Under Donald Trump's Republican Party, billionaires win; American families lose.
It doesn't matter if Republicans go with 1 bill or 2 bills or 50 bills. That is what they are debating right now. Their endgame--House and Senate Republicans--has always been cutting taxes for billionaires and forcing American families to pick up the tab.
Of course, Senate Republicans know that cutting Medicaid by over $800 billion to lower taxes for billionaires is wildly unpopular. They know that increasing the deficit by up to $5 trillion to help the ultrarich contradicts everything the so-called party of fiscal responsibility stands for. They say they have to cut all this stuff to reduce the deficit, and then, with their tax breaks for billionaires, they increase the deficit, no matter what sleight-of-hand accounting method they use.
What are Republicans doing about fiscal responsibility? Are they admitting that their plans would be a disaster for the deficit? No. Instead, Senate Republicans are engaged in budgetary hocus-pocus to hide the true cost of their tax cuts for the ultrarich, and there may be signs that House Republicans are going along.
Instead of admitting the truth about the consequences of their plans, they are pursuing a gimmick called ``current policy baseline''--a gimmick, if there ever was one--which is essentially an attempt to magically turn $5 trillion of deficit spending into zero dollars of deficit spending. Well, that can't happen and doesn't happen, and the economy will realize it doesn't happen. Any junior high school math student could tell you this is a bunch of bunk. You can't pass $5 trillion to cut taxes for the rich and pretend like it doesn't affect the deficit.
The issue isn't complicated. Republicans are trying to hide the true cost of their billionaire tax cuts from the American people. Meanwhile, they are getting ready to eviscerate funding for healthcare that serves over 80 million Americans--kids, seniors, rural communities. These cuts to Medicaid will dramatically hurt rural America, people with disabilities, and more.
The only people who seem to be opposing this is the hard-right Freedom Caucus, because they seem to really care about the deficit. Let's hope they stay strong for the sake of the economy and this country.
Of course, the American people are not going to take these Medicaid cuts lying down.
Last night, I got on a Zoom. Over 3,000 New Yorkers, worried about the attacks from Republicans on healthcare, got on the Zoom, many more than we expected. These were rank-and-file folks, healthcare advocates, union members, and concerned citizens from all walks of life. They were all upset about the cuts to Medicaid and putting those cuts in place in order to give tax breaks for billionaires.
It was a great call. It was an energizing call. I urge my colleagues to do the same, as many of them are. It is a stark reminder of what is at stake but also a reminder that the American people don't like these cuts.
We heard from New Yorkers who are in danger of having their Medicaid coverage taken away if Republicans proceed with their actions, on this Zoom of over 3,000 people. But we also talked about taking action.
I urged participants to call their Members of Congress. I urged them to mobilize online and to organize in their communities. We urged everyone to make their voices heard, like we are seeing in the townhall meetings.
I reminded folks that organizing is not easy, but it works. It changes things, and it is going to make a difference in making sure Medicaid is protected.
Mr. President, on our Education Secretary nominee, today, the Senate will vote on whether to advance the nomination of Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education.
Mrs. McMahon's nomination comes as President Trump has been clear about cutting funding for education and abolishing the Department of Education entirely.
Is Mrs. McMahon going to go along? I hope not.
Cutting education is not what the American people want. The American people don't want a radical, out-of-touch billionaire slashing funding for public schools. When you slash Federal funding for education, guess what happens. Since so many of our school districts--urban, suburban, rural--depend on this Federal money, it leads to higher property taxes for people back home.
If you eliminate the Department of Education as a whole, that means local communities are forced to pick up the tab to fund the schools. It means that families in these communities will pay in the form of higher property taxes to make up the loss of Federal funding. But communities will also be forced to slash other programs to make room for funding for schools.
Again, this is not what the American people want. This is not what they voted for.
Mrs. McMahon, in my judgment, is not qualified to lead America's public education. She seems not to care very much about it. But that is precisely why President Trump nominated her. She is the perfect choice to bring our public education system burning to the ground.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The majority leader is recognized.
Mr. President, this week, the Senate is focused on unleashing American energy. As I have
But our Democrat colleagues made it clear, yesterday, they don't believe such an emergency exists. The Senator from Virginia called it a ``sham.'' Our colleague from New Hampshire said it was ``an emergency declaration in search of an emergency.''
Every Senate Democrat voted to deny the emergency that our country faces. I guess they haven't seen the reports of the precarious state of American energy.
Last year, a Washington Post headline read:
A recent report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warns of ``mounting resource adequacy challenges'' in the next decade.
Whether Democrats want to acknowledge it or not, the signs of a rapidly approaching energy crisis are clear. There is a threat of blackouts, not enough power to meet demand, heightened prices for gas and utilities. Apparently, Democrats don't think these are cause for alarm. But whether they are willing to acknowledge it or not--and yesterday's vote, I think, made clear that they are not--we have a serious problem, and if we don't do something about it, we face a future with an unreliable and unaffordable energy supply.
Republicans are taking action. This week, the Senate is working to prevent two of the Biden administration's anti-energy policies from going into effect.
On Tuesday, the Senate passed Senator Kennedy's resolution to stop the Biden administration's marine archeology rule. Offshore oil and gas producers have long been required to submit an archeological report before drilling if their project area was thought to include things like shipwrecks, settlements, or other archeological sites. But last year, the Biden administration decided to require archeological reports for all offshore projects, even when there is nothing to suggest the project will be near an archeological site. It is just another way to slow down production and heap more costs on producers--costs that consumers eventually pay. And it is another part of the Biden administration's efforts to close off America's waters to conventional energy production.
Under President Biden, offshore permits dropped to a two-decade low. The administration's offshore leasing plan included only 3 possible leases, down from 47 in an earlier draft from the first Trump administration.
And, of course, there was President Biden's last-minute ban on oil and gas production in 625 million acres of America's waters. Why we would so severely limit the use of our natural resources is beyond me. Under Republican leadership, we will be leveraging assets to restore American energy dominance.
Later today, the Senate will also vote on a resolution to block the $6 billion natural gas tax that was included in the Democrats' so- called Inflation Reduction Act. This tax would increase costs for energy producers and limit energy production, leading to higher utility bills for many Americans.
Under the Biden administration's implementation of this tax, it would hit smaller operations the hardest. On top of that, the tax puts tens of thousands of jobs at risk, including in natural gas-rich States like Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Texas, and North Dakota.
The Senate will vote later today to stop implementation of this tax on energy producers. I appreciate Senator Hoeven's leadership on this issue. Thanks in substantial part to his efforts, energy producers will not have to worry about this unnecessary natural gas tax, and the American people won't have to worry about it driving up their utility bills.
It would be nice if Democrats would join us in our efforts, if not to avoid our rapidly approaching energy crisis, at least to promote more affordable prices for Americans. I have recently been hearing our Democrat colleagues express newfound interest fighting inflation. If they are serious about that, they should be joining us in blocking these anti-energy policies that are driving prices up.
But with Democrats or without, Republicans will keep working to build a more secure and more affordable energy future.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, before coming to the floor each day, I try to make sure I go through the morning newspapers, and today I found in the Washington Post an interesting column: ``Multi-car pileup as electric vehicles collide with reality.''
``Multi-car pileup as electric vehicles collide with reality.''
And the reality is the Democrat electric vehicle mandate is a failure. It failed the American people, failed the taxpayers, and just plain failed.
For years, President Biden and Democrats tried to force Americans to buy electric vehicles. They tried to do it by banning gas-powered cars. They tried to do it by bribing people with taxpayer subsidies.
President Trump has, rightly, promised to pull the plug on Joe Biden's unpopular electric vehicle mandate. People are delighted. President Trump fulfilled that promise on day one in office. He ended the Biden ban on gas-powered vehicles. In my home State of Wyoming and the Presiding Officer's home State of Montana, that is welcome relief.
The next step is for Congress, for this body, to end the subsidies on electric vehicles, and I have introduced legislation to do just that. My bill ends the $7,500 subsidy for EVs. It also closes the Biden loophole that funnels taxpayer moneys, believe it or not, to communist China. Finally, it ends the subsidies for the EV charging stations.
The EV subsidies were, in essence, a Biden giveaway. He wanted to give money away to the coastal elites who drive electric vehicles, and it was connected to Biden's unpopular climate dreams.
The aggressive push for EVs began with Democrats' reckless tax-and- spending bill. It included a $7,500 handout for anyone who bought an electric vehicle, while not a single Republican in the House or Senate voted for that reckless tax-and-spending bill.
The Joint Committee on Taxation looked at the cost of these EV subsidies because there was going to be a mandate attached; you were going to have to buy an electric vehicle at some point or other. So originally they said it might cost $14 billion. That is a lot of money. When they redid the math a year later, they said the cost estimated would be $100 billion. Outside analysts estimated the cost even higher. Goldman Sachs said that the EV subsidies could cost taxpayers as much as $394 billion, which is 28 times as much as the original thought that it would be when the Joint Committee on Taxation looked at it.
These subsidies--this is for a vehicle that most Americans can't afford, don't want, and doesn't work for them. It doesn't work in my home State of Wyoming. It doesn't work in the Presiding Officer's home State of Montana. Most Americans know that EVs are luxury items with severe limitations. They certainly can't be the primary source of transportation for most Americans.
The average cost of an EV: $62,000. Well, that is $16,000 more than the cost of most gas-powered vehicles. The dealers I have talked to in my home State of Wyoming tell me that it takes significantly longer to sell an EV than a gas-powered vehicle. And the EVs that they are able to sell, they end up selling for a loss. The nationwide sales of EVs is also stalling. They actually lost market share in 2024.
Despite endless subsidies, EVs account for less than 10 percent of all car sales in America. Most of these are sold to wealthier Americans, people who don't need a subsidy from the government to begin with. This is social engineering to benefit the liberal elite. It is
Every time a wealthy liberal in San Francisco gets a government subsidy when they go and buy an electric car, a working-class family in Sheridan, WY, ends up paying in their taxes.
My legislation ends all of that. EVs are a bad investment for American people and for American automakers. This month, Ford projected that, in 2025, it would lose over $5.5 billion on its electric vehicles. In 2024, Ford sold only 21,000 EVs. It lost $5 billion. That is a loss of $60,000 for each and every electric vehicle that they were able to sell. Now, Ford isn't alone. Major car companies--General Motors and others--are also losing money on EVs.
