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33Senate Resolution 346: Urging All Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Spend a Minimum of 5 Percent of Gross Domestic Product on Defense
34Senate Resolution 347: Expressing the Sense of the Senate That the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee Should Take Immediate Steps to Lower...
Thirty-two bills and four resolutions were introduced, as follows: S. 2529-2560, and S. Res. 346-349.
Pages S4904-05
Measures Reported
S. 1199, to extend the statute of limitations for fraud under certain pandemic programs, with an amendment in the nature of a substitute. S. 2232, to expand the surety bond program under the Small Business Investment Act of 1958, with an amendment in the nature of a substitute.
Page S4902
Measures Passed
National Farmers Market Week: Senate agreed to S. Res. 349, designating the week of August 3 through August 9, 2025, as ``National Farmers Market Week''.
Page S4954
Measures Considered
Export of Defense Articles to Israel Disapproval: By 27 yeas to 70 nays (Vote No. EX. 454), Senate did not agree to the motion to discharge S.J. Res. 41, providing for congressional disapproval of the proposed export of certain defense articles to Israel, from the Committee on Foreign Relations, pursuant to 22 U.S.C. 2776 and in accordance with the provisions of Sec. 601(b)(3) of the International Security Assistance and Arms Exports Control Act of 1976.
Pages S4890-96
Foreign Military Sale to Israel Disapproval
By 24 yeas to 73 nays (Vote No. EX. 455), Senate did not agree to the motion to discharge S.J. Res. 34, providing for congressional disapproval of the proposed foreign military sale to the Government of Israel of certain defense articles and services, from the Committee on Foreign Relations, pursuant to 22 U.S.C. 2776 and in accordance with the provisions of Sec 601(b)(3) of the International Security Assistance and Arms Control Act of 1976.
Page S4896
Lions Act of 2025: Referral Agreement
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 901, to amend the Small Business Act and the Small Business Investment Act of 1958 to increase the maximum loan amount for certain loans, and be referred to the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
Pages S4899, S4954
Nesvik Nomination: Cloture
Senate began consideration of the nomination of Brian Nesvik, of Wyoming, to be Director of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
Page S4859
A motion was entered to close further debate on the nomination, and, in accordance with the provisions of Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, a vote on cloture will occur on Friday, August 1, 2025.
Page S4859
Prior to the consideration of this nomination, Senate took the following action
Senate agreed to the motion to proceed to Legislative Session.
Page S4859
Senate agreed to the motion to proceed to Executive Session to consider the nomination.
Page S4859
Rinaldi Nomination: Cloture
Senate began consideration of the nomination of Luigi Rinaldi, of New York, to be Ambassador to the Oriental Republic of Uruguay.
Pages S4859-60
A motion was entered to close further debate on the nomination, and, in accordance with the provisions of Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, a vote on cloture will occur on upon disposition of the nomination of Brian Nesvik, of Wyoming, to be Director of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of the Interior.
Pages S4859-60
Prior to the consideration of this nomination, Senate took the following action
Senate agreed to the motion to proceed to Legislative Session.
Page S4859
Senate agreed to the motion to proceed to Executive Session to consider the nomination.
Page S4859
Clarkson Nomination
Senate resumed consideration of the nomination of Tyler Clarkson, of Virginia, to be General Counsel of the Department of Agriculture.
Pages S4881-90
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 53 yeas to 44 nays (Vote No. EX. 453), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Page S4881
Serralta Nomination
Senate resumed consideration of the nomination of Gadyaces Serralta, of Florida, to be Director of the United States Marshals Service.
Pages S4896-97
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 59 yeas to 38 nays (Vote No. EX. 456), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Pages S4896-97
Kozma Nomination
Senate resumed consideration of the nomination of Matthew Kozma, of Virginia, to be Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, Department of Homeland Security.
Page S4897
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 53 yeas to 44 nays (Vote No. EX. 457), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Page S4897
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that if cloture is invoked on any of the nominations individually, all post-cloture time be expired, and Senate vote on confirmation of the nominations, at a time to be determined by the Majority Leader, in consultation with the Democratic Leader, no earlier than Thursday, July 31, 2025.
Pages S4881-82
Mason Nomination: Agreement
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that at approximately 10 a.m., on Thursday, July 31, 2025, Senate resume consideration of the nomination of Cheryl Mason, of North Carolina, to be Inspector General, Department of Veterans Affairs; that notwithstanding Rule XXII, at 11 a.m., the cloture motions filed on Tuesday, July 29, 2025 ripen, and Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Cheryl Mason, of North Carolina, to be Inspector General, Department of Veterans Affairs; if cloture is invoked on the nomination, Senate execute the order of Wednesday, July 30, 2025 in relation to the nomination of Tyler Clarkson, of Virginia, to be General Counsel of the Department of Agriculture; provided further, at 2:15 p.m., Senate execute the order in relation to the nomination of Gadyaces Serralta, of Florida, to be Director of the United States Marshals Service., and following disposition of the nomination, Senate vote on confirmation of the nomination of Cheryl Mason, of North Carolina, to be Inspector General, Department of Veterans Affairs; and if confirmed, Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Andrea Lucas, of Virginia, to be a Member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for a term expiring July 1, 2030, and if cloture is invoked, Senate then execute the order in relation to the nomination of Matthew Kozma, of Virginia, to be Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, Department of Homeland Security.
Page S4954
Nominations Confirmed
Senate confirmed the following nominations: By 53 yeas to 45 nays (Vote No. EX. 450), Thomas Gaiser, of Ohio, to be an Assistant Attorney General.
Pages S4857-59, S4860-69
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 53 yeas to 47 nays (Vote No. EX. 449), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Pages S4864-65
By 52 yeas to 44 nays (Vote No. EX. 452), Joseph Kent, of Washington, to be Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Pages S4869-81
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 53 yeas to 44 nays (Vote No. EX. 451), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Page S4869
Nominations Received
Senate received the following nominations: Thomas Albus, of Missouri, to be United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri for the term of four years. Timothy Dill, of Ohio, to be an Assistant Secretary of Defense. Andrew Duva, of Florida, to be an Assistant Attorney General. Daniel Edwards, of North Carolina, to be an Assistant Secretary of Transportation. Thomas Ferguson III, of North Carolina, to be United States Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina for the term of four years. Ho Nieh, of Alabama, to be a Member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the remainder of the term expiring June 30, 2029. Michael Payne, of Virginia, to be Director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, Department of Defense. Richard Price, of Missouri, to be United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri for the term of four years. Darin Smith, of Wyoming, to be United States Attorney for the District of Wyoming for the term of four years. Maurice Todd, of Florida, to be an Assistant Secretary of Defense. Douglas Troutman, of Maryland, to be Assistant Administrator for Toxic Substances of the Environmental Protection Agency. A routine list in the Army.
Page S4954
Nominations Withdrawn
Senate received notification of withdrawal of the following nominations: David Eisner, of New York, to be an Assistant Secretary of Energy, which was sent to the Senate on February 11, 2025. Jason De Sena Trennert, of New York, to be an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, which was sent to the Senate on February 11, 2025.
Page S4954
Statements on Introduced Bills/Resolutions:
Pages S4907-10
Record Votes
Nine record votes were taken today. (Total--457)
Pages S4865, S4868-69, S4881, S4896-97
Adjournment
Senate convened at 10 a.m. and adjourned at 10:45 p.m., until 10 a.m. on Thursday, July 31, 2025. (For Senate's program, see the remarks of the Majority Leader in today's Record on page S4954.)
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: 95 of 208 spoken turns were found. Turns without a time are still listed; they just can't seek.
Only in Washington--only in Washington--can you let people take more than what is legally allowed under a government program and, at the same time, let them keep it. Last year, I shined a light with the Treasury inspector general that over 40 percent of excess marketplace subsidy payments totaling $10 and two-tenths billion, dating back to 2016, were not being recouped.
So why not recouped? Because of the current so-called safe harbor recapture rules. When ObamaCare was passed, it established so-called safe harbor recapture rules for the advanced premium tax credit, also known as a subsidy.
When an individual buys a health plan off of the Federal marketplace, the government subsidizes much of the cost through an advanced premium tax credit. The subsidy is based on a consumer's estimated income. At the end of the year, the consumer reconciles any differences in their subsidy amount based on their actual income compared to their previously projected income.
If a consumer gets more than what is permitted based on their income, they must return the excess amount unless they fall within the so- called safe harbor, which is based on income and excess amount, as a consumer could misestimate their annual income and not be required to pay back any excess subsidy or maybe just a small portion.
Until now, safe harbor rules permitted keeping up to $3,250 in excess. This policy actually rewarded fraud and wasted taxpayers' money. This is especially concerning since I have also found that insurance agents are also using targeted internet ads to fraudulently enroll consumers with false income.
Congress has tightened and simplified the safe harbor rules before. Senate Republicans, through the One Big Beautiful Bill, ended this legal theft for those over the poverty limits. This policy will save over $19 billion in the next 10 years. Senate Republicans
This will save over $40 billion. This is good news for the taxpayers but, particularly, fairness in this program.
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, so this morning, we got more worrying news showing how Donald Trump's administration is raising costs, sowing chaos in the economy. The New York Times headline put it succinctly: ``U.S. Economy Slowed in First Half of 2025 as Tariffs Scrambled Data.''
And while the Trump administration will try to wave rosy headlines about the Q2 numbers, today's GDP number is, in fact, a mirage because some ominous numbers lurk under the hood. Business investment plunged in the second quarter by 3.1 percent.
The fact that business investment plunged so starkly is very troubling. It shows that, already, businesses are worried about growing their operations, worried about hiring more workers, worried about trading with their international partners, and worried in general about the future.
And this number is another data point in a larger pattern. Donald Trump's tariffs are weighing down the U.S. economy, spiking costs for small businesses and families alike. And if Donald Trump keeps up the chaos, the dangers for the economy will continue to get worse.
Mr. President, we are coming up on the 1-month anniversary of Senate passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, and there is a lot to celebrate: sorely needed funding to restore our military readiness and ensure that our men and women in uniform are fully equipped to defend our country; funding to continue the work of securing the border, ending the illegal immigration crisis that President Biden created; $1\1/2\ trillion in Byrd-compliant savings to trim waste, fraud, and abuse, and put our government on a more secure financial footing going forward; measures to unleash American energy production to ensure a stable, reliable, and affordable energy supply for the American people; support for local law enforcement--all this and a whole lot more.
And I could talk about each of these things for a good long while, but the biggest reason for the One Big Beautiful Bill, of course, was about making life better for hard-working Americans, and that is what I want to talk about today. Without congressional action, Americans were facing a massive $4 trillion tax hike next year. For a typical family in my State of South Dakota, that would have looked like a $2,500 tax increase--$2,500. That is a lot of money.
And the first thing Republicans were determined to do, if we got elected last November, was to make sure that Americans were not hit with this tax hike. And so months before last year's elections, we started laying the groundwork for an extension of the 2017 tax relief to prevent tax hikes on hard-working Americans.
But not just an extension.
My Senate Republican colleagues and I were determined to ensure that this tax relief was permanent so that Americans wouldn't have to worry about their taxes going up down the road, and that is what we did. The One Big Beautiful Bill makes the 2017 tax relief permanent, and it prevents a massive $4 trillion tax hike on the American people.
But we didn't stop there. We didn't just make the 2017 tax relief permanent. We added to it with new measures to provide relief for hard- working Americans.
We increased the child tax credit to $2,200 and indexed it to inflation so its value will never go down. We increased the standard deduction, exempting additional money from Americans' taxable income, and we added a new $6,000 bonus deduction for seniors, allowing Americans on Social Security to keep more of their money.
And that is still not all.
We eliminated taxes on tips for millions of tip workers: Uber and Lyft drivers, hairstylists, delivery drivers, and servers at restaurants. We eliminated taxes on overtime pay for millions of hourly workers. That includes individuals like nurses and police officers, firefighters and paramedics--people who put in extra time away from their families to keep Americans safe.
And the list goes on.
Americans can now deduct the interest costs of a new car that is made here in America. Parents can save for their children's futures with new investment accounts funded by an initial $1,000 deposit from the government. Then there is the small business tax relief and the other measures to unleash economic growth to create new opportunities for workers.
This bill is going to make life better for hard-working Americans, and now it is time to make sure they know the details. As I indicated, this bill is the product of more than a year of work and of incredibly intense work in the last few months. Now that we have passed it, it would be easy to feel like our work is done, but that is not the case. A lot of time went into putting together this bill, and an equal amount of time or more needs to be spent ensuring that hard-working Americans are aware of the opportunities this bill offers. That means not just talking about the bill here in Washington but going back to our States and talking about it with our constituents face-to-face.
We are extremely familiar with the details of our legislation--we have been working on it for a long time--but that doesn't mean that all of those details have made their way out of Washington, and our job now is to make sure that they do, to make sure that our constituents have the chance to learn about everything that is in the One Big Beautiful Bill in face-to-face conversations with all of us--the people who know this bill best.
Communicating about this bill should be a priority when we are in Washington but especially when we are in cities and towns across America. It has been a tough few years for the American people. Let's make sure they know that a brighter future is on the way.
Mr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 192.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Luigi Rinaldi, of New York, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Oriental Republic of Uruguay.
Mr. President, I just heard the minority leader, once again, come to the U.S. Senate Chamber and cry wolf. This time, it is about Medicaid reform.
Let's be very clear: We need to strengthen Medicaid, and we did that in the bill that we just passed and was signed into law. The minority leader, once again, puts fear above the facts. He is upset. He is upset because Republicans are asking able-bodied adults to work if they want to receive taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits.
He also is upset because Republicans believe that illegal immigrants should not receive Medicaid benefits. Let me set the record straight. Medicaid is for the vulnerable. It was never meant to cover able- bodied, working-aged adults who refuse to work nor was it meant to cover illegal immigrants whom the Democrats continue to embrace. Today, there are over 1.2 million illegal immigrants receiving Medicaid benefits. Today, there are 4.8 million able-bodied, working-aged adults who refuse to work who are on Medicaid. That doesn't strengthen Medicaid. It strains it. It weakens it. It makes it harder for the people who need Medicaid whom Medicaid was designed for. It also wastes taxpayer dollars.
Work requirements are common sense. You know, they used to be bipartisan. Bill Clinton, from the Presiding Officer's home State, signed that into law in the 1990s. President Obama defended it in 2008. President Obama said: Work must be the centerpiece of any social policy. Democrats today don't believe that. They think Clinton was wrong, and they think Obama was wrong. They are for laziness, and they are for illegal immigrants.
The Democrats, today, are defending dependency rather than independency. That is what they are doing today. That is what Chuck Schumer did on the floor of the U.S. Senate this morning.
Republicans believe in a safety net--a safety net to help people reach their full potential, to get back up on their feet. We believe in hard work. We believe in work as part of somebody's identity, their dignity, their self-worth, how they view themselves as role models for their children. If you are healthy and you refuse to work, it is a choice you may want to make, but don't expect the taxpayers to pay for it. No child, no pregnant woman, or disabled person will lose coverage.
What the Democrats want to do is remove work requirements and continue to fund healthcare--Medicaid--for illegal immigrants. That is just not fair to everyone else.
Mr. President, I came to the floor to talk about a different topic, but in listening to the minority leader, I couldn't help myself but to talk about just how far to the left the Democrats have gone, and, oh, it is no surprise that they are at their lowest level ever in the polls. The front page of the Wall Street Journal this weekend shows Democrats at an alltime low in the history of polling in terms of the people who identify with the Democratic Party and who reject the Democratic Party. Only one in three accepts what the Democrats are preaching while 63 percent of the American people do not identify with that at all.
This is no surprise given the Democrats' goal of raising taxes and making illegal immigration easier and continuing to recruit more illegal immigrants to this Nation by offering a lot of free things, which is what the Democrats want to continue to do, but that is not the reason I came to the floor today.
Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor to discuss how our government is funded.
The Constitution puts Congress in charge of setting up programs and funding them. There are some programs--for example, Medicare and Social Security--that are funded at a certain level every year unless Congress passes a law to change it, but for pretty much everything else, Congress has to pass a new funding law every single year. The list is long. It is medical research, fighter planes, weather satellites, salaries for park rangers, and food inspection programs so that the lettuce you eat doesn't make you sick.
The money we spend is detailed every year in a set of 12 bills that Congress votes on, and they are called appropriations bills. The Senate voted on the first one of these 12 bills last week, the one that deals with funding veterans programs and military bases.
I care deeply about improving the lives of our servicemembers and our veterans. All three of my brothers were proud veterans, and they served their country with honor.
I am the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee. I voted no on that funding bill because even if this bill becomes law, I don't believe Donald Trump has any intention of following that law, and I am not willing to be a helpmate on another one of Donald Trump's scams.
Why do I think that Trump won't follow the law? Well, consider his administration's track record of the past 6 months on congressional spending laws.
First, Trump tried to freeze billions of dollars that American families and businesses count on, money that Congress set aside to support everything from food assistance programs to scientific research. Multiple Federal judges blocked the illegal power grab, saying it blatantly violated the Constitution of the United States. Now even Republicans are begging the administration to hand out the money for investments that Congress already passed and, by law, that their communities were promised.
Second, Republicans in Congress are bowing down to Donald Trump and ratifying some of his worst efforts. They are using an obscure piece of Federal law to zero out Federal funding after it was approved by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. This process is called rescission, and it only requires 50 Republican votes to do Donald Trump's bidding.
If that wasn't bad enough, Trump is already promising to use a shady loophole to defund even more programs, demanding cuts so late in the year that Congress doesn't have time to do anything about it. The Director of Donald Trump's Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought has already said that the loophole is ``on the table.''
Let's be clear about what is happening here.
Step 1, Congress negotiates a compromise that both Republicans and Democrats support, and it is signed into law.
Step 2, Trump tells Republicans what parts of that deal he wants to cancel.
Step 3, Republicans in the Senate bend the knee and follow Trump's orders to cancel the money.
But wait--there is more. Apparently, step 4 is Republicans turn around and, with a straight face, ask Democrats to negotiate more deals for the next year's funding, starting the whole rinse-and-repeat process again, beginning with this bill to fund veterans services.
Are you kidding me? Do we really look that gullible? Why should Democrats come to the table and negotiate in good faith and throw our support behind a ``bipartisan bill'' only for Republicans to turn around after the deal is done and, somewhere down the line, delete any parts of the deal that Trump doesn't like? That is like Republicans saying ``Let's cut a deal'' and that you are going to sell us a car today, and then a month from now, the Republicans come back and steal the wheels.
Of course, Trump may not ask his Republican buddies to rescind spending. Maybe instead, on his own, he will just illegally refuse to spend it--the way he has done with $425 billion already this year.
Look, our Founders didn't give the President the power to decide spending. A King can decide anything he wants but not a President. Donald Trump wants to be able to wake up and decide to cancel funding for public education, for transportation projects, for medical research, for food inspectors, for anything, just because Donald Trump feels like it, and he wants the Republicans in Congress to roll over and let it happen--no checks, no balances; just Trump playing King and ending the programs that would help the American people.
Trump is getting a lot of help from his Republican team. Russ Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, has said the problem in Congress is too much bipartisanship--too much bipartisanship. In other words, the Trump administration is saying loud and clear that Donald Trump makes all the decisions. They don't need and they don't want Democrats.
At the very same time, the Republicans need Democratic votes for these funding bills because the Senate rules clearly require 60 votes for them to pass and there are only 53 Republicans in the Senate. If Democrats won't provide those votes, the Republicans want to blame Democrats for shutting down the government when this year's funding runs out at the end of September.
On the other hand, if Republicans really want Democratic votes for these funding bills, then they should ask us what is it going to take to win Democratic support, not just what programs we want to fund or what the level of funding should be--not that, when the promises themselves won't be worth the paper they are printed on. No. Democrats should tell Republicans that if they want our votes, then they are going to have to guarantee that the deal we strike actually means something.
I get it. Democrats and Republicans have different priorities. Here in the Senate, Republicans just voted to end healthcare for 17 million Americans and to drive up health insurance costs for millions more. Republicans have just voted to give billionaires huge tax cuts.
Democrats are willing to make a deal, but our deal is about bringing down costs for families, including the cost of healthcare, groceries, and housing.
If Republicans want to make a deal, then let's make a deal but only if Republicans include an agreement that they won't take back that deal a few weeks later.
Congress is a coequal branch of government. We swore an oath to the Constitution, not to a King. I am asking my Republican colleagues to grow a spine and stand up for Americans instead of bowing down to their pretend King, and I am asking my Democratic
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. President, I am really pleased to be here on the last week--or around the last week--that we are going to be here before we return in September. I am particularly happy to be here with the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee to talk about an issue that I think we both care about. So I am going to start off and then yield to Senator Whitehouse.
As we both know, for too long, critical projects central to American energy development, infrastructure improvement, and economic development have been trapped in a cycle of redundant reviews, shifting goalposts, endless redtape, and regulatory uncertainty.
Businesses large and small, looking to build things in our country again, really need the certainty that is necessary for long-term investments. And projects needed to deploy new energy technologies and efforts to restore the environment have been caught in the same regulatory swamp as well. This has been loaded on for years. Years of changes in guidance have created a complex web of ever expanding, duplicative, and contradictory requirements, while Congress has not stepped in to provide the clarifications that our country needs. All this has led to lost jobs, missed economic opportunities, and higher prices across America, underpinning the importance of comprehensive reform to our environmental review and permitting processes.
I can tell you, I get asked about this consistently, every day, and more than a few times a day. So let me talk a little bit about my home State of West Virginia. I have seen firsthand how projects that our communities rely on face needless delays and how costs are then shifted to our families, who pay more for energy, housing, transportation, and basic goods as a result.
These types of delays nearly stopped what will become one of the most environmentally friendly steel production facilities in the world, which will employ over 1,000 people in Mason County.
Top highway projects like Corridor H that would improve both safety, mobility, and create economic development have encountered multiple permitting delays and uncertainty under a litany of environmental statutes.
And even West Virginia waterline extensions, broadband deployment, and bridge replacements have all faced delays from the Federal permitting process.
If you spend time in my State and visit our communities and travel across our mountains, it is obvious how important these projects are to our State of West Virginia. They impact everything from how we heat our homes to how we connect our schools with internet and maintain the roads and bridges that our residents travel on every single day. Point blank, these delays are holding our State and every State back from reaching our full potential, robbing our people of investments and economic development that would improve the quality of their lives.
So I believe it is time for Congress to act. Clearly, I am no stranger to the ever elusive topic of permitting reform. Throughout my time in the Senate, I have introduced multiple bills on the subject and have been involved in the regulations on this topic. And while we were able to include some reforms in the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act, it is very clear that much more needs to be done.
The fact of the matter is, each one of us in this Chamber has a critical need in our State that could be addressed by improving our permitting and environmental processes, like building more housing--we always hear about a housing shortage--or bringing energy projects online--we hear about the expansion of nuclear that are going to be held into the permitting process--or improving the conditions of surface transportation infrastructure, just to name a few.
No matter what our constituents need, we all know that permitting reform is needed to deliver projects more quickly and more efficiently.
In my role as the chair of the EPW Committee, where we have jurisdiction over the laws that set the framework for our environmental review and permitting processes, I could not be more earnest in my desire to lead this effort with our ranking member. And our committee's involvement on this issue remains apparent by the delivery not just of this speech, as we are doing together, but as we continue to work together with the goal of crafting bipartisan legislation.
Together, we started bipartisan conversations in our committee in February when we held a hearing to gain the perspectives of leaders who are directly involved with navigating these processes to ensure that we would gather a complete look at all of the issues. We kept the hearing record open for over a month to give all stakeholders the opportunity to share their experience with the existing environmental review and permitting processes and identify challenges and recommend possible solutions to this Congress.
From this record, we garnered 107 submissions representing 146 individual organizations and an additional 854 individual requests on how to improve the Federal environmental review and permitting process. These responses have helped the EPW Committee identify the challenges that persist across the wide variety of projects and to identify consensus on potential solutions to address these challenges.
While we have talked about the issue of permitting for a number of years in Congress, it is important that we currently find ourselves, I think, in like thought all across the spectrum. Each branch of the Federal Government--from executive to Congress and the judiciary--are united in our dissatisfaction with the current permitting and environmental review processes.
The Trump administration has taken numerous actions to cut redtape and to put the United States in its best possible position to grow our economy and create jobs. The Supreme Court delivered a unanimous decision in the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition case in May that validated what many of my colleagues and I have long been saying, and that is that the responsibilities of Federal Agencies under the NEPA policy act have evolved beyond what Congress intended, creating roadblocks instead of considering the environment in Federal decision- making.
Right now, we have the momentum, I believe, needed to deliver meaningful and lasting reforms to the environmental review and permitting process, and I believe this is an unprecedented opportunity and something we can truly accomplish. I do believe--and Senator Whitehouse and I know this well--that there are areas of strong disagreement in this area between the two of us, and what we are going to try to do is to find those areas of like thinking that moves the process along. No matter how difficult it might be, this is the only way we get a permanent solution so that we don't see the swings of the environmental process that we have seen over the last few years.
So, to start, durable and implementable reforms need to be successful. They have to be bipartisan. Legislation that the Senate crafts must take into account all types of projects, not just politically favored projects, no matter who is favoring them, or projects that will support the infrastructure needs of some Americans but not others.
We must provide clarity and transparency in these processes and be thoughtful in the way we craft the legislation. We need to address every stage of these processes to find efficiencies, while balancing public health, the environment, and the needs of our economy. And our legislation must establish guardrails that cease the endless amounts of Agency delays and litigation that stunt the development of our projects. I have seen investments in my State collapse under the weight of legal challenges, denying benefits to those that need it the most.
I want to stress that modernizing these processes does not mean cutting corners or weakening our environmental and public health protections, and this is exceedingly important to all of us and to the process. It means focusing the government on meeting the needs of the American people, ensuring
So the reality is this: Hard-working Americans want a government that works for them, not one that keeps them waiting for the benefits that many of these projects promise to their communities. And what happens when you wait? If the project still goes forward, it gets more and more and more expensive with time.
I was encouraged to see bipartisan efforts from our colleagues in the House of Representatives, as last week Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman and Representative Jared Golden announced a proposal to address many of the concerns I just laid out.
So as negotiations continue in the Senate, we must remember that it will take a collaboration of both Chambers and the administration to get impactful legislation across the finish line. The opportunity is here. This is right in front of us. And I can guarantee you that I will be at the forefront of these efforts to make sure that these reforms can become a reality.
So I encourage my colleagues to heed the importance of this moment. Many of our colleagues are talking about this and have great expertise in this area, and we need your help.
With that, I yield the floor and am here to listen to my friend Senator Whitehouse.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague from the Mountain State of West Virginia to talk about permitting reform. People listening should know that we work together well, that I like her personally, and that I am grateful to her for her support of important Rhode Island projects that we have gotten cleared.
On permitting reform, there has long been bipartisan interest-- interest to speed the construction of transportation projects on housing; interest to deliver cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable energy for American families.
As I have often said, the Federal Government often moves far too slowly, and permitting is a prime example of this. Projects undergoing environmental reviews are frequently stuck in limbo if just one Agency drags its feet. ``Interagency process'' is the technical term for multiagency decision-making. And interagency process is too often the enemy of effective governance, too often the executive branch refuge for incompetence, too often the executive branch shield against accountability, too often the executive branch screen of bureaucratic delay.
