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21Senate Resolution 262: To Authorize Testimony, Document Production, and Representation by the Senate Legal Counsel in the Case of in Re Architect of the Capitol Employment Dispute
Twenty-one bills and three resolutions were introduced, as follows: S. 1938-1958, and S. Res. 261-263.
Pages S3234-35
Measures Passed
Authorizing testimony, document production, and representation: Senate agreed to S. Res. 262, to authorize testimony, document production, and representation by the Senate Legal Counsel in the case of In re Architect of the Capitol Employment Dispute.
Page S3237
O'Neill Nomination: Agreement
Senate resumed consideration of the nomination of James O'Neill, of California, to be Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Pages S3222-30
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 51 yeas to 46 nays (Vote No. EX. 290), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Page S3222
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing for further consideration of the nomination, post-cloture, at approximately 10 a.m., on Thursday, June 5, 2025, under the order of Tuesday, June 3, 2025; that notwithstanding Rule XXII, the motions to invoke cloture filed during the session of the Senate of Tuesday, June 3, 2025, ripen following disposition of the nomination of James O'Neill, and if cloture is invoked on the nomination of John Andrew Eisenberg, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Attorney General, the post-cloture time expire at 1:45 p.m., on Thursday, June 5, 2025; and that if cloture is invoked on the nomination of Brett Shumate, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Attorney General, all post-cloture time be expired, and Senate vote on confirmation of the nomination of Brett Shumate at a time to be determined by the Majority Leader, in consultation with Democratic Leader on Monday, June 9, 2025.
Page S3237
Nominations Confirmed
Senate confirmed the following nominations: By 48 yeas to 46 nays (Vote No. EX. 291), Michelle Bowman, of Kansas, to be Vice Chairman for Supervision of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for a term of four years.
Pages S3211-18, S3230, S3237
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 51 yeas to 46 nays (Vote No. EX. 288), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Page S3218
By 57 yeas to 38 nays (Vote No. EX. 292), Edward Walsh, of New Jersey, to be Ambassador to Ireland.
Pages S3218-22, S3230, S3237
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 60 yeas to 37 nays (Vote No. EX. 289), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Page S3218
Nomination Received
Senate received the following nomination: 1 Air Force nomination in the rank of general.
Page S3237
Statements on Introduced Bills/Resolutions:
Pages S3235-36
Record Votes
Five record votes were taken today. (Total--292)
Pages S3218, S3222, S3230-31
Adjournment
Senate convened at 10 a.m. and adjourned at 7:16 p.m., until 10 a.m. on Thursday, June 5, 2025. (For Senate's program, see the remarks of the Majority Leader in today's Record on page S3237.)
Every speech and line is the Congressional Record's own text, read from GovInfo. Speakers are matched to members by GPO's own metadata. Referandom places each turn on the Clerk's video by matching its words: 19 of 107 spoken turns were found. Turns without a time are still listed; they just can't seek.
Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act (Executive Session)
Mr. President, the month of June is considered National Dairy Month, and this has been going on for decades and decades. And to kick things off, the Senate Agriculture Committee passed a bill that is entitled the ``Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act.'' That was voted out of committee yesterday, and it was voted out unanimously.
This bill is a very important piece of legislation, of which I am proud to be a cosponsor. Not only will it help the dairy industry, but it is going to restore great-tasting and nutritious dairy products to our Nation's school lunch program. Specifically, it is going to allow chocolate milk, whole milk, and 2-percent milk, instead of the requirements of the existing law that these kids in school can only drink skim milk.
The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act is also the first piece of legislation that the Senate Ag Committee has marked up in nearly 3 years. Its passage represents the bipartisan work that the Senate Agriculture Committee has a good reputation on delivering.
I look forward to the final passage of the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act here on the Senate floor. Hopefully, it is very, very soon.
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, Senate Republicans are continuing to work on a reconciliation bill that makes America stronger and more prosperous. An important component of this bill is what it does on energy.
Republicans spent a lot of time last year talking about how the Biden administration's hostility to conventional energy production was putting America on a dangerous trajectory in the future, and we promised that we would work to unleash American energy dominance, if we were put in charge. We have been working to deliver on that promise since January, and that work continues with the reconciliation bill that we will take up this month.
Energy is essential. Without a reliable energy supply, our homes, schools, hospitals, businesses, factories--and our entire country-- literally, would grind to a halt. It is the critical resource, and we can't afford to get it wrong.
But the Biden administration took us down the wrong path. It restricted development of America's conventional energy resources. It imposed regulations that heaped new burdens and costs on conventional energy producers, and it implemented an electric vehicle mandate that would have put an enormous new strain on our already wobbly electric grid.
The United States is rapidly heading toward an energy crisis where we simply don't have the supply to meet the
Meanwhile, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned of ``mounting resource adequacy challenges'' in the next decade.
That is a pretty serious situation, but, fortunately, we can do something about it. We have an abundance of natural resources, from the Gulf of America to the North Slope of Alaska.
The Biden administration seemed to view those resources as a liability, but Republicans recognize these resources as the assets that they are, and our reconciliation bill will help unleash these resources to promote a stable, secure, and affordable energy supply.
It will open up leases on America's lands and waters for responsible conventional energy development. It will expand production opportunities for essential energy resources that the Biden administration tried to put on the sidelines.
As I indicated earlier, leveraging our natural resources through the reconciliation bill is just one part of the Republicans' energy agenda. For the last several months, we have been hard at work eliminating burdensome regulations that threatened to stifle energy development in our country.
We blocked implementation of the Biden natural gas tax, which would have driven up energy prices and destroyed jobs in the energy sector. And we intend to do away with this misguided tax in the reconciliation bill that we will be considering soon.
We have also repealed Biden-era energy regulations for household appliances and business equipment--regulations that would have driven up costs and reduced choice, with little environmental benefit.
And the House and Senate moved to prevent California from imposing a de facto electric vehicle mandate on the whole country.
The Biden administration sought to tie up American energy, but under the Trump administration and a Republican Congress, that era is over. Instead of a Green New Deal, we are giving a green light to energy producers. We are allowing Americans to benefit from our country's resources, and we are working to ensure a secure, reliable, and affordable energy supply for the long term.
Mr. President, our reconciliation bill will help put us on the path to that secure energy future. I look forward to taking it up later this month.
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, over the past few days, Donald Trump has bent over backwards to try to sell his so-called Big Beautiful Bill with a new lie. He said no one will lose healthcare coverage. He says no benefits will be slashed. He says the bill won't harm a single recipient. He is lying. This is all total nonsense, and Senate Republicans need to reject Donald Trump's snake oil sales pitch.
I implore my Senate colleagues, tread carefully with your Big Beautiful Bill. If you pass this bill, it won't be Donald Trump's soothing words that will be enacted in your States but, rather, deep and devastating harm to your constituents. And your constituents, Senate Republicans, will hold you responsible for going along with Donald Trump's ruse.
If you go down this road, he will take away coverage from kids, from seniors, from parents, from moms. You will put doctors and nurses out of work. You will put rural hospitals in particular jeopardy since they depend on Medicaid, Medicare, and government help to stay going. They are often the biggest employer in your rural counties, Senate Republicans. They are often the only source of healthcare.
When Americans see this is all to make the ultrarich even richer, they will know that it was this nasty bill that made it happen.
Donald Trump's Big Beautiful Bill is repeal and replace by another name. Here are the facts:
Under the bill, over 14 million would lose healthcare coverage. As bad as this bill is, we just got news that it will get even worse. CBO today will announce that it is not 14 million people kicked off but more--estimates as high as 15 million.
The Republican bill will kick even more people off healthcare than we originally thought--not only by attacking Medicaid but by destabilizing the ACA, private insurance, and now even Medicare--even Medicare.
So this bad bill is getting worse. The estimates of how many people will lose their healthcare coverage goes up and up and up each time we read the fine print. The closer and closer people look at the bill, the worse and worse it gets.
Tens of millions of Americans who otherwise qualify for healthcare would be mummified in new redtape, shortened enrollment periods, higher premiums, and weaker coverage. People would fall through the cracks and get phased out of coverage altogether in the coming years. It is death by a thousand paper cuts, and that is no accident; that is the intention of the Republican bill.
And let's talk about fraud. Donald Trump says, well, it is just knocking out fraud. Democrats would love to work with Republicans to eliminate fraud and waste in healthcare, but the bill Republicans have right now does not accomplish that. It is aimed at real people--real people who need healthcare, taking that away. This Big Beautiful Bill uses the fraud boogeyman as an excuse to kick people out of healthcare who would otherwise qualify, including people with jobs, including people with kids.
The only fraud happening right now is the fraudulent sales pitch coming from Donald Trump and his statement that he won't boot anyone from coverage. That is the fraud here. The fraud is the lies Donald Trump is telling Republicans about this bill, that people won't lose coverage. That is a lie. That is the fraud. Republicans should know that and reject this awful Big Beautiful Bill before it is too late.
Mr. President, I come to the floor today having just listened to the minority leader in the Senate talk about his view of the world and the economy and what the American people are seeing. Well, it is a misguided view, misunderstood, because he is clearly not seeing what so many Americans are seeing today in their lives.
So I rise to share some outstanding economic news with the Nation because people back home are seeing that America is getting back on track.
Americans want, need, and voted for affordable prices. Today, inflation is at a 4-year low. Inflation has fallen every month since President Trump and Republicans took office.
Americans want, need, and voted for higher wages. Income has risen nearly every month--actually, every month--since President Trump and Republicans took office.
Americans want, need, and voted for affordable groceries. Egg prices have dropped 61 percent under Republican leadership.
Today, Americans are feeling upbeat about the economy. Last month brought the largest boost in consumer confidence in 4 years. Americans are confident about their future. A majority of Americans now say the country is finally heading in the right direction. This is after 4 years of high prices.
CNN's own poll this weekend--this is CNN--they found that Republicans have a better economic plan than the Democrats. Not by 1 point--no, no, CNN didn't say by 1 point or by 2 points, but by 12 points--double digits. In the CNN poll, Republicans have a better economic plan than the Democrats. When it comes to the economy, Americans trust Republicans over Democrats. CNN on-air reporters appeared shocked and stunned--the video is astonishing.
Look, Americans trust us because they are seeing real results. They are seeing Senate Republicans here fighting for them. Republicans have used the Congressional Review Act to reverse 18 punishing regulations and rules out of the previous administration. The most recent was when we ended California's leftwing electric vehicle mandate. You remember that? That is the one that said you had to buy an electric car. They were going to ban gas-powered cars by the year 2035. We got rid of that, and the American people are grateful.
Now we are working on a comprehensive economic plan to deliver safety and prosperity for all Americans. Here are the facts: Republicans are committed to stopping a $4 trillion Democrat tax increase. It would be the biggest tax increase in American history. We cannot let it happen, in spite of the fact that the Democrats want it to happen. We also cut taxes on tips and overtime. Hard-working Americans will keep more of the hard-earned money and put it in their pockets, not in the government till. Seniors will be able to keep more of their social security. They have earned it.
Republicans will also strengthen Medicaid for Americans who need it. Medicaid is a vital service. But let's talk about those who need it, because it is a trillion-dollar program, and what we see is that billions of dollars are being lost year after year to not just waste, fraud, abuse, but also to corruption. And that is taking the resources away from the people who need it.
Remember, it is the Democrats who put millions upon millions of healthy, working-age adults onto Medicaid. Many of them absolutely refuse to work. Democrats want them to stay on Medicaid forever; Republicans want them to find a job.
So the American Enterprise Institute, an organization that everyone in the Senate is familiar with, they came out with a report last week and said how nondisabled Medicaid recipients without children spend their time. So let's take a look at how folks who are working-age individuals who choose not to work who are taking Medicaid benefits-- interfering with sometimes other people who need the Medicaid much more than they do. But how is it working? How do they spend their time?
Well, for Medicaid recipients who are not working, they say that, after sleeping, watching television and playing video games is how they spend their time. How much time? An average of 4.2 hours per day watching television and playing video games, rather than looking for work or working or volunteering or in school or education or preparing themselves to work. Apparently, they spend about 22 minutes looking for work. It is quite a disproportionate effort that shows where their priorities are. They are not looking for jobs. They are not looking to
The American people are fed up with that sort of abuse of our taxpayer dollars.
It was Democrats who gave 1.4 million illegal immigrants Medicaid benefits. How many people in our home States want that to happen? Very few in my home State and, Mr. President, I am sure very few in yours.
The California Governor--do you know what he wants? He wants to add even more illegal immigrants onto the Medicaid rolls.
Republicans want Medicaid for Americans who need it, not for 1.4 million illegal immigrants.
And it was the Democrats who spent over $1.8 billion from Medicaid for transgender surgeries for minors. How many people in our home States think that is a use of government money?
Republicans will also unleash affordable, reliable American energy. These are the things that are making the economy strong, that lower prices at gas stations and on electric bills.
Senate Republicans are building a stronger, more prosperous America. That is why we have such good economic news and why people are saying: Yes, we are getting on the right track.
What are the Senate Democrats doing? They continue to be committed to obstructing the Republican agenda, and they say they are going to do it every step along the way. That is what we see coming from the minority leader. They want to stop President Trump from even getting his team in place. The Democrats are filibustering every one of the President's nominees.
Actually, by the end of this week, the Senate Republicans will have confirmed 74 nominees from President Trump that he nominated since January--74 nominated. The Democrats have filibustered 73 of the 74. The only one they didn't was Senator Marco Rubio. In the Foreign Relations Committee, last week, they said, ``We are sorry we voted for you,'' because they don't like what he is doing.
