Legislative Session
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will resume consideration of S.J. Res. 13, which the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. President, over the last 2 weeks, during the Senate recess, I continued my annual 99 county meetings across Iowa.
My travels brought me to the Western Iowa community of Jefferson, in Greene County, for a Q&A. I often say Iowans don't brag enough, and Jefferson has got something to brag about, so I want to take this opportunity to brag about the people of Jefferson, IA.
Jefferson is about an hour northwest of Des Moines, our capital city. This community is home to the 168-foot Bell Tower, located in an iconic town square. These hard-working Iowans went to bat for their community and came out on top. In other words, it is like baseball--they hit a home run.
Jefferson recently was presented with the 2025 Great American Main Street Award at a national conference in Pennsylvania. Winners are recognized for excellence in commercial district revitalization and historic preservation efforts. Jefferson exemplifies how ``small communities can overcome economic challenges through ingenuity and collective effort.''
As a product of smalltown Iowa, I am aware of obstacles facing rural communities. So I applaud everyone involved in the program named ``Jefferson Matters'' for your teamwork, your resilience, and your can- do attitude.
Jefferson is a shining example to communities across Iowa and all America.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
Mr. President, one of Republicans' biggest priorities this year is extending the tax relief we passed in 2017 and preventing a massive tax hike on hard-working Americans.
We took a big step forward before Easter with the passage of a budget resolution necessary for a final bill, and we are rapidly moving toward final bill text. Senate Republicans held hours of great discussions today to hammer out a number of details.
The issue before us is simple: If we don't act, Americans making less than $400,000 will face a $2.6 trillion tax hike next year--$2.6 trillion. Small businesses will face a $600 billion tax hike. Republicans do not intend to let that happen.
We are going to extend the tax relief we passed during President Trump's first administration, starting with the lower individual rates that put more money in Americans' pockets and eased the burden on small businesses. I say ``extend,'' but in fact, we intend to make that tax relief permanent. Hard-working Americans should not have to worry about tax hikes every few years, and small businesses need tax certainty for long-term planning. So we
We are also committed to making other small business tax relief from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent, like bonus depreciation and the section No. 199A deduction. The National Federation of Independent Business reports that making the small business section No. 199A deduction permanent would result in the creation of an additional 1.2 million jobs annually, with that number climbing as the law goes on.
And the Tax Foundation reports that long-run GDP would increase by a substantial 1.1 percent. That means more jobs and more opportunities for American workers. It also means an increase in Federal revenues-- but an increase in Federal revenues the right way, by growing and expanding the economy, not raising taxes.
Ensuring permanent tax relief for hard-working Americans and small businesses would be a substantial part of the final bill, but that is not all that would be included. We will also be focusing on some of the other challenges our country has faced over the past 4 years: a dangerous border crisis, deficiencies in our military readiness, and Biden administration policies that threat to weaken our already shaky electric grid and jeopardize our Nation's energy supply.
President Trump has already made tremendous progress on securing the border and deporting criminals here illegally, but we need to dedicate additional resources to border security to secure those gains for the long term. So the final bill that we pass will include a transformational investment in securing our borders, including things like additional detention space, more Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and additional barriers and technology.
We will also make a transformational investment in our military readiness to address deficiencies and ensure that we are equipped to detour and defeat any threat.
And we will implement policies to unleash American energy production to ensure a secure, stable, and affordable energy supply for the long term.
Finally, we will take a hard look at how we spend taxpayer dollars and implement savings measures to put our country on a more fiscally sustainable path.
It is going to be a great bill, and it is going to help produce a stronger and a more secure America.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. President, over the Easter break, I continued my annual 99 county meetings. And, as always, Iowans set the agenda.
At my open town meetings, I had big turnouts. People shared strong views about tariffs, deportations, and the Department of Government Efficiency. At nearly every one of those Q&A's, Iowans also raised concerns about the Federal deficit and the $36 trillion debt hanging over our heads.
I am sharing this feedback with my colleagues here because that is what representative government is all about.
It seems like, no matter which issues put a burr under their saddle, my constituents are hungry for the same thing. So, simply, they would like to have some certainty of policy coming out of Congress and some predictability. Such predictability is very essential for our country to move forward economically.
Some people see Washington in chaos. These feelings of uncertainty keep Americans up at night. Workers are worried about their retirement savings when they watch the stock market seesaw. Farmers are wondering if they will have a market to export their grain. Small businesses are worried that rising import costs will drive them into the red or force them to jack up prices on their customers. And everybody is concerned that come January 1, 2026, they could be subject to the largest tax hike in U.S. history. And that is without even a vote of Congress.
I have long been an open book regarding my concerns about tariffs. I consider myself what, around this town, we call free and fair traders, negotiating tariffs down.
That said, the President has another approach. President Trump has raised valid concerns about some of our existing trading relationships, especially with China. That is why I am willing to take a wait-and-see approach as Trump's trading partners come to the negotiating table.
I hope his policies will ultimately result in free and fairer trade. If they do, he will be much more successful than my approach over the last 50 years. If he is successful, I will be the first one to say: Praise the Lord.
But in the meantime, it is clear the on-again, off-again tariffs are driving uncertainty, and that uncertainty is the same that is reverberating across our economy.
There is no better example than when the market for U.S. treasuries went haywire at the beginning of April as a result of some of this tariff talk. Foreign investors got skittish and actually dumped U.S. treasuries. That caused interest rates to spike on the 10- and 30-year bonds. That should have set off the alarm bells here in Congress.
American taxpayers are on the hook for a $36 trillion national debt. Americans are already paying $1 trillion a year in interest payments-- about three times what they were before interest rates and inflation hit us after the last 4 years. This trillion dollars is more than we spend annually on national defense, and, in the end, we don't have anything to show for all that interest.
Don't forget, those costs rise when interest rates rise. If we pay more servicing on our debt, there is less money for everything else that the Federal Government does to help the American people.
Given the size of our national debt, even slightly higher than expected interest rates mean trillions more spent servicing our debt over the next decade.
Worse yet, if our bondholders were to lose confidence in our ability to budget or govern responsibly, soaring debt payments could trigger a return of sky-high inflation or even end America in a fiscal crisis.
In 2023, the credit rating agency Fitch downgraded the U.S. credit rating, noting the size of our national debt and ``the erosion of governance.'' Those words, ``the erosion of governance'' are from the Fitch report.
More than ever, Congress must step up--step up its game--to provide stability in the form of good governance and fiscal restraint. This means we must work to deliver on essential congressional functions without the last-minute brinksmanship that has become a norm when either we don't appropriate for next year and government should shut down or, like I am going to talk about, with the national debt and the debt ceiling coming, if we don't handle that issue, we can possibly shut down the government.
Along the lines of what I am talking about, I would like to delineate three must-do items on our agenda that need to be completed before October 1 of this year.
First, we must pass a tax and spending package to avert massive tax hikes on the American people. That must include resources for the administration to secure our borders and beef up our depleted military.
Second, we must guarantee that we will always pay our debts. This means we must raise the debt ceiling well in advance of the Treasury running out of money to pay the bills.