Permitting reform is a golden opportunity to fix this. We should make Federal permitting faster and more efficient, all while incentivizing project developers to engage with stakeholders early on in the process rather than drag it out. It currently takes far too long to build important projects in this country, and while Federal permitting is not the only bottleneck, it is frequently a major one.
In the last two decades, China has built more than 25,000 miles of high-speed rail lines, while the United States has completed zero. We can and must do better. Chair Capito and I are both ready to do our part to move permitting reform forward and, ultimately, across the finish line. We are already engaging with our colleagues in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee because those two committees have to work together to make this work. And I hope Republicans in the House are able to move to responsible legislation as soon as this fall.
But I must remind everyone again, because I have said this frequently, that it makes no sense for Democrats to agree to permitting reform until the Trump administration stops its lawless disregard for legislative authority and judicial orders. The lawlessness is rampant, and it is hurting people and communities and projects. Until the administration shows it will honor its oath to faithfully and impartially execute the laws--its constitutional oath--how can we trust that any legislative compromise on permitting reform will be executed fairly? And if we can't trust that, what is the point?
Trump has fired independent Agency commissioners, defied court orders, and threatened to weaponize the government against his perceived political enemies. His rescissions destroy bipartisan appropriations accords. The Trump administration's record on this is bad, and on energy policy, it is particularly awful.
The President declared a fake energy emergency despite record energy production in America. He defied the very dictionary by defining ``energy'' to exclude wind energy and solar energy, the fastest growing American energy sectors. He directed a halt to offshore wind permitting, even stopping work on an offshore wind project actively under construction.
Hang up your hardhats, guys; we are shutting down the project.
So if we want a permitting bill, this unconstitutional lawlessness has to end. It is raising utility bills, and it is endangering our energy supply. Just last year, 95 percent of the new energy on the grid was wind, solar, and batteries--95 percent. This lawlessness kills that growth.
And--I will add--we need offshore wind. I have a permitting reform proposal for offshore wind. With demand skyrocketing, we need clean, reliable, and domestic resources like offshore wind. Just ask the head of the North American Electric Reliability Council, the impartial source on grid reliability.
Our constituents are now facing higher costs on everything from groceries to homeowner's insurance, thanks to climateflation. Permitting done right will deliver cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable energy and help stave off the worst economic harms of climate change.
Let's be clear: Without domestic clean energy, we are looking at a vastly more expensive future. Renewable resources have near-zero marginal cost. They drive down the cost of electricity demand. States with more renewable resources do better heading off electricity price increases than States with fewer renewables.
And without domestic clean energy, we are looking at an energy future for America driven by Chinese innovation, Chinese industry, and Chinese power.
The global future of energy is clean. We are either part of it or we are left behind. Peak demand is expected to grow by 15 percent for summer peaks and 18 percent for winter peaks over the next 10 years, raising concerns about energy shortfalls.
What would reduce the risk of shortfalls? Better permitting, bringing more renewables onto the grid, building transmission lines. Instead, we are moving backwards, in the opposite direction.
Seventy percent of transmission lines are more than 25 years old, and they are showing their age. Last year, we managed to complete all of 322 miles of high-voltage transmission lines. It is the third slowest year in the past 15 years.
Thousands of electricity generation projects are waiting to connect to the grid. As of last April, they have added to 2.6 terawatts of power stalled for grid connections and millions of engineering, construction, and manufacturing jobs also stalled in part because of our inability to build the transmission lines for those connections.
We are entering a climate economic danger zone as climate upheaval hits property insurance markets and threatens to upend mortgage markets, which count on insurance, which threatens in turn to tank property values if you can't get mortgages, which could take down our whole economy. This is the path we are now on.
The Fed Chairman testified in the Banking Committee that in the next 10 to 15 years, there will be entire regions of our country where you can't get a mortgage anymore--entire regions.
Failing to permit and build the clean, modern grid we need isn't just foolish, it is dangerous. It helps put us on a path to climate and economic disaster.
Let's stop pretending fossil fuel giveaways are energy policies. Let's stop pretending that solar and wind are not energy. Let's stop revoking funds for transmission projects that we need. Let's stop acting like the clean, modern grid we need will build itself. Instead, let's build the clean energy future that brings down costs, creates jobs, and protects our communities, with the urgency this moment demands. And let's do it, Madam Chairman, together.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant executive clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, the mass starvation and death sweeping through Gaza is a moral tragedy and a strategic abomination.
What started as a war with a just cause--to go after Hamas for the unspeakable atrocities it committed on October 7 and bring home the hostages--quickly turned unjust and immoral.
Now, everybody knows how complicated and fraught the Middle East is. Everyone knows that navigating this generations-long conflict requires nuance and depth and a historical understanding in order to try to get it right. Everyone knows that smart and sincere and decent people can disagree on this issue. But what is happening today is entirely different. There is no excuse for this horrific suffering. It is not making Israel or Israelis or Jews any safer, nor is it helping to bring home the 50 remaining hostages who have been in brutal captivity for almost 2 years.
The fact that this catastrophe was preventable is precisely what makes it so indefensible. People have been warning for months that the Israeli Government's actions would result in exactly this kind of tragedy, where children are dying by the dozens and hundreds of thousands of people have been starving for days.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which Israel scrambled to set up 2 months ago, has failed. According to the BBC, where there used to be 400 U.N. aid distribution sites all across Israel and Gaza, there are now just 4 run by the GHF. As a result, a third of Gazans--a third of Gazans--are going multiple days in a row without eating.
The World Health Organization reports that at least 63 people--many of them children--have died from malnutrition this month alone, and more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid at GHF sites, according to the U.N.
In May, the GHF's first executive director resigned, saying:
Whether you believe this organization was set up to fail intentionally from the start or, more charitably, that the Israeli Government established it without understanding that it couldn't succeed, it doesn't matter. What is plainly obvious now is that it is not working.
You don't have to be some leftwing organization or get your data from the Hamas government to acknowledge that the GHF is failing at its fundamental mission of feeding people, which raises the question, why?
Here we have an Israeli security apparatus that can and did synchronize an attack of exploding pagers across an entire country. They can reach and gather intelligence from the high command of their greatest adversaries. The IDF is widely viewed as punching way above its weight in almost every way. Yet Israel is asserting that, given all of those capabilities, the one thing they can't do is facilitate aid distribution. That is too hard for them.
Food and medical assistance routinely get into conflict zones around the world--Yemen, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Gaza should not be any different.
What is different are the stated goals of the extremists in the Israeli Government:
That was the National Security Minister of the Government of Israel-- completely stopping humanitarian aid, conquering the entire Gaza strip, and encouraging migration. These are their words; these are not my words.
As the starvation takes hold, their response is to deny that it is even happening. There is no starvation in Gaza. Who said that? The Prime Minister of Israel.
Ben Gvir added--I have to collect myself before saying what Ben Gvir said:
``If they were hungry, they would have returned the hostages home.'' It is worth pausing on that for just a moment. Too many people in the Netanyahu government make no distinction between the actual enemy that is Hamas and innocent civilians.
The idea that a desperate mother, malnourished herself and out of breast milk for her infant, or a 7-year-old running to the front of an aid line to get whatever scraps he can for himself and his siblings-- the idea that these people are in charge of which hostages are released and when, that they suddenly are being held to account for the actions of Hamas on October 7, is preposterous. It is another example of the casual dismissal of civilian death and suffering as if it is an inevitable consequence--war is hell and all of that. But what possible explanation is there for letting infants and 2- and 3-year-olds starve? What tactical advantage is being gained?
Standing up for our shared humanity, whatever our other differences and preferences, should not be a matter of controversy, but too often, when someone is critical of Israel and they are a Jew, they are characterized as a self-hating Jew. And if someone is critical of Israel and they are not a Jew, they are characterized as anti-Semitic.
I want to be crystal clear. Anti-Semitism is among the oldest and most vile prejudices that exist. It is real, it is scary, and it is on the rise in the United States. It should be fought at every turn--left, right, and center. Anyone who simply waves it away or denies the urgency of addressing it is either not paying attention or lying.
But criticizing the conduct of this war; criticizing Minister Ben Gvir, who talks about ethnic cleansing; criticizing the withholding of aid; criticizing the excessive tolerance for civilian casualties; criticizing Prime Minister Netanyahu's apparent willingness to cling to power at the expense of Israel, Israelis, and Jews everywhere--that is a separate matter. Everybody gets to do that, just like Americans get to criticize their President without hating America or the people within it. People are more than their governments.
The Government of Israel is behaving terribly. The conduct of this war is indefensible. And it is not in spite of my Jewishness and my Judaism that I say that; it is because of it.
There are a lot of people, including people I know personally--and I believe this--who believe in the sacred idea of Israel.
They are good people, and this cannot be about vanquishing one side of the political spectrum, whether that is the left and center left or the right and the alt right. This is about grounding ourselves in a very basic principle, which is, whatever else we are fighting about, can we please hold the children harmless?
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The senior assistant executive clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the mandatory
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the nomination of Thomas Gaiser, of Ohio, to be an Assistant Attorney General, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 53, nays 47, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 53, the nays are 47.
Mr. President, it is July 30--my older daughter's birthday--but we are approaching a season that Senators and our staffs alike look forward to each year with some anticipation, which is going back home, talking to our constituents--more importantly, listening to our constituents, hearing what is on their minds, and determining how we might do our jobs better.
I sometimes, tongue in cheek, refer to Washington, DC, as a forward operating base in hostile territory, but the truth is, many of the most important battles that are fought in our country are fought out here on the floor of the U.S. Senate. But, as we look ahead to next month, it is worth taking stock of where we have come in the first half of the 119th Congress, in the first 6 months of President Trump's tenure as President of the United States--certainly, in his second term, obviously--which has been an amazing record of accomplishment if you look back at it.
We have confirmed President Trump's Cabinet at a record pace--no thanks to our Democratic colleagues who have reflexively or, you might even say, mindlessly opposed each and every nominee of this President, with maybe one exception. That would be the Secretary of State, Senator Rubio.
In the process of obstructing all of these nominees and forcing us to burn valuable floor time by not agreeing to any voice votes or to the expedited consideration of noncontroversial nominees, they have forced us to burn valuable floor time, during which we might have taken up other important bipartisan matters. Nevertheless, we have done important things--unfortunately, alone on this side of the aisle, without any support from our friends across the aisle--like extending the Trump tax cuts from 2017 and making them permanent, addressing the looming debt ceiling to prevent a national default. We have secured many other important wins for border security and law enforcement through the One Big Beautiful Bill.
We also passed our first rescissions package, codifying many of the most important spending reforms identified by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
While these accomplishments are not insignificant, we are just getting started.
As I mentioned, our Democratic colleagues here in the Senate have reflexively and mindlessly opposed President Trump's nominees, but we have confirmed 107 of them while 147 lower level but critical nominees are still waiting to be confirmed by the Senate--147. These include many Ambassadors to key allies around the world that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has voted out of committee. They are waiting for their day on the Senate floor.
To date, Senate Democrats have allowed voice votes or given unanimous consent on exactly zero--zero--of President Trump's civilian nominees. This is the only time in recorded history that the minority party has refused to do so on any nominees at this point in a Presidency, and it is shameful. It is inexcusable. They are not hurting Republicans; they are not hurting President Trump. They are hurting the American people because these are people who will serve in critical positions that require Senate confirmation not only here in the United States and the administration but around the world in representing the United States at Embassies all across the planet.
Senate Democrats' partisan obstruction is making our country less safe; it is making American foreign policy less effective; and it is ceding the field to our adversaries, who have no problem putting their representatives in these countries which currently lack American Ambassadors.
I, for one, believe that if our Democratic colleagues do not relent on this needless and mindless obstruction, Senate Republicans will have to consider what additional steps we need to take in order to expedite this process.
There is precedent for this. Back in 2017, when Neil Gorsuch was nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court, our Democratic colleagues refused to grant cloture or closing off debate by giving 60 votes for that purpose. It forced Republicans to change the Senate rules to lower that threshold from 60 down to 51, which had always been the longstanding tradition. Even in spite of the possibility of requiring 60 votes, it simply had not been required previously.
And when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada was majority leader, the Democrats changed the threshold for cloture on all other Federal judges from 60 to 51. So in 2017, in order to break that logjam on Supreme Court nominees, Republicans returned the favor.
I believe that some similar process by which we set a new precedent on the President's nominees may be necessary before we leave this Chamber, before we leave the Senate and Washington, DC, this month.
The President must have his team in place. Again, our Democratic colleagues seem unwilling to accept the fact that President Trump actually won the election, receiving a mandate from the American people. Why else would they obstruct all of his nominees and force us to burn valuable floor time by not agreeing to any sort of expedited process, force us to burn all this valuable floor time just to confirm 107 nominees and leave 147 waiting?
It is not fair to the American people because these people are supposed to serve in important positions of responsibility on their behalf. It is not fair to President Trump, who has been denied his team. But it is also not fair to the people who agree to serve in these important Senate-confirmed positions, many of whom have had to sell their businesses, go through a rigorous ethics and legal background scrub, and are simply waiting, day after day after day, will they or won't they, will they or won't they vote to confirm me to this position, which, for many of them--maybe all of them--is an honor of a lifetime.
So we owe it to the American people. We owe it to President Trump. We owe it to these nominees who have volunteered to serve their country to vote on these nominees without further delay.
There is more work to do. In addition to confirming President Trump's nominees, another task that awaits the Senate upon our return is the National Defense Authorization Act. This is the necessary authorization that Congress passes each year to support our men and women in the military, to make sure that we remain the preeminent military strength in the world, and, as President Trump has said time and time again, to make sure that our main national security policy is peace through strength.
We don't want to fight any unnecessary wars, but the best way to avoid
The Defense authorization bill is the main legislative vehicle for ensuring that our military has the resources they need to achieve the missions of today and to rise to the challenges of tomorrow.
We are, I believe, living in the most dangerous world since World War II, and we must take seriously our obligation to authorize additional resources and support the men and women and the families who serve in the U.S. military.
We passed the Defense Authorization Act for 63 consecutive years, and 2025 cannot be the year that we break that streak.
The Senate Armed Services Committee, under the leadership of Chairman Wicker, has done an excellent job on a bipartisan basis. His committee has already completed the markup of the Defense authorization bill and filed it for consideration on the Senate floor.
Last year, in contrast, under the Senator from New York, the Democratic leader Senator Schumer, we did not see the Defense Authorization Act come to the floor until more than 2 months after the September 30 deadline. But I am optimistic now, with new leadership and with Republicans at the helm, we will pass the Defense authorization bill on a timely basis.
Finally, in addition to confirming the President's nominees and ensuring our military readiness, Congress needs to fund the government. The end of the fiscal year is the end of September, but our Senate Democratic colleagues are already threatening not to work with us on funding the government--which perhaps is the most basic responsibility of Congress--threatening a harmful and unnecessary government shutdown. But it is clear, with their reluctance to work with us to make sure that that doesn't occur, that the risk of that happening is squarely on their shoulders.
Their stated excuse is that they don't agree with some of the things that the Trump administration has been doing. I will remind our colleagues across the aisle that the American people are ultimately the ones who will have to pay the price if they continue to persist in delay tactics that lead to a government shutdown.
It is simply mind-boggling to me that our Democratic colleagues would choose to impose a punitive shutdown on the American people as some sort of partisan payback for Republican efforts to put our country on a more sustainable fiscal path.
Yes, we are trying to look for efficiency. We are trying to avoid waste, fraud, and abuse due to the efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency and other leaders in the Trump administration, but the fact remains that our country is more than $36 trillion in debt. The only way to ensure that our social safety net programs remain viable for generations to come and that we continue to be the preeminent military power in the world and maintain that deterrence that I spoke of a moment ago, the only way we can do that is by responsibly funding the government, and that has to happen between now and September 30.
As the Senate winds down this week, and with a recess approaching, I will remind our Democratic colleagues that our work is cut out for us upon our return, and we have important work to do yet before we leave, particularly with regard to this backlog of 147 nominees.
We have had a productive and successful Senate, notwithstanding Democratic obstruction. But I look forward to doing even more, not only in the remaining time before we leave for the recess but when we return from that recess.
After all, we should not get bogged down by partisan battles that cause us to neglect our larger responsibility. We are here to represent the 350 million people who call this country home, and it falls to us, on their behalf, to do the job that they sent us here to do and not to engage in this mindless partisanship and increase the dysfunction and inefficiency of that government.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I rise today to discuss a subject that transcends partisanship and political parties, and that is our growing national debt.
Nearly 230 years ago, President George Washington issued his Farewell Address. It is a speech full of advice and wisdom that this country still looks to today for guidance. But lost within that address is an often-overlooked warning--a warning against the accumulation of debt.
Specifically, our first President cautioned the newfound American public that our government should avoid ``the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned.'' In other words, President Washington warned us against kicking the can down the road and pushing off a burden that he said ``we ourselves ought to bear.''
So today I ask, has our country heeded these words of warning? Let's take a look. As of this morning, the national debt totaled $36.7 trillion. To put that into perspective, that is more than triple the amount of debt from when I first came into office in 2009. And to get your head around it, if you break that number down per American, it translates to more than $107,000 in debt for each and every person in our country.
By 2029, the debt held by the United States as a percentage of our economy is expected to be higher than at any point in the entire history of our Nation. Within the next decade, the United States will spend more annually to pay down the interest--just the interest--on our debt alone than we do on anything else except Social Security.
So in answer to the question ``Have we listened to President George Washington's warning?'' I think the answer is very clear: No, we haven't.
The American people may be asking: Well, what does this matter to me? How does this impact my life, my future?
They may ask: If it truly mattered, why are not more people--not only here in Washington, DC, but across the country--talking about the issue? If it truly mattered, if this truly mattered, having this massive debt, why did Republicans in Congress just pass a bill that will increase our debt by trillions in additional dollars?
Point blank, I think the majority of Americans just want to know: Why should I care?
Mr. President, I am here to tell every American and all of my colleagues here in Congress that we must take this seriously because the national debt is an issue that impacts the daily life of every single person in our country.
For one, the higher our national debt grows, the greater the likelihood that interest rates will also increase. Higher interest rates mean the cost of everything--from mortgages, to student loans, to car payments--will become even more expensive for hard-working Americans. The larger our debt becomes, the more money we must dedicate to paying it off, and that often means fewer resources that we can invest back into our communities, whether it is to upgrade infrastructure, to improve our schools, or to support economic development in our communities. It means fewer resources for critical programs that support early childhood education, boost workforce development, expand access to quality, affordable housing, and more-- things that actually benefit every person in this country.
So the moral of the story is, as debt grows, life becomes more expensive for all Americans. And at a time when the price of gas, groceries, housing, and everyday needs is already too high, the American people simply cannot afford this added cost.
Our growing debt also presents real threats to our national security. If we face another major emergency like a pandemic or a global financial crisis, there is serious concern that we may be too hamstrung by our debt to respond effectively. This fact should concern every American.
As we work to address this issue in a tangible way, we need to make sure we
But despite these things, Congress has, unfortunately, time and time again, chosen to add to the problem instead of being part of the solution. So consider this: In every Presidential administration since President George W. Bush, at least $5 trillion has been added to the national debt.
Since 2002, which was the first year we experienced a deficit following 4 years of a budget surplus, the United States has incurred 20 of the largest deficits in our entire Nation's history.
This is an important fact. The two largest deficits came out of the Trump administration--the Trump administration, the two largest deficits this country has ever faced.
This means that the imbalance between our revenues and spending has been at an alltime high. And just last month, my Republican colleagues took this problem and supercharged it when they passed their reckless so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. It should have been called the ``One Big Deficit Bill.''
The bill that President Trump signed into law on the Fourth of July will kick millions of people off their healthcare and make it harder for families to put food on their table by cutting food assistance. All the while, they added $3.5 trillion to the national debt.
Basically, my Republican colleagues betrayed working families and mortgaged our Nation's economic future all to give the wealthiest Americans a tax break.
Instead of putting us on a sustainable fiscal path, this bill has kicked the can down the road once again. Our fiscal house is on fire. Yet, year after year, Washington chooses to add a little more gasoline.
Despite the grave situation we face, I do have some good news. We still have time to turn this around. There are ways to get our fiscal house back in order and stave off potential crises. But it is going to take cooperation from all of us.
Instead of the political gamesmanship and polarization that has taken root in our democracy, this situation will require everyone--everyone-- rowing in the same direction. Congress will have to come together in a bipartisan manner to find commonsense measures that strategically address our Nation's debt while investing in economic growth and hard- working, middle-class families.
At the root of this effort is correcting the ever-present imbalance between revenue and spending. This opportunity to restore fiscal discipline is why I plan to come to the floor on a regular basis to discuss this dire situation posed by the national debt--from looking at how we got here to highlighting the everyday impacts our debt has on everyday Americans to underscoring the impending crisis that is in store if we don't change course. And we must do it quickly.
It is not farfetched to say that we are at an inflection point in our Nation's history and that the futures of our children and our grandchildren are, indeed, at stake. We have all played a part in the deterioration of our fiscal health, and it is time--it is, in fact, past time--that we all play an important part in restoring it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. President, if there are four words to describe the first 7 months of the Senate Republican majority, they would be ``promises made; promises kept.''
The American people gave us a mandate to secure the border, strengthen the economy, rein in wasteful spending, and make America great again, and that is exactly what we have done while working with President Donald Trump and his administration.
You can start with the Laken Riley Act, which was the first bill signed into law, and this strengthens the Homeland Security Department's efforts to detain criminal illegal aliens and get them out of our communities.
We passed the HALT Fentanyl Act, which empowers the administration to take the fight to the cartels and to end our drug crisis.
We passed Senator Hagerty's GENIUS Act, which promotes economic freedom and helps ensure that America leads in the development of cryptocurrencies.
We passed a $9 billion rescissions package, permanently eliminating wasteful spending on everything from biased media outlets to far-left NGOs. This is just the first of many rescissions packages that we are going to send to President Trump's desk.
Now, despite Democratic obstruction, which continues even today, we have also confirmed more than 100 civilian nominees, who are carrying out President Trump's agenda, and we are continuing to fight for confirmation votes to make certain that the President has his entire team in place to serve the needs of the American people.
Most importantly, we did pass the One Big Beautiful Bill. It is now signed into law. There is so much good that is in this legislation that benefits all of the American people.
When I talk to Tennesseans, one of the most important things for them is the permanent extension of President Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. By extending these provisions, Republicans prevented the largest tax increase in history. It would have been a $4 trillion tax hike. Now, that is more than just a number. When you look at what goes into that $4 trillion tax hike, it would have meant fewer jobs, fewer opportunities, and fewer small businesses getting the doors open and hanging out the shingle.
Just the other day, I was talking to a small business owner in Tennessee, and we were discussing the Big Beautiful Bill and the 2017 law, and he went on to talk about the 2017 tax cuts when they first went in. This enabled him to hire two new employees, two individuals that were desperate for work.
Bear in mind, we had come through the Obama years with high inflation, with a shrinking economy, and the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was really that spur our economy needed to get moving.
Now, this gentleman talked about these two employees and the impact they had made on his business. He was so concerned that if those tax cuts expired, he would struggle to keep these individuals on the payroll. His take was that if we did not pass the Big Beautiful Bill-- make the tax cuts permanent, restore bonus depreciation, interest expensing, R&D expensing--that for so many small businesses like his there in Tennessee, the results would be catastrophic.
But what we do know is that with the One Big Beautiful Bill, millions of small businesses can now see their way forward to grow their workforce, especially with some of the new provisions that are there: No tax on tips. No tax on overtime.
As one restaurant owner in Knox County recently said to me, the reduced taxes on tips will help his servers get about $1,000 more in their pocket every single year. He also knows that helps in making it competitive when you are trying to recruit people to come work in the restaurant business.
A server over in Chattanooga said that these tax cuts will be ``beneficial for every server.'' ``We did earn that money,'' they said. So they think it is great that they are going to be able to keep that money in their pocket.
These tax cuts are just some of the provisions in that bill that will ensure that more Americans are going to keep their hard-earned money.
What we do know is that because of this law--and it is now the law of the land; it was signed on July 4--we know that Tennessee households are going to save about $2,600 per household, per year, on their tax filing.
Millions of seniors can now count on a bonus enhanced deduction of $6,000. That is $6,000, every senior, every year. That would offset what they have paid in income taxes on their Social Security benefits.
American families will benefit from a permanent $2,200 enhanced child tax credit. Working moms and dads are going to benefit from the employer-provided childcare tax credit, as more employers move forward to offer childcare for their employees.
Family farms can pass their legacy of hard work on to the next generation
Tennessee small businesses make up 99.5 percent of businesses in our State. That is 99.5 percent. They are small businesses. They will keep their tax breaks and be able to hire more workers.
While these tax cuts will benefit all Americans, it is hard-working people--middle-income workers, lower income workers--who are going to see the largest reduction in Federal taxes as a percentage of their previous tax bill. After 4 years of Bidenflation, this is much needed relief for hard-working Americans.
Of course, tax cuts are just one part of the Big Beautiful Bill. We secured the largest ever investment in border security to complete the border wall and hire thousands of Border Patrol agents. We strengthened Medicaid for those who truly need it by enacting commonsense work requirements for able-bodied, childless adults. We restored fiscal sanity by eliminating hundreds of billions of dollars in far-left Green New Deal spending. These are huge wins for the American people.
The good news is that President Trump and congressional Republicans are only getting started on delivering on our mandate to make America great again.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to speak today.
Some may know and some may not that today is Medicaid's birthday, and I thought it was probably a good time to--or anniversary or whatever you want to call it. But I came down here to reconnect to a discussion that I was having with my colleagues and with the White House on some of the concerns I have with the provisions in the bill that we packaged that was called the Big Beautiful Bill. That is actually not a marketing term. It is literally what the name of the bill is.
First, I have to stipulate that there are aspects of this bill that I would love to vote on 10 times--for example, the tax reform. The tax portions of this bill were something I worked very hard, as a member of the Finance Committee, to get passed back in 2017. What we did there was to avoid the single largest tax increase in U.S. history. For those who say it was tax breaks to billionaires and corporations, you probably ought to read the language or have somebody who has read it explain it better. The tax reform measures help people who grew up like I did, first and foremost. Go to that trailer park that I lived at on Richards Road in Antioch, TN, which is just south of downtown Nashville, or go to the one that I lived in in Jacksonville, FL, and ask them what happens--when you ever tax businesses--to their jobs.
I could get into a lot of other discussions, but the bottom line is, I didn't have a problem with the tax provisions. I actually wish that the tax had been in the content of the first bill and that we had taken the time to get the Medicaid policy right.
But I am back here again to talk about the Medicaid policy because we have to get it right. One of the reasons I decided to resign when I was confronted with the challenge of opposing this bill--I should say ``retire,'' not ``resign.'' I am still here--was to make the point that getting this policy right was more important than my getting reelected. I think the Medicaid policy in this bill is so fundamentally flawed that if we don't correct it that my colleagues--red State or blue State Republicans, purple State Republicans, and red State Republicans--may end up being guilty of almost the identical mistake that Barack Obama made when he forced ObamaCare down our throats without seeking a single Republican vote to get policy that made sense.
I was so convinced that Obama was wrong that I quit my job and worked full time to get the North Carolina legislature ready for only being in the majority for the second time since the Civil War as I was so convinced the policy was going to be wrong a year before it got implemented and that the Democrats had overreached. I became the second Republican speaker of the house in North Carolina, since the Civil War, based on a bad healthcare decision.