I reviewed nomination records stretching back to the 1980s. Thirteen of these positions that require confirmation in the Senate have never before had a rollcall vote in the U.S. Senate--done by voice vote or unanimous consent. The Democrats have filibustered all of them. That is how obstructive they are.
They filibustered the Chief of Protocol for the State Department or the Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security. These are not controversial individuals. These are people that the Democrats say we are just going to try to stop President Trump no matter what he tries to do.
They even filibustered the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, all to tie up the Senate, to waste time, and to try to slow down an administration that is working so hard to get our country back from the last 4 years of open borders and high prices that cost them the House, the Senate, and the White House.
These aren't based on objections of somebody's qualifications for those positions. This is all meant to obstruct President Trump and obstruct the will of the voters. Lest the minority leader forget, it is President Trump who won all seven of the battleground States in the Presidential election in November of 2024.
Well, Republicans are working through it. We have confirmed every one of President Trump's Cabinet at a record pace, and we are going to continue to work on all of these qualified nominees and get them all confirmed.
We are united on whether it is confirming nominations or passing our comprehensive economic plan. We are united on our mission. We will build an America that is safe and prosperous and strong, and not just for today but for generations to come.
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, one of the most important innovations that President Trump has brought to the Nation is the Department of Government Efficiency. And, of course, this has been headed by Elon Musk, during his term as a temporary government employee. But the good news is that the work of the Department of Government Efficiency--or DOGE, as it is called around here--lives on, and that is reflected in the fact that the Office of Management and Budget has sent its first rescissions package to Capitol Hill.
For those who don't follow the process of procedures here in Washington, DC, the rescissions package is important because it allows Congress to codify the important progress that the Department of Government Efficiency has made in identifying and starting to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse within the Federal Government.
And what DOGE found under the leadership of Elon Musk is a target- rich environment. During the last several months, DOGE has uncovered numerous examples of blatant government waste and abuse. These range from commonsense efficiency reforms to canceling programs that are outright nonsensical uses of the taxpayers' hard-earned money.
According to the website, the Department of Government Efficiency estimates that they identified $175 billion in savings, or approximately $1,100 per taxpayer.
I know some in the media have said: Well, that is peanuts; that doesn't count.
Well, tell the taxpayers who have to pay $1,100 in additional taxes a year to fund an inefficient government that has waste and fraud within it.
The truth is, we have more work to do, and this is just a start. That, to me, is the most important point to make. This is just a start. President Trump and Mr. Musk have changed the culture here in Washington, DC, and changed the conversation.
We know that our national debt has now surpassed $36 trillion, and that is an amount of money that I know no human mind can fully comprehend. But here is how I begin to get at it: when we start to think that we are spending more money on interest on the national debt than we are to defend the Nation, our most important job. That to me is shocking, and it is a mandate to get our spending under better control.
This isn't a matter of not taxing the American people enough. There isn't enough money to tax people for. It is a spending problem, and we need to get spending under control. We have multiple opportunities, and one of those is with this rescissions package.
DOGE started out with an ambitious goal of a 15-percent reduction in government spending of about $1 trillion. Again, this is what the media has pooh-poohed and said: Well, they haven't come anywhere near their target.
But, again, the most important point I can make is this is just the beginning. I don't see the work of DOGE being finished but, rather, being a starting place. Again, I think, perhaps, the most important contribution is it has changed the conversation here in Washington, DC. When people realize the egregious expenditures of their hard-earned tax dollars, then they say: Well, what more is there? Is this just scraping the surface?
And the fact of the matter is, it is.
When I look at some of the items included in this rescissions package from the Office of Management and Budget, I think this package will sell itself--or should sell itself--to people with any common sense.
It rescinds $67,000--a small amount, but small amounts add up--for testing insect powder nutrition on children in Madagascar--whatever that is.
Similarly, it rescinds more than $1 million for LGBTQI+ programs in places like Uganda and the Western Balkans. Why are we spending tax dollars in Uganda and the Balkans for programs and projects like that? Surely, it doesn't seem like a priority to me.
And if that were not enough, the DOGE recommendations, now embraced within this rescissions package, cut millions of dollars for Green New Deal-style programs, not in America but around the world. The bill rescinds $6 million appropriated for ``net zero cities'' in Mexico, half a million dollars for electric buses in Rwanda, and $2.1
Again, budgets are about priorities, and I can't imagine a world in which these would be the most urgent priorities for the Nation, as our debt exceeds $36 trillion.
But just when you thought these programs couldn't be more absurd, they become more absurd as you look further. It rescinds $4 million for ``legume systems research'' and $3 million for Iraqi Sesame Street.
Well, I think if we were to ask my constituents back home in Texas if they want their hard-earned dollars spent for ridiculous projects like including creating cartoon shows in the Middle East, they would say ``no'' loudly and emphatically.
In many respects, DOGE has shown a bright light on what, for a long time, has been a black hole in Washington, DC. Taxpayers know they send a lot of their hard-earned money to Washington, DC, and I think most Americans--patriotic Americans--if they thought this money was necessary and put to good use, then they would say: OK, that is part of the price we pay for living in the most prosperous, safest, strongest country in the world.
But when they see their money spent like this, they know something is terribly wrong.
So as I say, perhaps, the most important contribution that President Trump and Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have made is to shape the conversation, both on and off Capitol Hill, about government waste.
Many of the incredibly impressive team members who were hired as part of the DOGE initiatives have been hired on more permanently in various Agencies. So DOGE is not going away, even though Elon Musk has returned back to do work on his companies and is no longer on the Federal Government payroll.
I am not sure he ever got paid, by the way. I think he volunteered his time.
If you think about this for a minute, it is quite a momentous, but in some ways paradoxical, achievement. The nature of bureaucrats in government is to grow and grow and grow. And, over time, our Federal Government has simply become so large and unwieldy. We needed something like the Department of Government Efficiency to come in and begin to, No. 1, identify the problem and to, No. 2, begin to help us chip away at some of the outlandish spending, some of which I have mentioned a moment ago. But the good thing about this change in the conversation and this change in the culture here in Washington, DC, is that the efforts of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, will continue even after the current occupants of those positions move back to the private sector.
What DOGE has done is to have hired a team of people of incredible accomplishment in the private sector to help eliminate waste, and these cost-cutting efforts have become a quintessential, whole-of-government effort within the Trump administration.
The efforts to get our spending under control, though, do not begin or end with DOGE. We need to play our part in Congress to make sure this work does not go to waste. The way we do that initially is by taking up and passing this rescissions package. Since Congress holds the power of the purse, through the appropriations process, we have the power to rescind these funds when they are shown to be not appropriately expended or used. So this rescissions package from the Office of Management and Budget is a gift on a silver platter, and I look forward to taking up the bill and passing it soon.
But when it comes to eliminating wasteful Washington spending and trying to chip away at this incredibly large debt and the interest payments we are having to make on the debt, which jeopardizes everything else important in the government, including our national security, in addition to the rescissions package, we have the budget reconciliation bill, which was passed by the House and is now being considered here in the Senate--what has come to be known as the Big Beautiful Bill.
This bill is important, as I learned from small businesses in Texas last week as I traveled around the State. I asked them: What was the impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that we passed in 2017 during President Trump's first term? They said the impact was pretty dramatic. It allowed them to hire new employees, to invest in new equipment, to grow their businesses, and to provide more job opportunities for hard- working Texans.
The truth is that unless we extend those expiring provisions soon, all of that will go away, and they will have to begin to cut employment, they will no longer be able to grow their businesses, and they will no longer be able to provide additional benefits to their employees.
So the tax cuts that we will implement in the Big Beautiful Bill will allow those small businesses and individuals to prosper and, in turn, grow our economy, which will benefit everybody.
We also have savings opportunities in the Big Beautiful Bill, things like eliminating the Inflation Reduction Act, which was inappropriately named. I don't know from what Agency or corner of the Capitol--behind a door that is unnamed--these names come from, but the idea of the Inflation Reduction Act from its inception was laughable because it did nothing to reduce inflation. In fact, it made it worse by pouring gasoline on the fire.
The fact of the matter is, Bidenomics resulted in an incredible amount of additional spending, which created 40-year high inflation, and now that is sort of baked into the cake in everything we do here in America--when you go to the grocery store, for small businesses in terms of their inputs and the things they need in order to produce their products. If you ask folks in the agricultural sector, everything they use for inputs to grow a crop or to produce livestock has all gone up thanks to the wasteful spending of the Biden era.
So we need to begin to cut back on some of these wasteful spending projects, and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act is an important place to start.
We also need to do smart things when it comes to some of the other expenditures of the Federal Government--for example, so-called means- tested programs. We sometimes refer to that generically as ``welfare''--in other words, the safety net to help people who need a helping hand.
Government does have a role to play, but these are means-tested programs, which means that only people below certain economic levels qualify. Over time, we know that able-bodied adults who should be working and contributing to the economy, contributing to their families, to their communities, and to the Nation are receiving these benefits and are not working at all, and that has to change. That has to change. So particularly in our means-tested programs, there has to be a work requirement for able-bodied adults.
Plus, if you talk to employers around the country, as I have in Texas, they say: One of the biggest problems we have is a shortage of people willing and able to work. We have good, well-paying jobs, but we can't find the workforce to fill these jobs.
Well, the third means by which we are going to begin this process of controlling our out-of-control spending and our national debt is in the appropriations process. Of course, this is an annual process where we consider how to fund the Federal Government, and, like everything else in the budget process, it is a matter of choosing our priorities. But this is only 28 percent of what the Federal Government spends. Historically, we have ignored the other 72 percent when it comes to spending, but we are going to deal with that in the Big Beautiful Bill.
In addition, Congress has traditionally passed, as part of that 28 percent, 12 individual appropriations bills to fund the Federal Government. No. 1, of course, on that list of priorities is national security.
Of course, under Senate Democrats, we frequently punted this responsibility and passed something called a continuing resolution, which was on autopilot, instead of full-year funding measures that were debated in the Appropriations Committee, with bipartisan support, and then debated here on the floor and passed into law. Instead of that, we just passed continuing resolutions, which is an abdication of our responsibility as the holder of the purse strings under our government.
But while we often think of the appropriations process as strictly a
So we have three bites at the apple, at the spending apple: rescission, reconciliation--the Big Beautiful Bill--and then appropriations. I hope the House and Senate will take full advantage of each of these three opportunities to begin the process of reducing our deficit and debt because, as former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen said maybe about 10 years ago or so, ``The biggest threat to our national security is our national debt.'' That prediction at the time has come true when we are spending more money on interest on the national debt than we are on defense.
There is no better time than the present to begin to remedy this situation, and it is up to Congress. We can't look over our shoulder or look around the room and say: Who else will protect us and save us from this unsustainable trajectory? It is up to us.
While the formal Department of Government Efficiency Task Force may have concluded, the work of DOGE lives on. As a founding member of the DOGE Caucus, I will keep doing my part, along with all of my colleagues, to bend the spending curve. I urge all of my colleagues to join us in that effort, particularly by passing this rescissions package and then eventually, in the coming weeks, the Big Beautiful Bill.
Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the nomination of Michelle Bowman to be the Federal Reserve Board's Vice Chair for Supervision.
Governor Bowman has served on the Federal Reserve Board since 2018 when she was confirmed as the first Governor required to have community bank experience, but during her tenure, she has consistently prioritized Wall Street over Main Street. She has weakened safeguards on the largest banks in the country and has opposed commonsense rules to promote financial stability, to protect consumers, and to drive investment in communities across this country.
Just yesterday, in another Wall Street giveaway, she voted to lift the asset cap that was placed on Wells Fargo in an effort to rein in Wells' decades-long track record of customer abuses. She did this despite the fact that there is no public evidence that Wells Fargo has substantially changed its approach to banking.
Governor Bowman's actions have already imposed serious costs on small businesses and families. It would be especially dangerous to put her in charge of further deregulating Wall Street now just as President Trump has pushed the economy to the edge of a cliff.
Democrats on the Banking Committee unanimously oppose her nomination as Vice Chair for Supervision, and I urge all of my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, to do the same now.
In the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve Board effectively abdicated its statutory role as a financial regulator and supervisor. As a result, the Agency was asleep at the wheel as dangerous risks built up in the financial system, especially in the subprime mortgage market. When the economy tumbled, families, small businesses, and even community banks suffered the consequences of the Fed's negligence.
Congress established the Vice Chair for Supervision position after the 2008 financial crisis in order to ensure that the Fed never again ignored its financial regulation and supervision responsibilities, but in her 6 years on the Federal Reserve Board, Governor Bowman has hacked away bit by bit at the safeguards put in place after the 2008 financial crisis. Let's take a look at her record.
Governor Bowman has weakened critical safeguards for the largest Wall Street banks. She has voted to reduce big banks' loss-absorbing capital requirements, and she has voted to undermine the stress testing framework, both of which have left big banks more vulnerable to collapse. She has also voted to allow big banks to gamble with people's deposits in financial markets, including through increased investments in hedge funds and private equity funds. These actions have allowed Wall Street banks to take on riskier bets and juice their dividends, boost their buybacks, and pump up executive compensation--all at the expense of financial stability.
Bowman also voted to deregulate massive banks with $100 billion to $250 billion in assets. That particular error in judgment came back to bite our country quickly, causing the second, third, and fourth largest bank failures in U.S. history just a few years later when these three deregulated banks--First Republic Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank--all failed within weeks of each other in 2023. For a while, the entire banking system teetered on the edge of collapse.
Now, instead of learning from that near catastrophe, Governor Bowman has refused to take any responsibility for her votes that led to this banking turmoil, and she has opposed commonsense rules to strengthen the resilience of large banks even after those failures.