Currently, we are expected to hit the debt ceiling mid-summer to early fall. So common sense tells me we should avoid the chaos in the bond market, which could cause our debt payments to skyrocket. We must lift the debt ceiling with plenty of room to spare. Why wait to the midnight hour of government shutting down? That is too often the practice around here in the U.S. Senate.
Finally, we must fund the government to avoid the threat of that government shutdown. Our rinse-and-repeat shutdown stare-downs have become an unnecessary recurring source of heartburn for our constituents and deliver unnecessary uncertainty for the economy. We can surely do better.
Completing our must-do list on time and drama free begins with passing the tax and spending package in a timely and fiscally responsible fashion.
I know what it takes to grease the wheels and enact historic tax cuts using the budget reconciliation process. It is a four-letter acronym, KISS, K-I-S-S. In other words, keep it simple, Senators.
The 2017 Trump reform was a historic achievement. We cut taxes across the board. We did so by simplifying the Tax Code and trimming back the special deductions and credits. As a result, most taxpayers paid less tax simply by claiming the increased standard deduction that was in that 2017 law. They were able, then, to avoid the headache of spending hours sifting through receipts and IRS forms.
We now have the chance to make these tax cuts and reforms permanent. This alone would take the weight of a $4 trillion tax hike off the chest of the economy. That would provide much needed certainty to families and businesses.
So we must keep our eye on the ball. Let's avoid the laundry list of costly new items that we can't afford and that, at the same time, complicate the Tax Code and, at the same time, risk causing progress on the reconciliation package to come to a screeching halt.
We are coming off of an unprecedented peacetime spending binge, and it is time to pay the piper. The fact is, the Federal Government is broke. We are currently running $2 trillion annual deficits, and in just 3 years, our national debt is set to eclipse the World War II-era record relative to the size of the U.S. economy.
Let's get in the habit of paying for all new policies so we don't continuously keep digging ourselves into an ever-larger fiscal hole.
Let's stick to common sense. When you find yourself stuck in a hole, stop digging. Start climbing. This would require Senators, Congressmen and Congresswomen, and President Trump to set priorities and be willing to make tradeoffs.
Let's move forward with consensus spending reductions. Let's pull back expensive Biden-era regulations that supercharged mandatory spending programs. And, at the same time, who is going to argue with eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse?
Relative to new tax-and-spending policies, the overall package must result in significant deficit reduction, but we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We didn't get into our fiscal situation, the present situation, overnight, and we are not going to solve it in this single bill either.
Polling repeatedly shows Americans hold Congress in low regard. I have said this before, but it bears repeating. At my county meetings, someone will yell at the back of the room ``Grassley''--referring to me--``why can't you do something about the deficit?''
We can begin to restore the public's confidence in Congress by doing our jobs, getting our work done on time, and--egads--stop digging a deeper fiscal hole.
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 rise today with both sorrow and gratitude in my heart to honor and celebrate the life of an extraordinary woman, the Honorable Diana Denman.
Diana has rightly been described as the ``Godmother of the Texas Republican Party.'' She was a fierce warrior for freedom, but she was also a radiant spirit, a source of wisdom and kindness, and the embodiment of grace, conviction, and truth. Diana was a patriotic American. She loved this country. She was a true daughter of Texas and a very dear and cherished friend.
Diana was born in Abilene, TX. Her grandfather, Jefferson Davis Sandefer, Sr., led Hardin-Simmons University for decades, and Diana often said she inherited her lifelong passion for service and scholarship from his example.
But Diana's journey took her far beyond Texas. She left Abilene for Washington to study at George Washington University, from which she graduated with a degree in journalism. From there, she traveled to Hollywood to be an actress. She worked with legends like Cecil B. DeMille as well as a young actor named Ronald Reagan. Ever quick with a smile and a story, Diana used to say that the very first vote she ever cast for Reagan was for president--of the Screen Actors Guild.
That vote was the start of a lifelong commitment to conservatism. From Reagan's 1976 campaign to his election and through the Presidency, Diana stood shoulder to shoulder with the movement for freedom and optimism that defined the era and which we so badly need today. She later served in the Reagan administration in roles ranging from the Peace Corps to the National Museum Services Board. She did not see that as a break in the work she had been passionately doing.
She brought to Washington the same conviction as President Reagan, the same impulse that had brought both to Hollywood--that politics requires persuasion, that it requires winning hearts and winning minds, that we need to tell stories, that we need to bridge the gaps between generations, between communities, between ideologies.
Diana knew exactly what and why she was doing. When she was nominated by President Reagan in 1986 to be a member of the National Museum Services Board, her bio read:
By her side throughout her remarkable journey was her beloved husband Leroy, who was the chief lawyer for the storied King Ranch for more than 50 years. Plenty more offers came to Diana for prestigious diplomatic appointments, and yet Diana turned them down because she would not be separated from him.
I came to know Diana through politics, but she became family. I would not be standing here today were it not for her faith in me. She was among my earliest and strongest supporters when I first ran for Senate in 2012, and in 2016, Diana was a Presidential delegate for me. You could not ask for a fiercer fighter. Despite her diminutive stature, she could carry a knife crawling under barbed wire.
Diana's devotion to others extended especially to our men and women in uniform. Her home became a refuge for young servicemembers far away from their families. She visited bases. She met with veterans. She wove their struggles and triumphs into the fabric of her life's mission.
Even into her nineties, Diana remained undaunted. She sent emails, she hosted gatherings, she mentored young conservatives, and she dreamed bigger dreams for Texas and for America. Her energy defied her years, and her vision never dipped.
Her consistent friendship and endless hospitality meant the world to me and my family. Diana was dear friends with my father and dear friends with my wife Heidi, and Diana loved our daughters Caroline and Catherine. When we were in San Antonio, Diana invited us over. When she came to Houston, she always stopped by. When I was up here in Washington, Diana would always call, would always text, would always provide a word of encouragement, a word of hope, and a word of wisdom. And she always had a word of wisdom.
Diana was proper. She was elegant. She was old-school. One time, when she was hosting a dinner for me at her home, I had the temerity at the dining room table to remove my jacket. I will say, Diana braided me for 10 minutes after the dinner at lacking the good graces to know that a good gentleman should keep his jacket on during dinner.
Through and thanks to her tireless work, Diana changed how Republicans approached politics across the country, and she always led with humility and courage and grace. She cared passionately for foreign policy, for defending America, and for America being the leading voice for freedom in the world--America being a shining city on a hill.
Diana was many things. She was a journalist. She was an actress. She was a leader. She was a mentor. She was a philanthropist. And at her core, she was loyal--fiercely loyal--to those she held dear.
And now, Diana has been laid to rest in the soil of Abilene where her story began and from where she became part of Texas's story. Diana loved Texas with all her heart. Diana loved America with all her heart, and she loved freedom with all her heart.
I loved Diana. My entire family did. May God bless Diana Denman, and may
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The 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, when it comes to healthcare access, one of the biggest issues that Tennesseans face is rising costs, especially on prescription drugs. I will tell you, this comes up in meeting after meeting, questions about why our pharmaceuticals are costing me so much.