The policy that the House sent us in the reconciliation bill was good policy for Medicaid. It had a work requirement, which I support; it had all kinds of policies for waste, fraud, and abuse that made sense; and it saved $100 billion over 10 years. But then somebody in the White House tried to convince the Senate that they should up the ante for $200 billion more in revenue to pass policy that will do, I think, irreparable damage not only in the policy but in the politics, but we have time to fix it.
The reason I came to the floor today on the birthday of Medicaid is to say I believe the President does not want to harm qualified beneficiaries of Medicaid, but this bill will in its current form. There is a way to fix it. There is a way to have President Trump's legacy deliver on his promise not to push people off of Medicaid and government support systems who qualify for them. I am not talking about the ones who probably shouldn't be on it. There is a way to fix it, but if we don't fix it, I believe that our President's legacy--President Trump, whom I have supported; I have supported each one of his election efforts, and I support him to this day--is at risk if we don't recognize we are done and move on to the next thing.
We don't have to touch a line of the tax policy. We can have a discussion about some of the renewable energy, but I am not going to have that discussion. I want to have a discussion about something that I believe could be the Republicans' ObamaCare. Now, there are some States that probably are not affected substantially, but the majority is. I believe, if we come together and work on this policy and also work on the policy that is set to expire at the end of September--and that is some of the subsidies for the healthcare exchanges for ObamaCare--we could get this right, and this President's legacy will be righting the mistake that was made by Obama and avoiding the mistake that his advisers have told him he should pursue.
So I want the President of the United States and my colleagues in the Senate body to know I am unbridled by any political considerations for the next 17 months, and I stand ready to work with my Republican colleagues and Democrats who are willing to be bipartisan and do something right for our healthcare policy here to get this right. And if I do nothing else in my remaining 17 months, that is worth the effort.
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) and the Senator from Michigan (Ms. Slotkin) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 53, nays 45, 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 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. Under the previous order, the mandatory quorum call under rule XXII has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the nomination of Joseph Kent, of Washington, to be Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, shall be brought to a close?
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Michigan (Ms. Slotkin), and the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr. Whitehouse) are necessarily absent.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 53, nays 44, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 53, the nays are 44. The motion is agreed to.
Mr. President, today, marks the 60th anniversary of the day that President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Social Security Amendments of 1965, establishing Medicare and Medicaid--cornerstones of American healthcare. These programs provide millions, including 1.5 million people in Connecticut, with access to comprehensive and affordable healthcare.
Nothing is more important than our health. As the saying goes, if you don't have your health, you don't have anything; and if you don't have healthcare coverage, which for most Americans guarantees treatment, diagnoses, effective healthcare, you don't have your health.
I am here--I wish I could say--to celebrate these vital programs, but, really, I am here to defend them, to defend them against deep and damaging cuts made by Senate Republicans and the Trump administration. Their budget decimates Medicaid benefits. It threatens rural and pediatric hospitals. It increases health insurance premiums for the majority of Americans. Let me repeat: It increases premiums paid by everyday Americans--the majority of our fellow citizens.
Health insurers are already proposing a median premium increase of 15 percent in 2026. That will be the largest in 5 years, and that is just an estimate. You know, if you have had any experience with health insurers, that if they are estimating 15 percent, it could well, in fact, likely be higher. These cuts are not about eliminating fraud or waste in the Federal government; they are about delivering tax breaks to billionaires on the backs of working Americans.
This bill is an absolute disgrace. The American people should hold every Member who voted for it accountable when they are next up for election.
It is the biggest Medicaid cut in our history. Over 900,000 people in Connecticut rely on Medicaid for their health insurance coverage; 30 percent of them are children.
In fact, in Connecticut, Medicaid covers 41 percent of births and 68 percent of people living in nursing homes. The majority of people in nursing homes, in other words, depend on Medicaid, and they could well be thrown out of those nursing homes.
Under this bill, up to 158,000 people in Connecticut will lose Medicaid, and 53,000 will lose their ACA coverage. Even those who keep their health coverage will see reduced benefits and strained providers as the State struggles to make up the difference. People in Connecticut are lucky because there will be an effort to make up the difference, but many other States won't have that ability.
Just to be clear, these cuts are going to have an impact on everyone because the Medicaid Program is a huge source of funding for all hospitals. All hospitals depend on Medicaid. Even if you are not there with Medicaid coverage, the quality of care that you will receive will suffer as a result of these cuts. So even if you have private health insurance, your nearest hospital could close. You may have to wait longer for an appointment to see a doctor. Your out-of-pocket costs may increase. Hospitals will attempt to recoup that lost funding on your back. They have no choice. They have to stay open, and they have to cover their costs.
To make matters worse, my Republican colleagues refuse to extend the ACA enhanced premium tax credits. And 112,000 people in Connecticut rely on these credits to lower their monthly premiums. They are a lifesaver. They are a lifeline to health insurance coverage.
Without the extension, 10,000 children are at risk of losing essential services, and 81 small business owners in the State will see their premiums skyrocket. Premiums will rise for small businesses as well as individuals.
These numbers are staggering. They are stunning. But they fail to capture
So the net result here in human terms is couples forgoing children, grandparents losing independence, people seeing preventable deaths, skipped checkups, burned out healthcare workers. That is the real cost, the human cost, the impact on people's state of mind, their level of anxiety, their ability to focus on work because of physical pain they may have because of illness but also anxiety about how that illness is going to be covered by health insurance.
These cuts aren't just numbers. They are children, they are families, they are grandparents, people with disabilities, your neighbors, your friends, and probably you at some point.
Republicans knew the consequences. There was no mystery here. They knew the data. They chose cruelty. These cuts are cruel, and they are stupid. They are dumb because we all know that preventing health emergencies, providing diagnoses, catching illnesses early, and providing care and treatment early, in the long run, saves money for all of us.
It is unforgivable that they decided to turn their backs on millions of Americans, including their own constituents whose health and well- being is on the line.
Since this bill passed, of course, some Republicans are trying to walk back their vote--buyer's remorse. They had mixed feelings at the time, perhaps. They are supporting tweets like repealing the Medicaid provider taxes or boosting rural hospital funds because they see that those rural hospitals in their own States are going to be closing. They know the impact of Medicaid cuts on hospitals in all areas and people in every part of their States.
But those efforts are doomed to failure. They fall short. The rural healthcare fund doesn't come close to offsetting the losses rural providers will face from the cuts of Medicaid, just to give you one example. That is why I have joined Senator Wyden and Senator Schumer in introducing a bill that will repeal the health provisions in the ``Big Blatant Betrayal.'' It is not a Big Beautiful Bill; it is a ``Big Blatant Betrayal.'' This measure would extend the ACA premium tax credits.
Again, Medicaid cuts are reprehensible and reckless. Cutting the ACA premium tax credits affects hundreds of thousands of people in Connecticut and millions around the country, everyday middle-class and working Americans who have to cover healthcare bills.
I am going to keep fighting against any legislative efforts that put the interests and desires of billionaires over the needs of working and middle-class Americans.
This ``Big Blatant Betrayal'' is, in fact, simply cruel and stupid, and I hope my Republicans colleagues will join us in these efforts to truly walk back and compensate for the disastrous impact, the devastating affect it will have on families and working people all across this great country.
I am honored to yield to our distinguished leader.
Mr. President, I thank my great friend from Connecticut who cares about these issues so much and is one of our most effective advocates in the whole country for things like this. I thank him and thank all of my colleagues who have come to the floor--Senator Whitehouse, Senator Markey, and so many others who are just eloquent spokespeople for helping people with healthcare.
Today, Democrats are holding the floor on the 60th anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid being signed into law to talk about the Republican all-out assault on our healthcare system.
Look, the American people are just fed up--fed up, up to here--with the soaring costs of healthcare. They are fed up with Donald Trump and Republicans cutting their healthcare to help the billionaire class. But, unfortunately, Donald Trump and Republicans seem to live in a bubble because while they brag about how big and beautiful their bill is, the American people feel the opposite.
The more Americans learn about the Republican bill, the more they are realizing that Donald Trump and Republicans sold them a raw deal--a raw deal.
The Republicans' ``Big Ugly Betrayal'' is one of the most devastating bills for American healthcare that we have ever seen. The largest cut to Medicaid in American history, $1 trillion in healthcare cuts, 15 million people at risk of losing their healthcare coverage--why? To pay for tax breaks for billionaires; telling a mom whose daughter has cancer that she can no longer afford treatment, and the child may die because some billionaire needs more money? I don't have anything against the billionaires. God bless them. They made a lot of money. They don't need a tax break at the expense of middle-class, working- class American families, poor American families who desperately need healthcare.
What is big or beautiful about what they are doing? Nothing. It is even nervy to call it big and beautiful.
They listened to Donald Trump who just makes it up as he goes along, and they say: Yes, whatever he says, no matter how bad it is for the American people.
The American people don't want their healthcare cut to help out the ultrarich. It is a nasty proposition from our Republican colleagues.
If I may add an aside--I want to be clear. It is not just healthcare that is in danger. It is not just healthcare.
Today, we got a rather stunning admission from the administration on Social Security, another part of the safety net that deserves some mention now before I give up the floor.
Today, Secretary Bessent admitted in a podcast that the so-called Trump accounts that the Republicans snuck into the ``Big Ugly Bill'' are, in Secretary Bessent's eyes, a ``backdoor for privatizing Social Security.'' Let me repeat that. These are Bessent's words. What they put and snuck into the reconciliation bill that they call BBB, and we call the ``Big Ugly Betrayal,'' is a ``backdoor for privatizing Social Security.''
America, do you hear that? From one end of the country to the other, probably the most popular Federal program ever passed, and they want to privatize it. Do you know what ``privatize'' means? It means you are in trouble, Mr. or Mrs. Senior Citizen, because when they privatize it and the big boys get ahold of it, it is going to be much less money for you, if any at all.
But now we have it. Bessent actually slipped and told the truth: Donald Trump and his government want to privatize Social Security.
Another great lie from Donald Trump--he just lies at will--he promised that Social Security, under his watch, ``would not be touched,'' while, at the same time, his administration has strangled the program behind the scenes, laying off staff, shutting down offices, making it harder to claim benefits. And now they are openly talking about privatizing it.
Rarely is the end game for Republicans so obvious. They are ramming historic cuts down Americans' throats to help their billionaire buddies.
So in light of the attacks, as we mark the anniversary of Medicare and Social Security--it was a proud, proud day 60 years ago, when America finally understood that we were a wealthy country, and we had to use some of it to give people healthcare, the most important thing in their lives. If you ask the average American: What do you want most? I want to live long and healthy.
And the reason we are living longer and healthier, with all the troubles in the system, is because we have Medicare and Medicaid. And this is the anniversary.
This morning, I was proud to introduce legislation to reverse the disastrous healthcare cuts in the ``Big Ugly Betrayal.'' The bill is simple: It repeals the entire healthcare subtitle of the Republicans' bill and permanently extends the ACA premium tax credits that Republicans let expire.
Extending these tax credits should be a no-brainer. It will save Americans on the ACA hundreds--if not thousands--of dollars a year on their health insurance. Anyone who objects to this wants Americans to pay more for healthcare, plain and simple.
The Senate should take up our legislation as soon as possible because the worst of the Republican cuts are already starting to take effect.
It is not going to happen. Republican colleagues who thought: Oh, we can delay it so no one will know until after the 2026 elections. Bunk. It is starting already. Healthcare premiums are going to start spiking very soon.
Hospitals and clinics are at great risk of closing now, not after 2026. Some have already shut their doors in Maine, Nebraska, and other States. People in rural communities are worried sick that they will have to travel even farther to get healthcare.
In many rural counties, including some of mine in New York, the local hospital is the biggest employer. Those jobs will go by the wayside.
Again, this is not what the American people want. People want healthcare that is easy to access, easy to navigate, easy to afford. Seniors, kids, people with disabilities, people who rely on Medicare and Medicaid don't want to see their coverage ripped away. Republicans should be working with Democrats to strengthen these programs, not slash and burn them to the ground.
Don't go home and tell people lies, that your healthcare won't be affected by this bill. Of course it will. Even the Republican gurus say: Oh, talk about other things; don't talk about healthcare--because they know how bad it is.
It isn't too late. It is not too late for Republicans to reverse course. Democrats, meanwhile, will never, never, never--Senator Whitehouse, Senator Markey, Senator Hickenlooper, and all of my other Democratic colleagues will never stop fighting to fix our broken healthcare system.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, I thank Senator Schumer for his historic leadership on this issue. He has framed it perfectly for this Chamber and for the American people to understand what is at stake in our country in the year 2025.
A little more than 100 years ago, life expectancy in the United States of America was 48 years of age--48. We had gone from the Garden of Eden to a little more than 100 years ago, and life expectancy was still 48 years of age.
Then what happened? Well, then, because of the progressive movement, programs started to be put on the books--vaccines, public health interventions, NIH research on diseases, but big programs got put on the books as well.
In 1935, Social Security passed. It is an income supplement for old people in our country. When it passed, life expectancy was 61 years of age in the United States--1935. Who voted no? Republicans, in 1935. Why did they vote no? For billionaires and millionaires of that era that didn't want to help with the healthcare for everyone in our country.
In 1965, we voted in the Senate for passage of Medicare and Medicaid. What was the life expectancy then? Seventy years of age. Who were the ``no'' votes? Republicans here, voting against Medicare and Medicaid.
Today, life expectancy is 78 years of age; 30 years of bonus life for the average American in a little over 100 years because of all of these programs.
Now, what have the Republicans done? The Republicans have decided-- because of their ancient animosity toward Medicare and Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act and NIH funding for research for cancer and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's--to slash all of those programs. They finally have a chance, with Donald Trump, to listen to the billionaires of the thirties and the sixties and fulfill their dream where we cut the programs for ordinary families in our country. And they just did it a month ago.
Those cuts go right to the heart of what it is that makes the Democratic Party fundamentally different from the Republican Party, and that is our interest in and our passion for the healthcare of every American. The Republicans have opposed these programs throughout their entire history.
Donald Trump is right at the front of the line, always questioning whether or not we should be supporting Medicare, Medicaid; whether or not we should be supporting the community health centers, supporting rural hospitals. Donald Trump has always been at the front of the line saying: Absolutely not. And the Republicans are following him all the way.
And even when some Republicans say that they have some questions about it, like in ``The Godfather,'' part 1, they got an offer they couldn't refuse; and the ones that refused it, they can't even run for office next year because Trump has already taken them out. And what was it over? Medicaid. It was over Medicare. It was over the Affordable Care Act and making sure all of those healthcare programs are there for everyone in our society.
So, today, we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the passage of Medicare and Medicaid that Lyndon Johnson brought to the American people.
I will give you a few numbers. Right now in our country, 72 million Americans benefit from Medicaid--72 million. Eighteen million people with disabilities in our country are on Medicaid. They need the program. They have disabilities. And 37 million children in the United States are on Medicaid. That is 50 percent of the kids in the United States. Fourteen million kids with special needs are on Medicaid in our country, right now.
And the Republicans, on the floor of the Senate, slashed all those programs. Kids with special needs, adults with disabilities, 37 million kids--they just slashed it. And by the way, it is just a promise to billionaires and millionaires who want their money back.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said that health is the first wealth. So that is what Medicare and Medicaid, what Social Security, what the Affordable Care Act, what NIH funding for research for cancer and diabetes and Alzheimer's--that is what it is. It is providing the first wealth-- health--to everyone.
What the Republicans are doing--they have already done it--is they are looting the money for all those programs--all of them--to give it over to the billionaires, and it will lead to a complete and total devastation of the healthcare system in our country that we have built over the last two generations.
Millions of people have relied on Medicare and Medicaid to access the healthcare that they need. Yet, sadly, my Republican colleagues and Donald Trump have marked this milestone of the 60th anniversary by signing into law unprecedented cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.
By the way, I didn't get to know any of my grandparents. It was a foreign concept to my brothers and I. These programs hadn't kicked in yet to extend their life expectancy. The whole concept of a grandparent is completely alien to me. Not today, thank goodness, for young people in our country, but not after the Republicans have just passed the laws that are going to gut the programs that have allowed Grandma or Grandpa to live longer--much longer. They are gutting those programs. They don't really care about Grandma and Grandpa. They don't care if they are kicked out of nursing homes, even if they have Alzheimer's. They don't care. If you kick them in the heart, you are going to break your toe.
And that is who the Republicans have been all the way back to Social Security, since 1935. That is who they are as a party. They don't care. And life expectancy is going to start to go down and down and down and down in our Nation, which is their plan. They never liked the whole idea of funding these programs in the first place.
By the way, here are the numbers; it is unbelievable: $900 billion cut out of Medicaid. That is 10 million people who are going to be cut off the program. And they are going to gut the healthcare, ultimately, if you take all of the programs combined, of 72 million people. Two million of them are in Massachusetts, but it is huge. And they are known in different States in different ways. It is MassHealth. It is Healthy Louisiana. It is MaineCare, TennCare, KanCare. But one in five Americans rely upon Medicaid for the funding for their healthcare. And without Medicaid, it is just not there.
And Trump and Republicans are also stealing from a program that pays for half of all nursing care in our country. And by the way, 70 percent of the people in nursing homes, right: Alzheimer's, Parkinson's. We call them Grandma and Grandpa. These guys just assaulted that program, the Medicaid Program. And it is just absolutely unconscionable what they are doing.
So this bill is also going to add $3.4 trillion to the Federal deficit because they gave more in the tax breaks to the billionaires than they actually cut in these programs. That is how greedy the billionaires in our country are right now who are the supporters of Donald Trump.
And I have just heard from so many of my constituents who are terrified at what the implications are for the healthcare of their family, of their loved ones, of their children. It is just absolutely unbelievable.
A constituent shared that her best friend with a permanent disability counts on Medicaid support to ensure that she has a wheelchair for mobility and can receive assistance to continue independent living. Republicans have cut that program. They have cut that Medicaid Program. They are going to take away oxygen tanks from nursing home residents, wheelchairs from kids across the country, just to give tax breaks to the megawealthy.
Again, the Republican Party harbors an ancient animosity toward all of these programs going back to 1935. This was their moment. The ``Billionaire Boys Club'' comes together: Give us back all our money that has been used to extend the life expectancy by 30 years for all those people who don't deserve it--meaning all of the regular families in our country. It is just a direct assault upon them.
And it is not just the people who are on Medicaid who will suffer from these cuts. Hospitals, healthcare centers, nursing homes, they are all going to be forced to close across our country. The funding that keeps them open is Medicaid; it is Medicare. That is what pays for the bills for each and every one of those institutions.
It is going to be harder for families to find a pediatrician, harder for people to get mental health care, harder for seniors to get care as they age. Providers will lose their jobs. Families will lose access to care. And as millions more Americans lose their health insurance, skip appointments, ration medications, the billionaires who can afford concierge medicine will get another handout from the Federal taxpayers. The rich will get richer, and the sick will get sicker in our country, and it is going to increase the Federal deficit by $3.4 trillion.
It is almost unbelievable how irresponsible Trump and his billionaire buddies are, and the Republicans all went all in--all went all in. But it makes sense because that is who their party is. Their party is the party of the rich, and they have never supported the programs that help regular people get access to healthcare. So it is their roots. It is the Republican Party.
And Medicare, by the way, is going to be cut by $500 billion over the next 10 years. That is Grandma and Grandpa. They are on Medicare. They cut it by $500 billion just a month ago. And again, it is going to add trillions to the deficit.
So let me just say it again. The ``Big Ugly Bill'' is going to trigger $500 billion in cuts to Medicare, the program that over 67 million Americans are dependent upon. And most of them are called Grandma and Grandpa. Their programs get slashed, the programs that have kept them alive for preceding generations. My grandparents didn't stay alive. That is what they are doing: They are lowering the life expectancy of Grandma and Grandpa in this country. And those cuts start right away with the $45 billion cut next year.
So it goes without saying that Medicare is popular, Medicare is successful, Medicare is absolutely necessary. So this is an incredible moment in our history. People deserve more than being afraid to take an ambulance because they are worried how much it will cost. They deserve more than rationing their medication because they just can't afford the next dose. Americans deserve more.
Healthcare should be affordable to all, and everyone should be able to get the healthcare that they need.
And here are the numbers. According to Yale University--Yale University--51,000 people a year are going to die because they won't have access to the preventive care that is in all of these programs. That is a half a million people every decade are going to die early because they don't get access to the healthcare they need.
That is all on the Republican Party, and, by the way, they never cared anyway. They never cared about those families. They never cared about those people. They never care about the impact on the rest of the family when people die a premature death. It is 500,000 people, according to Yale University, that will die because of these cuts.
So this is an incredible moment in time. Every American deserves the basic dignity of access to high-quality healthcare, and we are not going to allow this fundamental assault on Medicare and Medicaid to stand. We got knocked down a month ago, but we are not knocked out. We are going to get up, we are going to fight, and we are going to win in the same way the preceding generations got up and fought and won against the Republican assault on the healthcare of families in our country.
The fight is on, and it is for the well-being and health of every family in our country.
I thank you, Mr. President. Again, it is so great to be here with Senator Schumer and Senator Blumenthal and my great friend, the leader from the great State of Rhode Island, my friend Senator Whitehouse.
Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, today is kind of an exceptional day. It is the 60th anniversary of the Medicare and Medicaid Act, which created two of the most successful programs for families really that the world has ever seen.
It should be a moment for celebration. Unfortunately, a bad turn has been taken, and there are now attacks on Medicaid and Medicare happening right in this building.
The ``Beautiful for Billionaires Bill'' that the Republicans forced through on a purely partisan basis cuts Medicaid explicitly--$1 trillion cut to Medicaid. So folks who are on Medicaid are going to see a real danger in their lives as a result of those cuts.
You may say: Well, I am not on Medicaid. I have private insurance. I have Medicare. I am going to be fine.
Not so. When the cuts are that big, they knock essential revenue away from hospitals, away from your family doctor, away from health centers, away from nursing homes. And I don't know about all the other States, but in Rhode Island, all those institutions are struggling. These are not easy times for people who are providing healthcare in our healthcare system. When you knock $1 trillion out of their pockets-- because that is where this goes. Medicaid money doesn't go to individuals, into their pockets, it goes to their providers. If you take away that revenue from the providers, you put them at risk.
You don't have to be on Medicaid to be harmed if your nursing home closes down because it has gone broke because Medicaid funding is no longer available.
So the Medicaid cuts are right in our face, and the damage they are going to do to healthcare institutions is obvious.
What is a little bit trickier and what I am calling out here on the floor today is the sneak attack on Medicare. I could run a tape here of all the Republicans who said: Oh, we are not going to cut Medicare. Oh, Medicare is different. Oh, we are going to protect Medicare.
We heard the President say it.
It was all hogwash. It was all complete hogwash. The sneak attack is underway, and I am going to tell you how it works. It works because the ``Beautiful for Billionaires Bill'' added $3.4 trillion or more to the debt. The Republicans had to lift the debt limit by $5 trillion, so it is a big number added to the debt. When that much added debt gets dumped onto our fiscal picture, it triggers another law. It triggers a law called the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act. Our technical term for it around here is that it triggers ``sequestration.''
When you create that much added debt, when you run up deficits that badly--as the Republicans have done to fund their billionaire tax cuts--here is what happens to Medicare. This is from the Congressional Budget Office. It triggers a $45 billion cut to Medicare in 2026, and it will increase each year to about $75 billion as an annual cut to Medicare in 2034. Between 2026, next
They don't want you to know that. They don't want to tell you that. They would like it to just happen automatically so they don't have fingerprints on it, but their fingerprints are all over it.
So what we should be doing is passing my bill to put Medicare and Social Security on permanently sound footing as far as the actuarial eye can see by simply lifting the cap on how much of your income is subject to Social Security and Medicare contributions. Easy to do. Very simple. Very fair. It makes Social Security and Medicare solvent essentially indefinitely if my bill passes.
That is what I would like to be talking about. Instead, we have a direct attack on Medicaid; a rebound attack from those cuts on the major institutions of our American healthcare system, like our family doctors and our doctors and our nursing homes; and a sneak attack--a sneak attack--through the pay-as-you-go provisions on Medicare to the tune of over half a trillion dollars.
Mr. President, this is not a good day. I regret that we are at this sorry pass.
Mr. President, I rise today to celebrate Medicare and Medicaid, two programs that have enabled millions--millions--of Americans to get the healthcare they need.
Sixty years ago today, President Johnson signed into law a bill creating these two critical programs. At the bill signing, President Johnson said:
Together, Medicare and Medicaid have helped generations--60 years, generations--of Americans stay healthy, get to work, pay their bills, and care for their families. Today, nearly 40 percent of Americans rely on Medicare and Medicaid.
Over the years, Democrats have fought to expand and strengthen Medicaid even further, including in the 2010 Affordable Care Act. But while the Democrats have worked to strengthen and expand Medicaid, Republicans have waged war on Medicaid and the Americans who depend on it.
Just this month, they passed a nearly thousand-page bill. They have the audacity to call it a Big Beautiful Bill. I call it the ``Thousand Pages of Pain Bill'' that will devastate communities across our country by stripping healthcare access--including Medicaid access--from some 15 million Americans, including more than 40,000 people in Hawaii.
There are a lot of States that have more people on Medicaid than are on Social Security, so this is a critically important program to our communities.
Frankly, Medicaid coverage literally keeps people alive. Without this coverage, millions of Americans won't be able to get the care they need--annual wellness visits, prescription medication, long-term care, and the list goes on.
Inevitably, more people will end up in emergency rooms as a last resort because if you don't have healthcare, you are not going to go to the doctor for wellness checks and et cetera--preventive care out the window. So you wait until you are very sick, you end up in emergency rooms, and then you overwhelm the hospitals--hospitals that are already facing higher costs and tight margins, especially in rural communities.
The Republicans' big--we call it the ``Big Bad Bill''--their ``Big Bad Bill'' also implemented new work reporting requirements for Medicaid. See, this comes from the attitude that people who are on Medicaid somehow don't deserve it, and so we are going to place all kinds of requirements because we think that people are just taking advantage of these programs--not that they need it, not that they use it so they can actually go to work.
These reporting requirements are so burdensome that it results in people being kicked off this care, their Medicaid care, even if they meet the new requirements.
So they are going to impose all these work requirements. For example, in 2018, Arkansas implemented work requirements for their Medicaid recipients. It flowed, again, from this idea that somehow people on Medicaid should have to come forward and tell, you know, the bureaucrats on a regular basis that they are trying to find work, that they are working, et cetera.
Well, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 18,000 people--or 25 percent of the population--in Arkansas subject to the work requirements, et cetera, lost healthcare coverage as a result.
Here is what happened. The vast majority of those who lost coverage met the underlying requirements but were unable to overcome the bureaucratic reporting process the State required--a process that cost the State millions of dollars to implement because they had to create an entire bureaucracy to keep track of everybody.
So, unsurprisingly, those who lost Medicaid coverage in Arkansas were less likely to be able to afford medication, delayed needed care, and struggled to pay off medical debt as a result. So without healthcare coverage, they ended up going to emergency care, straining the hospitals providing such care. That is common sense. Don't you think that that would happen?
The negative experience in Arkansas didn't stop the Senate Republicans recently from imposing similar requirements on Medicaid recipients nationwide. See, they didn't learn from the experience in Arkansas that you create this massive bureaucracy and kick out thousands of people who actually met the requirements to become Medicaid recipients but couldn't meet really the continuous bureaucratic requirements--but no lesson learned there.