Governor Bowman also voted to approve more than 800 bank merger applications, including Morgan Stanley's major acquisition of E*TRADE and Capital One's recent acquisition of Discover, which created the largest credit card company in America. Her lax approach to bank mergers undermines competition and increases concentration in the banking sector. That, in turn, inflicts costs on consumers and threatens the stability of the entire banking system. It also poses a direct risk to the future of community banks in this Nation.
In addition, Governor Bowman opposed even modest improvements to the Community Reinvestment Act. This is a 50-year-old law that was created to prevent racist lending practices by big banks and to ensure that all communities have access to critical financial services.
Last year, she was the only Fed Governor--the only one--to vote against a rule that would have updated the CRA regulations for the first time in nearly 30 years and would have increased banks' investments in communities of color, in rural and Native communities, and in other low- and moderate-income areas.
Beyond her deeply troubling policy record, Governor Bowman also demonstrated a worrisome lack of independence from the White House during her nomination process. For example, at her hearing, she refused to acknowledge any economic uncertainty created by President Trump's tariff policies, and she refused to concede any potential financial impact of those policies on U.S. financial stability. That refusal puts her at odds with Chair Powell, with the Fed staff, and with economic experts across the political spectrum. It was clear that Governor Bowman did not want to be seen even indirectly criticizing President Trump.
Ms. Bowman also stated that she plans to submit regulatory actions to the White House for review, which undermines the Fed's independence and all but guarantees a new deregulatory bonanza for these Wall Street banks.
She has refused to answer questions about whether she met with then- President Elect Trump or his transition team while on an official Federal Reserve-funded trip to West Palm Beach in November 2024.
Look, our economy is in a precarious moment. President Trump's disastrous mismanagement of this economy is raising costs for families, is putting jobs at risk, and is threatening to decimate small businesses across this country. Deregulating Wall Street right now would throw gasoline on Trump's economic fire. The last thing families and small businesses need is another massive financial crash.
I urge my colleagues to oppose Michelle Bowman's nomination.
Mr. President, I come to the floor today concerned that the Senate's advice and consent role is being undermined. It is being undermined by obstruction from Senate Democrats that threaten to keep the Justice Department from functioning as the American people expect and the American people deserve.
The Office of Legislative Affairs serves as the crucial bridge between the Justice Department and this Congress. This relationship is essential not only for the legislative process, but for maintaining constitutional oversight and accountability.
The Office of Legislative Affairs ensures that we, as lawmakers, have the timely information needed to craft legislation, conduct oversight, and fulfill our constitutional duties.
When we seek answers, whether it is on criminal justice or immigration or national security, it is the Office of Legislative Affairs that takes our questions and returns the responses. This function can't run on autopilot.
Yet, today, the Office of Legislative Affairs is hobbled. It lacks a Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General to lead that office. Why? Because Senate Democrats have decided to impede the confirmation of all justice nominees without exception. That is not the constitutional role of advice and consent. That is obstruction.
Every Senator has the right to raise concerns about nominees. That is our constitutional role. That is our duty. And holds of specific nominees for specific reasons at times is very appropriate. It is an appropriate tool for any Senator to use.
I have even used that tool, and I have also done it on nominees. But the process demands fairness; it demands common sense. We should weigh each nominee individually, not slam the brakes on an entire Agency, especially one for keeping Americans safe.
So I am here at the floor because the nomination of Patrick Davis has been pending on the Senate Calendar now for 2 months. This is regrettable because he is an exceptionally qualified nominee. And this Senator should know because he worked for this Senator.
Mr. Davis brings a strong record of public service and a deep understanding of the legislative process gained from his time working for me on the Senate Judiciary Committee. I am confident he will lead the Office of Legislative Affairs with diligence, with fairness, and with integrity. He should be confirmed today, and I am here to ask my colleagues to do just that.
Obstructing his nomination serves absolutely no one. Many Senators-- myself included--have outstanding requests to the Justice Department that we expect answers to. I understand that some Senators may complain that they haven't received a response to their own outstanding request. I have made such complaints myself over the years under both Republican and Democrat administrations.
But I don't believe that obstructing this particular qualified nominee who can help get the responses we need will address their concerns.
I also understand that some Senators are unhappy with the current administration and are using Justice Department nominees to make their displeasure known. To these colleagues, I will simply say that the obstruction of qualified nominees to lead the Office of Legislative Affairs makes it harder for the Department of Justice to engage with Congress and harder for Congress to do its job.
This, ultimately, ends up hurting the American people. I am asking this body to uphold a fair confirmation process so that the Justice Department can effectively engage with Congress. Blocking the confirmation of Patrick Davis does not serve the Senate; it does not serve the interest of justice; and it does not serve the American people.
Mr. President, I am here to ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of the following nomination: Executive Calendar No. 92, Patrick Davis, to be Assistant Attorney General; that the Senate vote on the nomination without intervening action or debate; that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
Reserving the right to object, I will object for two reasons.
First, a few weeks ago, I announced I am placing holds on all DOJ political nominations because the Attorney General refuses to answer fundamental questions about Donald Trump seeking a luxury plane from Qatar to use as Air Force One. This is a grave national security threat, as everyone knows.
The bottom line is very simple on this plane: The President of the United States accepted a luxury jet from a foreign government to use as his personal Air Force One. It wasn't just unethical. It reeked of corruption, of bribery, and threatened our national security.
That whole plane will have to be taken apart piece by piece to make sure listening devices aren't in it and be even more expensive. And yet the Justice Department didn't just look the other way; they approved it. That is so typical of this Justice Department and something that I think if a Democratic President did it, the Senator from Iowa would be the first on the floor to stand here and object.
Now we hear silence--silence. They won't even answer serious questions about this. This plane should be withdrawn, and I have introduced legislation to do that.
But that is not the only reason. Donald Trump has turned the Justice Department upside down. It is politicized. It is weaponized. It is hollowed out. Donald Trump and his acolytes in the Justice Department are less interested in prosecuting criminals and more interested in prosecuting Trump's perceived political opponents.
This is an absolute disgrace. Both sides in past administrations, Democrat and Republican, have worked together to uphold the rule of law at DOJ. But now, the rule of law has been replaced by loyalty tests. Career public servants who have dedicated years to prosecuting criminals are just shoved aside because when Donald Trump asks them to break the law, to undo the law, to set aside rule of law, they refuse.
Investigations and prosecutions are dictated by political convenience and not justice. And now Republicans want the Senate to quietly rubberstamp a political nominee for the DOJ by unanimous consent--no hearing, no debate, no scrutiny.
On an important position like this, this should happen regularly that there should be debate. But with this Justice Department, as horrible as it is, as political as it is, as destructive of American values as it has been--no way.
The nominee is a former staffer for the very same Senator making the request. Now, as my colleague noted, in the past he has been up there when other administrations made ethical violations and did the wrong thing in his judgment. But now there is just silence from my colleague and from all of the Republican Senators.
And they know what is going on. They know what is going on. But blind obeisance to Donald Trump is wrong when it comes to something as sacred as this: rule of law and a Justice Department that seeks to enforce the law, not just go after political enemies.
If Donald Trump and Republicans want to poison and politicize our justice system, I am not participating. I object.
I add one more point with deep regret. What is happening to the Judiciary Committee and the Justice Department is shameful. Inspectors general have been dismissed with no accountability. Again, my colleague who used to uphold the inspectors general and praised them--tons of them are dismissed now.
The American Bar Association has been sidelined. And today, up in the Justice Department, unqualified judicial nominees--some barely out of law school--are being rushed through confirmation. This is not how the Senate should work.
It didn't work that way when there was a Democratic President and my friend was chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
There should be no special treatment--none; not for political allies; not for former staffers; not for anyone. What Trump and Bondi are doing to the Justice Department and the rule of law is dangerous. It undermines the public trust and erodes the rule of law.
Mr. President, I am sorry to hear the objection. I would like to correct the one thing that Senator Schumer said, that Patrick Davis didn't have a hearing before the committee. We did hold a hearing on Patrick Davis.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The assistant bill clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the nomination of Michelle Bowman, of Kansas, to be Vice Chairman for Supervision of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for a term of four years, shall be brought to a close?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The assistant bill clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the nomination of Edward Walsh, of New Jersey, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Ireland, shall be brought to a close?
Mr. President, what we have come to realize is, under the last administration, the American people really suffered from open borders, crime, and lawlessness. And they spoke out about this, and, in November, they issued a mandate to President Trump. And, of course, we talk a lot about the economic impact of that. We talk about the health, but we also focus on the ``Make America Safe Again'' provisions.
And I will say this. Since he was elected in November and sworn in, in January, President Trump has done exactly that. He has worked to make this country safe, to make our communities safer. And what we have seen in operations across the country is that the Trump administration has committed
Now, in recent weeks, the Department of Homeland Security has worked with the Tennessee State Highway Patrol, and they have arrested 196 criminal, illegal aliens in Nashville, TN. Now, these are people that ought not to have ever been in the country. They are violent criminals, members of Tren de Aragua, members of MS-13. They are drug dealers. They are sex traffickers. They are human traffickers.
And do you know what? People said: I can't believe we had that many drug dealers, sex traffickers, gang leaders, gang clubs that were here in our community.
And when you start to look at the crimes of some of these people, people are aghast at what they have learned, and they are grateful that President Trump, Secretary Noem, Tom Homan--who is our border czar-- decided to come into Nashville and get these people off our streets and out of our communities.
Now, here is what we know about some of these. One of them is a Salvadoran national who is affiliated with MS-13. Now, he probably left El Salvador because he has been wanted for murder in his home country. That is the charge against him, murder.
Tennesseans are saying: Look, we want to make certain we get these individuals deported, and I was talking to one of our local law enforcement officers--they are in Middle Tennessee--and I said: Tell me what you think about ICE and Homeland Security and the work they are doing?
He said: I am happy to see them here. We welcome them. We are glad they are working with the Highway Patrol because when you get these criminals and these gang leaders off our streets, you make the community safer, and you make our jobs a little bit safer.
And we are seeing the benefits of these deportations of criminal illegal aliens on a nationwide scale. I give you the example of Nashville because I represent Tennessee. But we know that, nationally, since inauguration day, ICE has arrested more than 66,000 criminal illegal aliens. The vast majority have prior criminal convictions and charges, including--as I have mentioned--violent MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gang members. Thousands more were charged or convicted of assault, weapons offenses, sex crimes, and murder.
And when these criminals are taken off the street, do you know what happens, Mr. President? Crime goes down. Safety improves.
Now, in February--and I think this is a great example result. So in February, ICE targeted more than 100 Tren de Aragua gang members that had taken over an apartment complex in Aurora, CO. Many people saw this. I am certain many of my colleagues saw this reporting on the news.
Now, that same quarter, that first quarter of the year, overall crime in the city declined by 22 percent. That is what happens when you go after people that are breaking the law, that have come into the country illegally, and came in with ill intent.
Now, despite the success that we have seen--whether it is Nashville or whether it is Aurora, CO--my Democratic colleagues are still demonizing these efforts and law enforcement and demanding an end to arrests and trying to stop deportations, and some are even working to undermine our brave and courageous law enforcement officers.
Now the mayor's office in Nashville has been one that has tried to obstruct these, and they were claiming that ICE's detainment of violent gang members and rapists is ``making [it] harder'' to keep people safe.
So the mayor's office and the mayor doxxed Federal law enforcement officers who were involved in these operations. They released their names; they released details about different operations. So they were doxxing and unmasking the operation and the investigators or the agents' names.
So what happens when the mayor does that is basically you are serving up a treasure trove of information to the gang leaders. You make the officers less safe, all law enforcement officers. You make the communities less safe, and you encourage--encourage--people to target the operations or the officers.
So what we have seen is this makes the job of law enforcement more difficult. It undermines President Trump's efforts to make our Nation safe, and, in essence, it has turned Nashville into a sanctuary city.
And, interestingly enough, in the State of Tennessee, it is illegal to have a sanctuary city. And because of the actions of the Office of the Mayor and Mayor O'Connell, DHS has deemed Nashville a sanctuary jurisdiction.
And all of this, we need to realize, is happening as ICE agents have seen over the past couple of months a 413-percent increase in assaults. I will tell you I think that our law enforcement officers, our Homeland Security investigators, and our agents deserve our support for removing criminal illegal aliens from our communities.
So on Friday, I sent a letter urging AG Bondi to investigate the mayor's actions and the actions of his office and determine whether he is using taxpayer dollars to aid illegal aliens and to obstruct our Federal law enforcement efforts.
I will also use every tool in the Senate to investigate the mayor and his office and hold him to account for threatening the safety of Tennesseans.
And make no mistake, if the mayor is found by the Department of Justice to be working outside of the rule of law, he should resign his position.
And, unfortunately, he is not the only Democrat mayor that needs DOJ to investigate them. We have seen the mayors of Chicago and Boston and their offices, they have repeatedly stated that their police departments will refuse to cooperate with ICE to apprehend criminal illegal aliens.
Now, think about this. These are criminals that are robbing people. They are doing carjackings. They are assaulting people. Many of them are abusing children. They are wanted in their home countries. And you have elected officials that are siding with and trying to protect criminal illegal aliens instead of siding with and trying to protect law-abiding citizens.
While this obstruction makes it harder for Federal law enforcement to do their jobs, they are still working to remove these criminals from the streets of Chicago and Boston and, of course, Nashville. Just last month, ICE announced that they arrested the Tren de Aragua gang members who shot and killed three people at a house party in Chicago in December. Criminal illegal aliens shot and killed three citizens. And in Boston, ICE agents apprehended nearly 1,500 illegal aliens during ``Operation Patriot'' last month, making the largest ICE operation to date in our Nation's history. More than half of those 1,500 have major criminal convictions--not just charged but convictions and charges-- murder, rape, drug trafficking, abuse of children, all among that number, 1,500. These are horrific crimes committed by illegal alien criminals who are roaming free in American cities until ICE comes in and apprehends them.