According to a study by the Department of Health and Human Services, the average drug price increased by more than 15 percent--15 percent-- between 2022 and 2023. That translates to about $590 per prescription. Nearly half of all the medications that were studied saw price increases that outpaced inflation, including some with increases of-- get this--over 3,000 percent.
This is unsustainable. And the reason it is unsustainable is why President Trump decided to take Executive action last month to lower drug prices for so many Americans. Among his actions, the President is taking on a category called pharmaceutical benefit managers or they are referred to in acronym parlance as PBMs.
PBMs raise prices and limit choices for consumers. When you look at this industry, we have pharmaceutical companies that are manufacturing the pharmaceuticals. You have health insurers that cover the cost of these. You have pharmacies that sell them, patients that rely on them, and in the mix, there are now PBMs. They are middlemen that came about decades ago. They are between the drug manufacturer, the health insurer, and the pharmacies. Think of this as a triangle with the cost of that running around from point to point.
PBMs came into play decades ago. Bill Clinton was President when they came to be. They were supposed to help manage prescription drug costs and benefits for employers. It sounds like a worthy goal. But over time, these benefit managers have gained incredible power over the prescription drug access across the entire country. They determine which medications will be covered by health insurance plans. I would imagine that many of us have had something that was prescribed, and then we find out no longer can we take that; there is going to be something to replace it or it is not going to be covered at all.
They also determine the price. Many times, we have gone to pick up a pharmaceutical, and we have known what the copay was. It was covered. Then, all of a sudden, it is not and the price jumps and you are standing there at the pharmacy counter asking what has happened. Then you have to go call your insurance company. Then they say it is because of the pharmacy benefit manager, and then they will tell you, well, the employer is trying to reduce their costs--all of this ``excusitis'' because they are focused on how much money they can make.
This revenue is often linked to the price of the drug, and the PBMs steer health plans toward more expensive options rather than lesser expensive options. They game the system by tying administrative fees, rebate-based compensation, and other payments to the list price of the drug. And to make matters worse, current regulations allow Medicare Part D plan sponsors to contract selectively with pharmacies, favoring PBMs' preferred networks that often exclude independent pharmacies that are probably located on the town square there in your hometown.
This is something we have seen far too often in Tennessee, and we have realized this hurts those who live in rural and other underserved areas the most.
Recently, the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance conducted an audit of a single PBM in our State. They wanted to see how this is affecting the price of pharmaceuticals in our State. What they found was truly troubling. To the report, the PBM in question forced nonaffiliated pharmacies to pay higher rates for more than 550 medications, including some drugs that they tagged as, again, 3,000- percent more expensive than what would have been the lower cost option.
A nonaffiliated pharmacy is generally an independent pharmacy. They are not part of a chain. They are not part of that vertical integration of the pharmacy--the physician, the PBM, the insurance company, the drug manufacturer. They are there in your neighborhood.
We also saw in this report that the PBM in question repeatedly failed to reimburse low-volume pharmacies. Again, that is probably the pharmacy in your neighborhood. And they, in good faith, fill your prescription. And then the PBM challenges it and does not pay the bill.
So the next time you go to the pharmacy, what do you hear? Oh, this is not covered. We cannot help you. You are going to have to drive 30 miles or 20 miles or whatever to get to one of the affiliated pharmacies, which, again, that is one of the big changes.
Again, what you are seeing is those that are in underserved and rural areas and use an independent pharmacy, they lose out. We also found that this PBM in question was engaged in spread pricing that allowed them to pocket $30 million.
That is one PBM in one State--Tennessee--and spread pricing put an extra $30 million in their pocket. What that means is patients were overpaying by $30 million, plus the inconvenience, plus the accelerated price, plus the fact that these PBMs jockey for what they can get in these rebates, and they change what you are allowed to get. And by the way, they do that without ever talking to your physician.
When you look at that spread pricing, it is the difference between what the PBM charges the health plan and what they reimburse to the pharmacy. This is increasing the cost--another burden you bear--of your insurance. That is what PBMs are doing.
So President Trump is addressing this issue by directing his administration to evaluate the role of PBMs in raising drug prices. The resulting report should provide an even clearer picture nationwide of the harms that are being caused by these PBMs, these middlemen, and they are totally unnecessary.
In the Senate, we are working on bipartisan legislation to hold the PBMs accountable. In March, Senator Hassan, Senator Warner, and I reintroduced the bipartisan Patients Before Middlemen Act. This piece of legislation--which we want to get across the finish line and to the President's desk--would restore fairness for patients by requiring Medicare Part D plans to contract with any willing pharmacy, not just those in the PBM network. That means Medicare Part D would be contracting with your local community pharmacy, the one where you have a relationship, the one where you know the pharmacist, the one where you go in and say: Help with this; explain this medication to me; talk me through this.
Also, our legislation would enhance transparency by assuring that PBMs are not limiting patient access to available pharmacy options under Medicare Part D. If your doctor says: You need this, and the PBM says: No, we are not going to pay for that; we are going to pay for this one over here, it would give you the right to get what the doctor says is best for you. It would ensure PBM service fees are no longer connected to the price of drug discounts, rebates, or other fees.
When you hear these rebates advertised, guess who gets them. The PBM. When you hear discounts advertised, who gets it? The PBM.
Also, this would create an enforcement mechanism requiring PBMs to pay the Department of Health and Human Services any amount more than the designated service fee. It means they would no longer be able to game the system, get the rebate and the money, pocket it, and you get a higher price.
It is far past time that Congress took action to hold these middlemen accountable. I think we should just do away with them completely. It is time that we lower these drug costs for Tennesseans and Americans across the country. With the PBM Act, we know that this will happen.
Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title 5, United States Code, of the Rule Submitted by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency of the Department of the Treasury...
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill 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, this week, the Senate Banking Committee-- the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs--advanced the nomination of Michelle ``Miki'' Bowman to be the Vice Chair for Supervision at the Federal Reserve. Miki Bowman is my constituent. She is a Kansan, a native of Morris County. Miki has deep roots in rural America.
After graduating from the University of Kansas, followed by Washburn University's Law School, she came to Washington, DC, working across Capitol Hill and the executive branch. Like many good Kansans, Miki eventually found her way back home, and she became the vice president at Farmers and Drovers Bank, a community bank in Council Grove, KS. That occurred in 2010. In 2017, Miki became the Kansas State bank commissioner, where she was responsible for overseeing hundreds of State-chartered banks, trust companies, money transmitters, and other nondepository entities.
When President Trump chose Miki to serve as the community bank representative on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, it was clear she was a great choice, the right choice to give small lenders and rural communities a voice at the Fed. Not only did Miki exceed the qualifications for the position set by law, but her time living and working in rural Kansas helped guide her decision making.
With immense experience working in and supervising community banks, I am confident Miki will continue to be a champion for those community banks but really, more importantly, for those those community banks serve, the people of States like mine and the Presiding Officer's. She will serve those people and those communities well.