Now the Republican Senators decide they should impose these kinds of requirements nationwide. So thanks to Senate Republicans, millions of Americans will lose their Medicaid coverage, which is what happened in Arkansas. Republicans know that thousands of their constituents will meet this fate.
In fact, one of my Republican colleagues said that his constituents were going to lose their Medicaid coverage, and he thought that was unconscionable, so he is not even running for reelection. But his colleagues didn't learn from what happened in Arkansas, didn't listen to their colleague. But what they did do while they imposed this work requirement, they delayed the implementation of the majority of the Medicaid cuts until after the 2026 midterms.
I wonder why. I think they are hoping that by the time the pain of these cuts actually hurts their constituents, they are hoping their constituents will have forgotten who caused the pain--Republicans.
But the people are paying attention. They see that we have a regime hellbent on dismantling government from Medicaid to Social Security. You heard my colleague from Rhode Island talking about what is going to happen to Medicare, cuts to the Department of Education, USAID, the National Weather Service, so much more. Trump and his Republican allies are attacking programs that our American people rely upon.
They are, in the words of President Johnson, allowing Americans to suffer needlessly, all to line the pockets of their billionaire buddies. And note that while they want Medicare-Medicaid recipients to have work requirements, I mean, they have to do something in order to get these benefits, the billionaires who are going to get these massive tax credits don't have to do a damn thing to line their pockets. It is shameful. And it will result in real harm to millions of Americans.
For 60 years, Medicaid and Medicare have made our country and our communities stronger. When you have healthy people, your community is stronger, it stands to reason.
So when Republicans wage war on Medicare and Medicaid, they are waging war on our communities, on us. So we need to fight back. We all need to stand up to this regime and stop them from dismantling the programs that our communities rely on.
Mr. President, the United States is the wealthiest country on Earth. I think it is fair to say it is the wealthiest country in the history of the world, probably in the history of the solar system. What we do with that wealth speaks volumes about who we are as a country, about
Earlier this month, Republicans passed, I would call it a truly devastating budget bill that gives many of the wealthiest people in this country and many who don't want a tax break--it gives many of the wealthiest people in this country and corporations a $4.5 trillion tax break. That was their goal. They just needed to find a way to pay for it. Well, actually, they only paid for a small part of it. But in doing so, they cut more than a trillion dollars from Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and food stamps--the programs that help struggling Americans meet their most basic human need for food and healthcare--again, just so they could pass the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the history of our country.
That speaks volumes about whom this administration values, but what does the bill mean for Americans? Over time, 15 million Americans are likely to lose their health coverage, and 241,000 of them live in Colorado. Hundreds and hundreds of hospitals around the country are at risk of closure, many of them in Colorado.
Take the Sunrise Monfort Community Health Clinic in Evans, CO. We were there in May, and Sunrise's network of 14 rural health clinics serves 43,000 patients across a broad swath of Northern Colorado. Seventy percent of them are enrolled in either Medicaid or Medicare. Now, we spoke with their CEO back in May, and we were told point-blank that gutting Medicaid--dramatically making cuts to Medicaid--will force them to dramatically cut services.
They estimate that those cuts in Medicaid will force between 7,000 and 14,000 of their patients off of healthcare. That is a quarter of their patients. Again, all because lawmakers in Washington have decided to give still bigger tax cuts to the ultrawealthy and, again, many of whom don't want or need tax cuts. It is nuts.
The administration knew taking healthcare away from many Americans would be unpopular. So they crafted and snuck in a provision to solve that. Most of the Medicaid cuts won't take place until 2027. ``Well, why wait till 2027?'' you might ask. Well, because it is after the midterm elections at the end of 2026.
They basically gutted our social safety net system and then made sure that Republicans wouldn't be--well, they found a way to make sure that Republicans would be insulated from the immediate political costs from their voters. That is why, right now, they are building a massive public relations campaign to go out and sell the bill to Americans.
They, so far, completely deny that this bill is going to harm Americans in any way. Instead they say it is about efficiency, government efficiency, and cutting out waste, fraud, and abuse.
Well, listen, I am all for making government more efficient. When I was mayor of Denver, we made the city smaller. We had a hiring freeze for 2\1/2\ years. We asked the workers to do more with less, and they did that. But we did it in increments, and we worked to make sure people knew how much they were valued and they could make a difference.
When I was Governor of Colorado, we balanced our budget every single year. We went through every board and regulation that we could find on the books, 24,500 rules and regulations, and we simplified or eliminated 11,000. We did all this without cutting services and without cutting resources that people rely on.
Now, Republicans knew they were going way beyond waste, fraud, and abuse. That is part of the reason it took 24 hours of voting and arm- twisting to pass this, what we call in my family, ``God Awful Bill.''
They knew they were going to be hurting their constituents and Americans. I mean, the bill itself is a prime example of a--what my grandfather used to call a drunken spending spree. It is going to cost the American people more than $4 trillion when you consider the interest payments on the national debt.
And none of the arguments the Republicans have used have legs. Ultimately, the bill isn't just a trillion dollars in cuts for Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. It really, through these rules and paperwork, creates new barriers to access. That means more paperwork, more hoops for families to jump through.
Under Trump's ``Big Ugly Bill,'' government efficiency just means rolling out the redtape, miles and miles of it. And who pays the price? Well, rural Coloradans are going to pay some price. People living in Cortez and Lamar or Rifle will pay a price when their closest healthcare center closes. Pregnant women who have to drive 50 miles to give birth after their closest hospital will be forced to close their birthing centers and kids who lose their healthcare because their parents had to navigate so much redtape to prove they do, in fact, meet the requirements will pay the cost and adult children who can't provide sufficient proof that their full-time job is taking care of a disabled parent.
Now, listen to this, if you are a single adult in Colorado, you don't even qualify for Medicaid if you earn less than $1,735 a month. That means making less than $10.01. If you make $10.02 an hour, you already don't qualify for Medicaid.
So people making less than $10 an hour have to fill out reams of paperwork to demonstrate that they qualify. It is not just, they should be able to show their W-2 and say, hey, I am making $9.50 and that should be enough, but somehow there is a worry that people making less than $10 an hour should fill out all this other paperwork.
In what kind of a bizarre world do we live in? Bottom line, Republicans are cutting costs by punishing the poorest and most needy in our country when they can't keep up.
They are making the people who suffer the most suffer more. That is not the America that I believe in. The Medicaid system is not perfect, but it exists in our country because that country, our country, decided that no matter where you live or how little money you make, working Americans deserve basic healthcare. Who knows, someday we might get everyone covered. It is a vow we need to make. And certainly when we created Medicaid, it was a vow we made to help take care of the neediest people--or many of the neediest people in our country.
Now, because our country is measured by how we treat people--let me put this a better way. Because our country is measured by not how we treat people at the top but how we treat large numbers of Americans who start at the bottom, striving for a better life, that is how our country should be, and that is the dream we are all chasing.
And, ultimately, it is the American people that are going to have the final word.
Mr. President, I appreciate the comments from my colleague from Colorado. I don't think it is unique to the States out West, be it Oregon or Colorado or California or Idaho or Nevada or so forth. I think people in every single State care about access to healthcare.
Now, I came to the Senate in 2009, and in that year, we decided to make a major effort to fill in huge holes in our healthcare system. Well, we had Medicaid for the least affluent, but then folks who were just above that, they couldn't afford private insurance; they also didn't qualify for Medicaid, so we created extended Medicaid and made it a State option that covered a lot more people.
And then when you came to the middle class, you had folks who had insurance through their employer but not every employer provided insurance. And so we created the healthcare exchange where you could buy insurance and you could do so with tax credits to help you make the payments so that they were affordable.
Well, that plan was pretty straightforward, but a man named Frank Luntz--he was a pollster and messagemaker for the Republicans--put out a memo. And I was one of the first Members of the Senate to see this memo. It was April of 2009. And the memo said: Whatever the Democrats come up with to improve healthcare, we are going to call it a government takeover because we have done focus groups, and that scares Americans. It makes them dread this.
And it doesn't matter what the policy is, we will call it a government
Well, apparently, that is what America had come to because they did promote that falsehood all across America.
Now back home in Oregon, I have made a commitment to go to a townhall in each of my 36 counties every year, open hour. People can come and share whatever they want.
I am out in Prineville, OR, where, normally, there would be, like, 30 or 50 people at a townhall and about 500 people show up. Why? Because they are terrified of a government takeover of the healthcare system. There was about 200 people inside the room. There are several hundred people outside who can't get in because the room is completely packed. And they are angry. They are very angry.
And one man shouts out and says: Why won't you listen to us and stop this government takeover?
And I said: I will listen to everybody in this room. I will describe major features of the plan, and you all can respond to me: Step forward or step backward. So I said: How about requiring insurance policies to cover pre-existing conditions? Step forward--80 percent of the people in the room raised their hand. Step backwards--about 10 percent. Another 10 percent didn't vote.
I said: How about having preventive tests free because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure? Step forward--80 percent yes.
How about having children on your policy to age 26? Again, 80 percent yes.
How about having a website where you can compare private insurance policies so you can pick the best one for your family? Again, 80 percent yes.
Well, by now, people are looking around the room going: Well, this all sounds pretty good. Of course, they came, and they were very angry.
I said: Let's talk about the economics of this. How about providing tax credits to help middle-class Americans buy insurance from private companies? Again, 80 percent yes. People liked that idea.
How about expanding Medicaid because we have the least affluent in our society who are trapped between just a little too affluent to qualify for Medicaid, but they certainly can't afford private insurance.
Oh, no. That sounds good too.
And so I would say then: Thank you very much for the feedback on the major features of the plan. There is no government takeover in it, but you have all expressed to me your support for many of the features, and that is why I am supporting it.
Well, this was the year 2009. You had a blue trifecta that said: Let's fill in the holes on healthcare, and we went about and did it. And now let's fast forward to 2025. You don't have a blue trifecta; you have a red trifecta. And the red trifecta knows how important health insurance is, so they made some promises. And the promises were: We will not touch your healthcare. We will not force people off insurance. And, in fact, they did exactly the opposite.
In 2009, the House, the Senate, the Oval Office working together to fill in the holes and make sure everybody could get healthcare; 2025, the red trifecta, the Oval Office, Republican leadership in the House and Senate say: We are going to tear down your access to healthcare. And that is what they did in the one big ugly betrayal of a bill voted a few weeks ago right here in this Chamber, tearing down your healthcare. And 15 million Americans are going to lose access to healthcare because of this bill.
Here is the philosophy we saw: Roll out the red carpet for the rich and powerful. Roll out the redtape for the less affluent. Wow. What a horrific strategy to rip healthcare away from 15 million people.
What does that mean to a family when they lose health insurance? Well, I will tell you. It means that they don't go to the doctor. And when they don't go to the doctor, that lump they ignored becomes ravaging breast cancer with horrific consequences for the woman, the family, the children. It means diabetes delayed is diabetes that is much more severe and hard to treat. It means all sorts of risks for the individual and all sorts of consequences for the family and the stress of knowing you have a healthcare condition and you should go to a doctor but you don't go because you can't afford to go.
Or maybe you do buy a policy, but now it is more expensive. Here is what is going to happen on the healthcare exchange in Oregon. The cost is going to go up by 68 percent, an estimated $1,300 per family, because the big ugly betrayal of a bill raised the cost of buying healthcare on the exchange because it didn't extend the premium tax credits that were in the bill previously, that were in the system previously.
Well, that is a shocker. If people spend the money there, it may well be that they don't have the money for their rent, may not have their money to purchase the prescription pills that the doctor they went to said they need to buy, or maybe it is an impact on groceries.
And I will tell you what else happens. With so many people losing Medicaid--in Oregon, the Oregon Health Plan--and in Oregon, the estimate is 150,000 to 200,000 people will lose Medicaid.
Well, now in your rural clinics and hospitals, we have a situation where the revenue that flows to that clinic or hospital drops dramatically.
This is from the Sheps Center for Health Services Research, University of North Carolina--real experts on rural healthcare. And what do they say in this study? They say that more than 300 rural hospitals are at risk of either closing or significantly reducing their services because of the big ugly betrayal of a bill.
Oregon, four rural hospitals or clinics. Almost every state is listed here. Is that really what we want to do? We want to shut down rural healthcare?
And when you shut down a clinic, when you shut down a rural hospital, you aren't just affecting the least affluent who were on the State's Medicaid plan; you are affecting everyone in the community. Every single person loses access to the healthcare when the clinic or hospital shuts down.
We lost, 2 years ago, a maternity care ward in Baker City, OR. Tragic for the community. If you are getting ready to have a child, now you are thinking about the fact, to have it delivered, I have to go at least 70 miles down I-84, and I-84 is often closed in winter due to ice and snow.
Is that the stress? We want to rip healthcare out of our rural community and put on the stress?
And I will tell you what else happens: People simply don't get down the road for the medical treatment that they should be accessing.
So here is the story. This is wrong, so we are going to introduce a bill that reverses this and says: Everything that was ripped out of American healthcare by the big ugly betrayal of a bill, we are going to restore it. And we are going to add in the same tax credits people had access to last year. That way, there won't be a 68 percent increase for people buying healthcare on the exchange on Oregon, a $1,300 increase. That way, the middle class will still be able to afford to buy policies, and the less affluent will still have health insurance so they will get the care that they need, and the rural communities will still have the cash flow to be able to keep their clinics and hospitals open.
That is the right vision, not the vision of: Families lose and billionaires win. That is the whole vision of the big ugly betrayal of a bill. No, but, instead, a better vision. And what is that better vision? Families thrive and billionaires pay their fair share. Let's fight for that vision.
Mr. President, on this day 60 years ago, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the law that created Medicare and Medicaid, protecting the health and well-being of hundreds of millions of American families.
Those were our predecessors here on the floor of the U.S. Senate, and they passed that bill by the overwhelming vote--at least by today's standards--of 68 to 21, with support from Senators of both parties. And they did that because
It was 15 years ago that Democrats and President Obama built on that legacy with the Affordable Care Act, which expanded Medicaid and delivered affordable healthcare to 45 million more Americans.
Taken together, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act are three parts of one promise, a promise of health and a measure of economic security for seniors, for people with disabilities, for the most vulnerable Americans, and for Americans working hard paycheck to paycheck.
So 60 years ago, one Senator explained that the promise of Medicare and Medicaid meant this:
That is how one Senator explained his vote to make sure we provided coverage under Medicare and Medicaid.
Well, 3 weeks ago on the Senate floor, President Trump, with allies among the Republican Senators, forgot about those people, those people for whom that law was passed 60 years ago today. Because 3 weeks ago, right here on the Senate floor, Republicans passed what Donald Trump calls the Big Beautiful Bill.
It certainly is beautiful if you are a billionaire or a very wealthy person. For everybody else, it is an ugly betrayal. Because that bill, passed about 3 weeks ago, here on the Senate floor, slashed Medicaid. It cut into the Affordable Care Act and, combined, cut over a trillion dollars in healthcare to fund tax breaks for billionaires and very wealthy people, taking healthcare coverage away from 10 million people--even more if you count the failure to extend the tax credits from the Affordable Care Act which will expire at the end of this year--but 10 million on the terms of that bill alone, including nearly 246,000 of my fellow Marylanders.
And as others have said, this will increase the cost of healthcare for everybody else because it has a ripple effect throughout the insurance markets. When you start denying affordable healthcare to people on Medicaid, it puts upward pressure on premiums for everybody else as people go to get emergency care in hospitals and other places.
Now, one of our Republican colleagues reportedly said to members of the Republican caucus:
That was the quote from a Republican Senator. I can tell you, from talking to my constituents and hearing from my colleagues all over the country, the American people are not going to get over it.
Because of this bill that was passed 3 weeks ago, millions of Americans are going to lose their coverage, not because they are ineligible but because Republicans purposefully put up all sorts of bureaucratic hurdles to assess accessing those healthcare needs. That is increasing the costs and making it harder for people to access healthcare.
And because of the failure to extend the tax credits for the Affordable Care Act, a big part of those tax credits which will expire at the end of this year, another 20 million Americans will see their premiums jump an average of $700 starting in January. And in my home State of Maryland, I mentioned that about 246,000 Marylanders are going to lose access to healthcare because of the bill passed 3 weeks ago. And if we don't fix the issue of the expiring ACA tax credits by the end of the year, 70,000 Marylanders could lose their healthcare coverage altogether, and they will see their premiums increase 68 percent.
As others have discussed, rural hospitals were already in a very, very tough position across the country, and now hundreds could close.
We are also seeing seniors put at greater risk in nursing homes because of cutbacks on the number of nursing staff we normally require to make sure that people's elderly loved ones get the care they need and deserve, and these cuts will make families face impossible choices.
Again, all of that--those cuts to Medicaid, the cuts to the Affordable Care Act--is for one purpose: to partially offset the cost of tax breaks for billionaires and wealthy people. I say ``partially offset'' because, even after cutting Medicaid, we are going to see an increase in the national debt of $3.5 trillion over the next 10 years, and that doesn't include additional interest on that debt.
By cutting Medicaid so deeply, President Trump and Republicans are hurting people at every stage of life. You know, doctors take an oath to make sure they help people at every stage of life, from cradle to grave. What happened 3 weeks ago is going to hurt people from cradle to grave. For many, it will be an early death sentence by denying access to important care, including preventive care. Officially, death certificates may read ``died from late-stage cancer'' or because of an accident in a nursing home, but when you look behind that, you will find that it is because that late-stage cancer wasn't detected earlier or because the nurse who should have been there at the nursing home wasn't there. That will be as a result of the bill that passed 3 weeks ago.
We believe that Donald Trump and Republican Senators know better. We certainly know that they heard from their constituents about what would happen if this bill passed. Like many, I received letters from hundreds of constituents, saying: Please don't pass this bill.
I am just going to read two short excerpts from a few of my constituents.
Mary, from Carroll County, said:
That is what Mary from Carroll County said.
Frank, from Cecil County, said:
I received these heart-wrenching letters from many constituents, and I know that all of us in this Senate did as well. Unfortunately, we saw over 50 Senators look the other way in the face of all of those letters and, instead, vote for a bill that cut healthcare for millions of Americans in order to partially finance tax cuts for the very wealthy.
We cannot allow this to continue. In fact, we need to reverse it. That is why I am joining others on the Schumer-Wyden bill to repeal the healthcare cuts that were enacted in that betrayal of a bill 3 weeks ago and to permanently extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, which will otherwise expire at the end of this year.
Again, 60 years ago, former Senators passed the Medicare and Medicaid law. They enacted that, improving the lives of millions of Americans. Three weeks ago, we saw the opposite happen--the great betrayal. We need to make sure that we reverse the damage that was done. Then we need to build a better healthcare system for every American. That is what we should be doing at this point in our history: building on the legacy of the Senators 60 years ago and building on the legacy of the Affordable Care Act.
Mr. President, as my colleagues have mentioned, today marks 60 years since Medicare and Medicaid were signed into law.
Democrats and Republicans alike should be celebrating the lives that have been saved as a result of these critical programs. Members of both parties should be sharing stories about Americans who have benefited from the healthcare they have received thanks to Medicare and Medicaid.
Unfortunately, today, my Democratic colleagues and I are not celebrating. We are angry. We are angry that President Trump lied when he said he would cherish Medicaid and that his allies in Congress wouldn't touch this essential program. We are angry that President Trump and congressional Republicans slashed nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid so they could hand billionaires a tax cut and add $4 trillion to our national deficit. We are angry that their new law is about to kick 17 million Americans off of their health insurance.
In my home State of Nevada, that means up to 120,000 Nevadans will lose their healthcare; 100,000 of those Nevadans will lose their access to Medicaid; and another 20,000 Nevadans will lose their affordable health coverage if Republicans continue to refuse to work with Democrats to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. There are a million reasons this new law of gutting Medicaid is terrible for Nevadans and for our country as a whole, but, today, I just want to focus on one--Hannah.
Hannah is a young girl who lives in Nevada, and her parents shared her story with me. Now I want to share it with you.
Hannah was diagnosed with a congenital kidney disease while still in utero. The first few years of her life were full of hospital rooms, doctors, and machines trying to keep her alive. At just 2\1/2\ years old, Hannah underwent major surgery that finally gave her the opportunity to live like a normal kid, and she did for a few years. Then, at age 9, Hannah fell into a coma. Imagine. Imagine being her parents, watching--completely helpless--as your daughter fights something that you can't protect her from.
Hannah did eventually wake up but with a new diagnosis--diabetes--a condition that nearly 270,000 Nevadans manage every day, not just the disease itself but the crushing weight of the costs associated with it. Over the next 2 years, Hannah's parents spent more than $5,000 out of pocket because their insurance refused to cover all of their costs to their daughter. Hannah and her family sacrificed so much just to be able to afford medication that would allow Hannah to lead a normal life.
But just when they thought they would never be able to financially recover, they were able to enroll in Medicaid and receive the support they needed to care for Hannah at home. Now Hannah is able to live the life she wants to lead without the fear of medical debt pulling her family back underwater.
I want to read to you what Hannah's parents wrote me:
My Democratic colleagues and I worked hard to save Medicaid, and we tried to reach across the aisle to protect the 17 million Americans just like Hannah who could lose their insurance because of this bill Republicans and Donald Trump signed into law. Unfortunately, President Trump insisted that congressional Republicans pass his tax cuts for billionaires, and they did what they were told. So now Hannah and her family and millions more like them may be forced back into medical debt.
To the proponents of this new law who insist that kids like Hannah aren't the ones they are targeting to kick off coverage, I would say that either they are being dishonest or they simply don't understand how Medicaid actually works. These cuts shrink the entire pot of money States rely on to fund Medicaid. Nevada and every State in this country will be forced to stretch fewer dollars to cover everyone. That almost always means tightening eligibility or cutting services so kids like Hannah end up losing coverage even if they weren't the type of people Republicans singled out for cuts. It is just shameful, and it is un- American. We are better than this as a country.
Now, my Democratic colleagues and I will do everything in our power to restore the healthcare funding Republicans have gutted. You heard them on the floor today. You are going to hear from more of my colleagues. I will say this: We will not let our colleagues forget what they did. We will not let them forget the millions of Americans, whether they are in our States or their States, who are losing access to healthcare but who just want to get ahead and be able to afford their healthcare and have access to healthcare for themselves and their families. That is worth fighting for.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. President, 60 years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, of Minnesota, whose desk my hands sit on right now, traveled to Independence, MO. President Johnson signed Medicare and Medicaid into law. He chose that city for a reason. He wanted to make clear these programs delivered what their birthplace promises: independence, health, and security for millions of Americans.
Before that day 60 years ago, there was no comprehensive government health insurance in the United States. If you didn't get insurance through work, you were on your own. Before Medicare, no insurance company wanted to provide coverage to seniors. Most Americans without job-based coverage faced illnesses and injuries, knowing they would have to pay out of pocket, and millions, especially older Americans, kids, and low-income families, went without the care they needed. They risked their health and their financial security.
Today, over 110 million Americans, including more than 1 million people in my State, depend on Medicare and Medicaid. These programs cover everything from hospital visits to lifesaving prescriptions to long-term care that allow seniors to remain in their homes. These programs, along with Social Security, have driven poverty among seniors to record lows, but that promise is under a renewed threat.
My Republican colleagues have passed laws that have cut Medicaid and Medicare, which millions of Americans rely on. They have voted to cut healthcare by over $1 trillion to pay for a bunch of tax cuts for billionaires. These cuts will throw more than 15 million Americans off of healthcare and threaten the independence not just of our seniors but of kids, people with disabilities, rural families, and working families.
As you know, the Medicaid cuts were right there for all to see. The Medicare cuts came out of a trigger. Because they added so much to the debt at $4 trillion, it triggered an automatic Medicare cut of $500 billion. That socks rural hospitals right there, and we are already seeing the effects of the anticipation of that because rural hospitals can't wait a year. They have got to show the people who run their hospitals what is going to happen. If they think they can't make it because of these cuts and what is happening, we lose these rural hospitals, and, suddenly, moms who want to deliver babies have to drive 2 hours, and people who want to go to an emergency room have nowhere to go.
In my State, 170,000 people from all walks of life risk losing access to the care that keeps them healthy and self-sufficient. Cuts like these nationally could close over 300 rural hospitals, 200 health centers, and over 500 nursing homes. Families caring for kids with special needs, kids with disabilities, could be left without the support that allows them to thrive, and people once again will be forced to choose between putting food on the table and filling a prescription.
As my Republican colleagues attack these programs, I have heard from countless Minnesotans who are among the 71 million Americans who rely on Medicaid in particular. More than one in five in my State gets access to care through Medicaid, and for seniors in assisted living, it is one out of two.
When it comes to people who rely on Medicaid, one example is Lola, whose daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. A social worker advised Lola that her employer-based insurance may not cover the cancer treatments that her daughter needed and connected her with Medicaid. She said, ``Medicaid helped completely'' with the transfusions, the surgeries, the T-cell therapy, and ongoing care. Lola added: Using my own insurance would have caused delays, and ultimately I would have been, for my daughter, in a life-or-death situation without Medicaid.
Another is Robby, who, after years in adult foster care, now lives independently with a roommate because of Medicaid's disability waiver and community-based services.
For these Minnesotans, this isn't about politics. When they call our office, we don't ask if they are a Democrat or a Republican; we just help them. When they send us a letter with their stories and pleading for help, we
Medicare and Medicaid are overwhelmingly popular with Americans and overwhelmingly needed by Americans. It is about caring for one another. It is about ensuring that every American can live with peace of mind and have dignity--dignity--in their senior years and strengthening health and prosperity in every corner of our country.
On this 60th anniversary, we should be strengthening these lifelines, not dismantling them.
As a nation, we have already made progress--capping out-of-pocket drug costs with the last administration; passing my bill to empower Medicare to finally negotiate drug prices--if this administration will continue this program that already, for the first 10 drugs, saved billions of dollars; making healthcare affordable; saving families thousands of dollars on therapies and hospital stays for complex illnesses,
Yet, today, on this milestone anniversary, we are again called to defend the very promise that began in Independence, MO, 60 years ago.
To paraphrase Minnesota's Happy Warrior Hubert Humphrey, who was there with President Johnson when he served as Vice President after he was Senator from the great State of Minnesota--he once said this: The moral test of a government isn't just how it treats the young and healthy; it is also how it treats the sick, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
That is definitely true for government, and I believe it is a moral test for all Americans.
I urge my colleagues, let's protect the health and security that Medicare and Medicaid provide for Americans of all ages. Let's keep the spirit of Independence alive so every kid, every family, every person, no matter their story, can count on Medicare and Medicaid for generations to come.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. President, I rise today for every American who is scared--scared about losing their health insurance, scared about making ends meet after the passage of the Republican budget betrayal.
This August, my Republican colleagues are going to have to return home, and they are going to have to face their constituents. Let's see how many of them have the courage to hold townhalls and actually have real conversations with their constituents and take real questions.
I hope my Republican colleagues are ready to explain why they gave the ultrawealthy a $250,000 tax break--you heard that right, a $250,000 tax break--while gutting Medicaid--a gut punch to people who depend on Medicaid to be able to get the care they need for themselves or for their kids, maybe some other loved ones; the same Medicaid which helps cover the births of nearly half of America's children.