The transition to EVs is also estimated to kill hundreds of thousands of jobs, including in the Midwest, manufacturing jobs of gas-powered vehicles. It is already sending thousands of American workers from the assembly line to the unemployment line.
Ending subsidies for EVs is about saving taxpayer money, protecting American jobs, but it is also about protecting our national security. Initially, only EVs made in America were supposed to be eligible for this $7,500 subsidy. But before leaving office, Joe Biden made it easier for those tax credits on EVs to go for those made with parts from China. It wasn't supposed to happen that way, but Biden and the Democrats, so desperate to force EVs onto the American public, they created a leasing loophole specifically designed to help China.
This is how it works. It allows customers who lease EVs instead of buying them--but who lease EVs--made with Chinese parts, they could still fully receive the subsidy. Well, since 80 percent of the EV batteries come from China, they had noted a major problem because they weren't going to be able to get the subsidies. That is why they came up with this leasing loophole.
Because in 2022, before they had the loophole, only 7 percent of new EVs were leased. Because of this Biden gimmick, that number jumped to 45 percent--almost half of all the EVs in America then being leased rather than bought.
The American taxpayers are subsidizing technologies controlled by communist China. It is wrong. My bill ends that.
Republicans are focused on what matters: lowering prices, unleashing American energy, creating American jobs, and putting Americans back in the driver's seat.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I am here today in opposition to the measure that we are about to vote on, which would undo a rule that regulates the release of methane into the atmosphere.
Let's just start with the most basic simple proposition that methane is dangerous, it is poisonous, it is explosive. And for those reasons alone, it is something that the fossil fuel industry should not be leaking. The fossil fuel industry should be responsible about taking care of its leaks of a gas that is dangerous, poisonous, and explosive.
But in addition to that immediate danger, methane is also a really, really potent greenhouse gas. If you look at the effect over a 20-year period, methane in the atmosphere is 80 times--8-0--times more dangerous than carbon dioxide. So we talk all the time about carbon emissions, carbon limits, carbon pollution. Methane is actually 80 times more dangerous.
So there are two reasons why the fossil fuel industry should not be leaking large amounts of methane. First, it is dangerous, poisonous, and explosive. And, second, it is an 80 times worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
So how much methane is industry leaking, and why did we do this measure in the first place?
Well, industry told the EPA for years that it was leaking about 8 million tons--8 million tons--of methane, which all by itself is a pretty big number, but it turned out that the industry was not telling the EPA the truth.
It turns out that once independent sources got a chance to spot methane leaks using, for instance, satellites--this is a satellite image of a methane plume that is being released from a leak site--when they could find that--and satellites can now do that so we are beginning to know how much methane is actually being leaked and particularly when you backstop the satellite information with information from aircraft where the readings can be more sensitive than from a satellite--it turns out that what they were actually leaking was more like 32 million tons. They were only disclosing a quarter of what they were leaking, and even that 8 million that they disclosed was a pretty bad number. When you go to 32 million tons, that is a great deal of leakage of a gas that is dangerous, poisonous, explosive, and 80 times more powerful a greenhouse gas over a 20-year period than carbon dioxide.
Now, you would think that, as an attribute of basic human decency, these companies that are leaking methane would go and clean it up. It is the decent thing to do, but they didn't, obviously. They didn't even disclose truthfully and accurately what they were leaking. So, when we were confronted with a 32-million-ton annual leak of poisonous, dangerous, explosive methane, and its greenhouse effects on top of that, we tried to do something about it.
So what did we do?
Well, we did two things: a little bit of carrot, a little bit of stick.
The carrot was $1.5 billion--1.5 billion taxpayer dollars--in flatout corporate welfare to the leaking oil and gas companies so that they could use taxpayer money to clean up the mess they were making to deal with the pipes and the valves and the wells that they weren't properly maintaining and that were leaking, it turned out, 32 million tons of methane.
Now, one could argue that that was a pretty poor use of taxpayer money; that a basic tenet of corporate responsibility should be: You clean up your own mess. You take care of your own equipment. That is a basic tenet of human responsibility. I don't know why it shouldn't be a basic tenet of corporate responsibility, but the measurement of 32 million tons of leakage shows that, obviously, those companies were not meeting that basic corporate tenet of responsibility.
So along comes the $1.5 billion of free taxpayer money--corporate welfare--to polluters and leakers for taxpayers to pay them to clean up the problem that they were causing. I didn't love that, to tell you the truth, but it came with an incentive as well, and the incentive was, if you are still leaking methane after a certain period and if you are still leaking methane above a certain level--you had to be a big leaker yourself. It had to be a big leak, like 300 tons per leak, and you had to be in the worst sector of the oil and gas industry. If those things were true--if you had big leaks and you were a big leaker and you were in the worst performing sector of your industry--then you would be assessed a fee for the leakage, which would be an incentive, in addition to the free $1.5 billion the industry got to go out there and fix the darned pipes and valves and wells and stop the leaking.
What we are doing today is saying to this industry: You can keep the $1.5 billion. We gave you that whether you used it to clean up or not. I don't know that. I don't think the jury is back on that, but they did get the $1.5 billion. But the part where you have to pay if you are still polluting, after all of this, beyond industry standards--that is what we are stripping out today. This Congressional Review Act measure specifically helps the segment of the oil and gas industry that is not even meeting oil and gas industry standards for controlling leaks.
I think it is a pretty reasonable test to impose on industry leakers that they at least meet their own industry standard for leaking. This isn't some arbitrary standard that government has imposed. This isn't something that came out of the Green New Deal. This is the industry's own standard for responsibility about leaks, and you pay this fee if you don't meet your own industry standard for taking care of your equipment properly and avoiding leaks of a dangerous, explosive, poisonous
So that is where we are, and that is where we are at today. Today's vote only protects those worst industry performers who have not cleaned up their act and met their own industry standards. If there were ever an undeserving group for Congress's solicitude, that is the group. They are not even meeting their own industry standards. They are comfortable with dangerous levels of leakage beyond what even their own industry recommends as a standard, and on they go.
This is just a little bit of a piece with the recent designation by the Trump administration of what ``energy'' is. The Trump administration just put out a definition of ``energy'' that doesn't include solar or wind. Most of what came online and is slated to come online in 2025 has been solar and wind. It is the booming part of our energy economy. It is where the growth is and the jobs are and the innovation is. It is also a leading energy source in red States. If you look at who is best on solar and who is best on wind, you see States like Texas; you see Iowa; you see Wyoming. They have considerable investments in solar and wind, but the Trump administration won't even call solar and wind energy.
So we are in this bizarre circumstance in which the fossil fuel industry, which drives so much behavior in this body after $100 million spent on the Trump campaign that we know of--probably hundreds of millions more secretly--has gained two big things: one, a completely false definition of ``solar energy'' and ``wind energy'' as not being energy despite the fact that it is fully operational, producing electrons, and was the largest source of new additions to the grid for 2025, and they just decree: This is not energy.
Why the fossil fuel industry would want that is a pretty strong signal of how low that industry will go in using its power over Congress. They will basically press the Trump administration to claim that solar energy and wind energy aren't even energy. It is a spectacularly foolish and false proposition, but bending the knee to the wishes of the fossil fuel industry appears to have no limits.
This vote is the second expression of that subservience to fossil fuel because of all the things that you could do, of all the things that would help grow America's energy markets, of all the things you could do to help take care of people who live near energy facilities or people who are being subjected to harm from climate change--of all the things you could do, probably the worst one would be to take the worst performers at leaking, which shouldn't happen in the first place, who leak so badly they don't even meet their own industry standards, who for years have been falsely saying that they leaked only a quarter of what they have actually been leaking, and they are the people whom we are going to come to the rescue of.
They had two choices here so that they didn't have to pay the fee for being among the worst leakers and not meeting their own industry standards. One is, clean up your darned equipment. Fix your pipes. Fix your valves. Fix your wells. Stop the leaking or at least reduce it to your own industry standard. If you do that, you don't pay this fee--or come to Congress. Use your power, the force of your dark money, of your influence, of your super PACs, of your political control, and get that requirement removed so that you can continue to leak, continue to leak methane--a dangerous, explosive, and poisonous substance--into your communities, continue to add this far more dangerous greenhouse gas to the atmosphere, and continue to meet no reasonable standard of corporate responsibility for taking care of your own gear and quitting the leaking.
And you know what they chose; they chose to come here and get a free pass--a hall pass from Republicans in Congress, a hall pass from the Trump administration--so that they can continue to leak to their hearts content, never mind their culpability of not meeting their own industry standards, never mind the harm that it causes.
This is an industry that lives off a pollute-for-free business model. If this industry were not allowed to pollute for free--if it had to compete, head-to-head, with hydro, geothermal, solar, wind, without the free right to pollute--we would have a very different energy mix, and they know that. So they insist on protecting their right to pollute for free, but of all the little quadrants of the industry whose pollution- for-free we should be coming to the floor to defend, those worst leakers who aren't taking care of their own equipment even to industry standards are at the bottom of any reasonable person's priority list, and yet they are the ones we are here to serve today.
The backdrop to this is, of course, ``climate change,'' a term that the fossil fuel industry has so ingratiated itself with the Trump administration that it is able to excise the term--a language attack-- excise the term from official documents, a little bit like saying that ``energy'' is everything except solar and wind. That is obviously false--provably false, in fact, and a preposterous assertion--but when serving the fossil fuel industry, that is the stuff they make you do, and here you go with saying that climate change isn't real when Exxon scientists talked about its being real 30 years ago. We are driving down a path of polluter-funded falsehood that ends in very dangerous places.
We have a pretty good idea of where it ends because scientists have been telling us where this goes for decades now, scientists in our major universities. I do not believe that there is a single State university, a State university with the name of the State in its name-- University of Rhode Island, for instance. I don't think there is a single State university in this country that does not teach climate change. That is how well-established climate change is as a factual proposition, and what it is going to do has been known for a long, long time.
The predictions are astonishingly accurate. Here in the Senate, we heard all those predictions. The first hearing on those warnings was actually by Republican Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island in his role then as chairman of the Environmental Public Works Committee. He had a senior scientist from NASA, John Hanson, come over and describe what the science was, what we knew about what was going on.
So there is a long, clear, indisputable scientific record warning us of what is coming--preview of coming attractions.