The Vice Chair for Supervision plays the critical role of overseeing the regulatory environment and the supervision of many of our Nation's financial institutions, large and small. This Vice Chair position will be responsible for both rightsizing regulations for smaller lenders and finalizing the Basel III Endgame.
Not only do I trust Miki's professional experience, but I have come to know her as an independent, forthright, intelligent, quality individual with a demonstrated record of service to her State and Nation. Miki will make an excellent Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision. I look forward to voting to confirm her nomination here in the full Senate, and I urge my colleagues to support her confirmation.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Mr. President, as I have said before--and I want to make this really clear--I don't hate anyone. I don't. I look for grace wherever I can find it, and when I say my prayers, one of the things I ask my Maker for is, ``Please, God, don't let me hate,'' because sometimes it is hard here in Washington.
You know, there have been many a morning when I have gotten up in my overpriced Capitol Hill apartment, and I am walking over here to the Capitol, and I give myself a pep talk. I talk to myself. I say: Kennedy, today you are going to follow Jesus.
And by 10 o'clock, I still want to follow Jesus, but I also want to slap the hell out of somebody.
So it is important that we remind ourselves: Don't hate.
And I don't hate anyone. And that includes President Biden. But President Biden and his people had the remarkable ability to take something that wasn't broken and try to fix it. They would take something that wasn't broken in government and take it apart, loosen a few screws, and then it would be broken.
In a few minutes, I am going to ask the Senate to vote to try to repair some damage that President Biden's folks did in that regard. It has to do with banks.
As you know, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency--I will call it the OCC, so you will know what I am talking about. The OCC regulates our banks, and that includes big banks but also small banks. We have got more small banks in America than we have big banks.
In fact, our smaller banks throughout this wonderful country make most of the loans to ordinary people. At a lot of the big banks, now, if you are just an average small businesswoman or businessman and you need a loan, you go to the larger banks, and they won't even see you. You have to go to a small bank to get that loan.
Small banks merge all the time. You have probably seen it in your local communities. Why do small banks merge a lot? Well, one of the reasons is they can provide better services to their customers.
Another reason that small banks tend to merge a lot is because maybe they want to move into a new geographical area, and they can't do it
A third reason that small banks merge a lot is because they think, when they discuss their merger, that together they will be stronger and more profitable, and therefore, can make more loans.
But another reason is to try to comply with Federal regulations. I mean, our Federal regulations with respect to a bank will take your breath away. There are a bunch of them, and it costs so much to comply with rules and regulations by the Federal Government.
Our rules and regulations now cost the American businessperson about $2 trillion a year. And I am not saying all of those are banking regulations or not, but the cost of those regulations gets passed on to consumers, and that is why, in part, products and services have increased in price.
But there are so many Federal rules and regulations that a small bank will often say: You know, I can't comply with all of this loan. I have got to get help. And we have got to spread the costs.
So that bank will merge with another bank and have more people in it, and it will be cheaper through economies of scale, which I know, Mr. President, you understand because you are a very successful businessperson. But they can spread the cost through economies of scale.
So small banks merge all the time. Now we recognize that. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, OCC, back in 1995, saw this coming. And the OCC, at that time, said: We want to devise a way for small banks to be able to merge fairly easily, but, at the same time, we at the OCC want to be able to make sure that what they are doing in this merger is not a risk to the consumer.
So the OCC, in 1995, issued what is called the Bank Merger Guidelines of 1995. Their rule for the merger of small banks was pretty simple. The OCC devised this short questionnaire where, if you were two small banks and you wanted to merge, you had to answer yes or no to 14 separate questions--very simple, very straightforward. To 14 questions, you answered yes or no.
And then the OCC--the folks at OCC--could look at your answers and see if they thought there was any risk to consumers. And the OCC also adopted a rule that said: Look, if we don't give you an answer within 15 days, because we are busy--the OCC said--your merger is automatically approved.
Short, sweet, very effective. We haven't had problems with our small banks, and none of these mergers--hundreds have taken place since 1995, which have actually made the financial system in America stronger and created virtually no risk.
Well, President Biden's people at the OCC decided that it wasn't broken; so they were going to fix it. Again, I don't hate anybody, but you have got to call it like you see it.
I think the folks at President Biden's OCC got up one day and thought there was an award for being stupid. They took this very simple and effective rule and procedure, and they turned it on its head. What they did was tier-one-level moronic.
Here is what they did. They threw out the old rule. They said: We are going to have a new rule, and the new rule is instead of these--this was in 2013--instead of these 14 simple yes-or-no questions, we are going to make all of these small banks submit so much paperwork to us that you could stack that paperwork right here and stand on it and practically paint the ceiling.
They threw out the 14 simple yes-or-no questions. They said that now these small banks--these are small banks, now, community banks--have to submit reams and reams of evidence: We, at the OCC, will start making a decision based on 19 criteria. The banks will have to prove that they complied with 13 of what the OCC call positive indicators, and the banks will have to show that they do not align with six of what the OCC started calling negative indicators.
The procedure, not only did it require reams of evidence, but just trying to read their rule that they put out, it was written in Sanskrit. You would have to hire a bucketload of lawyers to be able to just understand the rule.
Then President Biden's people said: Not only that, we are going to throw out this 15-day rule that, if you don't hear from us within 15 days, your merger is automatically approved.
Well, it threw the merger process for small banks that was working beautifully into total disarray. It just made the whole process more expensive, less efficient, and more expensive for consumers because the costs are passed on.
So in a few minutes, I am going to ask the Senate to reject President Biden's cumbersome rule. I am not going to suggest that we not regulate small bank mergers. I am going to suggest that we go back to the procedure that we were using since 1995, which worked, and that we go back and adopt that procedure. That doesn't mean that the OCC can't revisit it at some point.
But let me just be blunt. What President Biden's OCC people did was put together a plan--a new rule--that looks like it was put together by a heroin addict with a socket wrench. I mean, it is the most convoluted thing you have ever seen.
If we vote yes today--and I hope we do--then we will reject this rule and go back to doing it the old way.
Mr. President, since I have a few minutes, I am going to move to another topic, reconciliation, which you are very familiar with. Thank you for all of your contributions to it, by the way, as we put together the bill.
The American people may be a little confused about what ``reconciliation'' means. As you know, a reconciliation bill is just a budget bill. That is all it is. It deals with spending of taxpayer money.
And why is it important?
Well, first it is going to be important to try to lower the prices that are gutting the American people like a fish. Inflation--President Biden's inflation--was simply pernicious. I don't know of another word for it.
It got to the point--I don't know about in your State, but in my State, you know, people shouldn't have to sell blood plasma to be able to go to the grocery store. They shouldn't. And make no mistake--we all know this--those high prices were man-made. Again, no disrespect, but that man's name was Joe Biden, and that is true.
The first goal of our reconciliation bill is to try to help get those prices down. How are we going to do that? No. 1, we are going to reduce government spending.
Why does that matter? Well, how did we get the inflation? We got the inflation because President Biden's favorite form of spending was more. I said many times if the White House during President Biden's term had discovered life on Mars, they would have sent it money immediately. And it was all this money that they injected into the economy, trillions of dollars, Inflation Reduction Act and the America Rescue Plan. They spent all this money. We had all of this money that came into the economy chasing too few goods, created demand, supply constant, and we had inflation.