I hope my Republican colleagues can answer how they can take from veterans, seniors, and children with disabilities just to hand more money to the top 0.1 percent. The top 0.1 percent--they are the wealthiest people in America. They are the ones who were rewarded with the taking of this money.
Meanwhile, Democrats have been listening to our constituents and hosting townhalls--even in Republican-led States--and fighting back against a law that does nothing for working families and everything for the ultrarich.
Senate Democrats are offering Republicans another chance to reverse the devastating cuts they just passed--cuts that will close rural hospitals and decimate Medicaid because Republicans have turned healthcare into a privilege reserved only for the most wealthy in the country.
That is not the way it has always been. Sixty years ago, Democrats and Republicans on this very floor came together to save seniors living in poverty and Americans who were suffering or dying prematurely because they didn't have health insurance and they couldn't see a doctor. This promise our government made to our Nation has saved millions from illness and undue financial burdens.
Senate Republicans broke that promise to the American people. Senate Democrats know that every American needs healthcare to survive.
Back home in New Mexico, families are learning what this law means for their daily lives. Some are already living their worst fears. They are checking their bank accounts. They are calling their doctors. They are trying to refill prescriptions while they still can.
Moms and dads of very sick kids are wondering how they are going to afford care when these cuts go through. One of those moms is Karisa from Las Vegas, NM. Her daughter Aurora was born with a chromosome 16 disorder. She had to have open-heart surgery. She spent her first year alive on oxygen.
Aurora is a fighter, but without Medicaid, Karisa could never have afforded the surgeries that saved Aurora's life. Because of Medicaid, Aurora isn't just surviving; she is thriving. She is going to birthday parties. She is playing on the playground and dancing to her favorite cartoons. That is what the fight is all about.
As Senators, we have the privilege to represent our constituents, but it comes with the responsibility to ensure that families like Karisa's can focus on healing instead of having to focus on the bills they can't afford.
Look, New Mexicans aren't looking for handouts. They work hard. They care for one another. I know it because I have lived it. When I was a kid, we moved in with my grandparents, Celedon and Nestora Lujan. I didn't understand it then, but I understand it now. We lived together because we had to. Now, don't take that wrong--we were also blessed to. It is how families get by in New Mexico.
Medicaid is not a handout; it is a lifeline. Medicaid is American dignity--the dignity of parents focused on caring for their children, not having to argue with an insurance company; the dignity of a senior not having to choose between medicine and groceries.
Earlier this month, Senate Republicans all voted to gut Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.
I mean, heck, some Senate Republicans are now even introducing legislation to roll back the very Medicaid cuts that they voted for on this floor just 3 weeks ago, trying to cover their tracks.
By the way, these same Senate Republicans all said on this Senate floor in one way or another that they promised they were not going to cut Medicaid. Well, I am tired of saying ``Well, it is not completely true'' or ``Oh, well, they misspoke.'' No. They lied. And growing up, my father told me that the coverup is worse than the lie. I hope when they go home, they have the courage to face their constituents.
So, Democrats, we are all standing here today to do what is right. Our bill will restore the Affordable Care Act's premium tax credits, which will bring down costs. It will reverse Republican cuts to Medicaid, remove redtape, and prevent the closures of rural hospitals-- something I think we all agree on.
So I urge my Republican colleagues, vote for your constituents, vote to save our rural hospitals, and vote to restore dignity to every American.
Let's work together and reverse the damage of the Republican budget betrayal.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be permitted to speak prior to the scheduled votes: Durbin for up to 15 minutes, Cotton for up to 5 minutes, Patty Murray for up to 5 minutes, and Mark Warner for up to 5 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, from time to time, I come to the floor to discuss political prisoners jailed by some of the world's worst regimes. I have often been joined in that effort to secure their release by colleagues on both sides of the aisle, including then- Senator and now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
You see, despite periods of retreat on the global stage, the United States is still being seen as a beacon of hope for those who want freedom and democracy, and this American voice has always enjoyed broad bipartisan support.
President Reagan certainly understood this when he famously told the
The late-John McCain understood this when he joined thousands of Ukrainians aspiring for freedom on Maidan Square.
President Trump's Special Envoy Keith Kellogg understood this when he recently secured the release of several Belarusian political prisoners.
My former Senate colleague from Maryland Ben Cardin understood this when he passed the bipartisan Global Magnitsky Act.
Many times, those released from gulags overseas as a result of pressure from this Chamber have even visited me here in Washington, and they note how important it is to be remembered despite their isolation. So today, I want to mention just a few cases that deserve the attention of this Senate.
Let me start with the United Arab Emirates. If you follow soccer or football--depending on your choice of the name of the sport--you will see ``Emirates'' across the uniforms of some of the most famous, premier league teams. When you think of the Emirates, you think of those teams, and you wonder about the airline, but you may not think twice about human rights.
The United Arab Emirates is where one of that nation's top human rights defenders, Ahmed Mansoor, has been in prison for 8 years. Mansoor is considered one of the last major human rights voices in the Emirates--one tragically being held at times in solitary confinement, separated from his family. He was arrested under the guise that his social media posts advocating for human rights threatened social harmony.
Despite the dismal conditions of his incarceration, he remains steadfast in his commitment to human rights, even conducting multiple hunger strikes in protest of his jail conditions--the same conditions he spoke out against before his detention. Recently, his outrageous 15- year sentence was upheld on appeal.
We have strong ties and shared interests with the UAE, but its continued involvement in the horrific Sudanese civil war and incarceration of Mr. Mansoor complicate that relationship.
I appeal to UAE President Muhammad bin Zayid Al Nuhayyan to show compassion and allow Mr. Mansoor's release on humanitarian grounds.
To those at the United Arab Emirates Embassy here in Washington, if you are listening to my voice, understand this: We are expecting a positive response for Mr. Mansoor, and we are expecting it soon. If you ignore this entreaty, believe me, many of us will remember.
Next on the list is Azerbaijan. In 2023, anti-corruption research advocate Dr. Gubad Ibadoghlu and his wife were forcibly dragged from their vehicle and severely beaten. He was taken to a prison, well-known for its torture, where he was denied medication and legal representation. What crime did he commit? Investigating and writing on the rampant corruption stemming from Azerbaijan's oil and gas industry.
While he was eventually placed under house arrest in April 2024, he has still been denied a trial, legal representation, access to adequate medical care, and his family continues to suffer harassment.
He is one of the many wrongfully detained individuals in Azerbaijan who should be released. If the Azerbaijan Embassy is watching this presentation, we are begging you: Do something to give this man a break, and release him from prison. We will be watching and hope you do.
Next is Tunisia, one of the most promising nations to emerge from the Arab Spring that sadly has seen President Saied consolidate power and stifle dissent by arresting political opponents and critics. One such case is Sonia Dahmani, a prominent Tunisian lawyer and political commentator who was arrested in May 2024 for her radio and television commentary. She faces five separate legal proceedings and an additional 10 years on pending charges. Her sister Ramla was also sentenced in absentia to 2 years in prison for advocating for her sister's case on social media.
Ms. Dahmani has endured appalling prison conditions, including sexual assault, and denial of basic medical care. I urge President Saied to release her on humanitarian charges and drop any remaining charges, including those against her sister.
If you are watching this presentation from the Embassy in Tunisia, believe me, we are begging you to act on this quickly, quickly. Show that you have heard this. Show that you understand the severity of your decision and understand that those of us in Congress and in the Senate will be watching carefully to see your response.
Lastly, two cases in Guatemala, cases new President Arevalo inherited and has bravely tried to solve: the troubling jailing of journalist Jose Ruben Zamora and legal harassment of anti-corruption prosecutor Virginia Laparra. Their incarceration occurred amid multiple efforts to derail the peaceful transition of power to President Arevalo last year. Both were eventually released from the prison to house arrest, but Mr. Zamora has now been sent back to prison, and Ms. Laparra continues to face baseless legal harassment from holdovers from the previous regime. Both deserve full release and dropping of remaining charges.
If the Embassy of Guatemala is following my statement, please respond--and quickly--and give these two people relief. We will be watching carefully and hope that you do.
What we do here matters around the world for the large and small battles occurring for freedom and democracy.
My friend and jailed Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza wrote the following from his Russian gulag a few years ago:
Let me remind Ahmed, Gubad, Sonia, Jose Ruben, and Virginia, you are not forgotten. Today, as I deliver these remarks, members of the families of some of these people are in the Gallery. Don't give up hope. I will continue to be that voice to remind the world of the incarceration and treatment of those that you love.
We need to be a beacon of hope in the United States. This is a demonstration, and we are begging these countries that are involved in these incarcerations and treatment to change their approach completely and give these people the freedom that they deserve.
Mr. President, today, I urge my Senate colleagues to confirm Joe Kent as the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
Mr. Kent has 20 years of military service and 11 combat deployments during the War on Terror, as well as experience as a Green Beret and a CIA officer. Mr. Kent has dedicated his career to fighting terrorism and to keeping Americans safe.
For Joe, this mission is both patriotic and, sadly, personal, as his first wife Shannon was tragically killed while serving in Syria in 2019. America remains grateful for and honored by her selfless, valiant service to our Nation, and we continue to hold Joe and their children in our prayers for their loss.
Mr. Kent understands the grave threat that terrorism poses to the security and safety of Americans. He has committed to returning the National Counterterrorism Center to its statutory mission of integrating threat intelligence from foreign terrorist organizations and to getting out of purely domestic activities. These are among the reasons I call on my colleagues to support his nomination.
Finally, in addition to Mr. Kent, I would like to emphasize the urgency with which the Senate ought to confirm nominees to all intelligence and national security-related positions. Getting these nominees through the confirmation pipeline is essential to our national security and crucial to increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of our intelligence Agencies.
Again, I am pleased to offer my support for Mr. Kent's nomination, and I call on my colleagues to do the same.
Mr. President, the National Counterterrorism Center plays a crucial role keeping our country safe. The Agency is responsible for collecting and analyzing intelligence to help protect our Nation from terrorist threats. It is sober, serious work that requires a level head and a commitment to putting the mission before politics, which is why I am deeply alarmed that Republicans are charging ahead to put it under the thumb of a conspiracy theorist who espouses White supremacist views and is patently unqualified for this important role in just about every way imaginable.
You are supposed to pick people with qualifications, but just about everything we know about Joe Kent is disqualifying for this role and alarming. There is his track record chumming it up with White supremacists, from discussing campaign strategy with avowed White supremacist Nick Fuentes to giving an interview to a guy who has defended Hitler, to rallying with the founder of a far-right paramilitary group. And let's not forget the Proud Boy that he hired as a consultant.
And it is not just his connections. There is his own bigoted statements, like claiming Islam is ``based on conquest at its core'' and pushing racist ``replacement theory'' rhetoric. That is alarming stuff. Let's be frank: These are White supremacist views, and they should have absolutely no place in our Federal Government.
And then there is his track record of politicizing intelligence, like when he was caught redhanded pushing to change intelligence reports-- facts be damned--so they would agree with Trump and attack Biden.
Joe Kent also has a track record of peddling conspiracies and attacking law enforcement, from saying our country is at war with a ``leftist cabal'' or calling to completely defund the FBI and ATF, Agencies that keep Americans safe from foreign and domestic threats, or pushing the offensive and false conspiracy that the January 6 insurrection was somehow a deep-state plot.
You want to know who in the Federal Government was behind the insurrection? How about we start with the man in the White House who promised to march to the Capitol with them. How about we start with the President who calls rioters patriots. How about we start with the guy who pardoned violent cop beaters en masse.
If you cannot be honest with the American people about January 6, you have no business being trusted with protecting our democracy. It should be that simple.
And let's not forget, Joe Kent was on the infamous Signalgate chat, where classified attack plans were discussed with no regard for security, for law, not to mention the safety of our servicemembers.
You know what he had to say about that? He said no classified information was discussed. That was the answer he gave at his Senate confirmation hearing.
Now, it is obvious that answer was a complete lie. Last week, the Pentagon's watchdog confirmed there was classified information in that Signal chat.
So was Kent being intentionally dishonest or does he not understand what classified information is? Either way, it is completely disqualifying, which, as I think I made clear, is pretty much the pattern here.
So here is my warning to Republicans. Confirming someone like Joe Kent to lead the National Counterterrorism Center makes about as much sense as putting Donald Trump in charge of releasing the Epstein files after all that we have learned. We have all the evidence we could ever need in the public record right now that he is not going to do the right thing, and we have no reason to believe he will do this important, high-stakes work in a serious, impartial manner, let alone a competent one.
So I am here to urge all my colleagues to join me in doing exactly what people back in Washington State have done each time they were asked to trust Joe Kent: vote no.
Mr. President, I want to thank my friend from Washington State. I want to follow some of her concerns. It is pretty remarkable, so I do rise with grave concern to speak in opposition to the nomination of Joe Kent to lead the National Counterterrorism Center.
Others may have already said this, but this is not a nomination we should treat lightly. The Director of NCTC plays a central role in asserting and integrating intelligence on terrorist threats, both foreign and domestic. That person must be trusted to tell the truth and to uphold the core principles of the intelligence community: objectivity, nonpartisanship, and fidelity to fact. Unfortunately, Mr. Kent has shown, time and again, that he cannot meet the standard.
Now, let me acknowledge at the front end that I respect Mr. Kent because he spent much of his adult life in service to this country. He enlisted in the U.S. Army at 18. He served for two decades as a Green Beret. He deployed overseas 11 times before working as a field operative for the CIA. That record of service deserves recognition.
And I do not question Mr. Kent's devotion to our country. However, that service, while admirable, cannot overcome a consistent pattern of questionable judgment and false statements, at odds with the objectivity he would be expected to uphold as Director of NCTC.
In May, Congress received clear written evidence that Mr. Kent, while serving as Chief of Staff to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, sought to manipulate intelligence to match a political narrative promoted by President Trump. Specifically, after the National Intelligence Council assessed that the Venezuelan Government was not directing the movement of Tren de Aragua--the Tren de Aragua gang--into the United States, Mr. Kent pressured career analysts to alter that conclusion, not because of new intelligence but because he feared the report would ``be used against the DNI or POTUS.'' Let me say that again. Mr. Kent pressured career nonpartisan intelligence analysts to change their conclusions not to reflect the facts but somehow to protect Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard.
The remarkable thing that happened next is that when the analysts stood firm, they were fired, sending a chilling message to every intelligence officer tasked with protecting this country.
Let me be crystal clear. Tren de Aragua is a violent and dangerous transnational gang, and the Maduro government are pretty bad folks. And nobody that I know of--least of all me--is minimizing the threat that Tren de Aragua poses or the importance of tracking their ideas and their activities in the United States. But our national security decisions must be based on facts, not politics.
When intelligence professionals conclude, based on the best available information, that the Venezuelan Government is not coordinating with that gang, their analysts--analysis--I think, has to be respected, even if it contradicts a political talking point.
Distorting that analysis to score political points not only undermines trust in the intelligence community, it risks misdirecting resources and attention away from the real threats we face.
Unfortunately, this incident is part of a much larger pattern, underscoring that Mr. Kent lacks the judgment and commitment to truth required of such an important position.
Mr. Kent has openly embraced the lie that the 2020 election was ``rigged'' and ``stolen,'' a lie that the Senator from Washington indicated helped fuel an insurrection against our democracy, and he has defended those who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, referring to them as ``political prisoners,'' and falsely claimed that the FBI and intelligence community were involved in directing the violence that occurred that day.
I can tell you, I was here that day. That was not directed by the FBI.
He has participated in the Signalgate group chat, where Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, and other political appointees discussed classified information, carelessly putting our sailors and pilots at risk--and for which Mr. Kent, in testimony before my committee on the Senate Intelligence Committee, remained thoroughly unrepentant.
During his nomination hearing, rather than reassuring the committee of his qualifications or judgement, he launched into a diatribe about the so-called Russia hoax, dismissing well-documented foreign interference in our elections as if it were a partisan invention.
Down to my last two pages, Mr. President.
That claim is not just wrong, it is willfully ignorant. The Senate Intelligence Committee conducted a comprehensive, five-volume, bipartisan investigation of the Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Over those five volumes, we detailed how Russia interfered in our democratic process, how those efforts were designed to help Donald Trump, and how individuals affiliated with his campaign welcomed his efforts.
That is not a hoax. That is a fact. Matter of fact, unanimously confirmed by every member of the Senate Intelligence Committee-- Republican and Democrat.
Mr. Kent's outright dismissal of it speaks volumes about how he views the truth, intelligence, and accountability, nor can we ignore his troubling associations. Mr. Kent has repeatedly aligned himself with far-right extremist groups, employing a member of the Proud Boys, a white nationalist organization with a record of political violence and extremism, as part of his 2022 campaign for Congress, a campaign for which he also solicited help from white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
At a time when domestic, violent extremism is one of the fastest- growing threats to the homeland, we are being asked to put someone in charge of counterterrorism who has aligned himself with political violence, promoted falsehoods that undermine our democracy, and tried to twist intelligence to serve a political agenda.
I urge my colleagues--particularly those who value the credibility of our intelligence Agencies--to think carefully about what message it sends if Mr. Kent is confirmed. Allowing Mr. Kent to lead the NCTC would not just compromise the integrity of our counterterrorism efforts, it would embolden those who believe loyalty to one man should outweigh loyalty to the truth. It would signal that the politicization of intelligence in service of falsehoods is no longer a disqualifier, and it would make this country less safe.
Mr. President, for these reasons, I join others and strongly urge a ``no'' on this nomination.
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Kelly), the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), and the Senator from Michigan (Ms. Slotkin) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 44, 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 PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The senior assistant legislative 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 Tyler Clarkson, of Virginia, to be General Counsel of the Department of Agriculture, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Kelly) and the Senator from Michigan (Ms. Slotkin) are neccessarily absent.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 53, nays 44, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 53, the nays are 44. The motion is agreed to.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII and as if in legislative session, it be in order for Senator Sanders to make motions to discharge S.J. Res. 41 and S.J. Res. 34, and if made, the Senate vote on the motions to discharge in the order listed at 9 p.m. today; further, that following the disposition of the motions to discharge the joint resolutions, the Senate vote
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I am going to ask for a unanimous consent motion and reserve my remarks until after we have had a chance to address that motion, recognizing that we are dealing with some scheduling issues this evening. But I want to make sure that I reserve the right to actually make a statement about my unanimous consent request after we have had our exchange.
So as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 151 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
This is legislation that would address the tariffs that the President is considering.
Mr. President, like my colleague from New Hampshire, I want to make a statement after, but I want to, at the moment, accommodate the scheduling requirements of some of my other colleagues. So I want to make a unanimous consent motion.
As if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 2383; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I rise in opposition to S. 2383, the Creating Access to Necessary American- Canadian Duty Adjustments Act, and S. 151, the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes on Imported Goods Act of 2025.
I agree with my colleagues, who will speak in just a moment, that tariffs should be more targeted to avoid harm to small businesses. I made precisely that point at a hearing in the Finance Committee in May.
Similarly, with less than 2 days to go to the August 1 reciprocal negotiation deadline, I appreciate that my colleagues, as well as our constituents, may be nervous about what comes next. However, at this juncture, these two bills are counterproductive to helping American families and businesses of all sizes.
The President's historic trade negotiations are bearing fruit. President Trump already announced new trade deals with major trading partners, including the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Japan, and the European Union. I urge other trading partners to reach a deal by August 1. Consequently, S. 151 and S. 2383 are counterproductive to the progress that President Trump has achieved and is poised to continue achieving in ongoing negotiations with our trading partners.
On April 30, the Senate rejected the IEEPA disapproval resolution on reciprocal tariffs for the same reasons.
Mr. President, on Friday, we may be facing the next escalation in the President's trade war. The tariffs that the President announced in April on virtually every country in the world are set to go into full effect tomorrow night at 12:01 a.m. Those tariffs are expected to add about $2,400 in costs for the average household per year.
That is why I introduced the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes on Imported Goods Act. This bill states clearly that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act cannot be used to place taxes on imports. If the President needs to block a dangerous product, he still can under my legislation. But if there is a real threat, I think we would want to stop it, not just tax it. That is what my bill does. It makes clear what the Federal court has already found: that IEEPA, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, does not authorize tariffs.
Passing my bill would give businesses and families more certainty to plan for the future and to keep more of their hard-earned dollars in their pockets.
Virtually every business in New Hampshire that I visited since the President announced his proposed tariffs has said that, in addition to the tariffs, the uncertainty is as difficult for them as the tariffs.
So I am disappointed that Senator Crapo decided to block this commonsense legislation. Sadly, I am not surprised. But this bill would do so much to help families and businesses in all of our States. It would shield them from higher costs.
We have been hearing about some of these deals that Senator Crapo referred to that have been reached with the EU and Japan, but let's be clear about what those deals mean because even after those deals--those agreements, trade agreements--Americans are going to be left paying dramatically higher tariffs.
A new analysis this week found that we will be paying the highest tariffs since the Great Depression, and we saw what those tariffs before the Great Depression contributed to.
Now, we just saw a deal announced with the EU by the President and Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Commission, forcing 15 percent taxes on imports. Now, compare that to what we were paying in 2024 at this same time. That was about 1.5 percent. So under this great deal that the President negotiated with the EU, Americans are going to be paying 10 times what we paid last year. And with Japan, President Trump agreed to a 15-percent tax. That is also 10 times what we were paying last year.
So let's don't pretend that these are some big wins. The President can announce that, but they are only a slight improvement on a crisis that the President created himself.
At a time when people are rightly worried about the rising costs of living, Trump's tariffs amount to a tax to make everything from clothes, to housing, to food even more expensive. For example, last month, home prices hit a record high, and these tariffs could add more than $10,000 to the cost of a home. Coffee prices hit a record high earlier this year, and now President Trump wants to put a 50-percent tariff on Brazil--our largest source of coffee. As families do their back-to-school shopping, they are going to see higher prices for clothing and shoes. Those prices could go up by 35 percent by the end of the year. For new parents, just for example, the price of one stroller at Walmart went up 50 percent in 2 months. And there are countless more products that are facing higher prices.
So let's be clear: These tariffs do nothing to bring down costs, and, in fact, they could add, as I said earlier in this statement, about $2,400 to the average household's yearly expenses. That is money that most families don't have just lying around.
We have all of those costs from these tariffs, and yet, at this moment, 30 hours from when the tariffs will go into effect, we still have seen no official notice implementing any of these deals.
That includes, by the way, no clarity on whether prescription drugs coming from Europe will face a 15-percent tariff starting in 2 days. I had a chance to meet with a pharmaceutical company this week, and they were lamenting what the impact was going to be on prescription drug prices because of the tariffs from the EU.
Last Friday, I visited the Brueckner Group in New Hampshire. They supply equipment to domestic manufacturers and import some of their specialized machines, which they make, from Europe. The machines they bring in are sold to manufacturers here in the United States to make everything from IV bags to toothpaste containers. They have 80 employees in the United States, and far more work on their machines at other companies across the country.
They saw orders put on hold in April, and further investments in the United States are delayed because they can't be certain what the tariffs are going to be that they might face.
They told me that even worse than the tariffs in some way is the uncertainty that has been created, the chaos that has been created by President Trump's announcements because people don't know how to plan, businesses don't know what to invest in.
I believe in supporting domestic manufacturing. It is New Hampshire's third largest industry. But half of all imports are raw materials and intermediate goods--the very things that domestic manufacturers rely on.
Instead of supporting domestic manufacturing, these trade policies are making future American manufacturing more expensive. Furthermore, they are threatening jobs.
My husband and I started out our married life owning and operating a small business. I know the hardest part of small businesses is growing and sustaining those businesses when you are uncertain about what is going to happen, and that is what these tariffs create, as I heard at Brueckner Group USA and as I have heard at every business I visited.
When I visited Brueckner 4 days ago, we had a 10-percent tax on everything imported from the EU, and at the time, that was set to jump to 30 percent this Friday. Then, Sunday, we saw an agreement to set the tax at 15 percent but with unclear exceptions to that tax, like, as I heard from the pharmaceutical company, with prescription drugs.
I also heard from Flight Coffee roasters in Bedford, NH. They are worried about the President's threat to place new tariffs on Brazil because they have already been paying a 10-percent markup on coffee because of these tariffs. Now they are facing a 50-percent tax on Brazilian coffee starting on Friday, and they have no choice but to charge consumers more. Their most popular product comes from Brazil. So this is a big hit to their business, and they can't be sure how this is going to impact their sales.
We should be clear: The United States has a trade surplus with Brazil. This threat is just because the President wants Brazil's independent judiciary to stop the prosecution of Brazil's former President.
How is any business supposed to plan for that kind of rationale and for those kinds of swings? They need to secure financing. They need to place orders. They need to invest in order to grow in the months and years ahead, but building a new plant and moving production takes time. In some cases, it takes years. So how can companies plan when they don't even know whether the Trump tax--this tariff--is going to be 10 percent, 30 percent, or something in between or something higher?
New Hampshire is in a housing crisis. How can builders plan their costs when no one can tell them if there is going to be a new 30- or even 50-percent tax on their materials come Friday?
How can a family already struggling with high costs continue to pay the rent and put food on the table if their household expenses are going up $2,400 this year? And now, on Friday, the administration is planning to make the goods businesses and families need 10 or 30 or 40 or 50 percent more expensive overnight.
This President promised to lower the price of everything--groceries, rent, energy. What these tariffs do is just the opposite.
We are hearing a lot of positive spin from the administration about the deals they are striking. But let me end by making two points.
First, we heard a lot of talk about 90 deals in 90 days. Well, we are way past that deadline, and we have seen six--count them: six-- announcements. And it is not even clear that Vietnam has actually agreed to what the President announced.
Second, I want to remind all of us that these deals all force Americans and American businesses to pay a tax rate that is far higher than what we saw before the President engaged in this trade war.
I talked earlier about how, for both Europe and Japan, Americans will face a tax that is 10 times higher than we paid last year. That same trend holds across every deal he has announced. With Indonesia, he agreed to a 19-percent tax--four times what we paid last year.
With the Philippines, a 20-percent tax, up from 1.3 percent. So 15 times what we paid last year. And for the UK, where we have a trade surplus--again, a trade surplus--he agreed to a 10-percent tariff, again 10 times what we paid in 2024.
So we should be very clear. All of these rates are an increase from what Americans have been paying since April. This President has raised average tariffs from 2.5 percent to more than 17 percent, the highest level since the Great Depression.
Again and again, he is adding costs to American families and businesses, and what are these costs for? They are to finance tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, for the biggest corporations. The end result of the President's ``Art of the Deal'' on trade is higher costs for families, uncertainty for businesses, and alienated allies who no longer view America as a reliable partner to do business with.
Mr. President, these tariffs are terrible. No. 1, let's be clear, they are a tax. So every tariff is going to be paid for by every consumer in this country, and it is going to be an expense for every business in this country. That is No. 1.
No. 2, these tariffs are totally chaotic in creating an immense amount of uncertainty so that businesses don't know what is the tariff from one day to the next. The least desirable situation for any of our businesses is when there is total uncertainty about what governmental policy is.
The challenges to our consumers and to our businesses are universal. Every consumer in every State, every business in every State faces the threat of these higher expenses that go to consumers in this incredible uncertainty that is inflicted on businesses.
But my legislation, the Creating Access to Necessary American- Canadian Duty Adjustments Act, the CANADA Act, cosponsored by Leader Schumer, by my colleague Senator Shaheen, Senator Murkowski of Alaska, Senator Kaine, Senator Collins, Senator Markey, and Senator Wyden, focuses special attention on our small businesses.