But then it came here, and, here, the fossil fuel industry butted in with enormous political force, turbocharged after the Citizens United decision allowed that industry to spend unlimited amounts of money. And in the enforcement--or nonenforcement--of that decision, allowed that industry to spend those unlimited amounts of money secretly from behind front groups and through Super PACs and from other devices where the public was denied the knowledge of who was trying to influence them. The basic right of citizenship is to know who is doing what to whom on the field of politics American citizens are supposed to police with their votes. That knowledge was denied them, and that flood of industry pressure came into this Chamber. And before you knew it, climate change was suddenly a partisan issue. If you wanted to be a Republican, you had to deny climate change. It was pretty much as simple as that.
Ask Bob Inglis from the House of Representatives what happened if you tried to break that grip of the fossil fuel industry on the House leadership, the fossil fuel industry grip on the House leadership on the Republican side.
So the science was right all along. We failed at the politics because of improper fossil fuel industry influence, probably the most maligned and large-scale political influence campaign in American history. We yielded to it. We allowed ourselves to not heed the warnings and take the steps that would have put us on a pathway to safety.
Now, having heard the scientific warnings, having failed at taking appropriate safety steps, we are now entering the third era, the era of consequences, when the stuff starts to hit the fan. And the warnings are coming from all over.
Just about 2 weeks ago, the chair of the Federal Reserve testified to the Senate Banking Committee that in 10 to 15 years, it will be impossible to get a mortgage in entire regions of the country. How does that relate to climate change? That relates to climate change because climate change is creating changes in weather patterns that
What the chief economists of Freddie Mac warned, the mortgage giant, is that the climate risk creates an insurance crisis, which rolls over into a mortgage crisis, which drives down property values so badly that it creates a 2008-style national economic crisis.
Those aren't the only warnings. Reinsurers look at this climate mess as a business proposition. The insurance industry has to get the future right in order to do its business, and it knows that what the fossil fuel industry is saying about what is going to happen in the future is a whole pack of lies. So they are raising their rates. The reinsurance companies are looking and saying, wow, this is getting way more dangerous. We are not going to reinsure without getting a lot more money.
Reinsurance rates have more than doubled since 2017. They were up as much as 40 percent in 2023 alone in some markets.
So it is not just the voice of the Fed; it is not just the voice of the chief economists of Freddie Mac; it is the reinsurance industry.
Go below the reinsurance industry to the insurance industry and look at the first and worst place, Florida. All the major insurers are out-- pulled the plug. Gone. Done. Pop-up insurers have come to fill the gap. Twelve to fifteen of them have gone bankrupt already. And when they go bankrupt, they don't pay claims, and Floridians are left stuck behind an insurer that was not solvent.
Florida has had to stand up its own homeowners insurance company, which now has a huge share of the market and an even bigger share of the risk because they have allowed the other insurers to come in and cherry-pick out the lowest risk properties. So Florida is carrying a liability right now on homeowner's insurance that is greater than its entire State debt.
If you want to look at the solvency of a State, look at what Florida's risk is for its property insurance companies, citizens' property insurance, and its backup fund that comes in when the pop-up insurance companies go bust and somebody else has to come in and pay the claims.
The insurance industry, which has to look accurately at the future is also telling us this is deadly, deadly serious.
There is an international Financial Stability Board whose job is to look at the world banking industry, the world banking sector, and warn of risks to the banking sector. They just put out a comprehensive report on the danger that climate change poses to the banking sector.
It comes in a couple of ways. One is the one I just described. When banks can't issue mortgages, they lose a huge revenue proposition. So they get hurt in the ``insurance to mortgage to market value to economic crash'' cascade.
But, also, as those values fall--let's say you went from carrying a $4,000 carrying cost for your property insurance to a $20,000 carrying cost. The present value of $20,000 every year into the future as long as you are going to own that home, diminishes the value of that home. It doesn't just diminish it for you and for the next buyer, it diminishes it for the bank that holds your mortgage. It is really important to banks that they have enough collateral to back their loan. Their loan-to-value ratio is what helps determine their solvency. So the International Financial Stability Board is warning banks around the world: Look out. The climate crisis is coming at you and for your solvency.
This was, perhaps, said best by The Economist magazine in April, which led with a cover article warning of the next housing disaster and saying that ``the severe weather brought about by greenhouse-gas emissions is shaking the foundations of the world's most important asset class''--real estate.
The number that they put to that risk that is shaking the foundations of the world's largest asset class is $25 trillion. A $25 trillion hit to the world's largest asset class.
In the United States, a new report by First Street, which is a technical firm that looks at flooding risk for a whole variety of corporate clients but also publishes as well--they just published a report that climate change could erase $1.4 trillion in real estate value by 2055--i.e., in the 30-year mortgage period--a $1.4 trillion hit to real estate values here in the United States. While $25 trillion dollars was The Economist's global number; First Street's is $1.4 trillion here in the United States.
Trillions are big, big numbers. And when it is hitting people in their most prized and valuable family asset--their homes--it is a very, very dangerous proposition.
Here is what The Economist said:
For climate harms--
i.e., the homeowner--
Hence the report from the International Financial Stability Board about the need to shore up the international financial system.
Here is how it goes down, they say:
Punch line:
Instead of dealing with this--even as Americans are already seeing their property insurance prices rise and double, are getting more and more nonrenewal notices to get them off the company--what are we doing? We are helping out the absolutely worst offenders at climate leakage.
Here is Deloitte. I will close with this. Deloitte is a corporate consultancy. This is not Green New Deal. This is a corporate consultancy:
Which was their prediction date--
And we are not even talking about that seriously. We are here, instead, to let off the hook that segment of the oil and gas industry that is the worst polluters, that doesn't even meet their own industry standards, and that can get away from the fee that we will be voting down now by simply meeting industry standards. This is a shameful moment for the Senate.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for a little more than a minute.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, every American should be paying close attention to what is about to happen on the floor. In just a few moments, the Senate will vote on a Republican resolution that is straight from the wish list of Big Oil and Big Gas.
Instead of spending floor time pushing legislation that will lower costs for American families, Republicans are bowing to Big Oil and Gas billionaires by trying to reverse the methane waste emissions charge which Democrats passed in the Inflation Reduction Act. Donald Trump and DOGE claim to care about efficiency, but Republicans are undoing a measure to reduce oil and gas waste and are making prices for the consumer go up--prices going up--when they are saying they want prices to go down. The rule we passed has been one of our most important tools to lower energy prices, to hold Big Oil and Big Gas accountable, to keep excessive and harmful levels of methane
Why are Republicans doing this? Well, it is simple. They are putting the needs of Big Oil and Gas companies over the needs of the American people, over the health of the American people and the health of our environment, our climate, our globe. And the consequences for the American people, for their health and their energy bills, are going to be very harmful.
I urge my colleagues to think carefully, one last time, before voting to overturn it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, all time has expired.
On page S1419, February 27, 2025, in the first column, the following appears: The clerk will read the title of the joint resolution for the third time. The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading and was read the third time.
The online Record has been corrected to remove those two paragraphs.
Unanimous Consent Request: S. 770 (Executive Session)
Mr. President, I speak with senior citizens all over Vermont and, in fact, in many parts of the country. Just last night, we held a telephone townhall in Vermont, and in our small State, 34,000 people were on the line. I think the reason for that is there is a great deal of anxiety among people in general and seniors in particular regarding the Republican budget proposal that was passed the other day in the House. Seniors and Americans all over this country have reason to be concerned.
At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the Republican budget would give over $1 trillion in tax breaks to the top 1 percent-- that is billionaires and the wealthiest people in our country. In Vermont and all over this country, seniors are asking: Well, how are they going to pay for that trillion-dollar gift to the 1 percent? The answer is not complicated. They have made it clear. Republicans will be making massive cuts in healthcare, nutrition assistance, affordable housing, and education. These are precisely the programs that working families and kids and the elderly and the sick and the poor most depend upon. The Republican budget would cut Medicaid by $880 billion. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has estimated that if these cuts are implemented, up to 36 million Americans, including millions of children, would have their health insurance taken away from them.
Let's be clear. When we have Republicans in the House passing a budget to make massive cuts to Medicaid, we are not just talking about throwing millions of kids off of the healthcare they need; we are also talking about massive cuts to community health centers, where some 32 million Americans receive the primary healthcare they need and where community health centers receive 43 percent of their funding from Medicaid. So a massive cut to Medicaid is a cut to community health centers and is a cut to the services that 32 million Americans receive, including many, many seniors.
At a time when we have a major crisis in nursing home availability in Vermont and all over this country, let us understand that Medicaid provides for two out of every three seniors who live in nursing homes. A massive cut to Medicaid is a massive cut to nursing homes and the people who utilize those homes. How many seniors would be thrown out of nursing homes if the Republicans cut Medicaid by $880 billion? Nobody knows, but it would be a disaster for working families and their parents. That is for sure.
But it is not just Medicaid cuts that seniors are worried about. Today, nearly 22 percent of people over 65 years of age are trying to survive on an income of less than $15,000 a year. That is an unbelievable and horrific reality. Imagine anyone in America, in any part of this country--let alone a senior citizen--trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less. I don't know how anybody can possibly do that, especially seniors who have healthcare needs and need prescription drugs and who need to heat their homes more than the general public. And it is not just seniors trying to get by on $15,000; half of our Nation's seniors are trying to get by on less than $30,000 a year.
The bottom line is that in the richest country in the history of the world, you have millions and millions of seniors today--people who helped build this country, people who raised us--who are barely getting by in the year 2025.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, the United States now has the dubious distinction of not only having one of the highest rates of childhood poverty in the industrialized
In America today, according to the latest OECD estimates, 23 percent of seniors are living in poverty compared to just 4.1 percent in Norway, 6.1 percent in France, 9.5 percent in Ireland, and 14.9 percent in the United Kingdom. That is a dubious distinction. That is something we should not be proud of. That is a crisis we should be addressing.
In addition to the poverty that millions of seniors in America are experiencing today, about half of older workers--these are people in the workforce right now, people between the ages of 55 and 64--have no retirement savings at all. You are 60 years old. You have worked your entire life. Half of the people in that situation--from 55 to 64--have no retirement savings at all.