So we are going to try to get those prices down--we, meaning this Congress--by reducing the government spending, which will reduce the stimulus to the economy, which, if we do it right, ought to lower interest rates. That is step 1 that we are going to try to achieve in reconciliation.
The second part of reconciliation, we are going to continue to try to reduce the rules and regulations. All of these rules and regulations have a price.
And when you are adding $2 trillion in costs that fall on the backs of businesswomen and businessmen, to stay in business they have got to pass the costs of all those rules and regulations on to the consumer.
So if we can get rid of some of these rules and regulations, like we are going to continue to do in a few minutes when we vote on a rule to get rid of the Biden rule I was just talking about, if we can reduce those rules and regulations, goods and services will cost less.
The third thing we are going to try to do in reconciliation or our ``budget bill,'' if you prefer that term, is redesign the Tax Code so that it looks like somebody designed it on purpose.
Since 1990, average GDP growth in America has been 2 percent a year. Now, that is just not acceptable. When we hit 2.5 percent now of GDP growth, we are so happy we want to go have a toga party. Two and a half percent is not acceptable.
We have got to start growing again at a normal rate. What used to be normal for America was 3 percent. Now,
And the byproduct of that is that wages will go up, and that way people will be making more money so they will be able to afford this inflation that President Biden left us with.
So the first goal of reconciliation is to try to reduce these prices, to try to kill inflation dead, but there is a second equally, some would say more, important reason, as the Presiding Officer well knows. In 2017, this Congress, during President Trump's first term, passed the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. We cut taxes by $4.3 trillion. And, boy, did it work.
The economy took off like a SpaceX rocket ship. Within a year, median household income in America had gone up $4,400, and people at the lower end of the wage scale enjoyed more tax benefits and more money in their pocket than people at the other end.
That is why I have to laugh when my Democratic colleagues say: Well, you know, this was a tax cut for the rich. No, all you have to do is look at the data. Unless you do your research on Twitter, you know that it helped people at the lower end of the wage scale more than those at the upper end. That is the good news.
The bad news is that those tax cuts expire at the end of this year. So we are going to try to extend them and make them permanent in our reconciliation bill. And if we don't, if we don't, then we are going to have a $4.3 trillion tax increase on the American people--$4.3 trillion.
I want the Presiding Officer to think about that when some of our colleagues try to throw up roadblocks to the reconciliation bill. In effect, what they are saying is, they want to raise taxes on the American people by $4.3 trillion. That is the most important thing we want to do in our reconciliation bill. It is not the only important thing, as I mentioned, but it is clearly the most important fact.
If we raise taxes right now, $4.3 trillion on the American people, this economy will begin a journey to the center of the Earth. We cannot let it happen.
Now, I don't want to minimize the importance of the role that reconciliation will play in lowering prices and lowering inflation. That is important. But worse than inflation is depression, and if we don't extend these tax cuts and make them permanent, we are going to be in a depression. And that is really what the reconciliation bill is all about.
I thank the Presiding Officer for his time, I will end like I began. I am not saying everything President Biden and his people did was wrong, but on this rule that they promulgated to hurt small banks, it was just disastrous, and we are going to try to fix it today. And my colleagues will vote with me on this.
We will return some sanity to the merger rules for small banking.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to vote no on S.J. Res. 13. President Trump promised that he would lower costs for American families on day one. He promised to cap interest rates on credit cards at 10 percent, and so what is it that the Senate is prioritizing today? Making it easier for banks to merge, raising the cost of credit for small businesses and households, and eroding banking services in local communities.
This resolution would undo commonsense provisions and improvements to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency bank merger review framework after decades of that office rubberstamping deals that have reduced competition in the banking sector and put community banks all across this country out of business.
Now, we have witnessed small banks just vanishing from our local communities over the past several decades. These are the banks that are deeply rooted in our neighborhoods, that do the painstaking local lending that many small businesses rely on.
Regulators' long record of rubberstamping bank mergers has resulted in scores of branch closures, leaving consumers with fewer choices when it comes to whom to trust with their money.
Between 2006 and 2021, the Federal Reserve approved more than 3,500 consecutive mergers without denying a single one--not even one single no. With the regulators completely asleep at the switch since 1990, the number of banks in the United States has declined from more than 18,000 to fewer than 5,000.
The biggest banks have been the beneficiaries of this consolidation because they have grown even bigger. In the mid-1990s, the 20 biggest banks in this country held a total of 15 percent of all bank assets-- the 20 biggest had 15 percent of all the assets.
Today, the top 20 hold more than 65 percent of all bank assets, and the concentration at the very top is even more extreme. The biggest four banks alone hold more assets than the next 75 banks combined.
This problem can be life or death for small businesses that can't get ahold of anyone at a big bank who understands the local economy or the nuances of their business or their credit needs.
At a big bank, you get a 1-800 number and a cookie-cutter product developed in some far-off headquarters. The problem is even more dire in low-income neighborhoods where research shows that predatory lenders and check cashers proliferate as bank consolidation increases.
Concentrating power into a few financial giants and money centers reduces competition, and it results in Americans paying higher prices for their banking services. That means higher credit card interest rates, higher fees, higher auto loan payments, and unaffordable mortgages. And when these banks become too big to fail, the entire economy feels the pain when those banks' risk-taking blows up, and taxpayers are the ones who have to foot the bill when Wall Street comes in here demanding bailouts.
In recent years, regulators started to wake up to the fact that a highly consolidated banking sector is bad for consumers and bad for our economy. Bank supervisors and antitrust enforcers have been taking a careful look at the rules that guide how mergers are scrutinized, and they finally--finally--began to apply the law, as written by Congress, and they retired the rubberstamp.
In 2024, the OCC, which oversees most of the very largest banks, finalized improvements to the bank merger framework, creating a more comprehensive process and a more transparent process. First, the new rules will end the practice that allows certain mergers to be automatically approved just 15 days after the closing of the public comment period.
This resolution would reinstitute automatic approval just as Elon Musk's, his DOGE, guts the very staff that are reviewing these bank merger applications. It is a dangerous combination to actually say: We are going to do these automatic approvals, give them a really short period of time, and then cut the number of people who are there in the regulatory Agencies to be able to review the mergers.
Second, the updated rules also ensure that all applicants provide regulators with the information they need to weed out harmful transactions and to ensure that the OCC is more transparent about how it weighs certain factors when making a determination for whether to approve or deny a merger, and all that would go away.
The OCC's final rule is a commonsense step to revitalize the bank merger framework after decades of lax review. Passing this resolution would turn back the clock, raise costs for Americans at a time when they can least afford it, and choke off credit even more for the small businesses that need it most.
I urge my colleagues to vote no on S.J. Res. 13. It is bad for consumers, bad for small businesses, and, ultimately, that means it is bad for our economy.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant executive 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.
Under the previous order, all time is expired.
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 PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read the third time, the question is, Shall the joint resolution pass?
I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
The following Senator is necessarily absent: The Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton).