The reason for that is as challenging as this is for every business, it is especially so for small businesses. They do not have the margin to deal with these price swings. They don't have the margin to adjust to the Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday policy changes. They don't have the margin to be able to absorb a huge hit in their expenses on the basis of whether a shipment that they were awaiting from another country was delivered on Monday or Friday.
That literally is what is happening.
Our small businesses are so profoundly important to us in Vermont-- and I know that is true in West Virginia, I know it is true in New Hampshire--and we have got to be doing things that help them. We should not be doing something that really hurts them. That is these tariffs.
The impact to us in Vermont is especially acute in our proximity to Canada. Canada is Vermont's major trading partner, but Vermont is hardly unique. Thirty-four States in our country have as their major trading partner Canada.
So we have got to level with the American people--the people we represent. The President is suggesting that these tariffs are nothing but pure revenue for our country. You know what, it is revenue for our country, but it is revenue that is paid for by our consumers and by our businesses.
As Senator Shaheen has so eloquently stated, we have got a serious affordability crisis in this country. People who work hard, who work full time, cannot afford to pay their bills at the end of the month. Our businesses that are operating with enormous efficiency and who are super concerned
You know what, those small businesses do not have the pricing power that our major businesses have. They can deal with it. They have got market power. And I am actually on their side because I don't think they should be subject to these horrible tariffs, but what I do have some appreciation for is the fact that the small businesses just don't have that margin no matter how hard they work, no matter how carefully they plan, no matter how committed their workforce is. If you have this tariff that creates a tsunami of uncertainty and expense, that jeopardizes their ability to hang on.
Let me go through some of the effects on Vermonters that I spoke to. All of us, like Senator Shaheen, visited businesses, talked to real people. Here is what I am hearing in Vermont:
Farmers: They are having to pay already 25 percent more for fertilizer. By the way, that is not unique to Vermont. That is all over the country. Our dairy farmers, small margin. How do you tell them to pay 25 percent more? And on August 1, by the way, it can go up to 35 percent.
Our maple producers: We import a lot of maple syrup from Canada. We produce the most maple syrup in the United States of any State, but we cooperate with them, and it is going to create a distortion of the market and put a lot of pressure on our maple producers.
Housing: As Senator Shaheen said, we get lumber from Canada. Housing is incredibly expensive. We all know that. It is true in your State, and it is true in mine. It is one of the big threats to people having an opportunity to move into the middle class. They can't afford a house.
These tariffs are sticking it to our folks in housing. The National Association of Home Builders is absolutely opposed to these tariffs, and rightly so, because an already expensive house now is going to have a 25- to 35-percent increase in the cost of lumber. I mean, where is that coming from? How is that fair? How does that make any sense for everyday, hard-working people in Vermont and in every State?
We are losing jobs from these. Steel and car manufacturers are having layoffs. They are in Michigan. They are in Indiana. They are in Alabama. They are in Minnesota.
In my State, Orvis, which is an iconic producer of elegant and exceptional fly rods, has had to lay off workers for the first time in a very, very long time, and it is all totally as a result of these tariffs.
You know, small business--I know we all believe this--is the backbone of our States, and every single one of us on both sides of the aisle, I think, sincerely believes that. But is it really a belief when we give lip service but not action to protect their opportunity to compete? And these tariffs are a killer for them. There is not a small business you can talk to that supports these tariffs and doesn't see it as an existential threat to their well-being.
You know, the President, on these tariffs particularly with Canada-- we had the United States-Canada-Mexico Trade Agreement, and that was negotiated by President Trump. He, in his Trumpian way, bragged about that as the best deal ever, and now he is ripping it up.
So what was it, the best deal ever? It actually was working. It gave stability. We had a market from Mexico up through Canada, and now that is getting ripped apart with these arbitrary actions on the part of the administration.
So it is all downside here. You know, there is a lot of press recently about the President getting a deal here and a deal there. And in the short-term news cycle, that is regarded as a victory. But you know what, when you step back and look at what the deals are, it is a deal to raise the cost to folks in West Virginia; it is to raise the cost to folks in Vermont, raise the cost for folks in Oregon, raise the cost for folks in New Hampshire.
I ask the obvious question: How is that a good deal?
Maybe it is a good deal, politically, for the President, but it is a really bad deal for our small businesses and for our consumers.
The other part of this, particularly with Canada--huge tourism industry. About 20 million Canadians come to the United States, about $20 billion. The folks from Canada--we, in Vermont, in New Hampshire, feel very close to them. We feel a social, economic, political connection to them. We really value them, and this has been such an insult to them.
I mean, aside from the tariffs, to talk about the 51st State to the Governor of Canada, that is all really uncalled for and very hurtful and very harmful.
Senator Shaheen and Senator Wyden both led delegations to Canada where I think they were, on behalf of all of us, expressing the appreciation and respect we have for our Canadian neighbors. We should not be doing something with these tariffs that shows massive disrespect to them.
I just want to end with a few quotes from the Vermonters I spoke to. By the way, these are Republicans; these are Democrats and Independents. This is not a deal that relates to whose side you are on in the Presidential contest. These are folks committed to the community they live in, committed to the employees who work for them, and care about a strong economy and a strong social life for us in Vermont.
Our treasurer said: Small local businesses will be hit very hard. They don't have the ability to find a different supplier and different vendors with the limited flexibility they already have.
We had another, a vegetable farmer, small scale: It feels like death by a thousand cuts.
Person in healthcare: Adding a tariff will either lead to drug shortages in the short term or long-term significant price increases.
So there is a commonsense element here that just seems to escape the U.S. Senate at times. We are actually pretending that this tariff is not a tax. It is a tax. We are pretending that the constant change and whimsical nature, the arbitrary nature with which the radius of one thing today and a different thing tomorrow doesn't have a really disastrous impact on folks who have to make real-world decisions about their ability to produce a product to meet the obligations of a contract they have entered into, to maintain the stability of their workforce and their supply chain.
It is all downside with these tariffs, and these are not targeted. You know, it is a separate question to use a tariff when you have got unfair labor or trade practices as we have from China. I think all of us here are quite open to the proper and limited use of tariffs as a tool. But this notion that tariffs as a revenue source and pretending that revenue is not being paid for by our businesses and by our consumers is wrong. It is just flatout wrong.
As this policy gets implemented, we are going to lock in these price increases and further aggravate the affordability challenges that everyday, hard-working Americans are feeling more acutely than ever.
Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from New Hampshire and my colleague from Vermont for both giving extraordinarily thoughtful comments.
The reality is, when you talk about these deals, what you are really talking about, the Trump agreements is essentially giving our country a few lines scratched on a napkin.
There is very little ``there'' there. And I so appreciate my colleagues seeking to free our citizens from crushing new trade taxes, courtesy of Donald Trump's tariffs. He slapped tariffs on things people buy from scores of countries. So he has hit cars and car parts, aluminum, beer, food, and clothing. The list goes on and on. That means just that Americans are going to pay more to buy the things they need because Trump taxes jack up the price.
This month, Donald Trump has been announcing these so-called trade deals from a handful of countries. So as I indicated, these are really much. The USMCA, which was something that Donald Trump participated in, was a real trade deal, was the result of intense negotiations, a transparent process, a bipartisan vote in the Congress.
Donald Trump's latest deals mostly consist of a tariff number, 20 percent on products from Vietnam, for example, with some sort of fake or vague promise that the rest will be figured out later. Instead of having an enforceable, binding agreement that opens markets to U.S. farmers and manufacturers and small businesses now, as I say, we get a little bit of verbiage put on a napkin or a piece of paper.
Not surprisingly, when Trump describes the deals, his story is often enormously different from what these countries say they agreed to. For example, Japan says it will provide up to $550 billion of financing in the United States. That is fine. Donald Trump claims Japan promised to create a $550 billion fund that will be spent at his direction-- essentially, a personal slush fund. Meanwhile, Vietnam has not even confirmed that it has agreed to the deal Donald Trump announced.
What does our country get in exchange for these higher tariffs that are paid by our people? Significant economic pain.
U.S. workers and employers are already getting battered by the trade chaos of Donald Trump. The big three U.S. automakers all announced plunging profits. General Motors lost more than a billion dollars due to tariffs. Instead of making U.S. automakers better off, the new tariff scheme is going to make our cars and trucks more expensive compared to Japanese competitors.
It is going to get worse. Because of Donald Trump's endless flip- flops on tariffs, the real cost of his trade taxes are going to go fully into effect in coming months.
Donald Trump can do all this because he, basically, goes off, does his own thing, and is claiming emergency powers to pursue the tariffs. My colleagues and I are proposing straightforward legislation to clarify the President's emergency powers. We say they have got to be used in emergencies and can't be used to put tariffs on things Americans buy from other countries.
A number of our Republican colleagues have supported Senator Shaheen's proposal in the past. Putting a check on the President's power to land us in trade wars didn't used to be a partisan effort. Senator Welch, Senator Markey, a number of my colleagues, and I want to exempt small businesses from having to pay Trump's emergency tariffs. That is because these small businesses are the least able to absorb big new government taxes on the materials they need to make their goods.
The bill my colleague Senator Shaheen and I are trying to pass today would rein in some of Donald Trump's worst impulses. The Shaheen legislation would clarify that the laws on the books were never meant-- never--to be a blank check for the President to abuse tariffs by using them as a punishment against a country--maybe multiple countries--that are hurting his feelings.
At the same time, my home State of Oregon is fighting these tariffs in court with arguments that will happen tomorrow. Donald Trump and his billionaire allies aren't going to feel the impact of higher tariffs. So I guess that may be why they don't care about the millions of Americans who do care deeply and can't afford higher costs.
Congress and the courts have to make clear that the tariff roller coaster in America has got to be stopped.
I thank my colleagues for their leadership on this issue.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, I am honored to add my voice to others we have heard already expressing grave concern about President Trump's misguided, mistaken, harmful tariff regime. Actually, it dignifies what the President is doing on tariffs to call it a regime, which implies that there is a strategy and a conceptual consistency and constancy to it.
Actually, it seems to be a flurry of announcements, some contradictory and inconsistent, about so-called trade deals. They vary from week-to-week, even day-to-day, with different countries--or the same country. President Trump calls them ``big wins.'' But these so- called victories benefit him alone, not the American people.
Let's cut through the bluster and the propaganda. Tariffs are taxes. Tariffs are taxes. The American people are the ones who pay the taxes-- not Donald Trump, and, almost always, not the countries the tariffs are directed against.
American families, particularly of lower and middle-income brackets will bear the brunt of these taxes. Whatever the rate, whether it is 15 percent, as the President has just announced against the European Union, or 20 percent against other countries, or 30 percent, these current tariff rates cause the American people to lose.
In fact, as a result of these tariffs, the average U.S. household is set to lose $2,400 in annual income. That is not Richard Blumenthal giving you that figure; it is the Yale Budget Lab, the scientists and the economists there who have no ax to grind, Republican or Democrat. They are just doing their work economically.
The costs of many consumer goods that Americans rely on are also set to rise. Here are just a few: Clothing prices, 37 percent; leather goods will rise by 39 percent; food prices will increase 3.4 percent, with fresh produce specifically rising by 6.9 percent; motor vehicles will rise by 12.3 percent, adding $6,000 to the price of the average new car.
With these increases, Trump's tariff plan will burden the lowest earners in our economy more than three times the highest earners. Let me repeat that: lower earners three times the burden compared to higher earners.
I have another key area of concern, and it has been baffling to me from the start of all this tariff talk: rising energy costs. Why would the President support a set of tariffs that raises our energy prices? So basic, especially in the highest use times in the year. Summer actually involves a higher use time than winter.
My home State of Connecticut already has some of the highest electricity costs in the Nation, 39 percent above the national average or an extra thousand dollars a year. But the President's tariffs will exacerbate this situation by driving up the cost of fuel and critical grid equipment--transformers and circuit breakers.
The recent projections have shown the tariffs could raise natural gas by 6.1 percent; oil by 2.3 percent; electricity prices by .7 percent. Those percentage points are real dollars in real people's pockets-- actually, dollars that will be taken from real people's pockets as a result of a senseless, reckless collection of taxes paid by American consumers. The cost of those utility increases will be paid by consumers. They will strain households in my State and across the Nation.
As the ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs committee, I am particularly interested in how these tariffs will affect our Nation's veterans. The President's reckless and destabilizing tariff regime will place incredible stress on our Nation's largest integrated health system, the Department of Veterans Affairs. Yes, it is our largest healthcare system. It serves 9 million veterans at more than 1300 facilities across the country. It is one of the essential public institutions.
The Government Accountability Office found in fiscal year 2024, the VA spent $16.6 billion on medical services and an additional $15 billion for drugs and biologics, medical and service instruments, and other equipment and supplies. And yet the administration's tariffs threaten access, the cost increasing for critical medical supplies and medications. Many of them are imported. The VA will pay more for them.
The recent deal with the EU levies a 15-percent tariff on all imports, including medicines, including pharmaceuticals. They represent the EU's largest single category of exports to the United States, and many go to our VA, where veterans ultimately will suffer the consequences of higher costs to the healthcare facilities that serve them.
European drugmakers have already warned that these tariffs will disrupt supply chains, delay research, and limit access to medicine. Forcing price increases into the VA system undermines the care we owe to all who have served.
Tariffs are already eroding job growth and reducing incomes. They are already felt in the supply chain. American businesses, especially our essential small businesses and those in the manufacturing sector, are already facing supply chain chaos. These businesses simply cannot easily absorb or offset the increased costs from tariffs on imported materials.
I visited a grocery in Connecticut just a week ago, and the owner said to me that he was absorbing the increased costs of tariffs--the percentages on tomatoes, on other produce. But he can't do it for weeks on end. Eventually, he will have to pass them on to consumers. He made very clear to me that he is now stuck between two bad choices--either eat the tariff taxes and risk going under or pass along these costs to consumers.
President Trump has repeatedly stated that he wants to restore American manufacturing, but his tariffs are actually making it harder, not easier, to build things in America. The costs of manufacturing here are rising, not declining. If he wants to reshore manufacturing, exactly the wrong way to do it is to disrupt the supply chain and increase the costs of what is necessary to build and make things in America.
In short, this tariff disaster is a self-inflicted economic wound that is the product of a mindset placing a priority on vanity and vengeance--Donald Trump's vanity, because he thinks tariffs are the best thing in the world--he said he loves tariffs--and vengeance against countries that don't follow his preferences, like Brazil. Consumers are paying more, workers are losing jobs and salary, veterans are at risk, small businesses are getting squeezed.
I call on my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to stand up to these deeply harmful tariffs. It is in the national interest that you do it. In fact, it affects our national security in a deeply harmful way, and I hope we can have bipartisan opposition to this kind of disastrous regime, which doesn't deserve the name ``regime.''
Mr. President, just about an hour ago, the President announced a tariff agreement with South Korea. But if past is prologue, this so-called deal with South Korea is one where U.S. families will pay more. It will increase their costs with the rise in tariffs of 15 percent. It is one where bold promises are made that billions in investments will come our way but with no substance to back it up. It seems to be just another one of these so-called deals that hurt the American people.
Earlier this morning, we got more warning signs that Donald Trump's foolish trade war is taking its toll on the U.S. economy. According to the New York Times, the ``U.S. Economy Slowed in [the] First Half of 2025 as Tariffs Scrambled Data.'' ``Scrambled'' is precisely the right word or you might call it chaos because from the moment that Donald Trump announced his so-called ``Liberation Day,'' his tariffs have ushered a season of pandemonium for markets, small businesses, retailers, and families.
Just today, Ford, one of the biggest American car manufacturers, announced that these tariffs will end up costing the company $2 billion a year. Big retailers like Walmart or Amazon and others have at one point or another warned of price hikes for everyday goods like clothes, appliances, and toys. The American people are worried about the increased costs of the things they buy, and yet these tariffs even raise those costs higher.
This sure doesn't sound like a golden age to me, and nor does the $2,400 that households will pay extra on average under this tariff scheme by the President. Instead, do you know what this sounds like? It sounds like a national sales tax on the American people, plain and simple. That is what Donald Trump's tariffs are--a national sales tax on families and small businesses.
On August 1, if Donald Trump doesn't change course, a whole new slew of tariffs on dozens of countries will come into effect and tax the living daylights out of households and businesses even more.
Look, nobody is fooled by Donald Trump's ruse. My Republican colleagues in their private moments know that Donald Trump is a BS artist when it comes to tariffs. His pattern is always the same: He makes wild promises, he talks a big game, but he never seems to follow through. He lies about what he says. He blames others.
Just look at the so-called deal with Japan. Donald Trump hailed it for supposedly delivering $550 billion in investments, but almost immediately--almost immediately--the Japanese Government said the real investments would be less than 2 percent of that figure.
What nerve for Donald Trump to mislead the American people on these tariffs, but he does it over and over again.
What about his supposed deal with the European Union? Again, Donald Trump howled from the mountaintops, saying that Europe would buy $750 billion worth of American energy and would make $600 billion in new investments in the United States, but immediately, typically, after the announcement was made, it was painfully obvious that those numbers were essentially made up. The EU stated publicly that the agreement was nonbinding and they had no real plan to back it up.
Tonight, the South Korea deal doesn't sound much different--a big increase, a sales tax on the American people--15 percent is a lot--and bold promises of investments that are made that never materialize, that almost vanish the day after they are announced.
The only parts of these deals that are real are the real costs Americans will pay out of their pockets. Grocery prices will go up. Everyday goods prices will go up. But savings, earnings, and prosperity in this country for American families will go down.
Meanwhile, is Donald Trump being tough on China like he wants people to think? Of course not. On the contrary, he is giving the Chinese Government greater access to U.S. semiconductors that are vital-- vital--for our national security. Where it counts the absolute most, which is getting tough on China, Donald Trump is acting like a pushover. By sending them these sophisticated chips, they are going to allow China to catch up to us in things like AI and many other new technological advances. A few years back, we worked hard to see that these vital chips were not sent to China, but in one fell swoop, without any real explanation as to the damage it will do, Donald Trump reversed it.
Democrats have been fighting back against these catastrophes from the start. I am disappointed. Just a few minutes ago, our Republican colleagues chose fealty to Trump over relief to the American people by blocking Senator Shaheen's bill and also Senator Welch's bill that would have halted many of Donald Trump's tariffs and would have protected so many American small businesses.
The right answer here was so glaringly obvious, but Republicans elected to worship at Donald Trump's altar yet again, even though they know these tariffs are terrible for people back home. Republicans are going to have to explain to the people back home why they are so OK with increasing their costs and abandoning them to Donald Trump's endless tariff chaos.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, I just want to follow on what the minority leader and Senator Blumenthal are saying about this chaotic tariff regime which the Trump administration--which Donald Trump himself is imposing upon country after country around the world.
I just want to begin by saying ``tariff'' is just a fancy word for a tax. You know, it is just a polysyllabic way of saying what a monosyllabic word means to every single American. It is a tax that is being imposed by Donald Trump on all of these products that come in from around the world.
On April 2, Donald Trump declared a national emergency over trade imbalances, slapping a one-size-fits-all, 10-percent tariff tax--a 10- percent tax--on the entire world, with added taxes for over 60 countries, some as high as 50 percent. Trump called April 2 ``Liberation Day,'' but it wasn't. It was ``Obliteration Day'' because this tax on all of these goods that would come into America would have a dramatic impact on raising the prices for American consumers.
Trump used a faulty formula, actually, to establish this tax rate that
Trump's country-specific taxes--tariffs--lasted just 1 week until Trump paused them, promising 90 deals in 90 days. Well, here we are on day 112, and how many actually legally binding, enforceable trade deals does the United States have? does Donald Trump have? Zero. He is right now at zero trade deals that are right now legally enforceable. What we have instead are press events announcing frameworks, contours, and concepts for trade deals, but all are fragile and subject to Donald Trump's latest whim.
Trump announced an agreement with China 3 months ago but yesterday threatened to reimpose 145 percent tariffs--a 145-percent tax on China and all the goods coming in from China if a deal isn't finalized by August 12. So he announces his big victory 3 months ago, and he still doesn't have it on paper, and he is threatening to go up to a 145- percent tax on all goods if there isn't a final deal on paper by August 12.
That chaos by Trump and Republicans has left small businesses in our country twisting in the wind because our American companies are importing goods from all across the world. Under this current tax regime, midsized businesses--those with 50 to 500 employees--are expected to cough up more than $80 billion in taxes. Let me say that again. There is going to be an $80 billion tax that American small businesses with 50 to 500 employees are expected to pay this year according to J.P. Morgan.
Those are just the direct costs. Let's talk about the indirect costs. Trump's tax chaos and threats have caused the Federal Reserve to delay interest rate cuts.
Today, once again, Jerome Powell--the Fed--stood pat on rates, citing ``elevated uncertainty'' from Trump's tariff threats, because it is very uncertain--the political environment, the economic environment that America is going to be living through over the next several months. Higher rates means higher borrowing costs for anyone trying to buy a home, buy a car, start a business, pay off credit card debt.
At his press conference today, Fed Chair Powell said:
That is inflationary in our country. Inflation is running hotter than expected this year at nearly 3 percent instead of 2.2 percent. And that is the concern which Powell has, which the Fed has, about the impact these tariffs--these taxes--are going to have upon the prices of goods sold everywhere in our country that are imported.
Powell warned that things could get worse on inflation. Tariffs haven't fully shown up in consumer prices, but those costs are beginning to be passed on to consumers all across the country, and that is a great concern which the Fed has.
Trump may be angry that the Fed is keeping rates steady, but his own policies, his own chaos is to blame. It is just a highly uncertain cloud that is hanging over the economy in our country because of Trump's tariff--Trump's tax--policy on goods coming into the country.
There is a hidden cost to this uncertainty. Trump's chaos, his ever- changing deadlines leave businesses unable to plan. And small businesses--and that is 97 percent of all businesses in our country-- they told me they have an inability to plan and that can be worse than the tariffs themselves, these sales taxes that Trump is imposing on these goods.
Small toy companies, mom-and-pop game stores in my State and across the country, are begging for certainty now so they can place orders for the holiday season. These companies need to know what their shipments will cost them, and they don't know.
Even today, Trump said he is going to impose a 50-percent tariff on Brazil and a 25-percent tariff on India. Well, how can small businesses plan for what the cost of those goods are going to be if they try to put them on their shelves this coming fall, into the winter? Many companies are simply not placing orders because they don't know what Trump's tariffs will be in just a few weeks.
Trump thinks tariffs on toys will just mean Americans buy fewer dolls. That is what the President of the United States said.
Well, that is just not how it is going to work. A small, independent toy and game store won't just sell fewer dolls; they are going to go out of business.
A constituent's small business in the toy industry in Massachusetts told me that its industry shows in June and July painted a bleak picture for this holiday season. These shows were poorly attended and had significantly fewer orders than expected. This business is expecting rising prices, reduced new product innovation, and diminished consumer buying.
In other words, Trump's tariffs--sales taxes--on toys will be the Grinch that stole Christmas this year from small businesses all across our country.
To give small businesses relief and certainty, I came to the Senate floor 70 days ago to offer my Small Business Liberation Act, and I did it with Senator Klobuchar and with Senator Schumer. The bill would have provided small businesses relief from Trump's disastrous, destructive, small business-killing tariffs that have been turning Main Street into Pain Street for the last 4 months of this year. The bill would have provided certainty to the constant whiplash and chaos that are President Trump's tariff policies by exempting small businesses from the baseline 10-percent tariffs and the country-specific tariffs that have been on pause since April 9.
Trump should exempt small businesses from his tariff games so they aren't collateral damage in Trump's trade war.
At the height of the Civil War, there was a saying that it was a rich man's war and a poor man's fight--because if a rich man put up money, he could buy his way out of the war, so that all who were left were poor men to fight the Civil War. And that was North and South. The plantation owners in the South, the big manufacturers and the textile industry in the North--they just bought their way out of the war.
Well, in 2025, this is a Big Business war, but it is small businesses on Main Street that are paying the price. Those least able to defend themselves are the casualties in Trump's tariff war.
It is not just small businesses being put in harm's way; studies have found that the burden of tariffs falls most heavily on working families, single parents, and women. According to the Yale Budget Lab, Trump's tariffs will cost the bottom 10 percent of households $1,300 this year. That is money they don't have in their pockets.
So, to my Republican colleagues, if you say you are for small business, prove it. If you say you support Main Street, protect it. Join me in passing the Small Business Liberation Act. Let's give small businesses the certainty they deserve, and let's stop letting Trump turn trade policy into a demolition derby for small businesses on Main Street all across this country. That is what the Fed is warning. That is what small businesses are feeling.
We just need to protect small businesses, and Donald Trump, right now, is absolutely creating a wrecking ball for those small businesses in our Nation.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his advocacy for small businesses. I hadn't heard that--turning Main Street into Pain Street--but as usual, he is able to take a whole complex concept and put it into one sentence that people will probably remember more than my entire speech right now, but let me continue.
I rise today, just hours before yet another self-imposed tariff deadline set by the President. He has threatened our allies and trading partners with an August 1 deadline to make deals or to see a dramatic increase in reciprocal tariffs. And while a few of these agreements have been announced, the result for the American people has been chaos, costs, and corruption--all up.
Let's start with the chaos.
The President promised 90 deals in 90 days. Instead, we have gotten more than 100 tariff changes--this way, that way, up and down--and barely a handful of vague trade frameworks, most of
This is no way to treat our friends and allies, and it is certainly no way to run trade policy and strengthen our economy.
Manufacturers and farmers in my State and across the country are being asked to make business decisions when the rules have been changing by the week or the day. I have spoken with small business owners who are holding back investments because they don't know what tariffs they will be paying next month or even next week.
And it isn't just chaos; it is also corruption. The administration slapped a 50-percent tariff on the country of Brazil even when we have a trade surplus with them. Remember, at the beginning, when he was talking about ``Well, with some countries, we have these big deficits, and that is different than the surpluses''? Why would you slap a 50- percent tariff on a country that we have a trade surplus with? Why? Because the President didn't like the political headlines coming out of the country. That isn't a trade strategy; that is weaponizing economic policy.
Meanwhile, American families are paying the price. When the administration boasts about collecting over $100 billion in tariffs this year, that is $100 billion in new taxes. It is not China paying for Trump's tariff taxes; it is the people of our country. Trump's tariff taxes are the largest tax increase on the American middle class in over half a century.
The President's new tariff taxes are already raising costs for American families by $2,400 a year--$300 of that in food costs alone. According to one estimate, fresh produce could rise nearly 7 percent under the new tariffs that are set to take effect on Friday.
It is American manufacturers who are absorbing the costs when they have parts that are coming from other countries. It is the American exporters, like farmers, who are losing markets. The markets will dry up. And it is American consumers who are feeling it at the checkout aisle. That might not mean much to the wealthy who just got those giant tax breaks, but it means a lot to seniors who are already struggling with higher grocery and prescription drug costs, and it means a lot to people who are struggling with high costs. And I just read about how the Treasury Secretary is now talking blatantly about privatizing Social Security.
In Minnesota, the Small Business Person of the Year--Busy Baby owner Beth Benike--fears her business can't survive under these policies.
I have heard from Mark, the CEO of a flower company in our State, who told me his business is being undercut by foreign competition that is exempt from the very tariffs his company is forced to pay.
I have heard from Minnesota's soybean farmers, who are concerned about losing markets that they have spent generations developing.