While they continue to side with criminals--these Democrat mayors and those city councils--Republicans are supporting the President's efforts to maintain the rule of law so that there are no more innocent victims like Larisha Sharell Thompson, a South Carolina mother of two, who was allegedly murdered in cold blood last month by six illegal aliens who were trying to steal her car.
Or Ava Moore, an 18-year-old Air Force cadet candidate who was killed while kayaking in Texas over Memorial Day weekend by an illegal alien who, according to authorities, hit her with a jet ski and then fled the scene.
Or the 12 people, including a Holocaust survivor, who were set on fire on Sunday in an anti-Semitic terror attack; the suspect, an Egyptian national who overstayed his visa after entering under Biden's open borders. This has to come to a stop.
And Tennesseans say: What can we do about this? Well, I have the CLEAR Act, which we have had for a time. It would ensure that State and local law enforcement officials have the explicit authority to assist the Federal Government in our immigration enforcement efforts. Basically, it would codify the 287(g) Program.
And this week I am introducing legislation that is backed by the White House that would establish a deportation shot clock, which would require the Federal Government to deport an illegal alien within 15 days of a court order for removal. Right now, it takes
And following the dangerous actions of Nashville Mayor O'Connell and his office, I am also introducing legislation that will make it illegal to doxx Federal law enforcement officials who are working to get these criminal illegal aliens off the streets. We realized after this occurrence that they were not included in the ``covered persons'' provisions.
So I invite my Democrat colleagues to join us in this. If not, I invite them, come down here. Talk about why they would choose to support criminal illegal aliens instead of working to make our community safer and to uphold the rule of law.
Mr. President, no one asked for this. No one asked for the biggest wealth transfer in American history from the poorest people in the country to the richest people to ever exist. No one asked for the biggest ever cuts to Medicaid, to kick 14 million people off of health insurance, and raise out-of-pocket costs for 20 million people. No one asked for food assistance to be slashed for millions of children and low-income families. No one asked for higher prices at the pump or on their electricity bills. No one asked for students across the country to lose Federal financial aid.
No one asked for any of this--and I really mean that. That is not just a rhetorical flourish. I don't think Trump voters asked for this. I know Harris voters did not ask for this. I don't think anybody really wants this.
I think the reason that all of these crazy, harmful policies are about to be enacted is for one simple reason, and that is to generate enough revenue to satisfy the insatiable desire for tax cuts for people who make more than $4 million a year. They are literally taking money out of food assistance and Medicaid and Affordable Care Act monthly subsidies.
By the way, you don't know if you get a subsidy or not. You just go on the exchange, and you pay the thing. The thing is, that thing is probably $400 or $500 or $600 a month less than it used to be because of the subsidies.
It is one thing to say 14 million people are going to get kicked off of Medicaid--and they will. It is another thing to say, because of those Medicaid cuts, a bunch of clinics and hospitals in rural communities are going to shut down--and they will.
I think what is a little underrated is many, many more millions of people are going to pay not $50 more a year, not $100 more per month, but many hundreds of dollars more per month. Why? Because when you yank that money out of the system, it is what is called a pay-for. It means it generates a ton of revenue.
How does it generate that revenue? By screwing regular people.
They are racing to pass a bill that does all of these things and that raises the debt by many trillions of dollars.
I think the problem some of us have--and I really appreciate the Presiding Officer. And when we agree, we work really well together, and when we disagree, we are at least able to stay civil. So I am trying to take the edge off of this. But one of the reasons that it sounds like I am frothing at the mouth and saying a bunch of partisan talking points is that it is kind of hard to believe that any political party would actually do this on purpose.
It is quite hard to believe that you would cut food assistance and cut healthcare and cut help for regular working people in order to shovel money to people making more than $4 million a year. But that is exactly what they are doing.
It is as if they designed this bill in a lab to make the maximum number of people angry. It is unpopular. It is unnecessary. And they are doing it anyway.
Hospitals serving rural and low-income communities will be forced to shutter because they won't be adequately compensated for their services--by the way, again, not a talking point. Go and visit any rural clinic or hospital. Ask them what percentage of their payer mix comes from Medicaid and what would happen if they lost a big chunk of that. A lot of them say--the big ones--big is relative. But in the State of Hawaii, our big institutions say: We could stay afloat. We just have to deliver a lot less care. And then everybody would end up in the ER, right?
The Queen's Medical Center, the sort of No. 1 trauma center in the middle of Honolulu, is already bursting at the seams. You have multiple people in the hallways. All of the rooms, all of the beds are taken. It was just a couple of months ago that they finally figured out a way not to release the psychiatric emergencies right onto Punchbowl Street in their hospital gowns.
That is before they do this to the hospitals.
After the ACA passed, you would go on the exchange, select a plan, and pay a fraction of what you used to pay. I think one of the things is that ObamaCare is now so old that people forgot how horrible it was before then--really horrible. So now you just go on, and you are kind of irritated because it is still money, and still feels like too much, and it feels like your HMO or provider nitpicks you and doesn't cover a bunch of care, and copays are too high. But it is way, way, way better than it used to be.
So this whole enterprise is for one single purpose, and that is to generate enough money to cut taxes for billionaire corporations and people who make $4 million or more in revenue. It is very, very few people benefiting and tens of millions of people being screwed.
There is little in this bill that will help regular people who are already struggling to meet their monthly obligations. But there are plenty of rewards for the ultrawealthy. Millionaires stand to gain roughly $70,000 in tax cuts, while billionaires in the top 1 percent receive close to $300,000 in benefits.
And how did they find that money to shovel to the millionaires and billionaires?
I don't mind a millionaire or a billionaire. I know, like, two billionaires. We are not close, but I have met them. I am sure I know many millionaires. There are a number of colleagues in the Senate who are in that category. So it is not like--I am not trying to demonize anybody.
I am saying: Do they need $300,000? I know people who need $300. I know people who actually won't be able to stay on any healthcare at all if these subsidies go away.
This is not the closing of loopholes. This is not fiscal discipline. I want to make this point as clearly as I can. We would be in a harder position to argue against this bill if it were actually deficit-neutral because, traditionally, the accusation against Democrats is they want to bust the budget, and Republicans want to be responsible.
But this one is weird because this is under the guise of ``We have got to do austerity; we have got to do tough stuff; we have got to cut.'' Then they come up with a bill that actually increases the deficit over baseline, even when they do their kind of nonsensical accounting where they basically have stopped counting the tax cuts that are in place because, you know, that is the baseline.
And so the whole enterprise--and everybody needs to understand this. They are making everything more expensive. That is food. That is medicine. That is groceries. That is gasoline. That is electricity. And the reason they are making it more expensive is because they are either indifferent to the suffering or, more importantly, they just need the money.
And they don't need the money to--you know, we raised taxes in the past, as a country, to fight a war, to beat Nazism; or we raised taxes in the past to shrink the deficit; or we raised taxes and raised costs for people to invest in something important. That is not what we are doing here. We are blowing up the budget, and we are harming regular people in order to provide tax cuts for people who literally didn't ask for it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, I am here to ask unanimous consent on
I will talk more about this afterward, but the chairman of the Finance Committee has elsewhere to be. So I will speak after I have offered this, and he has responded. I will go directly to my unanimous consent request.
As if in legislative session, and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of my bill, S. 1943, 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.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I rise today to discuss Senator Whitehouse's request for unanimous consent for the Senate to pass the Protecting Seniors' Data Act of 2025.
I agree with my colleague that Federal Agencies must take all necessary steps to safeguard the personally identifiable information entrusted to them by the people they serve.
Along these lines, the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, SSA, who was nominated by President Trump and confirmed by Senate Republicans last month, has spent his career protecting personally identifiable information. He has also committed to doing the same as Commissioner of the SSA.
However, legislation is not needed to request a Government Accountability Office, GAO, audit on a specific topic of interest.
Additionally, the Comptroller General, who leads the GAO, testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this year that GAO is already conducting a review of DOGE's access to agency systems, including at the Social Security Administration.
During his testimony, the Comptroller General also stated that GAO will issue public reports to the Congress on its findings from these reviews.
For these reasons, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
These remarks would ordinarily precede the exchange we just had, but as a courtesy to the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee, we are going a little bit out of order. I will now fill in the statement that I would have made.
Senator Crapo is obviously well aware of my concerns here. As I said at the very beginning, we have reason to believe that Elon Musk and his little gang of frat boys, tech bros, miscreants--call them the ``Muskrats,'' the ``DOGE Boys''--whatever you want. They went into Social Security with bad intent.
The cover that they went in under was they were going to look for waste, fraud, and abuse. But I think we know that the waste, fraud, and abuse veil in which the ``DOGE Boys'' wrapped themselves was a fake, because if you were actually concerned about waste, fraud, and abuse, you wouldn't fire all the inspectors general.
You would actually try to recruit the inspectors general into your so-called government efficiency effort because what inspectors general do all day is actually look for waste, fraud, and abuse.
And you could go through their files and say: Here, what are the biggest areas that we should be paying attention to?
And you would work with the inspectors general. Instead, they were fired. That whole apparatus to actually seek waste, fraud, and abuse was set aside and in came the ``DOGE Boys,'' a little bit like in ``The Cat in the Hat''--``Thing One'' and ``Thing Two''--except there were 100 more of them running around doing considerable damage to government Agencies and government systems.
And to a very significant extent, doing damage to government Agencies and systems was the point. This was not the bug. This was the feature. They went in to try to wreck stuff, and it became particularly dangerous around Social Security because, first of all, there was a propaganda campaign to talk down Social Security, to pretend, falsely, that it was riddled with fraud. That took place, including right over on the House floor, when the President came to speak to Congress and repeatedly lied about Social Security fraud.
Then you had the infiltration of people who were from tech bro world and from private equity world, exactly taking over Social Security. Then you had people talking up benefit interruptions like that was an OK thing. Well, a benefit interruption would be an excuse to go in and take over Social Security to privatize it with tech bros and with private equity people.
I think the noise that we made about that headed it off, but there remains the lingering danger that when they got into Social Security's data systems, they exfiltrated data because data has enormous value, or they infiltrated bugs to do damage to the old systems of Social Security; or, worst of all, perhaps, they left back doors so that Elon Musk or other folks who were interested in getting access to massive amounts of Americans' data can find their way into Social Security's data systems secretly.
So this is a very simple measure. It asks for an audit of Social Security data systems to make sure that those things did not happen. That really ought to be a bipartisan, if not unanimous, expression of Senate intention. That is why I hoped we could generate unanimous consent for it today.
I yield the floor to the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Finance Senator Wyden.
Mr. President, I rise in support of his efforts. He is a valued member of the Senate Finance Committee, and this is a thoughtful approach to bring accountability at Social Security.
The legislation directs the independent nonpartisan Government Accountability Office to conduct a top-to-bottom audit of Social Security's databases and in the process, determine whether DOGE left the Agency vulnerable to cyber attacks when its agents gained unfettered access to Agency records.
Americans want to know whether the DOGE agents violated Federal privacy and cyber security laws when they accessed their personal information.
Now, I have said it once. I will repeat it again. Social Security's databases represent the Fort Knox of Americans' personal lives.
I see our friend from South Dakota here. He is a member of the Intelligence Committee. We have talked about privacy issues on a number of occasions, and privacy is what the Whitehouse legislation is all about. This whole question of the Social Security databases involves people's bank account numbers, their home addresses, work histories, salaries, medical records. The list goes on and on.
Social Security, under the direction of the DOGE-appointed Acting Commissioner, let Mr. Musk's cronies stroll in without raising a finger. It remains to be seen what is going to happen with Mr. Musk no longer leading DOGE and the new Commissioner Mr. Bisignano taking the helm at Social Security.
It is clear that DOGE accessed the original records under false pretenses, and they were claiming that there was rampant fraud throughout the Social Security program.
As the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, I have been demanding evidence from the Trump administration for some time now about the existence of all of this ``fraud.'' Social Security has refused to provide me with a single shred of evidence. That is because--
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. President, Social Security, as I say, has refused to provide me with a shred of evidence because we already know from the Social Security watchdog that Social Security fraud--and, colleagues, this is the relevant number--represents 0.009 percent of payments.
So we have known for some time that this effort is part of the Trump plan to cut Americans' Social Security benefits. I believe the long- term objective is
This effort is also part of what Donald Trump, Mr. Musk, and Peter Thiel have made a broader effort all about, and that is to collect and compile a master list of personal information on each American by pulling from the IRS and the Departments of Homeland Security, Education, and Social Security.
I close by saying, thankfully, Federal courts have slowed DOGE's access to Social Security records for now. But the fact is, there needs to be a comprehensive understanding of the damage to make sure Americans' data is protected. That is why Senator Whitehouse's legislation is so important. I urge its passage.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The bill clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the mandatory quorum call under rule XXII has been waived.
A quorum is present.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the nomination of James O'Neill, of California, to be Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services, shall be brought to a close?
Mr. President, I am joining my colleagues today to speak in opposition to the Republicans' catastrophic budget bill that will end healthcare coverage for millions of American families so that President Trump can orchestrate the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and the working class to the ultrarich that we have ever seen in this country.
This bill has nearly $1 trillion in healthcare cuts, including over $800 billion in Medicaid cuts. In total, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that this bill would not only add $2.4 trillion to our national deficit, but it also kicks 16 million Americans off of their health insurance in the next 10 years. In Nevada, that means about 95,271 people will lose their healthcare and 66,571 will be kicked off of Medicaid.