The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 47, as follows:
The joint resolution (S.J. Res. 13) was passed, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
Climate Change
Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor today for the 298th time in my ``Time to Wake Up'' speech series to once again call attention to the looming climate calamity.
I went last week to the Our Ocean Conference--a conference founded by the United States of America and dedicated to protecting our oceans before the damage to them and ultimately to us becomes irrecoverable. It was the 10th such conference, which made it a bit of a benchmark.
I was the entirety of the U.S. delegation. You are looking at it--100 percent of the entire U.S. delegation. Ordinarily, many executive branch officials come. In this case, not one executive branch official attended from the United States. And of course not. This administration is nothing more than hirelings of the fossil fuel industry, and the conference, of course, addressed the harm that fossil fuel emissions are doing in the oceans and the harm that petrochemical plastics are doing in the oceans.
Fossil fuel emissions are heating up the oceans in zettajoules. It is a massive number. The joule, as you probably know, is the unit measure for heat energy. ``Zetta'' means it has 21 zeroes behind it. In more commonly articulated big numbers, it is a billion trillion joules. It looks something like this: 14 zettajoules of heat going into the oceans every single year.
To give a more practical definition, the entire energy production of the human species across the entire planet Earth amounts to one-half of a zettajoule of energy--everything. All the energy sources of humankind produce one-half of a zettajoule of energy every year. That is how much our species relies on.
The price to all of us of the fossil fuel component of that half- zettajoule is that those 14 zettajoules get pushed into the ocean, get absorbed by the ocean, every single year. The heating of the oceans from fossil fuel pollution is more than 30 times the energy used that causes the heating. It is not a part of it; it is multiple of it, magnified by the greenhouse effect. It is not that fossil fuel creates some excess heat and some of that goes into the oceans; the fossil fuel creates changes in the Earth's physical environment that magnify the heat retention of the planet, the so-called greenhouse effect. So for the component of the half zettajoule of human energy use that comprises the entire species' energy, 14 zettajoules of heat go into the ocean.
Put another way, if you imagine the heat energy given off by the nuclear bomb explosion over Hiroshima, multiply that by seven. Seven Hiroshima nuclear detonations' worth of excess heat is what fossil fuel emissions are driving into our oceans every single second--every single second. Every second, seven Hiroshimas' worth of heat.
In the 10 minutes that it takes me to give this speech, the oceans will absorb 4,000 Hiroshima detonations' worth of heat. That is why seawater off the Florida Keys hit jacuzzi temperatures. That is why measuring devices along our coasts show a foot of sea level rise already. That is why fish species are moving about and fisheries are collapsing. That is why the world's coral reefs are bleaching out--over 80 percent of the world's reefs hit in the last ocean heating surge caused by fossil fuel.
The physical disruption of the ocean with this massive injection of multiple Hiroshimas-per-second of excess physical heat is matched by a chemical effect--acidification.
The excess carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere by fossil fuel pollution interacts with the surface of the ocean, covering 70 percent of our planet--so a lot of surface to interact--and it causes the seawater chemically to acidify.
I actually did an experiment here at my desk, blowing the carbon dioxide in my breath through an aquarium bubbler into my water glass. And, sure enough, pH strips showed that the water in the glass acidified, measurably, just from my breath.
Acidification in the ocean degrades structures that are made up of calcium. It injures coral reefs, worsening the problems of pollution and warming. We are headed for a world of dead reefs at this rate. It makes life harder for shelled creatures, particularly in their larval stages, to grow. There are many of them, but one species measurably hit is the pteropod.
Who cares about the humble pteropod, you may ask. Well, you might,
A trawl survey a few years ago off the Pacific Northwest found that most of the pteropod caught in the trawl survey showed what the scientists called severe shell damage--severe shell damage. Pteropods don't survive well in acidified oceans. That much severe shell damage in a foundational species is a bad harbinger of things to come, and it is just one of many harms from fossil fuel emissions acidifying the world's oceans.
Then we get to the other petrochemical problem, plastics. The ocean is awash with marine plastic waste. Unlike natural substances that biodegrade into basic elements that return into the cycle of life that other beings can consume, plastics are manmade. Unlike natural substances, they break down eventually into microplastic and even nanoplastic particles that have no use to anything.
Ocean plastic waste is a menace. Large ocean plastic waste ends up in the bellies of whales, indigestibly, killing them. Ghost gear made of plastic goes about its lethal business with no fisherman ever retrieving the catch, just killing, killing, killing.
Pretty much every sea bird consumes plastic, lodging in its belly, starving its young of real food. You can walk midway island and see the cadavers of dead young birds with stomachs full of indigestible plastic unwittingly fed to them by their parents.
Small creatures consume tiny plastic particles. Bigger creatures consume the small creatures. We consume the bigger creatures. And now we find plastic particles in mothers' breast milk, in human brain tissue samples, even in rain drops over Colorado. Unless we change direction, there will soon be more plastic by weight in the world's oceans than the weight of living fish in the world's oceans.
The plastics and fossil fuel industry may chortle about their profits, but none of this is good for humans. These industries are damaging the natural systems of the planet, the natural systems to which we have adapted as a species, the natural systems that make Earth so beautifully and abundantly livable. And there comes a reckoning. As Pope Francis said, you slap Mother Nature, she will slap you back.
Regrettably, the plastics and fossil fuel industries are also damaging the political systems of the planet, corrupting government so as to disable our ability to remedy their pollution. The question of the moment that people should be asking is why are so many politicians lying to us about climate change? The answer, of course, is money. Fossil fuel money floods our political system, pours into it, much of it secretly.
Politicians, whose home State universities teach about climate change, lie about climate change. How is that possible? It is not like there is some unfathomable mystery about how climate change works that eludes human understanding. No, it is known. There is a counterforce at work against knowledge. Fossil fuel money and political pressure is that counterforce.
That force--that malign, corrupt, political operation of the fossil fuel industry--has now become dangerous. If you delay treatment of a disease, things get worse and a treatable disease can become lethal. If you delay dealing with termites in your house, things get worse, and it is no longer a repair but a teardown.
The fossil fuel political operation, for very selfish reasons, has delayed the remedies that would have given us a broad pathway to climate safety, and it is now getting dangerous.
The control of our government by this political operation is right now complete. Neither House of Congress will do anything right now to avert the looming danger. After asking for $1 billion from the fossil fuel industry and getting massive donations, our madman President says there is no danger--a supposedly educated man calling our climate perils a ``hoax.''
His executive officials are all in tow to the fossil fuel industry, doing exactly as they are told--puppets on a fossil fuel string. They even put Justices on the Supreme Court to ignore the facts about climate danger.
Here is their problem, which is our problem as well: Politics responds to money, but nature, she can't be bought. She couldn't care less. Nature will keep administering the consequences dictated by natural laws, by laws of physics and chemistry, and biology.
I flew home from the Our Ocean Conference, thanks to our understanding of those natural laws when you honor those laws, aerodynamics and metallurgy, and make flying from Seoul, Korea, to Dulles airport outside Washington, DC, possible. Dishonoring those laws is foolhardy and dangerous. Dishonoring those laws for money is reprehensible and dangerous.