As bad as all of that is, many of my Republican colleagues have proposed making a bad situation--a tragic situation--even worse by cutting Social Security. Some want to cut benefits. Others want to raise the retirement age. Then there are some who simply want to privatize Social Security and give it over to Wall Street.
Well, I strongly disagree. At a time when millions of seniors are struggling to keep their heads above water, I don't believe that now is the time--in fact, never is the time--to cut Social Security benefits. Instead of cutting Social Security and giving tax breaks to billionaires, Congress must expand Social Security so that every senior in America can retire with the dignity and the respect that he or she deserves. Further and importantly to the younger generation, we must also make Social Security solvent for generations to come.
So that is the goal. The goal is to say to seniors all over this country, in the richest country on Earth: We are going to address the fact that many of you can't quite figure out how to buy the food you need, heat your homes, get the prescription drugs you need. You are struggling. You helped build this country. You are our parents and our grandparents. We stand with you.
That is why I have introduced legislation today with 10 of my colleagues--Senators Warren, Merkley, Welch, Padilla, Smith, Van Hollen, Markey, Booker, Gillibrand, and Whitehouse--to accomplish both of those goals. This legislation would make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years. It would lift millions of seniors out of poverty, and it would expand benefits for seniors and people with disabilities by $2,400 a year.
Now, I know that in the world here in Washington where the government is now run by billionaires, $2,400 doesn't seem like a whole lot of money, but if you are trying to get by on $15,000 a year and can't afford to heat your house and can't afford to buy a prescription drug that you need, $2,400 is something that will help.
How do we do this? What does this legislation do? Well, at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when billionaires pay an effective tax rate lower than the average worker, this legislation demands that the wealthiest people in America, the billionaires and others, start paying their fair share of taxes.
Today, absurdly and unfairly, a billionaire pays the same amount of money into Social Security as someone who makes $176,000 a year. A billionaire pays the same amount into Social Security as somebody who makes $176,000 a year. That is because there is a cap on the Social Security payroll tax.
What does that mean? It means, if you make up to $176,000 a year, you pay 6.2 percent of your income in Social Security taxes, but if you make 10 times more--$1.7 million a year--you pay just 0.62 percent of your income in Social Security taxes. If you make $1 billion a year, you pay nothing more into the Social Security fund than someone making $176,000.
Now, that may make sense to somebody--probably to the billionaire class--but it does not make sense to me. This legislation applies the Social Security payroll tax to all income--including capital gains and dividends--for those who make over $250,000 a year. Under this bill, 91 percent of households in our country would not see their taxes go up by one single penny--not one penny for the bottom 91 percent.
Not only is this legislation good public policy, it also happens to be precisely what the American people want. According to a Data for Progress poll, 81 percent of the American people, including 79 percent of Independents and 75 percent of Republicans, support expanding Social Security benefits. So in passing this legislation, it is not only good policy, it is precisely what Democrats, Republicans, and Independents want.
Therefore, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 770, which was introduced earlier today; that the bill be considered read three times and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I rise today to discuss Senator Sanders' request for unanimous consent for the Senate to pass his Social Security Expansion Act. Before I do so, I want to respond to a couple of points that were made.
The accusation was once again made that Republicans are trying to cut taxes for billionaires. The reality is, Republicans are trying to stop a tax increase on all Americans. The TCJA, or 2017 tax bill, is going to expire at the end of this year, and if it is not stopped from expiring, every American will get a tax increase, and those in the lower income categories and middle-income categories will share $2.6 trillion of that tax increase. That is what the tax fight is about.
Then, continuing what I call the politics of fear in the face of the reforms that we are bringing, the attack was, well, we are going to cut Medicaid, we are going to stop financing for community health centers, and we are going to do all of these terrible things. I have not seen such a bill in this Congress, in the House or the Senate. We are debating how to get rid of fraud, waste, and abuse. We are not looking at how to cut benefits in Medicaid. I believe that is very clear. Today was the first time on the floor that I heard we were looking at community health centers. I wasn't aware of that either.
The bottom line here is we are trying to pay attention to our $37 trillion national debt by weeding out waste, fraud, and abuse. We will have disagreements about how to do that, but it is definitely not going to be all the things that are being brought up, that have been accused in order to stir people up and scare them and tell them that we should not pay attention to our national debt.
With regard to Social Security, we can all agree on the importance of Social Security, which provides monthly benefits to millions of seniors, individuals with disabilities, and their families.
I also agree with my colleagues on the other side that Congress must act to preserve and strengthen Social Security to ensure that it is there for current beneficiaries and future beneficiaries.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, if no action is taken, the combined Social Security trust funds will be exhausted within the next 10 years, meaning the program will not be able to pay the full amount of benefits currently promised.
However, I disagree with my colleagues' approach here today, and they have disagreed with our approaches. We have competing ideas about how we should address this issue.
Addressing Social Security's solvency will require thoughtful discussion about a variety of policy options that culminates in a bipartisan solution, not a cramdown of a different solution that we haven't even had the opportunity to have a discussion in the Finance Committee about.
Instead, my Democrat colleagues are pursuing a live UC of a bill that has not received consideration before the full committee and has never had a Republican cosponsor in the House or the Senate.
This bill would also raise taxes on certain workers making less than $400,000--something my Democratic colleagues have previously promised not to do.
For these reasons, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from Michigan.
Nomination of Linda McMahon (Executive Session)
Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to Linda McMahon's nomination to serve as the Secretary of the Department of Education.
All across America, from small towns like Grand Marais to cities like Grand Rapids, public schools serve as the bedrock of our communities.
As a product of Michigan public schools, the son of a public schoolteacher, and having watched my own three children attend public schools, I know firsthand the importance of public education.
Education is the cornerstone of academic achievement, career development, and lifelong learning in our society. A strong public education system is critical to not only our Nation's economy but community safety, social mobility, and the health of our democracy.
We need a Secretary of Education who values and respects public education and the millions of teachers and faculty who support the system.
We need a Secretary of Education who will support critical funding streams like Head Start for early education, IDEA for students with disabilities, and the school meal program that ensures that no student--no student--goes to class hungry.
That is why we cannot allow Mrs. McMahon to run our Department of Education. Instead of working to protect funding for the programs that support our students, improve classrooms, and help recruit the hard- working teachers that we so desperately need today, Mrs. McMahon has made it clear that she has, well, other priorities.
During her committee hearing, she blatantly supported efforts to dismantle our education system, including taking funding away from our public schools and using it to make investments in private schools. Mrs. McMahon and others have tried to sell this as ``school choice,'' but we know--we know--that it is basically a voucher program that will ultimately give private schools the ability to hand pick students and close their doors to everyone else. Private schools have no requirement to serve students with disabilities, students with mental health needs, or homeless students.
We have already seen private school voucher programs fail in States that have actually implemented them, like Louisiana--Louisiana, where students who accepted vouchers experienced significant declines in their academic performance, worse than the learning loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Katrina.
So-called school choice does not meet the needs of our students, and American voters overwhelmingly agree. A 2024 poll found that less than a quarter of Americans support increasing funding for school vouchers. Meanwhile, 68 percent of Americans want to boost public school funding to better support teachers and give our opportunities and children the education and career opportunities that they certainly deserve.
Under Mrs. McMahon's plan, we would be letting private schools decide who is educated and who is not. But, unfortunately, we know that these private institutions will always prioritize their bottom line, and the needs of students and families will be second.
If confirmed as Secretary of Education, the quality of our American education will certainly decline, and our children will ultimately suffer the consequences.
I would urge my colleagues to vote no on Mrs. McMahon's nomination.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. President, over the last few months, there has literally been more than 10,000 Californians who have made it a point to reach out to me by phone calls, by letters, by emails to say one thing loud and clear: Stand up for public education.
There are students throughout California, teachers throughout California, parents throughout California, and I am sure beyond in all of our States who are afraid that Donald Trump is going to decimate Federal funding for public schools. And from what we have seen, they have every right to be concerned.
You see, only 1 month into office, the richest President in our history has teamed up with the richest man in the world to slash public funding across the board, including in education.
They have already terminated nearly $1 billion in contracts with the Education Department alone. They have fired or placed on leave Education Department staff. These are hard-working Americans dedicated to everything from protecting the civil rights of students to special education, to student aid. And they are making it clear that this is just the beginning.
President Trump has bragged that he actually wants to eliminate the Department of Education, threatening the quality of education of 80 percent of students who go to public schools.
Colleagues, that is the situation. That is the context in which we find ourselves today as we consider the nomination of Linda McMahon to serve as Education Secretary.
We could talk about Linda McMahon's qualifications, or, frankly, lack thereof, but I am not shocked because President Trump isn't looking for someone with the background or the commitment to strengthen education in America. He is looking for someone to destroy it. President Trump has said publicly that he wishes that Mrs. McMahon would ``put herself out of a job.'' And it is clear that she is ready to do it. And to justify it, I know I have heard of her countless accusations of Department of Education overreach or that the Department is just too big. Now, if we are saying this because of the budget cuts Republicans are starving for to underwrite the tax rate for the wealthy, let me remind us all that the Department of Education is the smallest Agency in the Cabinet by a lot.
The Department is responsible, though, for promoting equal access to education; ensuring protections and support for students with special needs; defending the civil rights of tens of millions of students; and, yes, managing the student loans and Pell grants that students need to afford an education, just like I did when I was graduating from San Fernando High School, trying to figure out how I was going to be able to pay for college.
Yet Linda McMahon and Republicans in Congress will try to sell us on the idea that education should be left to States and to local communities.
Tell that to the young student who is struggling to read by the fourth grade but whose school doesn't have the resources they need to help them catch up. Tell that to the parents of an eighth grader who is behind in math who fear that their child will never be able to make up the time that they lost during the pandemic.
While it is true that State and local communities play the primary role in education, it is actually the Federal Government that helps close the gaps. That is part of what makes our country strong--the idea that no matter where you live, no matter who your parents are, or what tax bracket your family is in, you have the right to a good education because, after all, it is the surest path to achieve your American dream.
And, yes, it is personal for me. As I mentioned, I am a proud product of public education, a graduate of San Fernando High School--go Tigers. Upon completion of my high school education, I was accepted and had the blessed opportunity to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I earned my degree in mechanical engineering. That led to a better life and more opportunities--exactly what my parents worked so hard and sacrificed for. That is the American dream. And I know that, by far, I am not alone.