These numbers alone should at least give my Republican colleagues pause, make them think about how devastating this bill would be for our working families, and maybe even reconsider moving forward with trying to ram it through Congress.
But there is more to this than just these big numbers, and it needs to be brought to light. I was just home in Nevada meeting with Nevadans, hospitals, and providers. With the Medicaid cuts they are anticipating from this billionaire tax giveaway, hospitals are bracing themselves not just for coverage losses but for the downstream impact on care and costs. This is going to affect our most vulnerable populations in Nevada--seniors, children, veterans, parents of children with rare diseases, pregnant women, and our elderly in nursing homes.
When people lose coverage, they delay their care. A single mom who is living paycheck to paycheck and is worried about putting food on the table for her kids is not going to go to the doctor if she has a persistent cough; she will wait. But that means that when her cough turns serious, making it harder for her to breathe, she will have to go to the emergency room for treatment. By then, it is more dangerous for her and more expensive for everyone involved. The hospital she goes to has to treat her regardless of whether or not she has health insurance. If she can't pay, the hospital is on the hook for the cost of her care.
Now, if you are in a rural or underserved area, of which we have many in Nevada and across the country, and the one hospital for miles can't afford to keep those doors open, it may scale back or close altogether. The hospital staff has to choose which services to cut. Labor and delivery? Mental health care? Trauma units? These are services entire communities rely on. Or will they be forced to close entirely if they can't make up the cost?
In rural Nevada, people sometimes have to drive 2, 3, 4 hours to see their doctor. A hospital closure would be devastating for rural families trying to access even basic care. That is the danger we are facing with this bill.
This isn't just about Medicaid patients. As providers look to cover the cost of treating more uninsured patients, those expenses will shift to everyone, to working families and to employers, and premiums and out-of-pocket costs will soar--all so that this President and Republicans can pay for tax cuts for billionaires.
You know, this is also going to impact Nevadans who rely on the Affordable Care Act for their medical insurance. Republicans, in their bill, cut almost $300 billion from the ACA marketplace plans, and that would kick
This impact would be lasting. This bill is so expensive that it would force Congress to make even more Medicare cuts in the future. For those who don't immediately get kicked off their health insurance as a result of cuts to Medicaid, my Republican colleagues want to implement burdensome work reporting requirements so they can take away coverage from even more Americans to pay for those billionaire tax cuts.
In Nevada, over 67 percent of Medicaid recipients are already working, but if this bill passes, those working families will have to jump through even more government reporting hoops to prove they work. We know from States that have tried this--like Arkansas--that people lost Medicaid not because they didn't meet the requirements but because they couldn't keep up with the redtape.
Think about this: People working who already have access to Medicaid--they are making it harder for them to get it, which means that if you lose your Medicaid, your insurance, there is a possibility that if your health gets worse, you are going to lose your job. We are going backwards.
This bill has complex paperwork, frequent deadlines, and little flexibility to the everyday lives of hard-working mothers, veterans, and families across the country. And why again? Because the Republicans' goal is to take Medicaid away from as many people as possible so that they can find revenue to pay for the tax cuts for billionaires.
Think about what I said at the beginning: It is the biggest shift-- shift--in our country of wealth from the poor and the working class to the billionaire class. Instead of making the billionaires pay for this, they are taking it off the backs of the very people that are working in this country in the middle class, and they are preventing the poor from getting into the middle class, and they are making it harder for the middle class.
This is absolutely absurd, it is un-American, and we cannot--we cannot--accept this as our new normal. So my Democratic colleagues and I are going to continue to stand against this outrageous and dangerous bill because we know that the American public deserves better. Americans deserve a Congress that is helping to lift the poor into the middle class and helping the middle class have their lives be a little bit easier.
If we are talking about who should pay their fair share, well, I can guarantee you, if we polled Americans, they would say it is the billionaire class. The billionaire class should pay their fair share and not make it harder--not make it harder--for the poor and the working class just to get by and just to get through the day.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
Mr. President, I rise today on behalf of the 228,000 Wisconsinites whose healthcare is on the chopping block if Republicans get their way.
At a time when Wisconsin families are asking us to take on the skyrocketing costs of healthcare and prescription drugs, Congressional Republicans are doing just the opposite. My Republican colleagues are not using their time and energy to go after greedy corporations, not to take on the big drug companies, and not to expand access to affordable healthcare, but they are instead forging ahead with a bill that will kick millions of Americans off of their insurance and jack up the cost of healthcare for millions more.
I keep hearing my colleagues falsely claim that we are exaggerating how horrible this plan is for working families. They want to pretend these cuts are just going after waste, fraud, and abuse.
I am not here to engage in a ``he said, she said'' about this. The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan analyst, released a new report today and found that the Republican plan will result in 16 million Americans losing their healthcare. That means that those last- minute changes that were made in the middle of the night in the House resulted in 2 million more people being kicked off their healthcare. Of those 16 million, nearly 150,000 Wisconsinites will lose their Medicaid coverage.
Sadly, it doesn't stop there. This bill is yet another attempt to chip away at the Affordable Care Act. In my State, over 80,000 Wisconsinites will be priced out of their affordable care, and more will see their marketplace coverage costs skyrocket.
We are talking about children with disabilities, grandparents, working families, and so many more whose healthcare is literally right now in jeopardy.
I heard from Annette in Kenosha, WI. She has three children, including a sixth grader with severe special needs. She wrote to me about her daughter Maya's first year before they got access to Medicaid. She said:
She told me that she doesn't plan to stay on Medicaid forever, but that program ``has been a Godsend to us [right] now. It was a rigorous process to qualify. I hope other families like mine will have the support they need to keep their families healthy.''
I also heard from Evan in Madison, WI, who has undergone two brain surgeries and subsequent radiation over the last 10 years to treat brain tumors, in part paid for by Medicaid. He wrote to me:
Take Kevin in De Pere, WI, whose 19-year-old son has Down syndrome and relies on Medicaid for care. Kevin had a message for my colleagues who are considering advancing any cuts to Medicaid. He wrote:
For Americans like Kevin and Annette and Evan, Medicaid is a lifeline. Without it, millions of families would forgo their care or face almost certain financial ruin. But congressional Republicans are putting all of that on the line, making Americans jump through more hoops and ever more redtape to access their lifesaving care. And why? To kick enough eligible people off Medicaid to pay for their tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit corporations and their special interest donors--the very same corporations that jack up the cost of healthcare on Americans in the first place.
As deep as these cuts are, they fall far short of the total cost of the handouts that the Republicans are proposing in the form of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Their plan won't just kick 16 million Americans off their health insurance or 4 million Americans off of food assistance, the Republicans' plan will also balloon the deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade.
While Republicans spend the rest of their summer figuring out how to pass their agenda that puts their campaign donors and corporations ahead of working families, I will keep raising the alarm bells about the real Wisconsinites whose health and lives are in the balance if they get their way.
Mr. President, I want to join my colleagues in talking about one of the terrible elements of this bill, and that is it is going to take away Medicaid coverage, healthcare for--this morning, it was 13.7 million people across this country, including Vermont and including Missouri. But we just got an update: It is 16 million people; 16 million people are going to lose healthcare.
And this Medicaid Program that provides access to low-income folks, to kids with disabilities, and, of course, those parents who do so much to care for their child with special needs--they need that Medicaid to be able to keep body and soul together and give that
It provides healthcare for two out of three seniors who are in nursing homes. Medicaid pays for those hospital beds.
So how is it that at a time when healthcare is expensive--it is getting out of reach for more and more people; it is the biggest expense many families face--that we are actually considering in the U.S. Senate a bill that would take away healthcare from 16 million people? It is hard to believe that the U.S. Senate has any degree of appreciation for the reality of the everyday lives of folks who depend on this healthcare.
The legislation also takes away subsidies that have made it affordable for people to buy into the Affordable Care Act, known as ObamaCare. It is the margin that is necessary for millions of people to be able to continue to get healthcare coverage through the Affordable Care Act.
So we literally have a piece of legislation that is going to take away this healthcare for individuals. It is going to take away healthcare from families who are getting access through the Affordable Care Act.
This bill also is cutting nutrition programs. The SNAP benefits really matter for lower income families. It is how they feed their kids. And in your community and in mine, we have thousands of volunteers who put together food shelves, community food programs; they do Meals on Wheels; they volunteer to do everything they possibly can to help our kids in school with nutrition, to help with the Meals on Wheels for our seniors and then, of course, to distribute and help with the SNAP program. Millions of Americans are going to lose that. And, by the way, that SNAP benefit amounts to about 6 bucks a day, maybe a little more. Hardly a big bonanza but an incredibly important component of keeping body and soul together. It is the meals that are so essential to the well-being not just of our seniors but to our children.
So all of this is being done as a way of ``paying for'' legislation that is going to lower taxes. And I don't know how it works for you in Missouri, but when I am talking to Vermonters, nobody has come up to me and said: Peter, you have got to get to work on getting me that tax cut.
Nobody believes that there is a tax cut in this bill that is going to be anything at all meaningful to them in their struggles with affording paying their bills at the end of each month.
Now, if you are in the uberwealthy class, you would get $250,000. That is real money, although for some of those folks who are making millions of dollars a year, it won't even be anything they notice.
But why is it that we are pushing through this legislation that will provide a tax cut to folks who, by and large, don't need it, will do very little for working-class people, will have a negative impact on their ability to pay their bills, especially the ones who are going to lose access to Medicaid, especially folks who are going to lose access to food stamps or the SNAP benefits that are so essential to their well-being? And that is on top of all of those folks having to pay more because of the tariffs.
So this is an assault on the budgets of working families in America. That is what it really is. It is going to shrink their take-home pay at the end of the month. That is literally what it is we are doing. And for what? To provide a tax cut that is not going to be meaningful for the vast majority of Americans who really will end up paying more through tariffs and lost access to healthcare and nutrition programs than they will ever even in the wildest stretch of the imagination get from the so-called tax cut bill, the Big Beautiful Bill.
But there is another part of this that is so damaging, and especially for those of us representing rural America. Individuals need healthcare, but they can't get healthcare unless they can go to a community hospital, unless they can go to a community health center, unless they can go to a private practitioner who accepts Medicaid reimbursement.
All of those people who lose access to Medicaid to pay those bills are going to continue to show up at the doctor's office. They are going to show up at the emergency room. They are going to go to our community hospitals. They are going to go to our community health centers. And those health centers and those doctors will continue to do everything that they can to provide care, even if they don't get paid.
But at a certain point, they can't continue. They can't keep the doors open, they can't pay salaries to staff. They can't pay the light bill.
So what this does is not only take away access to healthcare for individuals, it starts to unravel the healthcare system to deliver healthcare to people in the community. Those institutions that lose the modest revenue reimbursement that you get from Medicaid--far less than Medicare, far less than private pay--are going to lose that revenue. And those institutions, those hospitals, those practices already operating on a very thin margin are going to go out of business.
And then what happens? We put all of the pressure for paying for the healthcare system on the private sector. And what we have seen over and over again is the so-called cost shift. It is a real thing. It is not a so-called cost shift; it is real. So the more money you take out of Medicaid, the more money and more burden you put on the private insurance market.
And who pays that? A lot of our employers. You know, in Vermont--I am sure this is true in Missouri--our employers care about their employees, and there is a struggle every year for employers who want to provide employer-sponsored healthcare when they get the sticker shock of a 10-, 15-, or a 25-percent increase in premiums. And that always then forces the discussion about ``Do we want to give a raise?'' or ``Do we want to just maintain benefits but pay for the higher premium with what would have been your raise?'' So that is further pressure.
So this bill does real harm to individuals, but it really also starts to continue and accelerate the unraveling of a financially insecure medical payment system.
So why do we do this? It is hard to answer. You know, it is a theoretical benefit. The theory here is if you lower taxes, you will boost the economy. We have been hearing that since Reagan, and that is very much in dispute, especially when the lower taxes go to folks who don't need it, and the folks who are struggling to pay their bills aren't getting much relief and are getting higher costs from tariffs and getting higher costs because they are losing access to healthcare, and this is going to weaken our communities.
And then of course, finally, what we are going to see is a significant increase in our debt. And the recent CBO scores, I think, put it at $2.8 trillion. And what are we getting for that? You know, sometimes a country has to borrow like we did in World War II. Sometimes you have to borrow like we did during COVID. Sometimes you have to borrow to rescue the economy like we did after the 2008 Wall Street crash. And you know why you are doing it.
But when you are in better times where you don't have this market collapse, you don't have this mass pandemic, that is not the time to be adding to the debt. And what it does is it means that in the future, if we do have to borrow for an emergency, our capacity to do it is more limited.
And what it is also doing right now is raising interest rates. And as interest rates go up, the cost of debt service on our budget goes up. And right now--right now--the biggest expenditure of taxpayer money is to pay interest on the debt that is escalating exponentially. So we are spending more on debt service than we do on the military. We are spending more on debt service than we do on Medicare and way more than we are on Medicaid. And by adding to the debt, it is clearly putting pressure on interest rates, raising what it is taxpayers have to pay.
So there is nothing good in this bill for the working person or for their small businesses that when they need to borrow money, they are much better off if they can get a lower rate of interest or when a family has to get a car loan, they can get a lower rate of interest or a mortgage, they can get a lower rate of interest. It is the exact opposite.
So we have got families who are paying more because of tariffs, losing a lot because they are losing their Medicaid eligibility and losing their access to the Affordable Care Act, and then everybody is paying more because of the
We should kill this bill, and I would urge all of my colleagues to take into consideration how this is going to affect the people whom each of us represents.