A corrupted U.S. Government, a polluted planet, and trillions-- literally trillions--of dollars in economic harm is headed our way fast, well and completely predicted, all from the bad behavior of a greedy and amoral industry that knows no bounds--not of decency, not of honesty, and certainly, not of protection for our planet. If taking that fight on is not a fight worth having, I don't know what is.
I yield the floor.
Addressing the Homework Gap Through the E-Rate Program
Mr. President, I rise this evening in strong opposition to S.J. Res. 7, the Congressional Review Act resolution that would repeal the Federal Communications Commission's commonsense rule allowing schools and libraries to use E-Rate funds--``E-Rate'' stands for ``Education Rate funds''--to ensure that there is access to the educational tools of a school or a library to every child in America, and that would occur by extending out the way in which we view this program so that Wi-Fi hotspots can be provided to students and to educators so that they can use them even when they are not in the school, even when they are not in the library.
If we pass this resolution--the resolution which the Republicans are malevolently bringing out onto the floor--we are not simply undoing a regulation; we are pulling the plug on progress in our country; we are abandoning millions of students who lack the internet access needed to complete their homework, to attend class, to reach their full potential.
This repeal will widen educational disparities in our country, it will deepen the digital divide, and it will slam shut the doors of opportunity for millions of children in our country.
We should be doing everything in our power to close the homework gap that exists between rich and poor in our Nation, not reopen it, not make that homework gap even larger, making it more difficult for poor kids to get access to these educational tools they need. In this modern era, that absolutely meets the definition of a Wi-Fi hotspot. That is the society of 2025. You have to move to that era.
That homework gap is the cruel chasm that separates students who have reliable internet access at home from those who don't. It is a gap that existed long before the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was laid bare when schools closed and kids were forced to learn from kitchen tables and living rooms. For some, the transition was difficult; for others, it was impossible. For too many children, especially in low-income, rural, and Black and Brown communities, they were locked out of virtual learning because, simply, they lacked a basic internet connection.
You didn't have to worry about the families that had a good income. Those kids had internet at home when their schools were shut down during COVID. But you had to create some kind of a solution for kids who didn't have that at home.
We saw the stories of the students sitting in parking lots outside fast-food restaurants just to pick up a Wi-Fi signal strong enough to complete their assignments. We saw families choosing between paying rent and paying for broadband. We saw the urgent, indisputable need for action.
In that moment of need, Congress stepped up. We passed, at my request, $7 billion to help provide hotspots and other connectivity tools to students and educators. Demand was overwhelming in our Nation. We had a COVID shutdown. Schools were closed, and there was going to be a huge digital divide which would open up because kids in the suburbs, for the most
The program, as it was implemented, however, helped nearly 18 million students at 10,000 schools and libraries connect to the internet. I am very proud of that. It was a big difference in the lives of those kids. But that funding ran out, leaving millions of students across the country at risk of falling back into the digital divide.
That is why, last year, the Federal Communications Commission took steps to extend the reach of the E-Rate Program--a program that I was proud to author in 1996 in the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
If I can take you back to that period of time, not one home in America had broadband. We still lived in an analog world, not a digital world. We lived in a world of dial-up internet technology. Broadband had not been deployed.
So the legislation, which I am proud to have been the House author of, along with Senators--what we did was we broke down every monopoly that existed. The telephone monopolies, the cable monopolies--they all were eliminated. Telephone companies could do what cable companies do. Cable companies could do what telephone companies do. All of a sudden, Comcast can offer phone service, and Verizon and AT&T can offer cable service. So they need to deploy broadband in order to accommodate all this information.
We are going to move very rapidly into a digital era, into a broadband era, and it happened pretty much in the blink of an eye for about 80 percent of our country. We are still working on the final 10 percent of our Nation, but for the most part, it happened by the year 2000, 2001. It was done. People had it. Broadband was deployed.
But what we did was we said to ourselves: We have got to take care of the poorest kids in our country as we move rapidly on a technological revolution. Yes, the economy is going to be absolutely exploding. In fact, about $1.5 trillion worth of private sector investment was put into that broadband expansion in just a 5-year period. It was incredible. It transformed our Nation.
A 14-year-old girl today thinks that she has an entitlement to a 65- inch screen in her living room and a little digital device on her lap at the same time. That didn't exist in the year 2000. It all happened in the blink of an eye.
Now, what would happen, though, to the kids that didn't come from suburban or wealthier families? So what I suggested was that we have a program, an education program, so that every time someone made a little phone call, there would be a little tax on it, and that tax would then create a fund. I called it the education fund, the Education Rate, and it ultimately just had a nickname called E-Rate. That is what helps to provide for internet service in schools--in schools in Harlem or Roxbury, MA, inner city, Washington, DC. That is what helps to supplement that, to make it possible for every kid to have access to the internet.
That program works, and so far, it has spent about $70 billion. It is still the largest educational technology program in the history of the United States--$70 billion, very profitable. But times change, and we learn about what has to happen as we are changing the way in which our country operates and new technologies get developed.
So, yes, we had that revolution from the 1996 act. I am very proud of it. We called the companies that got created Google, eBay, Amazon, Hulu, YouTube. I am very proud of that. We wanted a Darwinian, paranoia-inducing revolution out in the marketplace. We would no longer be tied to this old telecommunications system that Alexander Graham Bell would have recognized. No. We were moving on to the future, but with it, we had to bring along the young people in our Nation, and I mean every young person had to have access to it in their school, at their desk. So it was ensured to make sure that the schools and libraries had the connectivity which they needed. That is essentially what the E-Rate Program is all about.
But as the technology evolved, so too did the nature of education in our Nation, and today, learning doesn't end when the school bell rings. Learning follows students home, and so should internet access for everybody--everybody.
The Federal Communications Commission's decision to allow schools and libraries to lend Wi-Fi hotspots was not a radical idea; it was a responsible idea. It recognized that in the 21st century, a student's ability to succeed should not depend on whether their parents can afford a broadband subscription. It helped ensure that millions of students that relied upon the Emergency Connectivity Fund during the pandemic wouldn't suddenly lose access to crucial connectivity at home.
In other words, the Federal Communications Commission learned from what happened during the pandemic, learned from what happened when I was able to move over the $7 billion for these Wi-Fi hotspots to help kids at home get it, and they said: Well, do you know what we should do? We should just make sure that no student is left offline. We will make it a permanent program. And they passed that regulation.
You don't have to take my word for this. In study after study, it has been shown that students without access to broadband internet at home performed worse than their better educated, better connected classmates. It is not that these kids are smarter in the suburbs than the kids in the inner city. Those kids are just as smart. But you can't allow an education gap because the kids who have access are going to get a better education because they have access to the technology by which young people in our Nation get their education in the 21st century. So you have to make sure everyone gets access to it; otherwise, without access to broadband internet at home, those kids are going to perform worse than their better connected classmates. It is not that their intelligence is less than the kids in the suburbs. It is not that they wouldn't study as hard. They would. It is just that they don't have access.