That is why I find it outrageous that Mrs. McMahon and Republicans can so callously plan to take a chain saw to the American dreams of so many current and future students.
But, today, we are here to say that tens of millions of public school students are not line items on your chopping block. They deserve better. Our country is better than this.
I urge all of my colleagues to reject President Trump's attempts to abolish the Department of Education and to reject Linda McMahon's nomination or any nominee who is willing to carry out his wishes.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Mr. President, I rise today deeply concerned about the state of public education in our country.
Public education is foundational. It allows people to get ahead. As simple as that, it is foundational.
I have spoken before on the floor about the power of public education in my own life. As an immigrant from Japan, I arrived in this country speaking no English.
I started off by trying to learn how to count from 1 to 10--very humble beginnings. But it was the public education I received at schools like Koko Head Elementary and Kaimuki High School that enabled me, an immigrant from very humble beginnings, to learn English and to go on to college, law school, and, ultimately, the U.S. Senate.
We should all agree on the importance of a strong public education system for every student in our country. An educated citizenry helps grow the middle class and drive economic success in red and blue States alike.
Support for public schools should not be a partisan issue. There are millions of kids who are attending public schools in every single State in our country, so it shouldn't be a partisan issue. But just weeks into the Trump administration, public education is under attack. Already, chain saw-wielding Elon Musk--it is really hard to get rid of that image because he takes such delight in wielding that chain saw and willy-nilly cutting all kinds of government programs that we rely on. But Elon Musk and his minions have started unilaterally canceling contracts at the Department of Education without any transparency or accountability whatsoever, and Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to eliminate the Department of Education entirely, as part of his quest to cut government services we rely on to give trillions in handouts to his billionaire buddies.
While only Congress has the power to eliminate the Department of Education in its entirety, that is not stopping Trump from using every means available to weaken Federal support for education. And as you heard from my colleague just previously, there is a lot of support for public education in our country. Why? Because most of the people in our country have to go to public schools.
The person who will help him do this, meaning totally weaken our public school system and eliminate the Department of Education, is billionaire Linda McMahon. As Trump's Secretary of Education, she will dismantle the Department of Education from the inside out.
President Trump told her that he wants her to ``put herself out of a job'' by eliminating this Department. Since President Trump only nominates people who are 100 percent loyal to him, we can expect Linda McMahon will comply with putting herself out of a job, which leads us to wonder why we are even giving her this job in the first place.
A nominee tasked to end the very Department that she is supposed to be leading does not need to have much by way of experience in leading or running such a Department, which is the case with Linda McMahon. In her confirmation hearing, Mrs. McMahon could not name a single requirement of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the main Federal law that supports K through 12 education.
She couldn't say whether teaching African-American history courses violated Trump's Executive order on radical indoctrination. Teaching the history of our country is considered radical indoctrination by this President. Think about that for a minute.
She couldn't even answer a simple yes-or-no question about whether schools receiving taxpayer dollars should be allowed to discriminate against children with disabilities.
Mrs. McMahon is totally unqualified to oversee the education of our Nation's children, but Donald Trump doesn't care about that. Linda McMahon will carry out President Trump's dangerous agenda to dismantle the Department of Education, privatize the Nation's public schools, and strip educational opportunities from millions of students across the country.
In doing so, she will be 100-percent loyal to Donald Trump above all else. She will execute the plans laid out in Project 2025 to eliminate funding for title I schools, which support low-income students. We are talking about funding for 49,000 title I schools throughout the country, including 170 schools in my State of Hawaii, 2,091 title I schools in Florida, 7,500 title I schools in Texas, and so many more. Every single State has title I schools. There are 49,000 title I schools throughout our country.
Project 2025, Trump's blueprint, will have the Secretary of Education dismantle civil rights protections for students and weaponize the Office of Civil Rights to advance Trump's hateful, far-right political agenda. Then the Secretary will come after funding for programs that help provide childcare, afterschool care, school meals, and more. Think about it: school meals. For many children, that would mean taking away access to the only meal a day they can count on.
Why? Not because she thinks these decisions will improve outcomes or benefit students. No. These attacks on the Department of Education are about one thing and one thing only: finding money to pay for massive giveaways to billionaires like McMahon, Elon Musk, obviously the President, and their ilk.
Republicans are robbing our children's futures to line the pockets of their billionaire buddies, and they are robbing our country of future doctors, innovators, leaders, and more.
A strong public education system is the foundation of a strong democracy, a strong economy, and a strong middle class. That is why Democrats are committed to strengthening our schools and ensuring every child has the opportunity to get ahead, regardless of disability, income, or background. That starts with our rejecting Linda McMahon's troubling nomination to lead the Department of Education, a Department that she is going to start dismantling and, indeed, working herself out of a job.
On behalf of students, teachers, and families in Hawaii and all across our country, I urge my colleagues to think about it and to oppose this nomination.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the importance of the Department of Education and my grave concerns about the nomination of Linda McMahon to be the Secretary of Education.
President Trump has made it clear what his directive is for Linda McMahon. It is to dismantle the Department of Education. And despite President Trump's stating that he has never read Project 2025 and Mrs. McMahon repeatedly stating that she is not familiar with Project 2025's proposals on higher education, it is abundantly clear that this administration is following Project 2025 to a tee.
Project 2025 lays out a blueprint for ending the Federal Government's role in public education, starting with dismantling the Department of Education, so that they can find the money they need to provide tax breaks for their billionaire friends. You heard me right: cutting public education dollars so that the richest can get richer.
Eliminating the Department of Education would be absolutely devastating for students, for teachers, and parents in Wisconsin and across America. Wisconsin stands to have $235 million in title I funding ripped away. Wisconsin stands to have over $270 million in IDEA funding, which is critical for special education, ripped away.
What this means is Wisconsin teachers stand to have needed resources for their classrooms ripped away. Parents stand to have in- and out-of- classroom support for their children ripped away. And of course, our children--our children--stand to lose out on the public education and opportunity to learn that they deserve, regardless of their ZIP code.
Look, we know we are facing a challenging time in the American education system. We know that, as a nation, we must turn the tide and ensure that America is a global leader in educating our children, and I am committed to working with parents, teachers, principals, and school districts to do just that. But we also know what won't help our children get a good education, and that is slashing the education budget. And we know what will help turn the tide: critical, data-driven investment in our public education system to support our children, our teachers, our schools, and our communities.
It is clear that Mrs. McMahon is being nominated for this role not to help children but to do Mr. Trump's
In this critical time, we need to be providing our students and schools with more support, not less, and I urge my colleagues to join me in voting no on her nomination.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Nomination of Linda Mcmahon
Mr. President, as we celebrate Public Schools Week, Senate Republicans are preparing to confirm Linda McMahon, another of President Trump's billionaire patrons, as Secretary of Education, and I oppose such nomination.
During her confirmation hearing, Mrs. McMahon demonstrated little knowledge of public education or the basic programs and functions of the Department of Education. Clearly, the choice of this nominee is not based on merit.
But that does not matter because Mrs. McMahon was selected to be a front, as the Agency she hopes to lead is being dismantled by Elon Musk and DOGE. Indeed, while Mrs. McMahon was at her confirmation hearing, claiming that she would work to improve the Department of Education, Elon Musk's DOGE minions were at work firing people, taking back grants, compromising sensitive data, and laying the groundwork to eliminate the entire Agency.
And on Valentine's Day, President Trump's Department of Education threatened to cut Federal funding from public schools, as well as colleges and universities, if they did not eliminate any program that the Trump administration deems as promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
During her confirmation hearing, Mrs. McMahon seemed unsure whether this edict meant that schools can't celebrate or teach classes on African-American history or host clubs like Special Olympics or Girls Who Code.
As a reminder, by law, the Secretary of Education may not interfere with the content that schools teach, nor the academic standards that they set. Mrs. McMahon doesn't seem to know that.
By the way, while Mr. Musk has been tearing the Department of Education apart from the inside, Republicans in Congress have passed punitive blueprints that will cut trillions from government services to the American people, including education, all to pay for tax cuts for the richest Americans and Big Business.
In the Senate, the Republicans are calling for an unspecified $9 trillion in cuts. In the House, the Education and Workforce Committee must provide a minimum of $330 billion in cuts from education and job training programs. It is no wonder that educators, students, and families from across the country feel under siege.
We know what this looks like because we see how teachers, students, and military families are reacting with dismay as our world-class Department of Defense schools are laboring under another Secretary intent on politicizing its Department and promoting an indoctrination agenda authorized by President Trump.
I would like to take a moment to first thank all educators, school staff, family volunteers, and all community members who tirelessly work to equip our students for the future. We owe you a debt of gratitude and so much more than that. We need to recommit to strengthening our public schools and to investing in them.
In the first part of the 20th century, it was the high school movement that broadly expanded educational attainment, preparing young Americans for success in a changing world and evolving economy. This movement featured professional educators and engaged families and communities. It was about general knowledge and practical application.
This movement launched the United States as a world economic power. It was essential to our national defense, and it created the conditions for the success of the largest expansion of postsecondary education through the GI bill. The high school movement meant that soldiers returning from World War II already had high school diplomas and were ready for postsecondary education.
Head Start, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the Higher Education Act are some of our Federal laws that work to ensure that opportunities to learn and advance are not limited by income, race, ethnicity, or disability.
The expansion of public education is a great American story. Yet, today, it sometimes seems to have been forgotten. Some argue that we do not need public schools, that we can offer vouchers or education savings accounts or homeschooling instead. Today, instead of freedom of inquiry and inclusion, we see policing of what schools can teach, what students can read, what they can discuss, and how they should think. This is a recipe for stifling creativity and the development of the skills needed for an ever-changing knowledge economy.
We politicize and neglect public schools at our peril. They educate nearly 50 million students--our future. It is time that we treat public education as the priority it must be if we want a brighter future for our children and our grandchildren and our country.
We should embark on a new public school movement--one that will strengthen and support the education profession, one that will ensure that all communities can provide modern, state-of-the-art facilities, one that will ensure that all students have the right to read--with evidence-based reading instruction, school libraries, books at home, diverse materials, and the freedom to choose what to read.
Today, we are failing our public schools because we are not investing in them. For example, the average age of our public school facilities is 49 years. The GAO found that over half of our school districts in our country needed to replace or update major systems in more than half of their buildings.