You know, there is a bipartisan element to this bill. The bipartisan aspect of this bill is that everybody is going to share the pain of what this bill does. It is folks in red States. It is the folks in the blue States. Whether they voted for Harris or they voted for Trump, if they lose their Medicaid, that hurts; if they lose their community hospital, that hurts; if they pay higher interest rates, that hurts.
Let's come to our senses and vote against this bill.
Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague Senator Welch, the great Senator from Vermont, for shining a spotlight on Donald Trump and the Republicans' attack on healthcare in their so- called Big Beautiful Bill.
Let's be honest about what the Republican bill really is. It is repeal and replace by another name--not one fell swoop but death by a thousand papercuts.
They are afraid to say they want to kill healthcare, Medicaid, ACA; so instead, they put so many barriers in the way that, in effect, they are doing the same thing.
They are doing the same thing with Social Security.
We have all heard how this bill will devastate Medicaid. It is the largest cut in history. Every day you learn more about this bill, it gets worse. It includes over $1 trillion--$1 trillion--in healthcare cuts--cuts to the ACA, even cuts to Medicare. We have been learning that Medicare will be hurt as well by the sequestration.
And today, if you didn't think it could get worse with this ``Big Ugly Bill,'' it sure did. The CBO just announced that their bill will kick millions more people off their healthcare than we originally thought, not only by attacking Medicaid, but by crippling the ACA private insurance and even Medicare now.
Yesterday, it was 13.7 million people who would lose coverage. Today, it is as high as 16 million. You know, that is a big number, 16 million. It is families; it is people who need healthcare; people whose kids might have cancer and they are desperate to get something done; elderly who are paying so much for medicine, they can't afford to go to a doctor to see if the medicine is working; families that are just starting out and maybe someone lost his or her job. Yes, 16 million, but that is each person, a family, a group.
The more you look at the House bill, the worse it gets. Enrollment times will be shortened by an entire month. Wait times will be longer for everyone at the hospital. And 22 million people--22 million people--could see their average premium go up by an average of 93 percent. Small business owners--3.3 million--will see their premiums skyrocket. Hospitals, nursing homes, health centers are all at risk.
I have been at nursing homes in many parts of my State. Guess what? They are all afraid they are going to close because 60 percent, 70 percent of their income is Medicaid. That is how they take care of the elderly. And those people will lose their coverage and be forced to leave because the nursing home will close.
Well, how about those 45-year-old couples with three kids? They have no extra room in the house and Mom has to come back because she has no place to go; and there won't be adequate healthcare there at home.
And job loss. Job loss on this ``Big Ugly Bill''--this betrayal-- 850,000 will lose their jobs in healthcare alone, another 800,000 in clean energy, and many, many more. Millions are losing their jobs.
I don't know what the economists would think, but when you lose 2 million jobs, if that is the case, you are right on the edge of a recession, if not in one.
And despite all this, Donald Trump has the gall to lie and say that his bill wouldn't harm Americans' healthcare. He says no one will lose coverage. Ladies and gentlemen, people of America, Donald Trump is lying. The bill will kick people off their healthcare coverage. It will slash healthcare benefits. It will close rural hospitals. People will get sicker and die.
What did the junior Senator from Iowa say?
How about the junior Senator from Louisiana?
It shows the callousness of the Republican Senators when it comes to healthcare. They don't seem to care. They seem to say ``Tough luck.''
Republicans should forget calling this their ``One Big Beautiful Bill.'' You know what the new name for this bill is, a more suitable name? The ``We're All Going to Die Act.'' The ``We're All Going to Die Act'' because that just about sums up how callous they are being with the American people.
For many Americans, healthcare is the difference between life and death. Democrats will fight this bill with everything we have. The American people deserve to know the truth.
And one more point. I would say to my colleagues, Donald Trump is selling you Republican colleagues a bill of goods: It is not going to hurt anybody. Don't believe his false words because when you vote for this bill, the effects will actually occur, and the public will realize what you have done. So don't let Donald Trump sell you a bill of goods. We know he makes things up out of the clear blue all the time. He is doing it now. And when he calls you in and tells you that no one is going to be hurt, no one is going to lose coverage, you know that is a crock of you-know-what. I can't say it here. Don't listen to him because your constituents will pay an awful price in healthcare. And they will know you did it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. President, I rise today in strong opposition to the President's request to Congress this week to eliminate $9.4 billion in funding that has already been passed and signed into law. Let's say that again--that has already been passed and signed into law.
Anyone who watches ``Schoolhouse Rock!'' and listens to the song knows how a bill becomes a law. A Republican-led House at the time and a Democratic-led Senate came together; they made an agreement; they passed a bill; and it was signed into law by the then-President. But this President thinks he can just come in and change everything when it comes to really important things for people in this country that I am about to get to. That is just not how it works. We have got to do our jobs, and people need to stand up and say: This is our part of the job. We make the decisions about the funding. The President can veto them. He can work with us, you know, as we could be doing right now. Instead, it is just a one-pony show, but that is how this place works.
So what this proposal would do would gut funding that has already been appropriated for broadcasting--public broadcasting--and slash critical international aid funding, which are programs that have long had bipartisan support. I am the daughter of a newspaperman. I care a lot about people getting information, getting news, and right now, I care a lot about it in rural America because there has been such a breakdown of news coverage--of small newspapers that have folded, in part, because we won't do anything about the social media companies-- about Facebook and Google--and how they are able to use the content without being reimbursed. We just let it sit there as their lobbyists come in and stop it.
But while we are doing that in a lot of these areas now, the only news--the only way for them to find out about what is going on with a storm or what is happening with a wildfire or what is even happening with their local softball team or what is happening with the high school or what business is opening or closing--is through these sources of public radio and public TV.
Public broadcasting reaches nearly 99 percent of Americans with free programming, delivering lifesaving emergency alerts by the local news and shows that talk about what is actually happening locally and what is true and
I know that in my State this will be particularly devastating. We have a lot of rural areas. Minnesota has a long history of public radio and TV programming. Every week, 20 million people across the country listen to the Minnesota Public Radio programs that were originally produced by the Marketplace, right? Since 1967, its award-winning news operation has documented some of the most important stories of our time. With Minnesotans coming from Cambodia and as to what was happening there, it was public radio that was covering that. In 1988, MPR's Main Street radio produced a documentary called ``Against the Grain,'' which gave rural Minnesotans the mic to talk about how they were handling economic change. In 2007, MPR News covered every detail of the collapse of the I-35W bridge, which was, of course, also warning people of where they had to go, of what was happening, of what was closed down. They are covering research on dementia, State plans for K through 12 education. The legislative session right now--both the public TV and public radio stations--are diligently covering every single detail of that while so many other news organizations have gone away or broken down.
What do we want to have--no coverage of a city council in Bemidji, MN? We don't want to know what is happening on Main Street? We don't want to know, when a flood comes in, what stores are open and when? Why would we decide to cut ourselves off from information at this moment in time?
Public TV is a place where so many people get their news that 58 percent of households watch PBS programming in a year. PBS Kids? There are 15 million monthly viewers of PBS Kids, and, yes, that is right. They don't get exposed to all the advertising and all the stuff they would see online because they are watching the PBS Kids. I think that is actually a pretty cool thing for our country that there is a place that kids can watch these programs. Every month, 36 million Americans watch their local PBS.
I was just at KSMQ TV in Austin, MN. I am sure most of the people haven't heard of it, but, boy, to the people in Austin, it is pretty important. For tens of thousands of people, that is where they get their news--72 percent. The former Republican Senate leader in the State senate is on the board because they know this is a place that can find out about local news or what is happening and where they can find out about local news in places like Granite Falls, MN, and in places like Bemidji, MN.
All across the country, in times of crisis, public radio and TV are essential to public safety. While many other news sources lost power and the internet during Hurricane Helene, Asheville's Blue Ridge Public Radio stayed online, bringing lifesaving news and information to the over 500,000 people in the region who were without power. When Hurricane Milton devastated the Tampa area, local public station WUSF hosted live call-in shows. It aired frequent local news briefings and maintained a regularly updated live blog with a text-only bandwidth option to keep residents informed and safe before and after the storm.
I have been in so many areas of my State in a time of crisis of flooding, where you go down there, and the mayor in a really small town is sitting there, but he is live-streaming on their local public access because that is the way. Where else are people going to go? Are they going to try 80 different platforms on social media? Hmm. Are they going to go and try to figure out which local TV station in the Twin Cities--miles away--is, maybe, showing something every so often about their problems? They go to public access purely for safety's sake and much less for kids seeing really good programming that is free of all the commercial aspects that are coming kids' ways every single day. There is the interesting, in-depth kind of reporting you can have on a place like Marketplace for what is happening with the economy or something to listen to when you are driving for hours and hours and hours that doesn't mean endless ads and endless marketing because you actually get to hear the news or you actually get to hear some music you like.
That is what public TV and public radio do for us. It is a treasure in our country. Public broadcasting creates a more informed community through quality programming on local and national events, and I think it is really going to be important, as we debate this in the next few weeks, to remember that ``local'' part. It shines a light on the people, places, history, and stories that are the fabric of towns and cities that are addressing the most pressing issues. We must support these vital resources that give voice to important local issues that wouldn't otherwise be heard. They are going to be lost to history. It is going to be a future erosion of the fabric.
So what do people do instead? Oh, go look on Twitter and see if you can protect your kids from a bunch of bad stuff that is on there. I use it. A bunch of us in here--almost all of us--have accounts. It is an important way to reach people. I am not cutting it down, but I would much rather have a kid in my State be watching the programming on public radio than looking on social media accounts right now or be watching it on public TV and listening to the radio. It is a safe space for them to get some programming.
The President's request would also deepen the damage this administration has done to our standing in the world through reckless cuts to foreign aid. I will give you one example. The President would impose major cuts to PEPFAR, the program that began under President George W. Bush to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. Over many years, this program has earned consistent bipartisan support across 4 administrations and 10 Congresses. It is credited with saving over 25 million lives. These programs not only demonstrate Americans' humanitarian leadership, which certainly helps when you need a friend when there is a conflict going on abroad and you can point to things that you did in working with other countries, but they are also good for our country. We know that you just can't bury your head in the sand and hope that these problems in other countries and diseases aren't heading your way, whether it is Ebola or malaria or the bird flu. Oftentimes, these things come in from other countries. A pandemic, right? They come in from other countries.
So why would we, at this moment in time, cut off our investments in public health and in food aid and other things that are not only right, based on your belief that we are part of this world, and your faith or whatever makes you believe that, if we can save some lives for a small part of the Federal budget in America? Because we are so good at innovation and we are so good at producing things, and, yes, we have some extra food, and, yes, we have some rural economy that we want to keep strong, but also, just from a purely American, selfish version of this--and I don't mean ``selfish'' like a bad thing; I mean ``selfish'' like looking out for ourselves and our country--you would want to work with the rest of the world so these diseases don't come through your doors or you don't shut out and anger other countries when 90 percent of our customers, potential customers, are outside of our borders. You want to be able to sell stuff to them but not if we cut ourselves off from the rest of the world and make fun of them and call them the 51st State.
The President's proposed cuts to funding for UNICEF are also misguided. I was one of those kids at Halloween who would go trick-or- treating. I would have my bag and this little UNICEF box so people would put some pennies in, and I learned how much each of those dimes would mean for food for kids in other countries. We should be at the forefront of supporting brighter futures for children who are facing the hardships of poverty so the
Think about people who study in our colleges and graduate schools from other countries. Think about what they offer us. Yes, they pay their way a lot of the time. That helps college. But do you know what else they do? Sometimes they stay. Sometimes they stay for a few years. Basically, they are getting advanced degrees. They are getting skills that we want them to get, and sometimes we want them to stay in our country. In my mind, we should be stapling a green card to their diplomas. That is why, when you look at Fortune 500 companies in our country and who has headed them up, a huge number of them are immigrants or are kids of immigrants who were educated in our country.
That is such a big part of our economy and our advantage across the world. Why would we be cutting them off--or they go back to their home countries and say: You know, I kind of liked it there. They start a business. Then they do business with our country. That is how this has worked.
American businesses need access to emerging markets. Many countries that have received U.S. assistance have become important American trading partners. The connection between foreign assistance and American prosperity is especially clear in agriculture. America has proudly fed the world for decades, and foreign aid has been a critical component of that effort. Food aid is a significant market for American farmers, purchasing over $4.25 billion in American commodities from 2020 to 2024.
Minnesota farmers and ag businesses sold a total of $70 million in ag products to USAID's Food for Peace Program in 2024 alone.
Continuing this aid should not be a partisan issue. It never has been, or we never would have gotten it done for all these years. It has been completely bipartisan. Some people come at it, as I said, because of their faith and their belief in helping the world. Some people come at it in terms of economics and think this is how we help people, and then this opens the markets for us. Some people come at it from a security standpoint, which I mentioned with health but also applies in other ways. If you help people and you are their friends, it can lead to good things down the line.
Cutting funding for this international aid, not to mention cutting ourselves off from the information we need, especially in rural areas that so often in news deserts rely on public radio and public TV for their information, is sending our democracy backward at a time when we are completely connected and should be connected to the rest of the world.
These investments, compared to the rest of the Federal budget, aren't as big, but their influence in the immediate and in the long term is immense. They strengthen our country at home and strengthen American leadership around the world.
This is a test of our values, yes, but it is also economically the right thing to do to keep a fragmented country that is ever-divided somewhat on the same plane, by their kids having a public TV program to watch and learn from, from their community being able to tune in and watch a local sports game and are able to get their news about what happened on their city council and talk about it the next day.