In my State, we export over $7 billion in goods to Canada every year. Canada is not just our top trading partner; it is our trusted ally. Yet, under Trump's policy, we are slapping tariffs on them too.
Border crossings are down, tourism is down, and it is taking a toll on our economy.
That is why Senator Kaine and I got a vote on his resolution, which I was proud to be the lead cosponsor on, to say: Unleash us from this. Congress must take back its power over tariffs and the power of the purse. And, yes, we actually passed that bill. It is sitting over there, waiting in the House, as prices go up, as chaos goes up, and as corruption goes up.
You know, these are real people, real businesses, real farmers, and they are trying to survive in the uncertainty while the President treats our economy like a game show.
Let's be clear. I support strong trade enforcement. I backed targeted tariffs to combat the unfair dumping of steel and market manipulation, especially by China. I actually went over and met with the trade enforcers in the Commerce Department a few years back. I thanked them for their work and spent hours with them.
But this isn't a targeted approach. What President Trump is doing is a blanket approach that punishes our allies and our own workers more than our adversaries. He is using emergency powers to bypass Congress, and they are just letting it happen--our colleagues on the other side of the aisle--and are enacting sweeping trade taxes with little regard to the economic consequences. That is not leadership; that is an abuse of authority.
That is why, as I noted, I co-led the bipartisan Trade Review Act with Senator Kaine and Senator Warner. When the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO agree like they did on that bill, you know we are doing something right.
So I will keep working to restore common sense and responsible governance to our trade policy on behalf of American families, businesses, and farmers.
I supported the USMCA, which was a Trump trade agreement which the President was so proud of at the time. I would ask: Why not negotiate these issues--some of the issues I know we have? Why not negotiate that within the framework of that agreement? Because it is up for review. Instead, we have this chaos.
Right now, more than half of our major trading partners--accounting for 56 percent of U.S. imports--still don't have finalized deals. We have 24 hours to go. The clock is ticking.
But here is what we do know: This is not how you grow American manufacturing, this is not how you give farmers certainty that they can export to market, and this is certainly not how you lower costs for the middle class.
Minnesotans have had enough of these tariff taxes. They want solutions, not showmanship. They want a trade policy that works for farmers and workers and their families. They want leaders who will tell the truth about what these tariffs are: They are a tax on the people of America.
Mr. President, nobody in our country should be above the law--not a politician, not a celebrity, not a billionaire--no one. The principle of ``equal justice under the law'' is so powerful that if you walk outside these doors and you look across to the Supreme Court, you will see them carved into the facade above the pillars: ``Equal justice under law.''
No matter how powerful someone is, if they commit a crime, then they need to be prosecuted, and the American people have a right to know if information is being held related to the conduct of the crime.
So in regard to the Epstein files, there is only one right answer: the complete and total disclosure of everything, all the details, while protecting the names of the victims. Whatever a person's political party is shouldn't matter. The level of power shouldn't matter. Their net worth shouldn't matter. ``Equal justice under law'' is the vision of our Nation. If an individual is a pedophile, if an individual has raped a young girl, then they need to be held accountable. Let the chips fall where they may.
Jeffrey Epstein was a monster. He groomed and abused and raped and coordinated the rape by others of underage girls, and he trafficked these girls to rich and powerful men.
As I speak here tonight, the Department of Justice has files detailing a tremendous amount of information about his operation, and in those files, as we have heard from Pam Bondi and as she has informed the President, the President's name is among them.
Well, that doesn't mean that he was somebody who participated in a crime. He could be listed as an associate. He could be listed as a friend. He could be listed as somebody who attended a gathering. We don't know. In fact, we don't know about any of the names that are in those files as to what they did. But that is the point. As to the names of the powerful people who associated with an individual--Jeffrey Epstein--who was running an international sex trafficking ring--all of that information must be disclosed. Full disclosure is the only option.
My colleague from Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and the Senate Finance Committee have been investigating Mr. Epstein's financial network for years. They have been seeking disclosure.
I have a letter that Senator Wyden wrote. It reveals more than 4,700 suspicious wire transfers adding up to more than $1 billion from just one of Mr. Epstein's bank accounts and hundreds of millions of dollars in other bank accounts. What would that information show us about who they went to? What questions would it lead us to ask, and what questions would that information answer? The American public has every right to know the questions that Senator Wyden and the Finance Committee are asking.
Let me be clear. That work was bipartisan work, Democrats and Republicans together calling for disclosure and accountability.
In this letter, Senator Wyden notes:
For years, so many people across America in both parties have been demanding the release of the Epstein files, but we heard a lot from a few folks who are in the administration now.
December 15, 2023, Kash Patel said that Mr. Epstein's ``black book'' was ``under [the] direct control of the FBI.'' Well, Mr. Patel is now the Director of the FBI.
On October 22, 2024, Vice--well, he wasn't Vice President yet, but now he is Vice President--JD Vance said in a podcast:
On February 25, 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was in office, said Mr. Epstein's client list was ``sitting on my desk right now to review.''
But, suddenly, we are hearing a different tune from people in the administration. We are hearing: There is nothing to see here, they are saying. Go look somewhere else, they are saying. This is not important, they are saying.
But not everyone agrees with that. Let's take the Speaker of the House. July 15, House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN:
On July 16, Senator Majority Leader John Thune told FOX News:
I agree with Speaker Mike Johnson. I agree with Majority Leader John Thune. I agree that the right principle about this information is to put everything out there.
Let us not forget that as the Senate Finance Committee is pursuing those information about the file transfers and what they show, that, ultimately, it is not about money itself but about what money tells us and the case it builds for who did what, because what really matters here is this: the victimization of young girls. That is what this is about, the abuse of young girls, the rape of young girls. That is what this is about. That is what transparency is about.
So whether the information in the Department of Justice files is about flight and travel records, names of people who were involved in various ways, names of businesses or nonprofits, other organizations, about meetings held or communications made, whether it was by email, whether it was by text, whether it was by phone call, any immunity deals, any nonprosecution agreements, any plea bargains, any settlements--whatever it is--the American people demand transparency, just as the Speaker of the House demanded transparency, just as the majority leader of the Senate has demanded transparency.
This bill requires ``no record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of any of the following: embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary,'' regardless of who they are, regardless of where they live.
But what the bill also says is the information released must protect the victims and the underage witnesses, protect those who were victims or who were underage witnesses to crimes. So information can be redacted by those victims and underage witnesses--personally identifiable information, depictions of abuse, or information that would jeopardize a Federal investigation or national security.
Colleagues, the question before us is simple: Will this body follow the lead of the Speaker of the House and the majority leader of the Senate and call for full transparency?
The administration has said the law doesn't allow us to do it, so I am proposing a law that gives them the power to do what they have said they would like to do--transparency.
Will we, instead, object to this law to protect perpetrators of crimes against girls? That is the question tonight: Will we protect our children, or will the information be withheld? Will we fail to demand it, fail to adopt this law to ensure that it is delivered in order to protect the powerful? That is the choice: Protect the victims, be on their side, pursue justice, or protect the powerful?
So, Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 2557, which is at the desk. I further ask that the bill be considered read three times and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
For years, Democrats have ignored this issue. Now they can't stop talking about it. Maybe it is because Democrats are trying to distract from their extreme, unprecedented obstructions here in the U.S. Senate.
As of this morning, there were 147 qualified nominees awaiting confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Many were approved by committee with Democrat support. These aren't controversial nominees or individuals. They are patriotic Americans patiently waiting for their opportunity to serve their country. Some have quit their jobs; others have sold their assets. But this Democrat Trump derangement syndrome is holding them back.
So far this year, Democrats have allowed exactly zero--zero--nominees to be confirmed by voice vote. This is a drastic departure from the norms and traditions of the U.S. Senate. It is very different from how Republicans treated Democrat nominees when we were in the minority in 2021. Or maybe it is because Democrats don't want to talk about their dreadful poll numbers--the lowest in 35 years. It is front-page news.
Senate Republicans included a provision that addresses this very issue in the appropriations bill that Democrats are currently holding up. They are stopping the progress on the bill that addresses this. Either way you cut it, this exercise is a Democrat distraction; and therefore, I object.
Mr. President, I ask my colleague to yield for a question. He has chosen not to, and that is his right.
But the question I would ask is this: If the Speaker of the House is demanding transparency, if the majority leader of the Senate is demanding transparency, if the American people are demanding transparency, if my colleagues who have said time and time again just months ago there should be transparency, then why does my colleague come here and object to transparency? What is it that they know that they don't want the American people to know?
To withhold this information is an assault on justice, and it is absolutely wrong. We must continue to demand that the rich and powerful are not shielded from the full force of justice if they have perpetrated crimes against underage children.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. President, my colleagues, it feels like every single day the Trump administration finds new ways to defy the rule of law.
They will tear families apart, decimate local businesses, and deceive the public in order to distract from their own failures and scandals. And nowhere has this been clearer than in their cruelty toward immigrants.
As I have said time and again, this administration is not really just focused on cracking down on dangerous, violent criminals. We hear that from them all the time. But in practice, it is far from that.
If it was just deportation operations focused on dangerous, violent criminals, there would be no discussion, there would be no debate, and there would be no disagreement. But that is not what this administration is doing. They are going after all immigrants.
The vast majority of those who have been arrested and detained, and many of those deported--many without due process before being deported--are not convicted criminals. Don't just take my word for it. These are statistics and data coming out of ICE themselves, the Department of Homeland Security.
But through their indiscriminate raids, this administration is arresting not just undocumented immigrants but lawful permanent residents as well. There are U.S. citizens who have been arrested and detained, even veterans. Think about that: individuals who have served our country, prepared to pay the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our Nation and our democracy, now being rounded up indiscriminately.
If you think I am exaggerating with this concern, let the comments coming out of the Department of Homeland Security just yesterday leave no doubts. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson declared for the first time--now, I want to make sure I get this right, so I am going to quote:
She went on to say that DACA recipients should now self-deport from the United States. Think about what that means. The Trump administration is saying that these young adults who were brought to the United States as children and who have lived here, who have studied here, and who have worked here legally--let me emphasize that: worked here, studied here, lived here legally since the year 2012, thanks to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, this administration is saying now that they have no right to be here; that they could be deported or maybe should be deported at a moment's notice; or, worse, that they should choose to leave their families and their communities for countries that they have never known.
The whole point of DACA is protection from deportation. These are not criminals or some danger to society; these are young people who have lived in the United States for as long as they can remember. These are young adults who, as kids, were on your Little League team or in your Girl Scout troop. For God's sake, they are part of our communities, and they are young adults who have now grown up to be lawyers, to be doctors, to be teachers, and who have more love for everything that this country stands for than anyone threatening them in Trump's Department of Homeland Security. But this week the Trump administration is now telling them that they should be arrested and thrown out of the only home they have ever known in an attempt to satisfy Donald Trump's quest for political points or an arbitrary quota.
So, to the Trump administration, let me say this: You cannot claim to love our country at the same time you are trying to destroy our future.
Already, this administration has worked to cut healthcare for millions of Americans, including DACA recipients. They are cutting education benefits and opportunities for DACA recipients, but now they are threatening to arrest DACA participants as well. That is exactly what has been happening in my hometown of Los Angeles when, last month, masked immigration officials--unidentified and masked immigration officials--carrying weapons, raided a carwash in Temple City. It was there that they confronted and arrested Javier Diaz Santana. Let me tell you about Javier, and I really, really hope you are listening not just with your ears but with your hearts.
Javier Santana is 32 years old. He is a DACA recipient. He is deaf. And he has been working at a carwash 6 days a week for the last 5 years.
Immigration officials confiscated his identification. They confiscated his cell phone. They proceeded to handcuff him, put his hands behind his back in handcuffs, leaving him no way of communicating. You need to be able to use your hands to communicate with sign language. They deprived him of his ability to communicate.
This young man was a DACA recipient who has been in the United States since he was 5 years old. He has no criminal record. His immigration removal case has been closed, and he was issued a work permit by USCIS. He is a son. He is a brother. He is a friend. Colleagues, he is a human being--just one of many cases.
So don't tell me the Trump administration is following the law when we hear cases like this, and don't tell me that the administration is only targeting dangerous, violent criminals because the data proves otherwise.
As his family was scrambling to find details about where he was, where he had been taken, DHS quickly whisked Javier out of Los Angeles, all the way to El Paso, TX. His family feared that he could be deported or he had been deported, not only to a country he doesn't know but to a country whose language he doesn't speak.
But as tragic and as heartbreaking as Javier's story is, he is not alone. There have been more and more stories of DACA recipients being arrested and detained. And the fear is just growing across communities.
One thing is certain: This mass detention and deportation operation will go down in our history as a stain, a dark chapter in our Nation's history, an outrageous moral failure intentionally caused by this administration--because for all the tough talk, this is not just politics as usual.
In fact, when the DREAM Act was first introduced over 20 years ago, it was bipartisan, and it enjoyed bipartisan support for most of the last 20 years. And even today, polling shows an overwhelming majority of the American public supports DACA recipients--yes, both Republicans and Democrats across the country.
Now, Democrats and Republicans in Congress have supported the DREAM Act for most of the last 20 years. And I think, in our private conversations, I sense the bipartisan support is still there, and I can't wait for it to resurface. Let the public statements be on both sides of the aisle--the political will on both sides of the aisle-- reflect what we are saying behind closed doors because the only thing that we are seeing publicly is the Trump administration going out of their way to enact a policy of cruelty. But it is exactly what we have come to expect 6 months into this administration--using immigrants as scapegoats for the administration's failures, the administration creating a spectacle in their attempt to distract and deflect.
But make no mistake, Americans will not soon forget what this administration is doing to their neighbors--to their neighbors, to their coworkers, to their friends.
Now, this story doesn't end the way you think it might because we will continue fighting not just to stop these outrageous arrests, but we will not rest until we enact real and permanent protections for DACA recipients who contribute so much to our country.
Mr. President, pursuant to 22 United States Code 2776 and in accordance with the provisions of Section 601(b)(3) of the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, I move to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations of further consideration of S.J. Res. 41 and S.J. Res. 34.
Mr. President, let me begin by stating what the debate we are going to have this evening is about and what it is not about. It is not about whether anyone in this Senate disagrees that Hamas is a terrorist organization which began this war with a brutal terrorist attack on October 7, 2023, that killed 1,200 innocent Israelis and took 250 hostages. Everyone agrees with that. The International Criminal Court was right to indict the leaders of Hamas as war criminals for those atrocities, and I think most of us agree with that.
There is also, I believe, no disagreement as to whether or not Israel, like any other country similarly attacked, had a right to defend itself. Clearly, it did.
And in a certain sense, this debate is not really about Israel; it is about the United States of America and whether we will abide by U.S. and international law or whether we will continue to contribute billions of dollars to an extremist government in Israel which has caused an unprecedented humanitarian disaster in Gaza.
This debate is whether or not the United States of America will have any moral credibility on the international scene, whether or not we will be able, with a straight face, to condemn other countries who commit barbaric acts if we don't stand up tonight. That is what we are debating.
The vast majority of the American people and the world community understand that the Netanyahu government in Israel has gone well beyond defending itself from Hamas. Over the last 21 months, it has waged an all-out, illegal, immoral, and horrific war of annihilation against the Palestinian people. This war has already killed some 60,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 143,000, most of whom are women, children, and the elderly.
In a population of just over 2 million people--that is all that there are in Gaza--more than 200,000 have been killed or wounded since this war began. That is 10 percent of the population of Gaza. Ten percent of the population of Gaza, in the last 21 months, has either been killed or wounded. To put that into scale so that we, as Americans, can understand the enormity of what is happening there, if that kind of destruction happened here in the United States, if 10 percent of our population were killed or wounded in a war, it would mean that 34 million of us would have been killed or wounded.
The toll on Gaza's children is unspeakable, and it is literally hard to imagine. The United Nations reports that more than 18,000 children have been killed since this war began.
Just this morning--this morning--the Washington Post published a list of all of these children's names.
Mr. President, here is the list. These are the names of children published in the Washington Post today that have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza.
I should mention that more than 12,000 of these children were under the age of 12 and more than 3,000 children in Gaza have had one or more limbs amputated. That is how this war has impacted the children in Gaza.
But it is not just the horrific loss of life that is taking place there. New satellite imagery shows that Israel's indiscriminate bombardment has destroyed 70 percent of all structures in Gaza--70 percent of all buildings in Gaza have been destroyed. The U.N. estimates that 92 percent of housing units have been damaged or destroyed. Most of the population is now living in tents or other makeshift structures.
And let us not forgot, over the last 21 months, these people--most of whom are poor--have been displaced time and time again--told to go here, told to go there, told to go there, moved around--and often with no possessions other than the clothing on their backs.
The healthcare system in Gaza has been destroyed. Most of the territory's hospitals and primary care facilities have been bombed. More than 1,500 healthcare workers have been killed as well as 336 U.N. staff.
Gaza's civilian infrastructure has been totally devastated, including almost 90 percent of water and sanitation facilities. Raw sewage now runs all over Gaza. Most of the roads have been destroyed.
Gaza's educational system has been obliterated. Hundreds of schools have been bombed, and every single one of Gaza's 12 universities has also been bombed. I should mention there has been no electricity in Gaza for 21 months.
All of this is a horror unto itself, but in recent months, the Netanyahu government's extermination of Gaza has made an unspeakable and horrible situation even worse.
From March 2 to May 19, Israel did not allow a single shipment of humanitarian aid to come into Gaza--no food, no water, no fuel, and no medical supplies for a distressed population of 2 million people over a period of 11 weeks.
Since then, Israel has allowed a trickle of aid to get into Gaza but nowhere near enough to meet the enormous needs of a population besieged for so long.
When you cut off all food to a population, what happens is not surprising. People starve to death, and that is exactly what Israeli policy has deliberately done. It is causing mass starvation and famine. Children and other vulnerable people are dying in increasing numbers.
In the last 2 weeks, dozens of young children have died from starvation. Starving mothers cannot breastfeed their infants, and no formula is available and certainly no clean water to make it, in any case.
Hospitals have run out of nutritional treatments, and doctors and nurses who are already treating the desperate, they themselves are going hungry and are fainting from hunger. The World Food Programme says that the food crisis has reached ``new and astonishing levels of desperation with a third of the population not eating for multiple days in a row.''
Just yesterday, the gold standard U.N.-backed food monitoring group, the IPC, issued a new report saying:
When mass death from starvation begins, it is difficult to reverse. Aid groups say it will soon be too late to stop a wave of preventable deaths in Gaza, all of which is the direct result of the Israeli Government's policies.
What I am going to describe now is gruesome, but I think it is important for us to understand what is happening to the children in Gaza.
Mark Brauner, an American doctor who spent 2 weeks in Gaza in June, described the situation. This is an American doctor who was in Gaza.
That is an American physician who was in Gaza in June.
What the extremist Netanyahu government is doing now is not an effort to win a war. There is no military purpose in starving thousands and thousands of children. Let us be clear: This is not an effort to win a war. This is an effort to destroy a people.
Having already killed or wounded more than 200,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, the extremist Israeli Government is using mass starvation to engineer the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. They are trying to drive a desperate people out of their homeland to God knows where.
This is not my speculation. This is what Israeli Ministers and officials are saying themselves. A few months ago, the Finance Minister vowed that ``Gaza will be entirely destroyed.''
Just last week, another current Israeli Minister said ``all Gaza will be Jewish. The government is pushing for Gaza being wiped out. Thank God we are wiping out this evil.''
Another Likud member of the Knesset and former Minister called for ``erasing all of Gaza from the face of the Earth.''
And in the West Bank--not Gaza--in the West Bank, we see this agenda being carried out clearly and methodically with more than 500,000 Israeli settlers now illegally occupying land integral to any future Palestinian State.
Earlier this month, the Knesset even approved a nonbinding motion in favor of formally annexing the West Bank. This slow-moving annexation is backed by violence. Israeli security forces and settler extremists have killed thousands of Palestinians in recent years.
Israeli settlers brutally beat a young American to death earlier this month. Just this month, an American citizen was beaten to death, the seventh American killed in the West Bank since 2022.
Despite a demand from President Trump's Ambassador to Israel--this is Trump's Ambassador Mike Huckabee--no one has yet been held accountable for these deaths.
People around the world--all over the world--are outraged by what is going on in Gaza right now and countries are increasingly demanding that Netanyahu's government stop what they are doing.
France and Canada have said that they will recognize a Palestinian State. The United Kingdom has said it will do so as well if Israel does not immediately end this war and surge humanitarian aid. And at the U.N. last month, 149 countries voted for a cease-fire resolution condemning the use of starvation as a weapon of war and demanding an end to Israel's blockade on humanitarian aid.
But it is not just the international community. Just yesterday-- yesterday--Gallup, one of the best polling organizations in our country, released a new poll that shows that just 32 percent of Americans support Israel's military action in Gaza while 60 percent oppose it--32 percent support it; 60 percent oppose it.
To my Democratic colleagues here in the Senate, I would point out that only 8 percent of Democrats support this war, and I would also point out that just 25 percent of Independents.
And to my Republican colleagues, I would point out that more and more Republicans are beginning to speak out against the atrocities of this war and the fact that billions and billions of taxpayer dollars are going to a government in Israel waging an illegal war.
Further, a recent Economist/YouGov poll shows that just 15 percent of the American people support increasing military aid to Israel, while 35 percent support decreasing military aid to Israel or stopping it entirely. Just 8 percent of Democrats support increasing military aid to Israel.
The American people are haunted by the images coming out of Gaza, and these are some of those images. These are desperate children with pots in their hands, crying, begging for food in order to stay alive. That is what the American people are seeing every night on TV, on the internet, and in the newspapers.
These are emaciated children. Their bodies, in some cases, barely more than skeletons. The American people are seeing miles and miles of rubble where cities and towns once stood. They are seeing innocent people being shot down while they wait on line to get food while they are starving. Over 1,000 people have been killed waiting on line to get food because they are starving.
Despite these war crimes carried out daily and in plain view, the United States has provided more than $22 billion for Israel's military operations since this war began--$22 billion.
One estimate, based on Brown University research, calculates that the United States has paid for 70 percent of the Gaza war. In other words, American taxpayer dollars are being used to starve children, bomb schools, kill civilians, and support the cruelty of Netanyahu and his criminal Ministers.
That, Mr. President, is why I have brought these two resolutions of disapproval to block offensive arms sales to Israel.
S.J. Res. 34 would prohibit the U.S. taxpayer-financed $675 million sale of thousands of 1,000-pound bombs and many thousands of JDAM guidance kits.
S.J. Res. 41 would prohibit the sale of tens of thousands of fully automatic rifles--assault rifles.
These arms sales clearly violate the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act, which prohibit selling arms to countries that violate international law by killing civilians and blocking humanitarian aid, and very few people doubt that is exactly what Israel is doing.
If you want to obey the law, vote for these resolutions.
The rifles in question will go to arm a police force overseen by far- right extremist Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has long advocated for the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from the region, who was convicted of support for terrorism by an Israeli court and was distributing weapons to violent settlers in the West Bank. Ben-Gvir has formed new police units comprised of extremist settlers and has boasted about how many weapons he has distributed to vigilante settlers in the West Bank, and you want to give him more rifles? That is what one of these resolutions is about.
These are rifles the Biden administration held back over fear they would be used by Israeli settlers in the West Bank to terrorize Palestinians and push them from their homes and villages.
U.S. taxpayers have spent many, many billions of dollars in support of the racist, extremist Netanyahu government. Enough is enough. Americans want this to end. They do not want to be complicit in an unfolding famine and daily civilian massacres, and we here in Congress tonight have the power to act. No more talks, no more great speeches. But tonight we have the power to act, the power to force Netanyahu and his extremist government to end this slaughter.
The time is long overdue for Congress to use the leverage we have-- tens of billions in arms and military aid to demand that Israel end these atrocities.
At a time that Israeli soldiers are shooting civilians trying to get food aid on a near-daily basis, when extremist settlers are pushing Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank and when Gaza is witnessing mass starvation as a result of Israeli government policy, the United States should not and must not be providing more weapons to enable these atrocities.
Whatever happens tonight, history will condemn those of us who failed to act in the face of these horrors.
And I yield the floor to Senator Welch from Vermont.
Mr. President, the mass starvation in Gaza must end. The forced displacement of 2 million Palestinians in Gaza must end. We all condemn Hamas. We support a Jewish independent democratic state. We want a cease-fire, and we want the hostages home. But a colleague in the other body stated what needs to be said. It is the most truthful and easiest thing to say that October 7 in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned but so is the humanitarian crisis and starvation happening in Gaza. And that is happening with U.S. complicity, and it is time for us to stop complying.
Let's face it, let's face the facts and not ignore them. The starvation that we are seeing today, it is not unforeseen. It is not the unintended, unfortunate consequence of war. The starvation we are witnessing today is the self-conscious result of a military policy to concentrate the Palestinian population into an ever-smaller slice of land.
The starvation that we are witnessing today, it is an advanced and accelerating stage of the military strategy that is being executed by the Netanyahu government to force Palestinians out of northern Gaza and to induce them to leave the territory altogether.
And Palestinians, compelled by hunger and thirst, are being forced to make their way to a handful of sites, which our closest allies uniformly condemn as a drip feeding of aid. And, in fact, aid was totally cut off--totally cut off--by Israel for over 2 months. How in the world did they justify doing that?
And from the earliest days after October 7, we witnessed this plan of systemic and wanton destruction that included destruction of homes, destruction of mosques, hospitals, and schools. This was done. This is fact. We may not want to face it, but it was done with bombs that were provided by American taxpayers and approved by this Congress.
Israel unleashed the most deadly and destructive aerial bombardment campaign since Vietnam. More than 200,000 buildings were destroyed. Thousands of children were killed and injured. Thousands are amputees. And in just the last 3 months, the last 3 months--May, June, and July-- the Netanyahu government campaign has continued, and thousands more homes have been flattened by controlled demolitions. That literally means the military folks go up to a home, wire it, and blow it up. It is a home. Thousands more have been demolished by bulldozers. Israeli
You know, it is too late, it is too late for the 60,000-plus people that have been killed in Gaza. But it is absolutely not too late for the U.S. Senate to act. We are at an absolute catastrophic inflection point. And I believe that the United States, in fact, does have an obligation under humanitarian law to act. And I do believe that the American people, in your State and in mine, whether they have been supportive of Israel or not, are horrified at what is happening to innocent people in Gaza.
We have an obligation to act because if we do act, we can help save thousands of lives of Palestinians, who, as we speak, are starving.
You know, some folks take the position that the suffering and starvation will end when Hamas lays down its arms or releases the remaining IDF hostages. Every single one of us wants that day to come. But you know what, we have to ask ourselves a frank question: Is it right, is it just to use as a tool of warfare the starvation of an innocent population?
And I believe it isn't. International law says that is not allowed. It is a crime to starve a population to get what you want from your enemy. It is illegal and cruel to starve children to obtain a battlefield advantage.
Yet the Israeli government, under Prime Minister Netanyahu, has said that it is doing that; that is what it is doing.
It is so long past time for us to say enough. It is long past time to say, no, the United States will not stand by while hunger is being used as a weapon of war.
And we cannot separate the current starvation in Gaza from the Netanyahu government's strategy of forcibly displacing Palestinians from their land. You know, the leaders of Israel have explicitly stated their vision for Gaza.