As a nation, we should commit to modernizing our school facilities. That is why I will be reintroducing the Rebuild America's Schools Act to invest $130 billion in our school facilities in the communities with the greatest need.
We know there is a crisis in the education profession. Too many school districts struggle to hire and retain teachers. Too often, a career in teaching means financial struggles and little support to meet student needs.
Additionally, we need a national focus on literacy. In 2024, the percentage of eighth graders reading below the basic level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress was the largest in the assessment's history, and the percentage of fourth graders who scored below the basic level was the largest in 20 years.
Adults are not doing any better. Recent results of the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies show that overall scores in literacy and numeracy have decreased for U.S. adults, with adults scoring at the lowest level of proficiency in literacy, increasing from 19 percent in 2017 to 28 percent in 2023.
This is a crisis. Eliminating the Department of Education does nothing to solve it. Instead of gutting educational funding and eliminating the Department of Education to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, Congress should address the acute literacy crisis for both adults and children across the Nation.
We should be increasing funding for adult education--at least doubling it. We should increase resources for schools to provide evidence-based reading instruction by fully funding title I, increasing funding for the Comprehensive Literacy Development State Grant Program and for Innovative Approaches to Literacy grants.
We should double the Pell grant and restore its purchasing power so students do not have to rely mostly on loans to pay for college.
Sadly, none of this is on Mrs. McMahon's agenda.
I urge my colleagues to join me in ushering in a new public education movement--a movement to ensure that this generation, as well as future ones, has the foundation to achieve their full potential and build a prosperous future. This nominee is not the person to lead such an effort. All indications are that she will actively work against it. So I encourage my colleagues to vote no on her confirmation.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Unanimous Consent Request: S. 348
Mr. President, I rise today to seek unanimous consent for my STABLE Trade Policy Act with Senator Kaine, an act that would prevent any President from imposing tariffs on a U.S. ally or a free- trade agreement partner without congressional consent.
I will make that motion in just a moment, but let me, first, just explain what this is and why I am doing it.
Next week, President Trump has announced plans to impose 25-percent tariffs on products coming into the United States from Mexico and Canada, our No. 1 and No. 2 trading partners.
These tariffs will be disastrous for our economy and our national security. These tariffs will cost the average American household about $1,200 a year. They will raise costs for avocados, appliances, diesel fuel, dog toys, car parts, Christmas tree lights, tomatoes, and tequila. I could go on.
Our economies are so closely integrated--the United States, Canada, and Mexico--that it will increase the cost of a GM pickup truck about $10,000.
Even if these tariffs, at the last minute, are delayed, businesses are hurt by the uncertainty, which continues to increase costs.
President Trump plans to follow those tariffs with reciprocal tariffs on the EU, which includes many of our critical NATO allies and closest partners.
Imposing tariffs on our allies and partners diminishes our standing in the world and makes our neighbors less likely to help us in the future.
It is no surprise that Americans think this is a terrible idea. Barely a quarter of Americans think imposing tariffs on Canada is a good idea. More than double that disapprove.
President Trump has already declared an economic emergency to justify imposing these tariffs on Mexico and Canada, but my bill with Senator Kaine would prevent him from abusing long-established national security authorities to follow through on further tariff threats against our allies and FTA partners.
The U.S. Constitution in the Commerce Clause, article I, section 8, gives Congress jurisdiction over trade policy. It is time that we take ownership back of controlling the ability to impose tariffs willy-nilly on our trusted partners and allies by passing this bill and reining in President Trump's costly and damaging ideas.
So I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. 348 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I rise to discuss some issues with Senator Coons' request for unanimous consent for the Senate to pass S. 348, the STABLE Trade Policy Act.
Senator Coons is a good friend and a great ally, and, reluctantly, I stand to oppose this motion on this particular procedure.
First, Senator Coons and I agree about much on trade policy, including the need for the United States to have more high-standard free-trade agreements, like the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, or USMCA. We should ensure that the commitments in those agreements are respected.
The last administration not only refused to negotiate new trade agreements but undermined U.S. rights under them when it waived our intellectual property rights under the WTO TRIPS Agreement and without informing Congress, attempting to remove the rights of American investors under the USMCA.
Second, I also agree that we should not undertake tariff actions lightly on our allies or free-trade agreement partners.
We should, however, take care before we say that all options are completely off the table. In fact, all of our free-trade agreements provide exceptions for when parties can remove economic benefits, including on national security grounds.
I don't recall anyone suggesting that the Biden administration could not impose sanctions on Nicaragua last year because it was a CAFTA party. Instead, we recognized that legitimate national security grounds, including Nicaragua's human rights abuses, warranted the economic pressure.
Third, it was only yesterday that we confirmed Jamieson Greer as the U.S. Trade Representative to serve as the principal adviser on trade issues. He told the Finance Committee that he wants to work closely with Congress.
There are a lot of good things we can do together. For instance, we can negotiate new agreements and reinvigorate congressional executive partnerships on trade.
The STABLE Trade Policy Act is, accordingly, too blunt of an instrument when nuance is called for, including the option of tariffs in some instances.
With that, I object to Senator Coons' request.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. President, I understand that Senator Crapo, the chairman of the Finance Committee, a supporter of President Trump, has blocked this bill today. I hope to find ways to work with him on improving market access and on elevating the quality and the capabilities of U.S. trade engagement with our partners. But I really don't understand why President Trump seems so intent on harming one of his signature accomplishments, the USMCA.
I am disappointed because Congress gave the President authority to impose tariffs in the event of a national security crisis. Congress did not grant this power to pursue petty grudges against trusted neighbors.
Honestly, how can anyone be angry with Canadians? They are the nicest people in the world. Yet here they are, working with us, pleading with us to not impose ruinous tariffs that would harm their economy and ours.
I will briefly, then, just make, again, a few simple points. I am disappointed that President Trump isn't doing more to reduce costs. He was elected, in no small part, because of high inflation and promised it would come down on day one.
These tariffs, if imposed, will make inflation worse and hit the lowest income Americans the hardest. It will impact American business, American families, and American communities.
So I hope that working together with my friends and colleagues here in the Senate, we can find ways to lower costs on pharmaceuticals and automobiles and microchips. But imposing reciprocal tariffs on trusted friends and allies and sparking tariff wars in our region and around the world is not the way to do that.
Two-thirds of Americans already think that President Trump isn't doing enough to lower costs. Blocking this bill will only accelerate that if President Trump continues to act unwisely and bully and threaten our closest and most trusted partners.
We must find a better way forward together.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ukraine
Mr. President, I rise today to recognize a very painful milestone. This week marks the third anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Over the past 3 years, the world has witnessed the incredible bravery and resolve of the Ukrainian people as they have stood up to Russia's unspeakable brutality and destruction.
We have seen--and, indeed, the United States should take great pride in having led--an impressive coalition of nations coming together to support Ukraine in this fight to preserve its democracy.
At the same time, an alarming convergence of authoritarian states-- Russia, China, Iran, Belarus, and North Korea--have banded together to enable Russia's illegal war of choice.
As we mark this milestone, we are faced with another frightening set of developments. President Trump has set his sights on negotiations with Vladimir Putin to win the war. But before reaching the negotiating table, Mr. Trump has appeared so eager to reach
We have seen this playbook before, most recently in Afghanistan. In 2020, President Trump, eager to achieve a quick deal, negotiated directly with the Taliban and excluded the Afghan Government from the negotiating table. He capitulated to Taliban demands, including the release of over 5,000 Taliban fighters, and blindly agreed to a 1-year withdrawal timeline, even as evidence mounted that the Taliban was not holding up the meager demands in the agreement. I fear President Trump has not learned any new negotiating skills in the 5 years since.
The tenets of his approach to Ukraine and Europe appear to be the same: Exclude and criticize American allies, capitulate to our enemies, and withdraw support without any assurance of success.
Earlier this month, Munich was the scene of another capitulation, when Vice President Vance and Defense Secretary Hegseth kicked off Trump's giveaway campaign to President Putin.
The historical irony is unmistakable, since Munich is a place that has inauspiciously become a shorthand for the ``appeasement'' of tyrants.
In 1932, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain left his meeting with Adolf Hitler in Munich. And after surrendering Czechoslovakia in exchange for a peace pledge, when he returned to England, Chamberlain waved about a piece of paper with Hitler's promise and declared, ``Peace in our time.'' In reality, it was the beginning of the capitulation that would lead inextricably to the greatest war in history.
Hopefully, this administration's rush to appease Vladimir Putin will not lead to the carnage like that of World War II. But it well may cost Ukraine its sovereignty and independence while also undermining the international order--the very same order that America and her allies created from the ashes of World War II.
Let's review the bidding so far. To begin, Defense Secretary Hegseth's speech in Brussels at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group set a shameful tone for the American delegation in Europe.
Ukraine Defense Contact Group, or UDCG, was created by the United States under the Biden administration. It has organized and led the international efforts to support Ukraine, which has enabled Ukrainians to significantly repel the Russian invasion and continue the fight to protect their homeland.
The United States has led this effort throughout the war. I regret that Secretary Hegseth's first appearance marked the retreat of our role as leader of the UDCG.
In his remarks, he said:
He further stated:
In essence, Secretary Hegseth conceded away our most important leverage against Russia. His statements, echoed by President Trump and Vice President Vance, have already badly weakened and undermined our negotiating position by gifting the Russians with several unilateral concessions. All of these forfeits were made without any apparent consultation with the Ukraine or our NATO allies.
Again, the shortsightedness of President Trump's, Hegseth's, and Vance's statements are alarming.
NATO has been the bulwark against Russian aggression in Europe since 1949. The alliance has more than doubled its membership since its founding. Central to the enlargement is NATO's open-door policy, enshrined in article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which affirms a core NATO tenet that any European nation that demonstrates a willingness to contribute to our collective security and the values and obligation of the NATO alliance may seek membership.
Vladimir Putin does not get to dictate who may or may not become a member of the NATO alliance, just as his Soviet predecessors could not stop the membership prospects of Poland or Hungary or Germany. To preemptively surrender admission to NATO is national security malpractice and only benefits Vladimir Putin.
Finally, Secretary Hegseth declared that Europe and NATO are no longer priorities of the Trump administration.