The Department of Education's National Assessment of Educational Progress, for example, has repeatedly shown that high-performing students had much better access to the internet at home. I don't think you have to be Horace Mann--the founder of the public school system in the United States--to think that that makes sense. Of course it does.
In 2023, a study of Michigan students found that a student without access to home internet earned significantly lower grades--actually, 0.6 lower on the 4.0 scale--than their connected classmates. Not because they weren't as intelligent. Not because they wouldn't have learned equally well on their device. But you need the device. You need access. You need a Wi-Fi hotspot. You need internet at home. You need something that is going to help you to compete.
By the way, we have another word for those kids. We call them the future of the 21st century in the United States of America. Kids that are 20 percent of our population, they are 100 percent of our future. We are living in a digital world, and it is a portable skill set that every child should be able to take to anywhere they want to go in the world for the rest of their lives. It will be a skill set that employs them, educates them, makes them better citizens. But you can't reach that stage if you are denying it to them when they are 6 years old, 8 years old, 10 years old, 12 years old, and expect them to be able to compete with the kids that come from wealthier families. That is what this vote is all about. It is all about that one issue.
When I was a boy, I had my books. I could take them home. My father drove a truck for the Hood Milk company. I would take my books home. The school superintendent's kids would bring their books home. I could compete against them. Books are equal. That is not the world we live in anymore. If you don't have the internet at home, the other kids essentially have their books in their knapsack. It is called their iPad. They have their home computer. They have access.
I am only here because it was books and I could compete against any kid in Malden, MA, in a blue-collar community. That is why I am a Senator. I had never even been to Washington before I got elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. That was my first visit to Washington. I am 29, 30 years old, but I have been competing because you give me the books you give the kid
As a matter of fact, I actually sit here at the desk which Jimmy Stewart--``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington''--had in the movie ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.'' He had never been to Washington. I had never been to Washington.
But it didn't mean you couldn't do a good job if you had access to the same tools that young people had in the best school systems in America. That is what this debate is all about. It is about ensuring that every child has access to the internet through a Wi-Fi hotspot if they need it.
If the school, the library, says we have got to help them at home, they don't have it--because that kid will fall behind the kids who have it. And it won't have anything to do with their ability, won't have anything to with their desire to be a full participant in this great American experiment.
A study using Census Bureau data estimated that individuals with greater access to the computer and internet at home spent 28 percent more hours learning than those kids without that access. I mean, do we really need a study of this? Of course not. We know that is the truth.
So as this evidence on home connectivity piles up, there is no debate: Students without access to internet at home are seriously disadvantaged compared to their classmates, plain and simple.
I identified with this because my father was a truck driver. We didn't have trips to the Himalayas. We didn't have some kind of summer school at universities to help out my brothers and me when we were 15, 16, or 17. But we didn't feel deprived because we had the same books as the kids in the suburbs, in the private schools. We had the same books; and I am going to study as hard as I can.
Today, that is not possible. If you don't have a Wi-Fi hotspot, you can't do it. If you don't have internet at home, you can't do it. You might want to do it, but you can't do it. And by the way, they know they don't have it. They can see the kids on the other side of town who have it. They know it. They are 9; they are 10; they are 11; they are 12. They know it. That is what this program is all about. It is just to say: You have got it; you have got it at home. Go to it. Be whoever you can be.
These Republicans, they are going to vote this program out of existence. This is the great equalizer. This is the access to opportunity. This is democratization of access to opportunity through education, which is supposed to be the foundation of our country.
You know, when I grew up, I would look at Abe Lincoln and his story. I would look at the movies about Abe Lincoln. He would be reading books by candlelight in his house on the prairie. That is all you needed, was the light, because the book was there. You could do it.
Well, without a Wi-Fi hotspot, there is nothing to read. Your device is not working. You are denying that ambitious, hard-working, imaginative, creative young person--by the way, disproportionately Black and Brown in our Nation--from having the same opportunities that we have provided for 250 years since the dawn of our country.
So we are putting these young people at a serious disadvantage compared to their classmates. So now my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, they want to just take that tool away. They want to rip the hotspots out of students' hands. Why? Let's just listen to a few of their arguments.
First, the Congressional Review Act supporters say: The hotspots rule is illegal.
This is simply untrue. It is not illegal.
In section 254 of the Communications Act, Congress provided the FCC with flexibility to adapt the E-Rate program for changing times and educational conditions. How do I know? I am the author of that provision. So when people tell me it is illegal, it is not illegal. I wrote the provision which says the Federal Communications Commission can do this for the children of our Nation.
Second, the Congressional Review Act supporters argue that the hotspots rule endangers students by allowing them to access inappropriate content, including on social media.
False. That is also not true. Under the Children's Internet Protection Act, schools and libraries receiving E-Rate dollars must ensure that hotspots block or filter images that are obscene or harmful to minors.
By the way, with all the crocodile tears coming down from my colleagues on the other side about their concern for children, I have had a children's online privacy protection act pending here in the Senate for years that gives total privacy protection to children under the age of 17 in our Nation, and we can't get it passed.
Why can't we get it passed? Because too many Republicans are concerned about what the big social media companies might say to them.
Well, where is their concern, then, for the poor child being exposed? Not there. They should be more concerned about what Meta is doing to them, what Google is doing to them, what those big companies are doing--because, under the law, it can't happen under the E-Rate dollars. It can't happen. It is illegal. We need another law to pass that makes it illegal to let the big social media companies in our country do the same thing.
If my colleagues are really so concerned about children's online privacy and safety, I urge them to support my legislation--if they care about it--because that would block it.
Third, they say that the program is wasteful.
That is false. Again, the hotspots rule limits the amount of money that can be requested by an E-Rate applicant and prohibits the duplication of the funding. It is all written into the law.
Let me be clear: This repeal will not save the taxpayer a dime. What does the resolution really do? It doesn't make our schools stronger. It doesn't make our libraries better. It doesn't improve student outcomes. It doesn't lower your taxes. It doesn't save the government money. All it does is strip away a lifeline for the children in our Nation who need it the most, that they can take it home with them, that they can study at home. That is it.
So this E-Rate expansion didn't just connect students; it connected futures. It helped make good on the promise that every child, regardless of their income, their race, their geography deserves a fair shot at learning, and that promise is worth defending. It is worth defending.
Education is a great equalizer. It is the foundation of our democracy, the engine of our economy, and the heartbeat of our shared American dream that any child, regardless of where they come from, regardless of who their mother and father is, can dream the great dreams. But we have to give them access to the tools they need in order to maximize all of their God-given abilities.
In today's world, to be cut off from the digital world is to be cut off from education. And that means that broadband is not a luxury; it is a necessity. It is an essential tool as much as a textbook or schoolbus or a lunch program. This is not a partisan issue. It is not a liberal issue. It is not a conservative issue. It is a children's issue. It is an American issue. It is who we should be. It is a fairness issue.
I urge my colleagues to not vote to deepen inequality. Instead, vote to affirm our values. Vote to defend every child's right to learn, to thrive, to reach for the stars. Let's reject this resolution and recommit ourselves to closing the homework gap so that all children have equal access to learning.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