So this is not like a discussion or a debate trying to figure out what is the story. Prime Minister Netanyahu said: I don't care about the tactics and ordered military officials to ``destroy the homes, bomb everything in Gaza.'' He said that.
Finance Minister Smotrich, he said, ``Gaza will be totally destroyed, civilians will be sent to . . . the south to a humanitarian zone . . . and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries.''
Heritage Minister Eliyahu, last week, said that the Israeli Government--this was last week he said that--was ``rushing toward Gaza being wiped out'' and ``driving out the population.''
There is no mystery about what the agenda here is under the Netanyahu government.
You know, we are here to debate a continuation of American military weapons that are being used to implement the Israeli--Netanyahu-- Government policy. But we are doing it at a time when the horror of starvation has become apparent to everyone.
And I applaud President Trump for saying it like it was. There is starvation in Gaza--and then being in conflict with Prime Minister Netanyahu, who still denies it.
But America's closest allies are calling for an end to the war. America's closest allies are wanting to cut off the shipment of weapons that sends a green light to Netanyahu's extremist government.
And yet we are here today where just 2 weeks ago, President Trump, in fact, indicated that he intends to ship another half billion dollars' worth of 2,000-pound bombs and 1,000-pound bombs to the Netanyahu government.
So today we are here to debate, once again, whether we as representatives of the American people and the American taxpayers, people who want peace, who want the hostages home but are horrified at the starvation and the destruction of innocent civilian lives, the wholesale destruction of buildings and communities, whether we should continue to provide those weapons to Israel.
These bombs, by the way, are in addition to the 70,000 tons of explosives--70,000 tons--that have already been dropped on Gaza. And that is the equivalent of six Hiroshima nuclear explosions. Those bombs, as Senator Sanders said, have been used to destroy more than 200,000 buildings in Gaza. That is more than three times the number of buildings in Manhattan.
The bombs have killed thousands of kids, the equivalent of a classroom full of children every day has been killed in this conflict, a classroom. And let me tell you just about one strike. It was caused with a U.S.-provided JDAM.
On June 30, a month ago, a 500-pound bomb struck a crowded beachfront cafe, the Al-Baqa Cafe. People were having coffee. How in the world they had the ability to do that with the destruction all around them, amazing. But CNN reported that 40 people were killed, dozens were injured, including a 4-year-old child and a well-known filmmaker. And a couple that had recently become engaged--just think about that. They got engaged in the midst of this destruction, showing that despite all this violence, they had hope for the future; they had love for one another; they had that capacity amidst this enormous suffering to see a future and want to be part of it--dead.
Mona, who was the woman, was an engineering student, spoke fluent English, volunteered with orphans, and she was out for a break with her friend. Mariam Salah, she was a young painter who grew up in a refugee camp. She painted murals and dreamed of a career as a digital artist. She is dead.
You know, the Netanyahu government claimed we were targeting terrorists. Who knows? Was there a ``terrorist'' there? There was nobody in combat.
So we have to stop. We have to stop. And the question for this country is, Will we stop being complicit in this destruction?
Following the attacks on October 7, 2023, Israel had every right to go after Hamas, but how they do so matters. Indiscriminate bombing with massive casualties, women and children, is horrific, completely unacceptable. Blocking food and medicine with the goal of inducing starvation is horrific and unacceptable. And that is true under any religious or moral code.
Let me tell you about a few children the AP reported on a couple weeks ago.
Four children who starved to death, ranging from 4 months old to 2 years old--picture that little child in your arm, their legs and arms just a twig, their ribs showing every indentation, and then, finally, their body, as it goes through malnutrition, starts to consume itself, and they died of gastric arrest. Their stomach's ability to absorb nutrition shut down, and they died. The hospital they were at, the Patient's Friends Hospital, had run out of emergency nutrition supplies.
There are supplies that are specially designed for malnutrition among children. There are high-calorie biscuits and a high-calorie peanut paste enriched with milk powder that often goes by the name Plumpy'Nut. It is designed to help children. It has a long shelf life. It doesn't have to be refrigerated. To help save them from severe acute malnutrition, couldn't we have enough such assistance that no child would be starving to death in Gaza?
Organizations across Gaza have been running out of these supplies. UNICEF warned that their locations are running out. In fact, they said they would run out of this high-nutrition assistance for children 2 weeks from now.
Doctors working with malnourished children are saying the wards are quiet. And if you have been around a ward of children, you know that they are not quiet. But why are these children quiet? Because they don't have the energy to cry.
Noura has an 11-month-old son. He is deeply malnourished. He is missing his major developmental milestones, and she says:
And, in fact, Noura is in better condition than many other mothers because many mothers across Gaza were unable to breastfeed at all because of their own malnourishment.
Samah, another mother, relays that her family was driven from their home by air strikes--certainly true for almost every family in Gaza. And she says:
Dr. Mohammed Fadlalla of Doctors Without Borders says the Gaza ``health
The suffering is unimaginable. I have called for international reporters to be allowed in so we could all see exactly what is happening. I have called for Members of Congress to be allowed in to bear witness to what is happening. But the Netanyahu government has said no reporters, no Members of Congress.
More than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, widely reported, but understand this: 18,500 of them were children. According to a reporting by Associated Press, more than 80 children have died from malnutrition- related causes. And for every child who dies of malnutrition, there are thousands more in deep trouble.
UNICEF, in a July 25 report, said 320,000 children are at risk of acute malnutrition with thousands already suffering from severe malnutrition, the deadliest form.
This headline from the Washington Post, ``60,000 Gazans have been killed. 18,500 were children. These are their names.'' That was in today's paper. Take a look at it, colleagues. Take a look at the pages of microscopic names, all children. And every name here on this poster, a child who is less than a year old.
These are not just numbers. These are individuals, beloved by their family. Children who are dying. Children who are deeply malnourished.
Let me read you a couple names to remind us all of the fact that these are individuals, just like you are an individual, just like I am an individual, my friends, my colleagues:
All these children, almost 1,000 of them, under the age of 1. They never got a chance to pursue their dreams. They were cut down by bombing and by malnutrition.
The IPC, the world's leading hunger monitor, published a report on Tuesday, and I have that report here. Let me hold it up. This report, it says:
``The worst case.'' The World Food Programme reports that hunger in Gaza has reached ``astonishing levels of desperation, [and] a third of the population is not eating for multiple days in a row.''
But what do we hear from the head man, the leader in Israel, Netanyahu? He says, on Sunday, this past Sunday:
Let me be clear. That is a lie. The world knows it is a lie. We know that it is a lie. Donald Trump knows that it is a lie. President Trump said on Monday:
The use of food and water and medicine as a weapon of war against civilians--including against children, the ill, the elderly, the women--it is unacceptable. It is unacceptable under international law. It is unacceptable under any religious or moral code.
I have much more to share on this topic, many more facts I would like to present, but I want to make sure that my colleague, my colleague from Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen gets an opportunity to share his thoughts.
We have called on addressing starvation, the lack of food, going way back to January of last year, 19 months ago. We called on the Biden administration; we called on the Trump administration.
He has been a leader, understanding and reporting so many facts to help the rest of us understand what is going on.
I will be voting against any weapon of war provided to Israel until every child and every woman has adequate nutrition in Gaza.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be permitted to speak prior to the scheduled rollcall vote: Senator Van Hollen for up to 10 minutes, Senator Durbin for up to 2 minutes, Senator Risch for up to 5 minutes, and Senator Sanders for up to 5 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I rise to oppose the transfer of over $675 million of U.S. taxpayers' money to finance 1000-pound bombs and 20,000 fully automatic rifles and other offensive weapons to the Netanyahu government.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza has gone from horrible to hell on earth. Yesterday, we reached the grisly marker of over 60,000 people killed in Gaza, over half of them women and children. And that number could be much higher. More than 133 people have died of starvation, over 80 of them children, most of them this month.
Experts have been warning about the threat of famine in Gaza for months, ever since the Netanyahu government imposed a total blockade on all humanitarian assistance going into Gaza on March 2.
This is a man-made, preventable crisis, and the solution is clear. The Netanyahu government must immediately allow the U.N.-led distribution system to resume delivery of aid into Gaza to avert a full-blown famine.
I have long said that Israel is completely justified in its war against Hamas, which murdered over 1,200 people and seized over 250 hostages on October 7. And we must not rest until every remaining hostage comes home, and there must be no more October 7s.
But the Netanyahu government is not justified in imposing collective punishment against all of the people of Gaza to pay for the sins of Hamas, and yet that is what is going on as it uses food and humanitarian aid as a weapon of war.
There are now a half million people facing famine-like conditions in Gaza, but they are not just numbers. Colleagues, this is an awful, awful picture, but we have to look at what is happening in Gaza. This is baby Zainab. She weighed 6.6 pounds when she was born 5 months ago. She was 4.4 pounds when she died a few days ago. Her life could have been saved with a special type of baby formula, but none of that formula can be found in Gaza. It wasn't let in.
For months, the Netanyahu government has been blocking thousands of truckloads of lifesaving aid that could save babies like Zainab. And yet the Netanyahu government is denying what every human being can see, and they are denying the humanity of people suffering.
Just 3 days ago, Benjamin Netanyahu said:
Even Donald Trump, who has given Netanyahu a blank check, called out that lie. He said that ``there is real starvation in Gaza. You can't fake that.''
The World Food Programme says it has enough food to end the crisis, but the Netanyahu government won't let them deliver all of it. And last week, they blocked almost half of the aid convoys that the WFP requested permission to bring in.
On July 27, the editorial board of Haaretz, Israel's longest running newspaper wrote simply:
This chart from the Wall Street Journal tells the story. As you can see, back here in March, the Netanyahu government imposed a total blockade for months on all food and humanitarian aid entering Gaza. After several months, they began to let a little trickle of aid in, but they did not allow the deliveries to resume through the tested distribution system that had been run by the United Nations and supported by trusted organizations like the World Food Programme. Instead, they replaced it with an organization that goes by the name of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, but there is nothing humanitarian about it. It is a shadowy private organization backed up by mercenaries and the IDF.
The food distribution blocked by Israel had over 400 aid distribution points. The GHF operation has only four, and they are not always open. The operation has become a death trap. When you have 4 sites to feed 2 million people, it is not surprising that thousands of desperately hungry people are
The U.N. Secretary General said:
That should be obvious to all of us. Yet the Trump administration is using $30 million of U.S. taxpayer money to fund that deathtrap, and it is sending more taxpayer dollars to fund bombs to the Netanyahu government to continue the devastation of Gaza.
Colleagues, this must end. The Netanyahu government must immediately allow tested U.N. distribution systems to resume operations and quickly surge food to starving people.
It is important to note that the Netanyahu government claimed it was replacing the U.N. distribution system because Hamas was systematically diverting food intended for civilians for its own purposes. From the start, that was a pretext and a big lie. The U.N. distribution system had strong safeguards to prevent any significant diversion to Hamas, and they were working.
Cindy McCain of WFP said her organization saw no evidence of any effort of Hamas to loot aid trucks. Israeli military officials told the New York Times in a story in just the last couple of weeks that there is no such proof. They said:
An internal U.S. Government analysis that just came out in the last few weeks found no evidence of systematic theft by Hamas. That was also the testimony of former U.S. Special Envoy for Humanitarian Issues David Satterfield.
So why did Israel dismantle a system that was kind of working and replace it with one that is killing civilians as they try to get food? The simple reason is also horrifying. It is that the Israeli Government wants to use food as a weapon of war and for population control.
They opened four aid sites--mostly in the south--to displace Palestinians and move more in that direction. The Israeli Government is trying to herd the Palestinian people into concentrated enclaves as a prelude to pushing them out of Gaza entirely.
It is not a ``secret'' plan, colleagues; it has been right out there in the open. In fact, in February of this year, President Trump said he wanted to remove Palestinians from Gaza. And the Netanyahu government and the Prime Minister himself embraced the plan--which, by the way, had been previously proposed by members of his rightwing coalition. In fact, recently, his Heritage Minister said, as others have quoted, that the government was ``rushing toward Gaza being wiped out'' and ``driving out the population.''
Colleagues, this is part of a coordinated campaign by the Netanyahu government--a government that has declared the removal of Gaza's population as a strategic goal of the war. That is ethnic cleansing by any other name, supported by American taxpayer dollars.
The extremists in the Netanyahu coalition do not just have their eyes set on Gaza. As we speak, Israeli settlers are encroaching farther and farther into the West Bank, killing more and more Palestinians who live there.
It is important to note that one of the arms sales we are discussing is the transfer of 20,000 fully automatic rifles to the Israeli national police, headed by one of the most extreme members of the government, Ben-Gvir--somebody who handed out rifles to settlers a little while ago without having any idea where they were going.
On top of that, back in February, President Trump suddenly revoked all U.S. sanctions against extremist settlers in the West Bank that had been put in place by the Biden administration. That sent a terrible message.
In just the first 6 months of this year, we have seen the highest rate of settler attacks in years. One of those happened on July 11, when violent settlers beat to death a 20-year-old Palestinian-American citizen from Florida while he was visiting his family. His name was Sayf, and he is the seventh American citizen killed in the West Bank since January 2, 2022, and the fifth in just the last 19 months--some killed by Israeli settlers and others by Israeli security forces.
Just this week, a Palestinian activist who helped make the Oscar- winning documentary ``No Other Land'' was shot and killed by a violent settler who had been sanctioned under the Biden administration--the sanctions the Trump administration withdrew.
Meanwhile, on July 23, just a week ago, the Israeli Knesset approved a symbolic resolution that supported annexing the entire West Bank--a place where 2.7 million Palestinians live.
Colleagues, for decades, peacemakers on both sides have hoped to make the West Bank and Gaza a foundation of a Palestinian state. We need to make sure that we don't support these efforts that undermine peace and security in the region. Children are starving before our eyes.
Colleagues, if ever there was a time to act, it is now. It is overdue, but let's act now and support the resolutions put forward by Senator Sanders.
Several weeks ago, several Senators joined me in meeting with the Ambassador from Israel. It was an effort to discuss many of the things which we are discussing this evening.
We asked him why Israel was not providing humanitarian aid in Gaza. He said: That is not true. We were providing it, but Hamas was stealing it from us and using it to buy weapons and to make them stronger.
Then he went on to say--when we asked him about the children starving, the images we had all seen on television, he said: That is not true. That is a United Nations' narrative.
Then we asked him basically: If there is such a difference of opinion about what is happening in Gaza, why don't you allow international journalists to come into this area and report to the world what they actually see?
He said it was too dangerous for journalists to even witness it.
Mr. President, I want to tell you, that was an incredible statement and, I believe, totally wrong.
At the outset, Cindy McCain and others told us there is no diversion by Hamas of the humanitarian aid. It just isn't coming into Gaza.
They went on to say that these children--of course, we see them on television. You can't avoid it. That is the reality of the situation.
Furthermore, when it came down to it, we had to stand up and acknowledge the obvious--that Israel is part of this.
Children in Gaza are starving and dying. The question is, What will the United States do about it?
I thank the Senator from Vermont for offering these resolutions this evening. It is painful for many of us who devoted our congressional careers to supporting Israel, standing by them through difficult times. It is impossible to explain or defend what is going on today. Gaza is starving and dying because of the policies of Benyamin Netanyahu.
It is time for us as a nation to say that our taxpayers are not going to support this effort. I will be joining the Senator this evening in supporting this effort.
Mr. President, I rise today to oppose the two resolutions that are in front of the body right now.
These two resolutions are an attempt to stop munition sales to Israel that have been approved by the administration and are designed to provide Israel with defensive weapons that they need.
These are misguided resolutions and, if adopted, would reinstate the failed policies of the Biden administration and would abandon America's closest ally in the Middle East.
Let's remember, the conflict between Israel and Hamas and the need for the military assistance for Israel is the fault of Hamas. It is not Israel's fault. It is not America's fault. It is the fault of Hamas. It is the result of Hamas's grotesque action on October 7, the threat Hamas poses to American national security, and, of course, Hamas's treatment of the people of Gaza. They set up their military facilities in hospitals and schools and in mosques, they use the people of Gaza as human shields, and they steal the food the
I couldn't agree more with my colleagues who want an end to this war. We all want to see an end to this war and an immediate cease-fire and for the hunger crisis in Gaza to end. The solution to all of this isn't to deprive Israel of the weapons it needs; the solution is in the hands of Hamas. This could end in a moment. Hamas could release the hostages, lay down their arms and surrender, and not one more bullet would be fired. But until this happens, we can't let up on these terrorists who have committed the atrocities against Israel, have caused this chaos in the Middle East, and have endangered American national security again and again.
I hope my colleagues will join me in opposing this resolution.
A little over a year ago, the Senate voted for $18 billion in defense aid to Israel. On the Democratic side, the vote was 47 to 4. On the Republican side, the vote was 22 to 27. Democrats support defense aid to Israel.
This is not a vote to retract a single dollar of that $18 billion in aid; it is a vote to say that defense aid to Israel, which Democrats overwhelmingly supported, should be defensive in nature, not offensive weapons that are likely to lead to unnecessary civilian suffering and destabilization in the region.
I support defensive aid to Israel. I will support Senator Sanders' resolutions to not allow the transfer of these offensive weapons.
Mr. President, let me conclude by saying this: Senator Risch was right. Hamas is a terrorist organization that began this war. They are war criminals. But Hamas is not responsible for the starvation of children today. Hamas is not responsible for the fact that 90 percent of the housing units in Gaza have been destroyed, that their entire healthcare system has been destroyed, that every university in Gaza has been bombed.
So today, it is not about Hamas; it is not about Israel; it is about the United States of America and whether we will continue to be complicit in war crimes and in the destruction of women and children in Gaza.
I ask for strong support for both of my resolutions.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to discharge S.J. Res. 41.
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Kelly), and the Senator from Michigan (Ms. Slotkin) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 27, nays 70, as follows:
The motion was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the question is on agreeing to the motion to discharge S.J. Res. 34.
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Kelly) and the Senator from Michigan (Ms. Slotkin) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 24, nays 73, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the mandatory quorum call under rule XXII has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the nomination of Gadyaces Serralta, of Florida, to be Director of the United States Marshals Service, shall be brought to a close?
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Kelly), and the Senator from Michigan (Ms. Slotkin) are necessarily absent.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 59, nays 38, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 59, and the nays are 48. The motion is agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order the question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the nomination of Matthew Kozma, of Virginia, to be Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, Department of Homeland Security, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Kelly), and the Senator from Michigan (Ms. Slotkin) are necessarily absent.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 53, nays 44, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 53, the nays are 44. The motion is agreed to.
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 celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Wyoming Trauma and Emergency Medical Services Conference.
On August 21, 2025, the Wyoming Department of Health Office of Emergency Medical Services will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Wyoming Trauma and Emergency Medical Services Conference. The conference is a premier educational event for first responders statewide.
In the 1970s, Wyoming lawmakers recognized the need to create a statewide system to standardize emergency medical services. The Wyoming EMS Office was established to provide critical training, support, and continuing education for first responders. It is also responsible for EMS licensing across the State.
The trauma conference came from humble beginnings. The first conference was hosted in a basement room. Throughout the years, the conference grew in size and popularity as a respected source of education and information.
Over the years, the Office of Emergency Medical Services and the Wyoming Emergency Medical Services Association have both hosted this valuable conference. Spanning 3 full days, the event will highlight new EMS practices and trauma care issues. With national and local speakers, activities, and vendors, it will provide eight different continuing education tracks for participants to pursue.
Aside from the incredible educational opportunities available, the conference creates a sense of community. Each year, the conference highlights the achievements of incredible healthcare professionals around the State. Top first responders are honored by their peers with awards for Lifetime Achievement, the Pete Vase Medic of the Year, Physician Medical Director of the Year, EMS Course Coordinator of the Year, along with the Bystander, Rising Star, and Achievement Awards.
The Wyoming Office of Emergency Medical Services is led by Manager Aaron Koehler, MS, EMT. He is joined by a dedicated team including:
The Wyoming Trauma and EMS conference plays an integral role in the excellence of Wyoming healthcare and emergency response. This conference allows participants opportunities to meet with others, learn new skills, and improve their abilities in the field.
Every attendee, including EMS clinicians, medical experts, first responders, agency administrators, and educators, is truly selfless and caring. They are drawn to making a tangible difference and have an incredible passion for saving lives. I applaud each and every one of them for their hard work and commitment.
It is an honor to celebrate this significant milestone. This conference provides tremendous opportunities for our State's medical professionals. Congratulations to the Office of Emergency Medical Services on the 50th anniversary of the Wyoming Trauma and
Mr. President, today I would like to pay tribute to my friend Candance Castlen Brake, president and CEO of the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce. Candance is retiring this year after a decade leading the chamber, and I ask my colleagues to please join me in recognizing Candance for her devotion to serving the public and making her community a better place.
Candance graduated from Brescia College in Owensboro in 1993 with a bachelors in history and went to work in her first job for the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce as community program manager. The experience she gained in this role ignited her love for the chamber's work and continues to drive her to this day.
While completing her master's in public administration from Western Kentucky University, Candance began her next career step that involved a 5-and-a-half-year period helping run the Daviess County Fiscal Court as chief of staff to county judge executive W.M ``Buzz'' Norris. There, she assisted in the management of a $35 million budget and 200 full- time employees. This was only the beginning of her robust service in local and county government that built a foundation for her tremendous success as a leader.
Candance's affinity for the chamber brought her back in 2000 as vice president of workforce development and education. She worked with local businesses addressing workforce issues and helping workers transition into new jobs. Candance quickly rose to the rank of executive vice president overseeing a broad swath of operations which focused on economic development in Owensboro.
In November of 2004, Candance was elected city commissioner, where she began the first of three consecutive terms advocating on behalf of Owensboro and facilitating one of the most important developments in city history in the riverfront revitalization project. I was proud to help secure $50 million in Federal funds to renovate Owensboro's riverfront, turning this space into a magnet for economic development. Candance played an integral role in this project, encouraging community and business leaders to think big. What started as just an idea was made into reality through the persistence and tenacity of public servants like Candance.
In 2015, she returned to the Owensboro Chamber as president and led the organization through some of its most pivotal moments with a laser focus on bettering the lives of small business owners. Advocacy efforts under Candance led to the widening of highway 54, lighting of the William H. Natcher Bridge, and countywide broadband. In addition to these infrastructure accomplishments, Candance has worked tirelessly on talent building and retention through the chamber's young professionals group and by founding the Greater Owensboro Leadership Institute. She believes in young talent and has seen firsthand how valuable it can be to a city.
In addition to her career accomplishments, Candance has served on numerous boards such as Kentuckians for Better Transportation, the American Chamber of Commerce Executives Board, and the Brescia University Board of Trustees. She has also received status as a distinguished alumnus from her alma mater for making a difference.
While Candance's career accomplishments are beyond impressive, there is much more to her life. Inspired by her grandfather and motivated by current and past local entrepreneurs, Candance leads with selflessness, always striving to give back. She frequently attributes her successes to the team and ensures those around her feel valued for their work. Candance gives it her all and inspires others to get involved too. I know that she will succeed in the next chapter of her life and is looking forward to spending more time with her husband Nick and adult children Nicholas and Caroline. Once again, I ask my colleagues to please join me in applauding Candance's career of service to the public and to the business community in Owensboro.
Mr. President, for the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation I report favorably the following nomination lists which were printed in the RECORDS on the dates indicated, and ask unanimous consent, to save the expense of reprinting on the Executive Calendar that these nominations lie at the Secretary's desk for the information of Senators.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
*Nomination was reported with recommendation that it be confirmed subject to the nominee's commitment to respond to requests to appear and testify before any duly constituted committee of the Senate.
(Nominations without an asterisk were reported with the recommendation that they be confirmed.)
Mr. President, I rise to introduce the bipartisan NCUA Central Liquidity Facility Enhancements Act.
In December 2022, the temporary statutory enhancements that assisted the agent membership of corporate credit unions expired, leaving 3,322 smaller credit unions without access to the National Credit Union Administration's, NCUA, Central Liquidity Facility, CLF. This also contracted the facility's capacity by almost $10 billion.
This bill would grant the NCUA Board permanent statutory authority to determine the amount of capital stock in the CLF required for a corporate credit union to become a member of the facility, allowing more institutions to access this important backup liquidity source.
At a time of increased interest rate and liquidity risks for some credit unions, the CLF's role is increasingly important. This flexibility will ensure that the CLF can contain or avert any liquidity crises before they escalate and provide financial stability.
I thank Senator Cramer for introducing this legislation with me in the Senate. I hope all our colleagues will join us in supporting this bill to ensure that the CLF can appropriately and rapidly respond to economic events.
S. 2548. A bill to designate the Camp Hutchins Wilderness and establish Special Management Areas in the Shawnee National Forest in the State of Illinois, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
S. 2556. A bill to repeal the changes made by the health subtitle of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
Mr. President, I rise to introduce the bipartisan NCUA Central Liquidity Facility Enhancements Act.
In December 2022, the temporary statutory enhancements that assisted the agent membership of corporate credit unions expired, leaving 3,322 smaller credit unions without access to the National Credit Union Administration's, NCUA, Central Liquidity Facility, CLF. This also contracted the facility's capacity by almost $10 billion.
This bill would grant the NCUA Board permanent statutory authority to determine the amount of capital stock in the CLF required for a corporate credit union to become a member of the facility, allowing more institutions to access this important backup liquidity source.
At a time of increased interest rate and liquidity risks for some credit unions, the CLF's role is increasingly important. This flexibility will ensure that the CLF can contain or avert any liquidity crises before they escalate and provide financial stability.
I thank Senator Cramer for introducing this legislation with me in the Senate. I hope all our colleagues will join us in supporting this bill to ensure that the CLF can appropriately and rapidly respond to economic events.
Mr. President, I have 15 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 Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, at 11 a.m., to conduct a business meeting.
The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet in executive session during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, at 10 a.m.
The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a business meeting.
The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a business meeting.
The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet in executive session during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, at 10 a.m.
The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a business meeting.
The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, upon conclusion of the 10 a.m. meeting, to conduct a business meeting.
The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, at 10:15 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.
The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Committee on Veterans' Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, at 4 p.m., to conduct a business meeting.
The Special Committee on Aging is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, at 3:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, at 3 p.m., to conduct a closed briefing.
The Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and
SUBCOMMITTEE ON BORDER MANAGEMENT, FEDERAL WORKFORCE AND REGULATORY
The Subcommittee on Border Management, Federal Workforce and Regulatory Affairs of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, at 2 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
Mr. President, I now ask for a second reading, and in order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I object to my own request.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The bill will be read for the second time on the next legislative day.
I ask unanimous consent 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. 349) 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 the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 901, a bill to amend the Small Business Act and the Small Business Investment Act of 1958 to increase the maximum loan amount for certain loans, and for other purposes, and be referred to the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Thursday, July 31; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and that the Senate proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the Executive Calendar No. 271, Cheryl Mason; further, notwithstanding rule XXII, at 11 a.m., the cloture motions filed on Tuesday ripen and the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Mason nomination; if cloture is invoked on the Mason nomination, the Senate then execute the order of July 30 in relation to the Clarkson nomination; further, at 2:15 p.m., the Senate execute the order in relation to the Serralta nomination, and following the disposition of the Serralta nomination, the Senate vote on confirmation of the Mason nomination, and if confirmed, the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar No. 254, Andrea Lucas, and if cloture is invoked, the Senate then execute the order in relation to the Kozma nomination; finally, if any nominations are confirmed during Thursday's session of the Senate, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