In his words:
Further:
I agree that the security of America's homeland is our No. 1 national security mission, but I reject Secretary Hegseth's myopic view that the American national security establishment is so fragile and so constrained that it must shift the entirety of its focus to the border security mission, at the expense of other national security imperatives.
Moreover, border protection is a civilian law enforcement mission. Deploying large numbers of military forces to support the Border Patrol is a gross misallocation of forces and raises numerous legal issues.
The administration's shameful claims have been a shock to Ukraine, NATO, Europe, and the democratic world at large. They have provided great comfort to Putin and autocrats everywhere.
In addition to Secretary Hegseth's speech, Vice President Vance took the stage in Munich and further eroded our status in the world. He castigated European allies for his perceived grievances with their domestic politics and alleged movements away from ``democratic values,'' while at the same time remaining silent on the brutal dictators in Russia and Belarus who have never had a free or fair election in the course of their tenure.
President Trump gave his tip of the hat to autocracy last week when he attempted to revise history by alleging that Ukraine, not Russia, started the war and that President Zelenskyy was the ``dictator'' in this situation. These categorically false statements are either a product of deliberate deceit or historical delusion.
President Trump even directed the Acting U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations to vote against a U.N. resolution condemning Russia's war against Ukraine. The United States instead voted in a bloc with Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other authoritarian nations, which is a stunning reversal of decades of American foreign policy.
This toxic revisionist history has now pervaded his political nominees as well. Throughout the week, his political appointees have contorted themselves in order to avoid acknowledging the fact that Russia was responsible for starting the war in Ukraine. This is something straight out of North Korea, where ``facts'' are the sole purview of the Dear Leader.
We must also note the deafening silence from many of my Republican colleagues. Many Republicans claimed for years to be unapologetic supporters of Ukraine who were outraged by the perception that President Biden was not sending enough U.S. support to Ukraine. But now they appear to be standing by silently as facts are erased, as the pipeline of aid to Ukraine peters to a halt, as the Trump administration disbands Federal task forces established to seize the assets of Russian oligarchs and guard against foreign election interference and disinformation campaigns.
Silence is complicity. We cannot allow this to continue. If we are going down the path of negotiation with Russia, we must act to strengthen our hand in these negotiations.
Ironically, Russia is in a very weak negotiating position. Let us briefly review Putin's situation.
Over the course of 3 years, Ukraine has inflicted a staggering cost on Russia. Putin has lost 200,000 soldiers, and many hundreds of thousands more were wounded. He has lost hundreds of billions of dollars of military equipment and weapons. Indeed, Russia's weapons and logistical stocks are perilously diminished. Their closest ally in the war--Iran--is weaker than it has been in decades due to Israeli and U.S. actions. North Korean soldiers, sent to reinforce flagging Russian forces, are suffering severe casualty rates. Russia has been ousted from Syria, and its Wagner mercenaries in Africa are struggling to reorganize. The Russian economy is afloat but stagnant.
Any shrewd negotiator should recognize that Russia is on the ropes. Now is not the time to appease Putin. This is a time to exert maximum pressure to bring him to the negotiating table hat in hand.
There are three things we must do now.
First, we must continue to pressure Russia economically. This means strengthening existing sanctions, identifying secondary sanctions, and bolstering sanctions enforcement and anti-evasion efforts. At the top of the effort to control the evasion of sanctions, we should be working with allies to combat the illicit oil trade, including efforts to go on the offensive against the so-called ghost fleet of aging tankers Russia employs to facilitate the export of oil and other sanctioned goods.
Second, we must work with our European partners to impound and leverage Russia's frozen assets.
Finally, we must ensure in both word and deed that Ukraine has our support and commitment to working with them to establish a just and lasting peace.
However, instead of taking action to strengthen the negotiating hand on any of these fronts, the administration has shifted focus to the signing of a deal to exploit Ukraine's natural resources. Much remains to be seen about the shape of this agreement, but we do know it will take years, if not decades, to see substantial returns.
A large number of Ukraine's rare earth deposits are actually located in Ukrainian territory that is currently contested or occupied by Russia. I am not sure how one is to square this agreement with Secretary Hegseth's comments about the forfeiture of Ukraine's sovereign territory.
Furthermore, the deal includes no security guarantees from the United States, which the Ukrainians have--rightly, I believe--insisted upon. Security guarantees are essential to assure Ukraine that the United States is not simply interested in an enrichment scheme but is committed to the pursuit of a just and lasting peace.
Indeed, a just and lasting peace must be the final outcome. That is a United States national security imperative, one that has--at least until recently--enjoyed robust and vocal bipartisan support.
We support Ukraine because we know that the war in Ukraine is not just a regional war; it is the most visible demonstration of the larger existential threat Russia poses to our national security.
We support Ukraine to ensure that Vladimir Putin cannot achieve his goals, which are counter to our own national interests. We must be clear-eyed about this. If Putin succeeds in Ukraine, it will be the first piece in his long-stated promise to recreate the Soviet empire. If that happens, if we fail to learn from history and to see brutal and craven authoritarians for what they are and the threat they represent, we may again find America's sons and daughters sent overseas to fight on foreign shores.
I urge my Republican colleagues and my Democratic colleagues--all my colleagues--to speak up and stand with Ukraine as they have done for so many years. Let us continue.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Department of Health and Human Services
Mr. President, I rise today with my colleagues in strong opposition to the firings of scientists, medical researchers, and more at the Department of Health and Human Services.
HHS is in charge of everything from preventing disease outbreaks to making sure that our kids are healthy to ensuring that seniors can live with dignity.
It directly touches more lives than any other Cabinet Agency. That is why the administration's mass firings of thousands of HHS employees are deeply troubling.
When a new CEO comes in and wants to see a new direction for a company, they look at it, they look at all the divisions, they figure out their direction. They maybe cut a division; they maybe make changes to it. They look at the merits of certain employees; they move some employees to different divisions. And they figure out, thoughtfully, what is the right way and what is the best way for their company.
This is the entire government, but that is not what is happening here. They are firing people across the board, without regard to merit, without regard for function. They are firing some of the newest employees who are eager and excited to have their jobs. They are firing some people who are simply up for promotion which puts them in a probationary status.
They are not looking at what these people are doing or the value they bring to the workforce and to the American people. They are just doing it and getting on TV with a chain saw.
These are people who went into public service for a reason. They are people, in the case of Health and Human Services, who keep us healthy and save lives, who work every day to keep America at the forefront of medical breakthroughs and innovation.
It has been our secret sauce. It has given the world the most incredible, credible, lifesaving drugs and medical devices--like the pacemaker in my State.
That didn't just come out of one company. That came out of a lot of ideas, and that came out a lot of universities, and that came out of people doing clinical trials, and that came out of a devotion by our country to moving forward. That is how we have gotten these lifesaving cures.
That is how we mapped the human genome, so that we are now starting to offer personalized medicine, drugs that fit people, things that work, things that cure diseases we never thought were possible to cure. That is how our economy has been so strengthened, and we have led across the world.
You know, I have worked for years to cut redtape, and I know there is more to do. I know there is more we can do to make our government effective. But we can do that together and take the ideas from the administration. We can work on it in the next budget. We can make some changes. I support permitting reform--all kinds of things that we could do.
But these mass firings in the area of medical research? This makes no sense.
The Department of Health and Human Services is also tasked with implementing Medicare drug price negotiation, which I fought for years to pass into law, along with my colleague Senator Welch from Vermont, when he was in the House, and Senator Sanders here in the Senate.
This is expected--we finally passed it. It was part of the Inflation Reduction Act, and it actually says: Hey, this sweetheart deal that pharma had with Medicare, in which they can't negotiate at all and that the prices are locked in and so our country--people are paying twice as much as they do in places like Canada, for the drug. Yet it is our taxpayers that put in the money for the research or the VA, which works so well for our veterans. They are able to negotiate and get better prices, but not 50 million seniors?
So what did we do? We finally ended the sweetheart deal, and we passed a law. I would have been more aggressive about how many drugs we could negotiate because I understand they start with a group of drugs, and pretty soon that is going to help people who aren't seniors, as we did with the insulin cap. That insulin cap, at 35 bucks a month, was only for seniors, but Merck and other companies offered it to nonseniors, as well, because we got it going with the biggest prescription drug buying group in the country, and that would be our seniors.
So this Medicare negotiation has ramifications for everyone in this country. However, even though we only did 10 drugs at first, the Biden administration picked blockbuster drugs--big drugs that so many people take, like Januvia and Jardiance and Xarelto and Eliquis. Combined, in 1 year--just 1 year, when this starts next year; no one has refuted these statistics--9 million seniors will save $1.5 billion in out-of- pocket costs in the first year alone and save taxpayers over $100 billion in the next decade. That is just 10 drugs.
They have now come up with 15 more drugs, including Ozempic and those weight-loss drugs, and they have passed that torch now--or the voters have--onto the next administration. So now, it is on them to negotiate these 15 and then pick 15 more and 15 more. Imagine how much money we can save, not just for the seniors--that is obvious--but also for the taxpayers because
But firing the men and women who carry out these price negotiations put those savings totally at risk. You cannot take on some of the world's biggest companies--the pharmaceutical companies--with bandaids and a skeleton crew. That is not going to work. I think we all know that. We all know this is really hard work.
On top of this, the firings threaten healthcare for the 170 million Americans who get coverage through Medicare, Medicaid--which is so many of our seniors when they are in assisted living with their long-term care, and people's parents and grandparents--as well as coverage under the Affordable Care Act, including over 2 million Minnesotans. In fact, Medicaid actually provides healthcare for 20 percent of my rural residents in my State. You will see similar numbers all across the country. And more than half of all nursing home residents in our State are on Medicaid.
I remember when my dad was in assisted living. He got late-onset Alzheimer's. I found a place for him and found the next place when he needed a little more help, and I knew, as his savings were running out, what that day was. I knew the exact month that he was going to run out of his savings, and then he would go onto Medicaid. And that was a safety net. I actually knew I couldn't keep him at the same place, but I knew a place I could have him go to.
He ended up dying a year before that date happened. But there are so many people in our country that know the exact date when their parent or their grandparent is going to be able to have that safety net of Medicaid because they have actually run through all their savings.
Nationwide, Medicaid provides coverage for two-thirds of all nursing home care. And these cuts--what we are seeing out of the House budget, where they have put targets on the exact program that includes Medicaid--these cuts will be particularly disastrous for people with chronic conditions, including millions of veterans who become sick or disabled as a result of their service.