So one person says: I don't know what happened. I read this on Facebook.
Then the other person says: No, that is not true. I actually saw the local news in Austin, and I saw what it said on our local public TV network--they don't even, maybe, know what that is, but they know what it is--and this is what I found out.
That is how people can come to some common agreement about what is happening in our world.
And there is no better place to start than on a local level, which is why, when you talk to Republican or Democratic mayors or city council members, they will tell you: If we don't have that, how are we ever going to debate this levy proposal? How are we ever going to get people to understand why we have to make a decision about the school and whether we close it down or whether we expand it or whether we close another school down?
How are they ever going to have that without a public access station?
In this day and age, this idea that we are--what are we going to do? Just expect everyone to go out when they have three kids? Are they supposed to go out to every single meeting and watch it themselves? Or are they supposed to rely on that, maybe, they are going to get the right information on Twitter, but they are not sure if that person is telling the truth or that person is telling the truth? Or are we going to give them the first frontline of information, which is what C-SPAN does, by the way, which is why Senator Grassley and I are trying to make sure that we get C-SPAN on platforms like YouTube, owned by Google; by Hulu, owned by Disney, in the modern day.
It is the same thing here. I want to make sure there are some sources where people can gather and look at this news and know they are getting something of quality, know they are getting something either that entertains them with music, without every single song having an ad in the middle of it, and that they are able to get the news they need to be good citizens of this great country. That is what is on the line with these rescissions.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, a lot of people are asking the question: What exactly were people voting for in the last Presidential election?
Well, many things. We have many citizens who are voters in this country, but the recurring theme seems to be the cost of living for the average family, the ability of mothers and fathers to make ends meet and to see a realization of their dreams and aspirations. We were told, over and over again, that families across this country were being overwhelmed by the cost of living--gas, groceries, housing. So they gave a majority of the votes to President Trump, who promised he would make America great again.
Since taking office, I don't believe that the President has come near to keeping his promise. Instead, he has hired many of his billionaire buddies and cut deals with the ultrawealthy that will harm the same Americans who voted for him.
I am not going to get into his cryptocurrency scheme and how it has enriched him and his family. Let's set that aside for a minute and talk about issues that apply to every person.
Hidden in more than 1,000 pages in the bill that passed the House of Representatives is a plan--a laundry list of things--that I don't believe Americans even considered voting for in the last November election. They are going to have a devastating impact on families and States, red and blue alike.
The main takeaway from this ``One Big Ugly Bill'': Billionaires are going to win, and American families are going to lose.
Do you think the voters in last November's election for President of the United States would actually vote to close down their local hospital? That is what is looming.
You say: Oh, you Democrats and your scare tactics--that can't possibly be true.
Well, let me tell you what happened.
Three weeks ago, 20 hospital administrators from across the State of Illinois--from Chicago down to the southernmost part of our State--all took a special trip to Washington to warn me that the bill that was pending before the House of Representatives threatened the survival of hospitals across our State. These are hospitals which are not only critical for providing professional medical care, delivering babies, and saving people's lives who are in automobile accidents but also major parts of the local economy.
You come to rural, smalltown Midwest America and ask about the impact to the local hospital, and they will tell you: We don't know that we can keep a business or attract a business if we didn't have it. We count on it every day to be there when we need it. And, secondly, it is a major employer--in
Then they warned me: Many of these hospitals are hanging on by a thread. The money that they receive from government insurance programs like Medicaid keeps the doors open and the lights on and the doctors in town.
And now we have a proposal from the Republicans to cut that Medicaid benefit for 16 million Americans. This would be the largest cutback in health insurance protection in the history of the United States. That is what has been sent over by the House of Representatives and is presently under consideration by the Republican leadership here in the Senate.
Nationwide, half of all rural hospitals already operate in the red, and more than 300 rural hospitals are at immediate risk of closure--26 in Kansas, 22 in Alabama, and 9 in Missouri.
How many closed hospitals will the Republicans accept as part of their plan?
Let me tell you, I am from downstate Illinois--proud to represent the city of Chicago all these years but prouder still of being from downstate and trying to keep track of all the needs they have for this economy to prosper. I know rural hospitals are the backbone of many communities in downstate Illinois. Critical emergency medical care anchors the local economy.
Now you dig deeply into this Republican budget bill that has come over from the House of Representatives, and it turns out they are not just eliminating health insurance coverage for 16 million Americans, they are also cutting Medicare.
Medicare is a program primarily for elderly people in this country. It has been a miracle worker. Medicare was created in the 1960s, and it is no coincidence or surprise that the life expectancy of Americans went up as Medicare took root and became part of healthcare in America.
Despite promising to leave Medicare alone, which everyone said, from Donald Trump on down, Republicans couldn't help themselves. They slashed Medicare benefits and reduced access to hospitals, nursing homes, and medications for seniors in all 50 States--Medicaid and Medicare.
So why would Republicans in Congress take a wrecking ball to these two major parts of our healthcare system? To provide money from tax breaks to the wealthiest people in America.
I will bet you that he is making it up. I will bet you it is another one of those political schemes of his.
It is not being made up. It is true. They want to generate enough money to give tax breaks to wealthy people.
Based on a new update from the Congressional Budget Office today, up to 16 million Americans are now estimated to lose their health insurance coverage under this Republican plan that passed the House and is now being considered by the Senate Republicans.
I can just tell you this from a personal basis: There is no more helpless feeling in the world than to be a father with no health insurance and being told that your beautiful baby has a serious medical complication. I know. I have been there.
Some Republicans are downplaying these catastrophic health cuts. On the Senate floor earlier today, a Republican Senator said people on Medicaid are lazy and play video games all day. At a recent townhall meeting, when a concerned constituent raised the Republicans' proposed Medicaid cuts and said that people would die, it became a controversy in response to the Senator's comment.
It sounds like Republicans in Congress want to be the ones to decide who is worthy of healthcare in America. But Americans who depend on Medicaid are not strangers. They are your neighbors. They are people at your church, your school, and at your work. It probably is your family too.
If you or a loved one gets sick, will congressional Republicans deem you deserving of seeing a doctor? Is that what this was all about? Is that what this election was all about? Did the American people vote for tax cuts for billionaires? I don't think so.
A party like the Republicans, who claim they are the party of the working class--working-class billionaires--they refuse to put their money where their mouth is. Republicans in Congress may say they are just trying to lower your taxes, but most of the benefit is going to wealthy people who won't even notice it. Maybe their bookkeepers and accountants will be able to give them the good news that they just saved another $200- or $300,000 in taxes.
Under the Republican plan, taxpayers in the wealthiest 0.1 percent would get a $300,000 tax cut every year--$300,000 for the richest of the richest in America. Why? At the expense of healthcare for 16 million Americans? It makes no sense.
The average full-time worker making minimum wage on average would receive a tax break as well. I have to be honest about it. It is $20 a month. So $300,000 for the richest of the rich and 20 bucks a month for the working stiff. How can that possibly be fair?
Did the American people vote to slash jobs across the economy in the last November election? I don't think so. Since we passed the Inflation Reduction Act, 85 percent of investment in clean energy technology has landed in Republican districts.
Now, I know the President of the United States calls global warming and environmental issues a hoax. He has been hanging with that story for a long time even though we know something is happening. Notice the extreme weather events across the United States and around the world? They are getting more frequent and more costly. Is it a coincidence or is something going on? I happen to believe something is going on.
In just 2 years since passing the Inflation Reduction Act, businesses have announced 340 new clean technology projects. One estimate says that these projects will create 150,000 permanent jobs. I have seen it in my State. That includes more than 9,000 jobs in Texas, 4,800 in Ohio, 4,500 in Indiana, and 2,700 in my home State of Illinois. The Republicans' ``Big Ugly Bill'' puts these jobs at risk, taking a hatchet to tax policy that makes these projects possible.
The promise of a Republican repeal has already scared the private sector into withdrawing $14 billion in investment and canceling 10,000 clean energy manufacturing jobs. Why would the so-called party of the working class want to give their own constituents a pink slip? I don't get it.
Now, some of my Republican colleagues have been brave enough to raise alarms about the Medicaid cuts, the rollback of clean energy credits, and the cost of the bill, but do you know what the cost of this bill is to give tax breaks to the wealthiest people? It is $3.8 trillion more on the deficit over the next decade.
We already know the scammer in chief will try to bully Republicans into choosing billionaires over working families, using anything he can to persuade them or threaten them. My Republican colleagues must know that this plan does not make America great again; it makes our debt the greatest in the history of our Nation. Instead, it harms families in red and blue States looking for a fair shot.
Their lip service to these terrible cuts is not enough. I urge a handful of my Republican colleagues--and that is all it takes--to show some courage, show some common sense, tell the folks in the House and tell the White House as well that this approach is not going to work.
Taking health insurance away from 16 million Americans--more than has ever happened in the history of this country--is unfair, fundamentally unfair, and we all know it. We know intuitively that is just not fair. Taking Medicaid away from reimbursing hospitals and doctors of critical care in small towns and rural areas is a mistake we will pay for for generations to come.
I urge Republicans to listen to their constituents because I know that Americans who voted for Trump in November did not vote for what I have just described today on the floor of the Senate.
We need four Republicans--four--to stand up and say: This doesn't make sense--too much debt, too much pain for families, and too much of a gamble for rural areas in smalltown America.
We have to stand up and make a much better effort, and we should do it on a bipartisan basis as quickly as possible.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, I am here now for the 299th time in my
Since President Trump's inauguration in January, he has embarked upon a series of actions that quite simply defy reality. They obey the fossil fuel industry, but they defy reality--or maybe it is the other way around: They defy reality to obey the fossil fuel industry.
On his very first day in office, he issued an Executive order declaring that wind energy and solar energy are not energy. This defies even the dictionary, and it ignores the fact that humans have been harnessing wind and solar power since well before we started combusting fossil fuels.
In March, Trump's EPA Administrator announced his intention to undo the Agency's finding that carbon pollution endangers human health and welfare, despite the fact that the harms and causes associated with climate change become more evident every day.
In May, Jeff Clark, who runs the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at OMB--part of the OMB fossil fuel stooge platoon--best known for his involvement in crooked Keystone Cops efforts to overturn the 2020 election, issued a memo directing Agencies to stop using the social cost of carbon in Agency decision making--again despite the fact that we know that carbon pollution costs the government and the public lots of money.
Now we hear that Trump's EPA is ready to rescind a rule limiting carbon pollution from certain fossil fuel-fired powerplants on the pretense that emissions from these plants do not significantly contribute to climate change, despite the fact that the carbon pollution from fossil fuel-fired U.S. powerplants is greater than all the carbon pollution from all but six countries in the world. It is a major contributor.
Put simply, in Trump's world, facts don't matter, and the truth is whatever his fossil fuel donors say it is.
And now this fossil fuel influence operation has actually infiltrated its way into government, and it is affecting the fossil fuel industry's desires from inside.
This would be a sorry enough state of affairs by itself: a President of the United States who ignores facts and lives in a phony alternate reality of a polluting industry's making. But it gets worse when others modulate their own world views and actions to rely less on facts, on the immutable laws of nature and economics and, instead, on nonsensical utterances about climate change and wacko energy policy.
Take our Fed Chair Jerome Powell. After admitting to Senator Tina Smith on the Senate Banking Committee in February that climate change would make it impossible to get insurance and, therefore, impossible to get mortgages in certain coastal and wildfire exposed regions of the country, he fell into line behind Trumpian denialism. Three days before Trump's inauguration, he pulled the Fed out of an international network of central banks that researches climate-related financial and economic risks. The European Central Bank and the central banks of China, Canada, Mexico, Japan, the UK, and more than 80 other countries are members, but not us. Not anymore.
Then in May, the Fed pressured an international banking supervision organization to disband its task force overseeing climate risk. Thankfully, the other central banks refused. Last, the Fed dissolved its own climate risk working groups. We can't have those anymore, not when our polluter-funded dear leader says it is all a hoax.
Or take Daniel Yergin, Peter Orszag, and Atul Arya--three people who should know better. They waited barely a month after Trump's inauguration before publishing a 5,000-word manifesto in Foreign Affairs in defense of what they call energy pragmatism. What is energy pragmatism you might ask?
Basically, it is a Trump-friendly and factually challenged theory that transitioning to green energy is too complicated and expensive, so we may as well resolve ourselves to using fossil fuels for a long, long time to come. Despite its 5,000-word length and despite its inclusion of a section entitled ``It's The Economy,'' this piece never mentions the massive costs and systemic economic risks already looming from climate change. Quite an omission--literally only one side of the case--which brings me back to the social cost of carbon.
There was a time when Republicans were the great champions of cost- benefit analysis. Ronald Reagan was the first to mandate its use in the regulatory process. Obviously far from perfect, it does make sense to have a monetary estimate of the costs and benefits associated with a particular regulatory action. That is the social cost of carbon. It calculates the climate-related costs from adding an additional ton of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere or, alternatively, the benefits from removing or eliminating a ton of carbon pollution.
The social cost of carbon is not a new concept. Economists have been using it for decades. Yet Clark's memo argues that the social cost of carbon shouldn't be used because a monetized estimate of the costs of 1 ton of carbon pollution is too uncertain. So they recommend zero.
Well, first of all, we do know one thing about this, and that is that the cost isn't zero. Our own lived experiences teach us that. And there is actually case law to the effect that the number is not zero. We also know it is not even close to zero. Every serious academic estimate of the social cost of carbon is well north of $50, with most well over $100 per ton.
EPA's last estimate, informed by copious academic research, was $190 per ton in harm from carbon dioxide. The International Monetary Fund calculates that there is a subsidy to the fossil fuel industry in the United States every single year of $700 billion, which is their valuation of the ``pollute for free'' fossil fuel business model.
You can back-calculate from that to an effective cost of carbon pollution of around $150 per ton. Whether $150 per ton or $190 per ton, these weren't even the highest estimates out there. There are incredible estimates in the hundreds of dollars per ton.
Much of the variation among the costs comes from the choice of what damage you attempt to quantify. For example, that EPA estimate at $190 per ton only looked at four harms. It only looked at increased mortality, damage to agriculture, increased energy costs, and damage from sea level rise. Those four things--four things.
It did not consider the systemic financial and economic risks from climate change of the sort that I have discussed so frequently in this body--the ones to which Fed Chair Powell alluded when he admitted that climate change would render parts of our country uninsurable and hence unmortgageable.
That is a huge, looming, economic blow not in the EPA calculation. In other words, almost all estimates of the social cost of carbon are underestimates because they do not attempt to quantify all climate- related costs and damages.
Trump's polluter-run OMB wants us to ignore all of this. The logic is really stunning here--or I should probably say the illogic--because they say it is not clear what number is right, we will use zero, a number we know is wrong. That simply doesn't make sense, but it does solve the problem of the fossil fuel industry having to account for the harm that it causes. It is a massive favor to the fossil fuel industry.
So be clear, this is yet another oily fossil fuel thumb pressed down on the scale to help big polluters. Climate pollution is a global problem. Our emissions harm Americans and the rest of the world. Chinese emissions harm the Chinese and the rest of the world. And harms that occur to people in other countries end up having real costs here at home as well.
Some of them fall in the national security space. Take the Syrian civil war which destabilized the Middle East and led to periodic American military intervention. A long-term severe drought, exacerbated by climate change, is widely understood to have played a role in that conflict.
Look at nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, which have been at odds for decades. As glaciers shrink in the Himalayans due to climate change, water becomes, eventually, more scarce, raising tensions as these adversaries compete for a dwindling supply of that essential need.
Then there are the Northern Triangle countries like Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras hit hard by a drought made worse by climate change. The drought made it harder for subsistence
A drought in Panama lowers water in the Panama Canal and slows shipping, making it more expensive. A drought or flood hits a major agricultural exporter and makes food here at home more expensive.
A flood in Thailand swamps factories and provokes a shortage here in car parts. The global economy is interconnected; climate-related droughts, floods, fires, and storms in foreign lands impose real costs on Americans here at home.
The legions of bootlickers who orbit around Trump remind me of the legend of King Canute. King Canute, like President Trump today, was surrounded by hordes of flattering courtiers. Unlike President Trump, King Canute was displeased by his courtiers' relentless flattery that he was all-powerful. So to give his courtiers a lesson, King Canute set his throne by the sea edge and commanded the incoming tide to halt so as not to wet his feet. Well, of course, the tide took no mind of King Canute's words, continued its advance, and washed over his feet.
King Canute exclaimed:
Well, those words should particularly resonate today because climate change is real, and it is driven by eternal laws, by the natural laws of chemistry, for instance, and physics. And a latter-day ersatz King saying otherwise makes no difference at all to the natural systems of this planet driven by nature's laws.
Climate change is going to be very expensive, very disruptive, and very damaging. The warnings are already everywhere. And Florida's insurance crisis is a preview of coming attractions for all of America's coastal communities.
I won't dwell in this speech on that list of warnings. I spoke over and over about the many different Agencies and experts, from insurance industry CEOs to insurance industry board members to the Chairman of the Federal Reserve to the chief economist of Freddie Mac to the Economist magazine to the International Stability Board, and on and on and on. It is over and over the same warning: the warning that climate change is disrupting the planet so much that risks are becoming so unpredictable that insurance is becoming either flatout unavailable, or unaffordable on its way to unavailable, and that that insurance crisis quickly spills over into a mortgage crisis because you cannot get a mortgage on a property on which you cannot get insurance. And that mortgage crisis cascades into a crash in property values because if you bought your home with a mortgage, you probably need to sell it to somebody who needs a mortgage; and if you can't sell to that entire population of human beings who need a mortgage to buy your house because your house won't sustain a mortgage because it can't get insurance, then your market just crashed and the value of your home did as well.
I have shown here at this podium the map from First Street that predicted what, in the time period of a 30-year mortgage, is going to happen to home values around the country from this ``insurance to mortgage to values'' cascade.
And in some places, the loss of value was at 100 percent, a zeroing out.
But even where the loss of value is going to be 20 percent or 40 percent, think what that does to that community where all of the property in that community has lost that much value. Think of what that does to the community bank in that community and its solvency, its loan-to-value ratio, when the value of the collateral for its loans has crashed 20 to 40 percent.
This is coming. And there is an answer: renewable energy and low carbon technologies. Already cheap; getting cheaper. Plus, whoever dominates those industries will dominate the 21st century.
So let's protect ourselves from that looming threat. Let's make sure that who dominates the 21st century in energy is the United States. Let's not give away America's position in that competition to our foreign rivals just to humor a corrupt political influence effort here at home. That would be a disgraceful outcome, but it is the one we are headed for.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton), the Senator from Montana (Mr. Daines), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford), and the Senator from Montana (Mr. Sheehy).
I announce that the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Ossoff) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 48, nays 46, as follows:
The nomination was confirmed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the President will be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton), the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis), and the Senator from Montana (Mr. Sheehy).
I announce that the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Ossoff) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 57, nays 38, as follows:
The nomination was confirmed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the President will be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate resume legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I rise today to honor the life and enduring legacy of Mr. Gerald ``Jerry'' Danforth. Mr. Danforth was a truly remarkable leader whose impact reached far beyond the Oneida Nation and into Native communities across the United States.
Mr. Danforth was born on December 24, 1946, on the Oneida Reservation to Leslie and Eva (Schuyler) Danforth. He had strong roots in his heritage and spent his life in service to others.
For 30 years, Mr. Danforth served with distinction in the U.S. Navy, rising to the rank of force master chief. He served during both the Vietnam war and Operation Desert Storm. In 1994, he retired from the U.S. Atlantic Fleet with a record of service marked by courage, discipline, and leadership.
When he returned home, Mr. Danforth focused on building a better future for the Oneida Nation. Elected in 1999 and 2005, he served at Tribal Chairman of the Oneida Nation for two nonconsecutive terms. Mr. Danforth was a visionary advocate for Indian gaming and the vital importance of economic diversification. His leadership laid the groundwork for the Nation's self-sustaining and sovereign economy, which will benefit generations to come.
Mr. Danforth never wavered in his goal to improve the lives of the Oneida community. He worked to improve access to quality healthcare and education and to preserve the Oneida language and culture. He respected the General Tribal Council and made sure that the Oneida Nation's Government reflected the wishes of the people.
Mr. Danforth's leadership was firmly rooted in the principles of community well-being. He worked alongside the people of the Oneida Nation to address challenges, ignite change, and envision a better future. Mr. Danforth worked diligently to foster transparency, accountability, and consensus-based leadership. His commitment to good governance led to decisions that were consistently guided by the long- term welfare of the entire Oneida community.
Even after his terms as Chairman, Mr. Danforth continued his service to the Oneida people, serving as a judicial officer on the Oneida Appeals Commission, where he continued to advocate for fairness and accountability.
Beyond his extensive public service, Mr. Danforth was a family man who cherished time with his wife Pamela. They loved spending time in South Padre Island, fishing, having barbecues, and enjoying good food with friends. He also loved golfing, savoring red wine and chocolate, and baking pies. Through these little joys, he showed his warm personality, sense of humor, and love for life--qualities that many people admired about him.
Mr. Danforth is survived by his loving wife Pamela Johns Danforth; his children Paul Jameson (Virna), Steve Jameson (Cathy), Tanya Wood (Steve), Gerald Danforth, Jr. (Chitra), and Patrick Danforth; his stepson Keith Bimosae Johns Herman; his siblings James Danforth (Joanne) and Joanne Smith (the late Bruce Smith); and his treasured grandchildren: Alanna, Erin, Fiona, Ronan, Willem, Isobella, Eilish, Mariah Ciera, John Samantha, William, Gregory, Paul, Kaylah, and Analise.
Mr. Danforth will be remembered for his many contributions to the well-being of Native peoples and to the broader fabric of American life. His leadership, marked by unwavering integrity, thoughtful foresight, and genuine humility, will continue to be honored, admired, and emulated by generations to come.
May this statement serve as a fitting tribute to a life of remarkable distinction--a life dedicated to steadfast service to the Oneida Nation, to the United States, and to the fundamental cause of dignity and sovereignty for all Native peoples.
May his memory be a blessing, and may we carry forward his legacy with the same strength and spirit that defined his every step.
Mr. President, I rise today to honor the servicemembers from the 98th Expedition Signal Battalion, the 297th Regional Support group, the 1st Armored Division, the 200th Military Police, the 303rd Military Policy Company, the 3-321 Field Artillery Regiment, and the 41st Field Artillery Brigade who are currently serving alongside our NATO allies in Estonia. I had the opportunity to meet and talk with them during a recent visit, including several servicemembers from my home State of Florida. These brave American soldiers are currently serving alongside our NATO allies to protect against the threat of Putin's Russia. They are standing shoulder to shoulder with our allies who are putting their resources and citizens on the frontline. For them, the threat of an empowered Russia is not a theoretical one, but a tangible danger they deal with every day on the frontlines of the war. We are happy to support Estonia as they defend themselves and our NATO allies against this threat. I am honored today to recognize and honor the sacrifice of these Americans and the sacrifice of their families as they answer the call to protect their country and its allies.
Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the POST GRAD Act of 2025, which I introduced today.
For too long, the cost of higher education has remained a barrier for students pursuing advanced degrees that are necessary in our economy, including psychology, social work, and teaching, where shortages of qualified professionals that meet the needs of their communities persist. The POST GRAD Act would relieve some of the financial burden of financing a graduate degree by reinstating subsidized Federal student loans for graduate students, which was common practice in the United States from 1994 until 2012.
Unlike undergraduate students, graduate students have only been able to obtain Federal direct unsubsidized loans that accrue interest even while they are still in graduate school for the past decade. This can add thousands of additional dollars over the life of the loan.
Furthermore, the majority of those who take out graduate Federal student loans are disproportionately women, people of color, and people from low- to middle-income backgrounds. This bill presents an opportunity to lower the cost of graduate school and reduce barriers to access that support a 21st-century workforce.
I want to thank Representative Judy Chu for introducing this bill with me. I hope our colleagues will join us in taking a step towards making an advanced degree more attainable for Americans.
Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the POST GRAD Act of 2025, which I introduced today.
For too long, the cost of higher education has remained a barrier for students pursuing advanced degrees that are necessary in our economy, including psychology, social work, and teaching, where shortages of qualified professionals that meet the needs of their communities persist. The POST GRAD Act would relieve some of the financial burden of financing a graduate degree by reinstating subsidized Federal student loans for graduate students, which was common practice in the United States from 1994 until 2012.
Unlike undergraduate students, graduate students have only been able to obtain Federal direct unsubsidized loans that accrue interest even while they are still in graduate school for the past decade. This can add thousands of additional dollars over the life of the loan.
Furthermore, the majority of those who take out graduate Federal student loans are disproportionately women, people of color, and people from low- to middle-income backgrounds. This bill presents an opportunity to lower the cost of graduate school and reduce barriers to access that support a 21st-century workforce.
I want to thank Representative Judy Chu for introducing this bill with me. I hope our colleagues will join us in taking a step towards making an advanced degree more attainable for Americans.
Mr. President, I have five requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.
Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:
The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, June 4, 2025, at 1 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, June 4, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, June 4, 2025, at 10:15 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.
The Committee on Veterans Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, June 4, 2025, at 4 p.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.
The Special Committee on Aging is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, June 4, 2025, at 4:15 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
Authorizing Testimony, Document Production, and Representation by the Senate Legal Counsel in the Case of in Re Architect of the Capitol Employment Dispute
Mr. President, this resolution concerns a subpoena for deposition testimony and documents in a civil action pending in Federal district court in the District of Columbia. Plaintiffs in this case, former employees of the Architect of the Capitol, have sued the Architect of the Capitol alleging discrimination based on gender, age, and military status or service.
Plaintiffs have sent a subpoena to Nichole Kotschwar, deputy staff director of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, seeking deposition testimony and document production regarding matters in connection with the underlying employment dispute. The subpoena implicates the Committee's constitutional privilege and presents concerns regarding imposing an undue burden on a nonparty Senate committee employee. On advice of counsel, the Rules Committee seeks Senate authorization for Ms. Kotschwar, on behalf of the committee, to provide testimony and produce documents and communications with individuals outside of Congress relating to the requests of the subpoena.
This resolution would authorize the testimony and production of documents from Ms. Kotschwar except where a privilege or objection should be asserted. The resolution also authorizes the Senate legal counsel to represent Ms. Kotschwar in this matter.
I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The resolution (S. Res. 262) was agreed to.
The preamble was agreed to.
(The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Thursday, June 5; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of Executive Calendar No. 144, James O'Neill, under the previous order; further, that notwithstanding rule XXII, the cloture motions filed during Tuesday's session of the Senate ripen following disposition of the O'Neill nomination and if cloture is invoked on the Eisenberg nomination, the postcloture time expire at 1:45 p.m. tomorrow; finally, that if cloture is invoked on the Shumate nomination, all postcloture time be expired and the Senate vote on confirmation of the Shumate nomination at a time to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the Democratic leader, on Monday, June 9.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