What is this all about? It is about funding giant tax breaks for billionaires. Yes, over 2 trillion of that money goes to people who are wealthy, people making over $400,000 a year.
I am all for keeping in these tax cuts for people making under $400,000 a year, but I do not know why, when you are facing the debt that our country has and when you are dealing with people's needs with Medicaid and the like, you would decide to add tax cuts and make permanent tax cuts for people who are making over $400,000 a year.
We actually had a vote on this, late at night about a week ago, where we asked our Republican colleagues: OK. Well, how about for people making over $10 million a year? That was Senator Warren's amendment. She said: OK. How about if they are making over 10 million? Could we at least agree we shouldn't cut their taxes?
And, unfortunately, our Republican colleagues, for that amendment, yelled out: No.
Then we said--Senator Kelly got up there and said: OK. How about if they are making over $100 million? Then we should add more tax cuts?
Our colleagues voted against that amendment, which said we should not add more tax cuts for people making over $100 million when our country is facing the debt it has, when you have got the needs for people in nursing homes and the needs for people with childcare and the like.
So then they tried one more time. Senator Angus King, Independent of Maine, said: OK. How about for people making over $500 million? Then, at least, you can agree with us--right?--that we shouldn't add more tax cuts for those people making over $500 million a year. And, sadly, our colleagues voted no.
Instead of cutting costs for regular people and their prices and groceries, they are cutting Medicaid, which provides healthcare for 7.2 million seniors, almost 40 million children, nearly two-thirds of nursing home residents, and millions of people with rare diseases.
But this isn't just the numbers. There are moms and dads, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors. I heard from one Minnesotan who, at 4 years old, was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which causes rapid muscle weakness, making it harder to complete most physical tasks. But this Minnesotan, who is now 26, has been able to thrive because he has Medicaid coverage. He got an education. He got a job. He graduated with a master's degree in public policy. He is paying taxes. In his words, Medicaid gave him the affordable health coverage he needed to manage his rare condition.
For him and millions more, the cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services put their lives and livelihood at risk.
This week is rare disease week. I have met with many rare disease patients. I am the cochair of that caucus. And they are in town right now to convene and collaborate with Federal medical researchers, Ph.D. students, other families affected, drug and device reviewers and advocates.
Many of these rare disease patients were looking forward to attending the rare disease event that was supposed to be today. And this year it was going to be a collaboration between NIH and the FDA because of all that integral work that goes on with drugs being approved for people with rare diseases, but that annual event was canceled because the people carrying that out--these people here with very difficult, rare diseases--that was canceled because the people doing the event were fired.
The mission of the Department of Health and Human Services, which the thousands of Americans who were fired work every day to uphold, is enhancing the health and well-being of all Americans. These mass firings are a direct affront to that mission.
The building that houses the Department of Health and Human Services is named for Minnesota's ``Happy Warrior,'' Vice President Hubert Humphrey. It has been that way through Democrat and Republican Presidents. He was a champion for expanding access to healthcare. Inscribed in the entrance hall of that building are words from Humphrey's final speech in 1977. By the way, he was someone who was loved right here in this Chamber by Democrats and Republicans. Some of the most conservative Republicans mourned his loss, and they loved the guy. And this is what he said in his final speech here:
And he added, given he had a child in his own family with Down syndrome, and those with disabilities.
The firing of those who care for kids and seniors and those who work on rare diseases and those who are bringing together our people who work on drugs that are supposed to solve and are solving the problems for these rare disease families and those that are doing the approvals and those that are doing the research and the families that want to talk to them about it--they were all here, and they canceled it because, just like that, Elon Musk came in with his chain saw.
Those families are not going to tolerate this much longer.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Department of Health and Human Services
Mr. President, I want to speak about the extreme cuts that have affected the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control.
First of all, the DOGE operation starts out with a premise that it is attacking waste, fraud, and abuse. And I am for that. Anyplace that we can save taxpayers money by responsible assessment of what programs are working or aren't, anytime we can uncover waste or certainly fraud and abuse, I want to do that, and I want that to be done across the board. Whether you are talking about health programs where they could be better organized or they could be more efficiently run to achieve the goal of better services for the people you represent and I represent for all Americans, I want to do that.
But how is DOGE going about it?
And we are here to talk about how they are doing it in the Department of Health and Human Services, under Mr. Kennedy. Basically, they are doing it by sending out firing notices to people. Over 5,000 people have been fired, and that includes 700 in the Food and Drug Administration, 1,200 in the National Institutes of Health, and 600 in the Centers for Disease Control.
Here is the question, and the answer is obvious: If you want to make a program more efficient, do you fire the people first and essentially erode any capacity of that program to deliver the services that the American people need? Or do you study the organization? Do you kick the tires? Do you investigate and analyze where the issues are that can be addressed by a comprehensive plan that would include getting rid of any waste? It would include getting rid, obviously, of any fraud and abuse.
But what DOGE is doing is not that. It doesn't have a plan. What it has is a decision to fire people. So, essentially, DOGE is saying that the higher the body count of people who are fired, then the more the savings will be. Well, there is truth in that. If you just fire people and they are not on the payroll, you are going to save taxpayer money. But does that mean that you are getting waste, fraud, and abuse out of the system, or are you just wrecking the program? It clearly is going to be the latter.
You are just wrecking the program because you didn't even take the time to examine what is going on and how best to do it. Think about it. In the National Institutes of Health, there are investigators, there are scientists. These are people who are working on research that is important to your State and mine about diseases, about cures, about vaccines, about pandemics, things that--you know, American people are entitled to have some confidence and security that we have the best minds addressing health issues and focusing on cures to diseases that all of us can be subject to or the people we love, that they will be doing that job.
But these people are now just fired. They are gone. That means--just think about it. An NIH scientist, that is somebody who probably has a Ph.D, went to one of our State institutions. It might have been a land- grant college in North Carolina or a land-grant college in Vermont. And there is probably an enormous amount of talent in that person who was able to achieve a Ph.D in scientific research. And there is probably a good deal of public investment in the career of that person with the return being that person is going to be doing research on trying to cure diseases. And that person may well have gotten some Federal grants, including college assistance or Ph.D investigatory assistance.
That could be hundreds of thousands of dollars the taxpayers really invested in supporting a person who has become a scientist, helping us on very important research that is really good for the American people.
Boom. They go to work, or they are at home. They get an email, and they say: Don't show up for work; you are fired.
There is a certain cruelty in a lot of these notices because it also has an assertion that your performance has been subpar. Of course, we find out there has been no performance review; and, in many cases, these people who were fired supposedly because of subpar performance, in fact, did just have a performance review that said you are doing a fantastic job.
Or think about Food and Drug Administration. Their job is to review, among other things, medications that can provide life-enhancing, lifesaving, life-extending, pain-relieving medications that Americans are going to need and can benefit by. The sooner that work of investigation gets done, the sooner that the approval decisions can be made, the sooner cures get to market and to the folks in this country.
Boom. They are fired.
Again, these people, some of whom do have Ph.Ds, as I mentioned, but others of whom have been at the FDA for 15 or 20 years and have that institutional knowledge of how it works--these people are getting fired independent of any performance review, independent of any assessment of where do we need more people or where do we need fewer people or what are some of the functions that no longer need to be done versus some functions where we actually may need to enhance the staff to get a better job for the American people.
What is so bogus about DOGE is that it is not about waste, fraud, and abuse. It really is not because there would have to be an investigation, a plan, people looking at how the functions are being performed. It is simply a mechanism to justify firing people and lowering the head count.
And as I mentioned, you know what? That will ``save money,'' but it will destroy the capacity of these organizations that all of us agree are doing incredibly important work. It is going to destroy their ability to do it. It is just mangling the services in the area of Health and Human Services that are so essential to the well-being of the people in this country.
By the way, this has a real economic impact; and it is the economic impact, first and foremost, among those individuals who lost their jobs. But it is a real economic impact because we are eroding the infrastructure of science, of inquiry, and of investigation for better health cures. You don't destroy that and put it back together again overnight. That is what is so wrong-headed about the DOGE approach to things--body count versus better service, better performance, more sustainability.
Mr. President, you couldn't have a worse approach if your goal is more efficiency, better service, and better outcomes.
The other question that is going to be recurring for the American people is the likelihood--the inevitability, actually--of massive reductions in aid for Medicaid. Under the version of the House budget reconciliation act, they have to come up with trillions of dollars in savings. The only place you are going to get that is by cutting Medicaid.
We have a contradiction here because the President says he loves Medicaid, but he also says he loves the House bill. And the House bill does not love Medicaid. What the House bill does is it attacks Medicaid.
In Vermont, we have 20 percent or so, a little more, of our folks who depend on Medicaid for healthcare. It is kids from low-income families; it is seniors. Two out of three of our nursing home beds are paid for by Medicaid. You are going to have families where the kids are really trying to help their parents. Their parents need a nursing home, and they are going to get kicked out, literally. That is what happens.
Finally, what we know is, why is this happening? Why are these firings on a mass level being made when there has been no study and no plan in place to indicate that action will improve services or, in the long run, save money for the American people? It is being done because there is a goal to have a tax cut. That is a fair-and-square debate. What should our tax rate be; should we have a tax cut; if we have a tax cut, how do you allocate; how much goes to corporations; how much goes to billionaires; how much goes to everyday people?
But to have that debate without acknowledging that the way you are going to pay for it is by taking away healthcare for everyday Americans, that is not on the level. That is what is happening here, is that there is an agenda: Get that tax cut.
I happen to profoundly disagree with the tax cut for major multinational corporations, and I profoundly disagree with lowering taxes for billionaires--totally disagree with that. But when it is the situation that we are going to pay for it by taking away nursing home beds from Vermonters, from folks in the Carolinas, that is really appalling. We should not do it.
I am here with my colleagues to defend our commitment to good scientific research, to good cancer research, to good healthcare access for poor kids and seniors, and to sound the alert that that is what is at stake despite what the President may say about his ``love'' for Medicare. What he clearly has as his major agenda item is that tax cut.
I will acknowledge we can have a debate fair and square about that tax cut. But I think it is incumbent on all of us to acknowledge that the path to the President getting his tax cut marches right through access to healthcare in an attack on Medicaid.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
